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It was offensive slang
It was slang. Most people think it was just a shortened form of "German", which would have made it about as offensive as "Brit" or "Tommy". Even if the alternative theory that it was a joke on German army helmets looking like chamber pots (for which Jerry was once a slang term) were true, it'd reallty have been just a bit puerile (and if it was true, it was true in WW1 and by WWII most people just throught it was just short for German). The combatants in the world wars all had much more offensive terms for each other.
Calling Germans "Jerry" now is dodgy because it's usually "Daily Mail reader still fighting World War Two" xenophobia, and if you think that was the spirit in which @kimmo evoked the image, your objection should be to the whole paragraph, because taking "Jerry" out doesn't change it.
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itsbruce
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LairyGodmother
It was offensive slang used by Allied soldiers to describe German Soldiers. Compare with slang for other people from other nations and consider if they'd be interchangeable terms here.