[Editor's note: 3 responses to this query follow.]

1.
From: Gary Shellman (shellman@uwm.edu)

While there are clear policy disagreements between the Bush and
Schroeder administrations at present, I would like to take issue with
[Dan Rogers] that German American relations are in a "steep slide" based
on "deeper, ineradicable suspicions."  First to the generalizations: The
diplomatic differences over the past 100 years are easily documented
--the Great War and the destruction of its worst manifestation, the 3rd
Reich are exclamation points-- but these have never destroyed the
profound and continuing mutual respect the two nations share with each
other.   From the 48ers to the Donauschwaben, the United States served
as fertile ground for displaced Germans, most of whom maintained
communications with "the German fatherland" whatever that was.  Even
during the troubled Weimar Republic, the strong connections between
German and U.S. universities grew stronger than ever, while the
documents demonstrate gratitude for the Dawes and Young plans.  It might
be overstating it, but the U.S. would probably rank as "most favored" or
at least "least hated" enemies of the Third Reich.  Certainly, the U.S.
occupation zone, 1945-49 was the preferred area of residence for the
redivided Germany, and there is evidence of gratitude for the Marshall
Plan and the insistence on the market economy that fueled the
"Wirtschaftswunder."  Recent publications detail the social impact of
U.S. troops in the German American community, yet despite periodic
disciplinary problems, no issue interfered with German membership of
NATO, the growth of the European Union, or growing partnerships
throughout the 1960s and 70s. Socialists Wily Brandt and Helmut Schmidt
maintained strong diplomatic relations with the U.S. as did Helmut
Kohl.  Joshka Fischer may have protested U.S. nuclear missile deployment
in his youth, as he takes exception to a preemptive war (many of us
Americans consider it aggression and agree with him by the way) in the
current round of trans-Atlantic discussions.  Finally, there is the
whole roster of German American partnerships that have thrived over the
past three decades: the GSA, the Atlantik-Bruecke, the various
historical and cultural organizations, DAAD, the German Marshall Fund,
the American Council on Germany and more.  U.S. support for the
reunification was welcome.  Since 1989, until now, relations have been
warm and extensive.

Now a few specifics: in 17 years of working with German diplomats for
public affairs programming , I have encountered highly educated people
who understand U.S. quirks and culture and who are peacemakers, whether
SPD or CDU in background.  Guenter Pleuger, the current Ambassador to
the UN is an outstanding example.  The American presence in Germany for
50 years has resulted in extensive and generally positive interaction
between people of both cultures.  (I lived for 2 years at the Gutleut
Kaserne in downtown Frankfurt and worked at the I.G. Farben HQ and
interacted extensively with the local sports car club).  Student
exchanges have grown; our university's partner is Justus-Liebig-Uni in
Giessen.

In summary, the U.S. and Germany are intertwined in far too many ways
for Mr. Rumsfeld's rumblings to tear the relationship apart.  German
criticism and German proposals have been constructive.  While our
government is focused on immediate gains and short term goals, the
Germans (the French & others) actually see the big picture better than
the administration.  They consider the consequences of what appears
immanent in Iraq.  This is the perspective of one historian who has
worked programming international and U.S. foreign issues events for the
past 17 years.

Sincerely,
Gary Shellman


2.
From: Rod Stackelberg (stackelberg@calvin.gonzaga.edu)

Anti-Americanism is not the explanation for German or European criticism
of the Bush Administrations' war policies. "Ambivalence," not
anti-Americanism, is probably the right word to characterize European
and German attitudes toward America. They share our culture and our
ideals. It is our present militaristic, unilateralist foreign policy
that they criticize. It really took some doing to squander away all of
the good will and good wishes that Europeans bore toward our country
after September 11. Germany provided military and logistical support for
the war against Al Quaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. They are still
there to pick up the pieces while the US is already preparing the next
war. Europeans were and remain committed to combating terrorism. In
fact, a major reason Europeans oppose a military attack on Iraq is
because they are concerned that this will inhibit the war on terrorism,
will in fact make terrorism more likely and more of a threat rather than
less.

Europeans, including Germans, also have a far greater interest and, no
doubt, as smaller, weaker nations, a greater stake in the integrity of
international law and the role of the United Nations in enforcing
international law. A preventive war violates the conditions for a just
war and violates the UN charter, which prohibits the use of force unless
all non-military options have been exhausted. German and European
criticism of the US has to be seen in the context of US contempt for
international law and international efforts to solve global problems as
demonstrated by the US rejection of the Kyoto Agreement, the abrogation
of the ABM treaty on which all post-war arms control and arms reduction
agreements have been based, refusal to recognize the jurisdiction of the
newly-created International Criminal Court to prosecute war crimes,
opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Convention to
ban the use of Land Mines, as well as attempts to weaken the Chemical
and Biological Weapons conventions and more longstanding refusal to
ratify the Un Conventions on social and economic rights, on the Rights
of Women and the Rights of the Child.

The current rift has nothing to do with the pre-1945 anti-Americanism of
the German Right (which viewed the US as the symbol of commercialism and
egalitarianism, values anathema to heroic German idealists), except
possibly in the dialectical sense alluded to by Dan Diner. There are
some Germans who now see the fronts reversed, i.e., the US now has taken
on some of the unfortunate traits of pre-war Germany (not least the
sense of world mission).

Those obsessed by European anti-Americanism might do well to cast a
glance at an equally distasteful phenomenon closer to home: the
anti-Europeanism of the right wing hardliners in this country. Timothy
Garton Ash has an interesting article on this in a recent issue of the
New York Review. Right-wing publicists and right-wing journals like the
National Review or Weekly Standard refer to Europeans as "Euroids," "the
'peens," "Euroweenies," and my own particular favorite, the "EU-nuchs."
The current stereotype of Europeans is that they are wimps who can't get
it up in a military sense. They are seen, according to Garton Ash, as
"weak, petulant, hypocritical, disunited, duplicitous, sometimes
anti-Semitic and often anti-American appeasers." There are often sexual
under- or over-tones in this imagery. The American is the virile,
heterosexual male; the European is female, impotent, or castrated. The
ultra-conservative Robert Kagan writes in the journal Policy Review,
"Americans are from Mars, and Europeans are from Venus," and he doesn't
mean it as a compliment.

Rod Stackelberg


3.
From: Albrecht Ritschl (ritschl@wiwi.hu-berlin.de)

Dear Dan Rogers,

(writing to you from Berlin): thank you for taking the initiative on
this. Here are some reflections.

Is Germany's recent policy swing really just "a sign of Germany's
continuing self re-assertion, begun tentatively under Helmut Kohl in the
1980s and now being pursued much more boldly by Gerhard Schroeder."?

Let us keep in mind that Schroeder, Fischer, and the generation now in
charge of German politics began their careers in the student revolts of
the 1960s, a time of fierce anti-Americanism. I spent parts of my
childhood in Frankfurt and still have vivid remembrances of those
violent demonstrations, the Ho Chi Minh chants, the flag-burning etc.
One morning, the Baader Meinhof people blew up the entrance hall of IG
Farben building, then a US army headquarters one block away from my
school. I still hear the enormous bang it produced.

Infiltrating the rank and file of Germany's institutions ("Marsch durch
die Institutionen") and creating a mess there ("seid Sand im Getriebe!")
was among the proclaimed goals of that generation. Maybe we now see what
they meant?

There was also an ideological dimension. Neo-Marxism was rather quick to
make the connection between big business, Nazism and what was then
called US imperialism. Look into the writings of Marcuse, Adorno,
Horkheimer and the like. These intellectual underpinnings made it easy
to hate America's politics while at the same time listening to its music
and subscribing to its popular culture. The idea that Nazism was just a
product of big business was almost commonplace among the left, and has
made deep intellectual inroads. E.g. in economic history, this nexus was
considered an entirely respectable hypothesis far into the 1980s.

Let's face it. The remarks of Daeubler-Gmelin were not accidental. I
have heard similar things far too often to believe in a Freudian slip.
Still, the broader psychological interpretations of such beliefs are
obvious.

"In light of these recent events, my main question is as follows: in
broader historical terms, is the close relationship between the Federal
Republic of Germany and the United States, which lasted between 1949 and
2002, to be viewed as an aberration, a temporary concealment of deeper
and perhaps ineradicable suspicions on the part of both Germans and
Americans?" [Dan Rogers]

On the face of it, relations were indeed close. But let us keep in mind
that Germany's allegiance to NATO was under constant attack in the
German public. Remember the debate in the late 1970s about the Pershing
missiles? The peace movement strongly opposed stationing any new
missiles and more or less openly questioned German membership in the
NATO, and so did the SPD's youth organization, led for a time by young
Schroeder. In mass demonstrations, people formed lines several hundred
miles long, they chained themselves to railroad tracks and stationing
site gates when the missiles arrived. Compared to that, the low turnout
at Germany's current anti-war demonstrations so far has been surprising.
Maybe more is still to come.

"Most Americans, if they consider Germany at all, view it through the
prism of World War II." [Dan Rogers]

I am afraid that most Germans don't. The average German intellectual
would most likely point to business interests behind the war on Iraq -
which is an anti-American theme that goes back to the 1890s. Whenever I
insist on discussing the moral dimensions, the only thing I get to hear
is that even World War II was mainly about economic interests, not about
morality.

"As our memories of Cold War alliances fade, the notion of an unreliable
Germany of which the United States must be suspicious, may in fact be
regaining currency." [Dan Rogers]

No doubt. The difference is that Germany is about as fanatically
pacifist today as it used to be militarist in the past. In relative
terms, this is still an improvement, isn't it?

Kind regards, Albrecht Ritschl

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