13 - Transatlantic Reflections: German and American Television

Summary

NAZIS FOREVER? GERMANS ON AMERICAN TELEVISION

Paradoxically, the period between the end of the Nuremberg trials and the late 1950s saw, by and large, the most positive portrayals of Germans on American television in the half-century after World War II - positive, that is, to the point of distorting recent realities. West Germans figured as model capitalists and brave defenders on the frontline of the Western alliance, whereas East Germans were cast in the part of victims of communist oppression. In a 1953 See It Now special on West Berlin, journalist Edward R. Murrow visited both parts of the divided city, though filming in the East was possible only by using a concealed camera. The report emphasized the heroic struggle of West Berliners, embodied by Mayor Ernst Reuter, who was interviewed and quoted at length. Although there are numerous allusions to Germany's past, the primary frame of reference is World War II, not the Holocaust. Similarly, a 1961 two-part ABC close-up titled Germany West of the Wall and Behind the Wall contains no reference to the Third Reich, except for a mention of “the last World War, started by Hitler,” made by a spokesman for the German foreign office. The narration introducing the first part of the documentary places the images of shoppers on a busy Cologne shopping street in the proper ideological framework:

West Germany is more prosperous than either France or England, the nations that helped to defeat it. West Germany is threatened by the communists, it is prodded by its allies. And in its prosperity, it can never forget either the nearness of the communists or its separate island, Berlin.