Dear Foe: German Anti-Americanism since 1945

Journalist Henry R. Luce, the founder and editor of Time, Fortune and Life, proclaimed “the American Century” in February 1941. Luce conjured the vision of a world shaped by American ideals, one in which fundamental American values such as liberty and justice would everywhere be manifest. For

Luce, this century represented above all an ideological programme and not simply the victory march of Hollywood, McDonalds and Silicon Valley, which we Europeans have since come to expect; nor was this about cloaking US aspirations to power, as the anti-imperialist discourse seems to suggest. In step with the triad of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, Luce called upon Americans to guarantee freedom, economic growth and the fulfilment of personal needs to all people.1

However, one might just as well describe the bygone 20thcentury as “anti-American”. It is easily overlooked that, although Luce sold the term to the century with efficaciousness, he actually coined it from a defensive position. History proved in the end that Luce was right to have attempted to awaken his countrymen to the realities of an open-ended international situation. In early 1941 Hitler’s armies were advancing all over Europe. Democracy and the rule of law were in retreat all over the world. One nation after another was falling victim to dictatorship. If, by entering World War II the USA also put its stamp on 20thcentury world history, this success story was by no means a matter of course.

It is true that the ideals represented by an (often metaphorical) America in the last hundred years have inspired people all over the world, as Barack Obama’s recent speech in Berlin once again showed. Because America served beyond its own borders as a role model and stooge, it attracted repugnance and even terrorism. The dreams and also the nightmares invested by human fantasy in the future often bore and continue to bear an American signature. Yet, however profound the influence of those first and foremost American inventions, modern (“mass”) culture and (“mass”) democracy may have been, the 20th century also clearly bore the stamp of counter-movements that were opposed to “American Modernism”, which is to say, to liberal capitalism and representative democracy. In this respect America has always been more than simply a country. In the competition between ideologies and political systems, and also between civilisations – that is, between orders primarily informed by culture or religion - it was always a universal antithesis, waiting in the wings.

Understood correctly anti-Americanism is therefore more than merely criticism of the USA. If the concept of anti-Americanism is to be of any analytical value whatsoever – if, that is, it is to help us understand anything at all about fundamental social and ideological conflicts in the 20thand 21stcenturies –it must be separated from any (justified or unjustified) criticism of individual decisions taken by American governments; and equally, from any criticism of specific conditions in the USA. Anti-Americanism is therefore here defined as a critical principle, as anti-liberalism, anti-capitalism and even as an “anti-everything western” stance. Unlike anti-communism or anti-fascism, anti-Americanism is not focused primarily on an abstract ideological concept but rather, similar in its very word stem to anti-Semitism, finds its point of reference in an ethnic respectively in a national category. Yet, just as hatred of Jews is based on more than ethnic, racial or national prejudice, so too, is ideological opposition to America.2

If one defines anti-Americanism as anti-liberalism, one paradox is easily resolved: namely, historical and contemporary anti-Americanism has often amounted to anti-Americanism with America. Italian fascism, for example, admired the USA’s increasing economic, technological and political prowess, despite maintaining a critical distance.3 The same is true of Hitler’s Germany, which relied on selected American methods to get by, even if these were not named as such.4 West Germany’s New Left followed this deeply ingrained European pattern. Ideological opposition to liberal “American modernism” was however so closely interwoven with a certain American style of protest that researchers trenchantly speak of “Americanised anti-Americanism”.5 And in the GDR? The government there was officially anti-American yet Erich Honecker was not about to pass up a chance to invite Angela Davis to the Friedrichstadtpalast, even though the SED was at the same time busily constructing images of the enemy, designed to dampen the population’s enthusiasm for American Pop culture.6

Right-wing anti-Americanism after 1945

National Socialist Germany was defeated in May 1945. This as little spelled the end of right-wing anti-Americanism as it did of anti-communism. On the contrary: a European (which is to say,

Christian) “Occident” was looked upon favourably in Conservative circles until well into the 60s. Its advocates maintained a critical distance not only from the recently demised “Third Reich” and the Soviet Union but also from America as metaphor. Christian Democrats such as Adenauer and de Gasperi, the founding fathers of the European Community, sought a strategic alliance with the USA yet they cleaved to traditional anti-American cultural conceit. The creed of old European patriarchs (including de Gaulle) defended a Christian Western world in which anti-Americanism was synonymous with cultural disdain for an egalitarian “mass” society and “mass” democracy.7

Typical of this attitude was the idea that Europeans would assume the leading intellectual role within the transatlantic alliance and leave military and political predominance to the Americans. (West) German poets and philosophers compared America’s relationship to Europe with that of Rome to Greece, as conquering powers have historically tended to adopt the cultural values of the conquered.8 Adenauer considered cooperation with the USA a sine qua non of West German reason of state yet simultaneously refused to accept an “Americanisation” of Germany, and denied the Americans any “decisive intellectual role” such as that embodied by “[German] opposition to the spread of totalitarian atheism from Russia”. According to the Old Man of Rhöndorf, the only effective bulwark against the Bolshevik menace was “Christian Humanism”.9

German nationalist and radical conservative authors such as Gottfried Benn, Ernst von Salomon or Carl Schmitt remained consistently anti-American after 1945, in that they continued to challenge Westernisation and Americanisation at the political and social levels. Probably the most influential anti-American book of this early period was von Salomon’s autobiographical novel “The Questionnaire”. It marked the zenith of literary criticism of the unpopular denazification programmes, with which America was attempting to educate – or force – Germans to take political responsibility, an endeavour here parodied by von Salomon. His derisive dismissal of the victors of WWII was peppered with invective against American soldiers, whom he described as brutal, degenerate, stupid and mean. He personally considered the true victors to be those Germans still undauntedly opposing “Victors’ Justice”.10

The new genre of anti-American re-education literature blossomed in the 1950s and 60s. Books such as Auf dem Bauche sollst Du kriechen (1958), written by Richard Tüngel and Hans Rudolf Berndorff, both co-editors of the ‘Zeit’, or Charakterwäsche (1965) penned by Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing were not exactly representative of academic debate of the day in Germany yet considerably influenced educated circles nonetheless. ‘Nation Europa’ – a journal founded in 1951 and to this day a linchpin of radical right-wing theory – continued to print blatant NS propaganda by the column: endless variations on such tired myths as “Wilson’s treason”, “Roosevelt’s war debts” or the “influence of the Jews” on American policy. This entrenched double front against East and West and culturally pessimistic criticism of technological progress – Conservative Revolutionaries’ major theme in the 1920s and 30s – was a continuous thread in anti-American journalism in post-war West Germany.11

Left-wing anti-Americanism after 1945

Nor did West Germany’s left wing shed its ambivalent attitude to the USA after 1945. However, anti-American sentiment was here initially somewhat muted. The experience of exile had weakened ideological objections to American Modernism among the SPD. Competition with the East Berlin “people’s democratic” model also played its part. For a long time the SED therefore enjoyed the doubtful privilege of upholding traditional left-wing anti-Americanism almost single-handedly.12 Left-wing criticism of America occurred primarily amongst writers such as the members of Gruppe 47 whilst SPD politicians, although at times critical of American foreign policy, nonetheless sought an ideological alliance with the USA. Willy Brandt thus styled himself in the run-up to the 1961 elections as the “German Kennedy”.

Protest against the Vietnam War – which as a critique of foreign policy didn’t initially deserve the anti-Americanism label – was a catalyst for broad-based ideological anti-Americanism. Leading figures in the extra-parliamentary opposition movement had been politicised in the US during student exchange programmes; forms of protest such as the “sit-in” or “teach-in” were taken up, un-translated, in the German language.13 Yet criticism soon turned into out and out rejection. Re-appropriating older theories of economic imperialism, Rudi Dutschke interpreted the USA’s “expansive foreign policy” as an attempt to distract attention from social conflicts or contradictions on the domestic front. This anti-Americanism was of an ideological nature because it understood Vietnam as an example of a destructive tendency inherent in liberal Modernism.14

Such opposition was to transpire in the 1970s as anti-American acts of terror. In contrast to the APO, which still considered itself an ally of the oppressed and disenfranchised of America, terrorism no longer differentiated between “culprits” and “victims”. Dozens of people fell victim to anti-American acts of terror, amongst them a 20-year old American soldier who was executed by a shot in the neck in August 1985. This provoked violent debates amongst left-wing groups and RAF-sympathisers.15 The battle cry of “everyday fascism” was re-coined as the catchy “USA-SA-SS”. “Fascism” was a ubiquitous reproach that resounded with wonderful regularity on both sides of the Atlantic. As a resumption of older German images of the USA, “America” here served as a cipher for a pathological tendency inherent in the development of liberal-capitalist modernism.

In the peace movement of the 1980s anti-Americanism moved closer to nationalist positions, also above and beyond the borders of East and West blocs. The frequent graffiti, “the FRG is El Salvador”, (which painted West Germany as a ‘colonial’ victim of dollar-imperialism) was illustrative of a new evaluation of the USA among left-wing groups, one that also resonated in the GDR’s official Party line, but not only there. For example, during early 1980s debate on rearmament, the national wing of the Green Party demanded neutral status for Germany on the grounds that Soviets and Americans were forcing Germans to act contrary to their national self-interest. The East German peace movement expounded a comparable position – yet in opposition to its current government. This national-neutralising position diffused in the course of further stations, up until and including protests against the Iraq War; indeed, given the problematic issue of Palestine it showed certain structural similarities with the global political line of confrontation described by Luce in 1941.16

Is anti-Americanism still with us today?

Looking back at the anti-American century it becomes evident that many ardent anti-Americans were simultaneously powerful forces of Americanisation. This illustrates the enormous attraction exerted by the ideals America represents. Such inconsistency was possible because opposition was directed more at the metaphorical than at the real America: ‘anti-American’ critics were more strongly opposed to their own country than to America. Authors such as political scientist Christian Schwaabe of Munich have now argued that the “arrival in the West” of a united Germany took the sting out of anti-Americanism.17This is true in as much as, since the end of the 1989/90 European civil war when communism, like fascism before it, was historically defeated, neither a “German way” nor a “European way” is any longer able to refer back to the same fundamental conflicts.

Therefore, even though the conflicts between fascism, communism and liberalism, which were waged within the Western world and so decisively shaped the 20thcentury, have been settled, opponents of the metaphorical or real America of which Henry Luce once spoke have by no means disappeared. In the wake of decolonisation, including that within the last European empire , the Soviet Union, liberal modernism remains in the focus of global political and philosophical conflicts, even if the USA is becoming economically and militarily weaker. Metaphorical America is now once again playing the role of Global Enemy Nr. 1. The 9/11 terrorists hadn’t a bone to pick with George W. Bush personally, but certainly a problem with the Pentagon and Wall Street, symbols of American power. It wouldn’t therefore be far-fetched to assert that traditional anti-Americanism, so characteristic of European and Atlantic civil wars in the 20thcentury, has indeed passed its historical expiry date. Yet we have by no means seen the last of anti-Americanism as a fundamental critique of liberal-capitalist modernism.In this respect, the 21stcentury may possibly become, if not an American perhaps an anti-American century.

German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. 2008

1 Cf. Henry R. Luce: The American Century. In: Life, 17th February 1941, pp. 61-65.

2 Cf. Dan Diner: Verkehrte Welten. Antiamerikanismus in Deutschland. Frankfurt/Main 1993, p. 29.

3 Cf. Emilio Gentile: Impending Modernity. Fascism and the Ambivalent Image of the United States. In: Journal of Contemporary History 28, 1993, pp. 7-29.

4 Cf. Philipp Gassert: Nationalsozialismus, Amerikanismus, Technologie. Zur Kritik der amerikanischen Moderne im Dritten Reich. In: Michael Wala, Ursula Lehmkuhl (Eds.), Technologie und Kultur. Europas Blick auf Amerika vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert. Cologne 2000, pp. 147-172.

5 Kaspar Maase: Diagnose: Amerikanisierung. Zur Geschichte eines Deutungsmusters. In: Transit 17, 1999, pp. 72-89.

6 Cf. Uta A. Balbier, Christiane Rösch (Eds.): Umworbener Klassenfeind. Das Verhältnis der DDR zu den USA. Berlin 2006, p.12 f.

7 Cf. Vanessa Conze: Das Europa der Deutschen. Ideen von Europa in Deutschland zwischen Reichstradition und Westorientierung (1920-1970). Munich 2005, p. 135-160.

8 Cf. Hans Freyer: Weltgeschichte Europas. Vol. 2. Wiesbaden 1948, pp. 16-17, 86-90, 581-2, 654.

9 Hans-Jürgen Grabbe: Das Amerikabild Konrad Adenauers. In: Amerikastudien 31, 1986, pp. 315-323.

10 Cf. Ernst von Salomon: Der Fragebogen. Hamburg 1951.

11 Cf. Philipp Gassert: Gegen Ost und West: Antiamerikanismus in der Bundesrepublik, 1945-1968. In: Detlef Junker et al. (Ed): Die USA und Deutschland im Zeitalter des Kalten Krieges, 1945-1990. Ein Handbuch. Bd. 1. Stuttgart, Munich 2001, pp. 944-954.

12 Cf. Dorothee Wierling: Amerikabilder in der DDR. In: Balbier/Rösch: Umworbener Klassenfeind. pp. 32-38.

13 Cf.. Martin Klimke: 1968 als transnationales Ereignis. In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 14/15, 2008, pp. 22-27.

14 Cf. Philipp Gassert: Anti-Amerikaner? Die deutsche Neue Linke und die USA. In: Jan C. Behrends, Árpád von Klimo and Patrice G. Poutrus (Eds.): Anti-Amerikanismus im 20. Jahrhundert. Studien zu Ost- und Westeuropa. Bonn 2005.pp. 250-267.

15 Cf. Wolfgang Kraushaar (Ed.): Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung. Von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail 1946-1995. Vol. 1. Frankfurt/Main 1998, p. 590 f.

16 Cf. Andrei S. Markovits: Amerika, dich haßt sich’s besser. Antiamerikanismus und Antisemitismus in Europa. Hamburg 2004, p. 173-196.

17 Christian Schwaabe: Antiamerikanismus. Wandlungen eines Feindbildes. Munich 2003, p. 12-13.