Ambiguous Relations: The American Jewish Community and Germany since 1945 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ambiguous Relations: The American Jewish Community and Germany since 1945 Jeffry M. Diefendorf Ambiguous Relations: The American Jewish Community and Germany since 1945, by Shlomo Shafir. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. 508pp. $44.95. The title of the book summarizes the author’s argument quite well. From the moment that Americans began to discuss postwar policy toward Germany through the unification of West and East Germany in 1990, most American Jews, whether American or European born, were loath to have friendly or cooperative relations with postwar Germany. However, since the United States, pursuing what it considered its own national and strategic interests, rather quickly became set on first the economic recovery and then political and military rehabilitation of West Germany, neither organized nor individual Jews were able to mount effective resistance. Furthermore, in order to solve pressing problems that were of specific interest to Jews, such as reparations, the restitution of property, or the resettlement of Jewish refugees, the American Jewish commun ity had to deal directly with German authorities and not get hung up on the continued existence of German antisemitism or the presence of former Nazis in the German government or in German business. Such key figures as German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and American occupation chiefs Lucius Clay and John McCloy, not to mention the political and diplomatic representatives of the new Israeli state, were all hard-nosed realists, and if Israel could negotiate directly with the Adenauer government, how could American Jews contend that Germany should be shunned? Any improvement in German-Jewish relations and German-Israeli relations would facilitate German-American relations and further the foreign policy aims of all parties. Whatever the American Jewish community thought, it had little choice but to fall in line, and usually it could exert but marginal influence around the edges of larger policy questions. Naturally, since the United States had no formal relations with East Germany until the 1970s, and since even then relations with West Germany remained of primary importance, Shafir devotes only one chapter to the contacts between organized American Jewry and the East German state. Shafir’s study is based on exhaustive research in many archives and a thorough reading of the secondary literature. His approach is encyclopedic in nature, and readers may want to flag for quick reference the three pages of abbreviations liberally used in the text. American Jewish organizations and influential individual American Jews seldom, if ever, spoke with one voice, and Shafir is very good at clarifying the differences between, for example, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Conference, the American Jewish Congress, and the World Jewish Congress. Whatever the issue, such as the Morgenthau Plan, German reparations, or the trials of Nazi perpetrators, Shafir discusses the varied views of organized Jewry and of Jews speaking on their own behalf. Over and over again he shows that where Jewish organizations agreed with broader American policy—examples are the need for German reeducation for democracy and the importance of extending the German statute of limitations law [End Page 148] to make possible the continued prosecution of Nazi criminals—they could exert some influence. But when those organizations were bucking the trend, such as the acceptance of West Germany as an ally and bulwark against Communism, they had little influence. This is no surprise. The American Jewish community may have been prosperous, well-educated, and articulate, but it was a small minority. Readers should not pick up this book expecting to find an analysis of how American Jews responded over time to the Holocaust. This is not Shafir’s main concern. Nevertheless, there is an interesting, if brief, treatment of the American response to the Eichmann trial and to Hannah Arendt’s controversial book on that trial. On several occasions Shafir mentions the outcry against Ronald Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg mili tary cemetery, perhaps because the symbolism of the event and the protests against it were so clear, but Shafir’s overall portrait of relations between Germany and the Ameri can Jewish community suggests that, in fact, Bitburg should not be given too prominent a place. It is too bad that Shafir’s book was completed before the...