[Editor's Note:  4 responses to this query follow.]


1.
From: Gerald R. Kleinfeld (thegsa@yahoo.com)

Dear Dan,

I'd like to refer you to the article by Klaus Schwabe in the FAZ of 25
January, "Archaeologie des Antiamerikanismus," which considers the
Kaiserreich and the Weimar period.

Gerald R. Kleinfeld


2.
From: Joe E. Cleere (cleerje@mail.auburn.edu)

Using a quote from Karl Haushoffer is a rather anachronistic way to
begin in describing current German-American relations.  Haushoffer was a
Pan-German, and I do not think there are that many of those around
except in the fringes of German society.

The Germans oppose the United States' foreign policy concerning Iraq
because they believe it is the right thing to do.  In their opinion, an
invasion and occupation of Iraq would destabilize the Middle East, both
in the long and the short term, and sew the seeds for more terrorist
extremism.  Yes, Iraq has a limited amount of WMD.  But should a
devastating war that would destabilize the Middle East more than what it
already is be waged against Iraq because of WMD or loose connections to
Al Qaeda?

I think the German proposal for more weapons inspectors escorted by UN
troops is a better solution than a full-blown war.

If German-American relations worsen because of the current impasse over
Iraq, it is not because the Germans are anti-American and want to snub
their nose at the United States; rather, it is because the Bush
Administration's foreign policy is short-sighted and could lead to
disaster for all concerned.  The Germans are trying to save the
Americans from themselves.  They do, after all, know a good bit about
their own history and the disasters that occurred between 1914 and 1945
because of nationalism and hubris.

Joe Cleere
Auburn University


3.
From: Susan Boettcher (susan.boettcher@mail.utexas.edu)

I have a different perspective on this, which relates to my contacts
with the large communities of descendants of German immigrants in the
U.S.  I have always found it interesting that members of these groups
think of themselves as simultaneously "German" and "American", and that
what seems to be a superficially positive picture of Germany (often in
the absence of very specific knowledge about Germany today) is based on
a complex and selective historical memory of "Germany" that feeds
heavily on the nineteenth century and only peripherally on WWII.  I
suspect that on the screen of these communities, the momentary chill is
just a "blip" in the larger picture.  If WWII, which afforded an
opportunity to many of these people to return to Europe as soldiers,
could not damage the ideas of these groups about "Germany," I doubt that
the current situation will affect it much, either.

Susan Boettcher
UT-Austin


4.
From: Fabian Rueger (fabian@ruegers.net)

Dear Professor Rogers,
I would very much like to follow on your posting on German-American
relations.  I see a few problems with your approach taken to analyze
this situation though; to explain the current 'steep slide' (we will
still have to wait whether current events actually come to mean one) on
the most objective (i.e. non-national) perspective, we should first rule
out any bias from historically rooted preconceptions of German-American
relations. Having extensively studied the crisis of German-American
relations in 1961-62, I think the current developments should be
analyzed with the following things in mind.

Prof. Rogers wrote:
"...if one reads some of the postings in Internet forums at the moment,
it's hard to reach the conclusion that America itself is loved."

The appearance of anti-American sentiment on Internet lists is not
reliable proof for or against any long-running cultural sentiments,
since Internet lists are statistically unrepresentative.  Hot-headed
debates on the net displayed by easily angered people ("flame wars") are
surely outlets for minorities wishing to present extreme positions and
feelings, but I have sincere doubts as to their usefulness to judge
entire cultures, especially on historical terms.  Currently there is an
abundance of extreme rhetoric available; much of it is based on
preconceptions of Germans and Americans of each other. While there
clearly is a cultural criticism of America at work in Europe (not
Germany alone) that is judgmental, deep rooted and instinctive, coming
to the fore whenever a public debate on German-American politics ensues,
it is not a reliable compass for analyzing German-American relations.
Vice versa there are strong impulses to judge Germany by a similar set
of cliches in the US.

An unbiased approach should distinguish between the cliches of each
other's culture and the rationale behind actual political
decision-making; we also need to distinguish between the meta-cliches
("Europeans" vs. "Americans") and the national stereotypes ("Germans" vs
"Americans"). I dare say that French (and Spanish, and Italian, and
Dutch, etc.) cultural stereotypes of the United States are strikingly
similar to the German tool set. What makes the cultural relations unique
are therefore only those parts of the stereotype which are directly
rooted in historical experience (or, better put, in contemporary
national subjective interpretation of the past).

In 19th century British upper classes there was a romantic infatuation
with all things German, until the rise of the Wilhelmine Empire. When
(working class rooted) Lord Northcliffe practically invented the modern
yellow press, his publications could thrive by selling to the British
public Germanophobia as a means of indirectly criticizing  the ruling
elites (such as the German-descent house of Hanover/Windsor); that
German foreign policy at the time provided a wonderful canvas for
Germanophobia in Britain is a given. In the meantime, German immigrants
in the US were considered the Mexican underdogs of their time. The
combination of this imagery in the Anglo-American world, in addition to
the handsomely idiotic foreign policy of the Kaiserreich, provided for a
cocktail that deeply entrenched the notion of extremely authoritarian
rude and ill-mannered Germans. In 1912, Britain and Germany had almost
identical grades of civil rights, yet Northcliffe had managed to sell
the British public a concept of German culture far from reality. It was
no surprise that he became the British minister of propaganda in World
War I; Goebbels later proudly proclaimed that he had learned all his
propaganda methods from the Northcliffe press.  Northcliffe's brother
Lord Rothermere, who took over the publishing empire after his death,
attempted partially to make up for this and made the mistake of
publishing conservative apologies for Hitler in the early 1930s. A
similar development can be found round and before World War I in the
United States. Sometime around the turn of the century, partially
attributable to Wilhelmine politics and the rise of simplifying mass
media, a Germanophobia had entrenched itself in the Anglo-American world
that exceeded the rationally explicable.  This is not to say that
British and American views of Germany were alike; in many ways they were
different.

The development of the view of Britain and America in Germany is quite
different; there was massive criticism of American culture among German
intellectuals, mostly fed by Marxist approaches to interpret the world
through the lenses of capitalism and exploitation. There is abundant
literature on this topic. The majority of the German political
establishment in the 20th century, however, largely attempted to base
its decisions on more rational factors. German politicians were well
aware that the United States was the first nation to recognize the
Frankfurt revolutionary parliament in 1848; that Washington had rejected
the Versailles treaty; that without Wilsonian principles a defeated
Germany would have fallen prey to French and British imperial ambitions;
that America had funded the Marshall plan and supported the
reconstruction of Europe after World War II; it had been the guarantor
of German liberty throughout the Cold War and a proponent of unification
in 1990.  Despite current simplistic rhetoric in the media, these facts
are well on the minds of German politicians today, as they have been
throughout the second half of the twentieth century. In the system of
transatlantic relations, Germany's position is between Britain and
France; always second to Britain's special relationship, but never
following France's tendency to attempt to steer Europe into neutralism.
Within this system, Schroeder's current public deliberations are an
aberration; we will have to see whether he actually acts this way
without being punished by the German political establishment (which is
developing criticism of his surpassing France in saying No in the UN
security council.)

Dan Rogers <drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu> wrote:
"The controversial comments by SPD justice minister Herta
Daubler-Gmelin, in which she compared Bush's election tactics to those
of Hitler (using international affairs to distract from domestic woes),
are in this sense no accident, but the continuation of a German critique
of the United States going back for decades. One wonders if her
rehabilitation at some point may be a sign to watch for."

A sign for what? Germans' tendency to project proto-Hitlerism into
American politics? I think we need to analyze this projection a bit
more.  Part of it is still the deep-rooted shock of World War II,
resulting in a general public culture of pacifism. German public
discourse easily projects proto-Hitlerist fears onto any uncontested
political leader openly threatening war. When Chirac tested his nuclear
weapons in the Pacific a few years ago, similar vocabulary easily
appeared in the press; apart from this, the West in general has a
tendency to assign Hitlerism as a model (Milosevic during the Kosovo
crisis, Saddam Hussein today, are all attributed the title of another
Hitler despite the lack of specific exterminationist ideologies in their
respective power systems.). There is a particular model of discourse at
work in Germany - an extreme fear of war mixed with fear of another rise
of Nazi-esque politics - but I doubt that an (albeit existent, but not
dominant) anti-Americanism plays a major role in it. Ms Daeubler
Gmelin's comments have surely been silly, but her continuing political
career could not be considered a proof for general German
anti-Americanism, just as a continuing career of David Duke could not be
considered a proof for general racism in the United States. We must make
sure we don't fall into the trap of analysis by cliche on either side of
the Atlantic.

Sincerely,
Fabian Rueger

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