During World War I (and less frequently during World War II),"Hun" referred to Germans.The reason is because at the end of the 1890s, there was a warcalled the Boxer Rebellion in China. Several countries, includingGermany, sent soldiers to help end the rebellion. When the Germansoldiers were leaving, the German Kaiser (Emperor) told thesoldiers that they would be so fierce and deadly that their Chineseenemies would remember them for centuries, just like how the Hunshad been remembered and feared in the Roman Empire.Allied propagandists remembered this quote when World War Ibegan, and applied it to German soldiers to portray them as cruel,uncivilized barbarians.