West Germans against the West: Anti-Americanism in Media and Public Opinion in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1949-68

Abstract

In his PhD thesis, supervised by Anthony Nicholls, Christoph Hendrik Müller tackles the reverse angle of the well-researched topic of (West) Germany's Americanization, namely West German opposition to this process and German resentment of the American way of life, including culture, business practices and political ideas. Basing his argument on Gesine Schwan's and Günter Moltmann's definition of ‘anti-Americanism’, he outlines in three parts the origins and impact of the two broad types of anti-Americanism in 1950s and 1960s West Germany. Part 1 is introductory and lays out his theoretical framework, and Part 2, entitled ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung at the Expense of the United States’, deals with criticism by the German public in the early years of the Federal Republic. Here Müller argues that most of the criticism directed against the USA resulted from an attempt to redefine and reestablish a new German national identity after Nazi rule and its atrocities. By attacking the negative impact and often contradictory nature of US occupation policy, but also by pointing towards questionable American war conduct, such as the carpet-bombing of cities and the use of the nuclear bomb against Japan, many Germans tried to downplay German war crimes and atrocities. In so doing they were still influenced to a certain degree by Nazi propaganda, in particular with regard to the Morgenthau plan. The widespread criticism among the German public and media of the treatment of native Americans, and criticism of continuing racial segregation in the US, were usually conservative attempts to deflect from the Holocaust and German racism, but they also came from people located left of the political centre.