15 - Old Stereotypes and New Realities - The West German Image of the United States

Summary

The West German image of America between 1945 and 1968 cannot be understood without looking at an earlier history that stretches back to the late eighteenth century. The most important elements of this image included positive attitudes of Germans in liberal, bourgeois, intellectual, and leftist circles toward American values such as freedom, democracy, and constitutional rule; a converse, negative attitude toward the United States among more traditional and reactionary-conservative social groups; the educated classes' denigration of American “civilization” and their elevation of German and European “culture”; admiration for American technological innovation and rationalization techniques that produced new levels of efficiency in industrial production, trade, and organized labor; and finally, a radical Marxist, socialist, and communist critique of capitalism in its American form.

Germans have always embraced a variety of images of America, not just one picture. These images have been ambivalent or multivalent, even contradictory, and “anti-Americanism” has long constituted an integral part of this general history of transatlantic perceptions.