by Tony Judt
tion misjudges the demonstrable relationship between voter behavior
and foreign policy. Whether one sees the war in the Middle East as
right or wrong, the majority of the population views it differently
from the peace activists. Most Germans see the war as something that
is taking place far away from Europe. Therefore, the idea of German
participation in a “war on terror” is not likely to win spontaneous
approval in a country where the potential threat of terrorist groups
has been dismissed. The situation was different 25 years ago when the
Red Army Faction, who did not pose nearly as great a threat as
Al Qaeda, was active. The trial of high-ranking terrorists in Frankfurt
and Hamburg aroused a great deal less public interest than the sex and
cocaine scandals of local figures, even though plans for a spectacular
bomb attack on a Christmas market in Strasburg as well as for a poison
gas attack on the Frankfurt subway were revealed.
The electoral success of the red–green coalition and its subsequent
drop in the opinion polls has little to do with the rejection of the war
in Iraq. Despite what spin doctors and election losers like to claim,
voters are not a herd of sheep that can be easily manipulated. The
foolish talk of elites, who supposedly cause wild fluctuations in public
opinion so that they can be celebrated as masters of strategy, is simply
a means by which professional political consultants create their own
legends. Right now, Tony Blair is paying a harsh price for the illusion
that anything that leads to success is justifiable. Foreign policy can
only compensate for domestic problems, if there is a discernable for-
eign pressure, as there was in the era of détente. However, if the
domestic situation is extremely serious, then foreign policy does not
have this compensatory power. In the fall of 2002, the foreign policy
situation was not ambiguous at all. The Bush administration had
attempted to sell its intervention in Iraq as a continuation of the “war
on terror.” In order to accept the foreign policy strategy against the
“axis of evil,” a certain political worldview had to be shared—a world-
view that even a majority of Americans did not share. For reasons of
realpolitik, even this strategy was later disavowed in the case of North
Korea, so that what emerged was a tangled web of interpretation-ripe
strategies that involved power politics, harrowing scenarios about
weapons of mass destruction, as well as political and moral justifications
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Is There a New Anti-Americanism?
85
for a transfer of power from outside. The Bush administration did not
succeed in representing this invasion as a necessary act in the fight
against terrorism. By putting pressure on and manipulating the pub-
lic, together with Blair’s technique of asserting power, morality was
employed as an instrument in the effort to gain domestic majorities.
The loyalty of the American and British people toward the troops on
the ground should not be mistaken as support for the war.
Manipulation has been all too obvious and now that details are com-
ing out about the way in which the occupation of Iraq was carelessly
portrayed as a short-term affair, the British and American public have
reacted with exasperation. A completely justifiable policy of regime
change, which would aim at revolutionizing the entire Middle East,
would require a 10–20-year presence of a substantially larger contin-
gent of international troops than are now stationed in Iraq. Even with
the best intentions, no American president would ever receive the
support of a majority of Americans for an openly declared policy of
long-term democratic intervention.
The credibility of American policies was put at stake in 2002. A
“deeply rooted” anti-Americanism was hardly necessary to feel less
than enthusiastic about these policies. In Europe, ambivalence is part
of a self-perception that is shaped according to nation. In America, by
contrast, the logic of power suits the social and psychological compo-
sition of the country. With this point in mind, it is easy to understand
how criticism of American foreign policy slips into anti-Americanism.
At first glance, the rhetoric of the “only remaining superpower” seems
realistic. This rhetoric is a poor disguise, however, for a perspective of
helplessness that Europe is loath to acknowledge. From this perspec-
tive, obvious differences in power are chalked up to being an integral
component of the inequality and injustice that rules the world. Only
when the past short century is viewed historically is it possible to
understand that, despite the bipolarity of the political world order in
the second half of the century, it was, in reality, an American century.
The entry of the United States into World War I was the beginning
of the end of Europe’s centrality to world politics—a fact that the
elites of old Europe accepted only begrudgingly. Even Sir Winston
Churchill made sarcastic remarks about the ambivalent character of
American help at a time when National Socialists were threatening Great
Britain’s very existence. The secular formulation of translatio imperii,
which Dan Diner describes convincingly in his book Das Jahrhundert
verstehen, could be either referenced ironically or taken as a red flag
waved at a bull—something that seeks to fulfill its need for size and for
significance. That is why President de Gaulle found supporters among
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German politicians. They saw the possibility that German national
traditions could live on in a Europe dominated by Germany and
France. For Germany, on the other hand, the transatlantic relationship
is distinguished by an imperative for social change that runs through-
out the entire twentieth century. It could be called the American
Promise, a promise for which post-1918 Germany was entirely recep-
tive. While this seems completely forgotten today, this promise still
permeates everyday life. An Americanism exists, which renews itself
periodically, and, which plainly depends on the attractiveness of
the “American Way of Life.” The history of anti-Americanism can
only really be understood if it is seen as an answer to a notorious
Americanism, which has a long tradition in Germany. No less than
Goethe himself wrote, “America, you have it better . . .” and this was
also meant politically as a critique of European feudalism. The most
German bildungsroman of all, Goethe’s William Meister, offered up
the song of the emigrant, whose destination is called America—a land
in which fantasy and empire meet. After Europe’s failed bourgeois
revolution of 1848, America remained the land of the free. This
stirred the imaginations of those who were left behind and who could
not come to terms with the conditions in Germany. The America of
their imaginations could be called a dream America. Already in the
long nineteenth century, millions of Germans had this dream in mind
; as their real goal.
This dream of American life was revived more than once during the
“short century”. In the Weimar Republic, America was associated
with the open-minded and the modern, with fashion, entertainment,
and technical production. Even National Socialist ideology took into
account German ambivalence toward American society. Despite the
restrictive immigration policies that America introduced in the 1920s,
Germans, especially in the lower classes, continued to believe in the
American dream. The worldwide expansion of the entertainment
industry also contributed considerably to America’s popularity. In the
fantasyland that was this dream, the English actor Charlie Chaplin
became an American hero with whom the average moviegoer could
identify. His film, Modern Times, created an image of the modern
world that educated European elites could only begin to adopt in
earnest after the fall of National Socialism. With Les Temps Modernes,
French intellectuals, likewise, sent a signal that was also heard in
Germany, that they would now turn toward a non-European version
of the modern world. This prepared the ground on which the inter-
national Movement of the Sixties was built—a lifestyle revolution that
turned its back on traditional Europe. Even international opposition
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Is There a New Anti-Americanism?
87
against the Vietnam War developed on the basis of social relationships
that had become Americanized. In no other country of Old Europe
did this develop in such a strong or obvious way as it did in West
Germany, where, in contrast to France or Italy, there was no commu-
nist party that could exist within the political public sphere. German
protests against the Vietnam War also consciously followed the style,
form, and content of the Civil Rights Movement in America. The
Sozalistische Deustche Studentenbund (SDS) even got its name from
its American counterpart, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
The antiauthoritarian protest movement of the 1960s was social in
motivation. In the final analysis, the protest movement could not
come to terms with the pacifism of the post-National Socialist period
and with the way in which pacifists adopted Germany’s disarmament
as if it were their own idea. Solidarity with the American soldiers who
had deserted was still a priority, however, even in the midst of the anti-
imperialist justifications of militant anti-Vietnam War protests. Not
until the identity politics of the 1970s, which was a reaction to the
failed attempt to transform society, were cultural elements mobilized
to reject the United States, the superpower of the West. To this end,
they gathered together a hodgepodge that included not only environ-
mentalism and pacifism but also old attitudes of superiority and a
more recently developed historical amnesia. In the late 1960s, this was
incorrectly described as a generation gap. By the 1980s, emphasis on
the generation gap disappeared when a generation-spanning consensus
formed around the need for a new collective identity. The controversy
was over how to build it. The Historikerstreit of 1985 became the most
significant example of the new debates over German self-understand-
ing. In this search for a new self-understanding, Germany looked to
America for approval. This was demonstrated in the handshake
between President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl at the graves of SS
soldiers in Bitburg, where the chancellor used Germany’s ambivalence
as a means of blackmail.
The political classes of Europe can always count on the ambivalent
attitude of the people toward the United States. Certainly, by the time
NATO was established, American superiority in the Western alliance
had become so obvious that the old relationships between the people
and national identity were no longer sustainable. Under the rubric of
national liberation from German occupation, Gaullists and the com-
munist parties of the European continent were the most successful in
maintaining a feeling of national continuity. England had meanwhile
already fled into the unique role of the special relationship. Germany,
on the other hand, had to turn away from its past in order to join
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D etlev Cl aussen
either western or eastern alliances. This meant that at the end of the
Cold War, no country in Europe was less prepared than Germany for
the return of the national question. “Reunification” had attained the
status of an ideology during the last 40 years of the short century.
Although foreign commentators took the desire for unification as
given, within Germany this was hardly the case. The dynamics of
socialism’s collapse created the longing for a national solution to the
German question, even if the solution was intended more as a mirac-
ulous rescue of East Germany from the misery of “really existing
socialism.” While the worst aspects of a divided Germany could be
projected upon the collapsed Soviet Union, the fact that the Allies
divided Europe in reaction to Germany’s attempted seizure of world
power remained shrouded in memory. Gratefulness for Germany’s
prosperity during the Cold War is still invoked in pro-American terms
but below the political surface and the commemorations that cele-
brate the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Air-Lift, lurks antipathy toward
America. This antipathy is expressed in peculiar discussions about
accusations of an allegedly collective guilt, or about the expulsion of
Germans from previously occupied territories, or about bomb-filled
nights. Then, the discussion is no longer about the German past, with
its stereotypes of perpetrators and victims; it turns into debates over
the influence of Jews on American policy. This merry-go-round of
public debate has spun faster and faster since the Gulf War in 1992.
The current, ill-considered characterization of allied troops in the
Middle East as occupiers is linked in public memory with the occupa-
tion of Germany after 1945. In Germany, it is only reluctantly that the
Jews and former concentration camps prisoners are conceded the right
to see May 8 as a day of liberation. In the meantime, even this day has
been sacrificed for the sake of national continuity.
In West Germany, the need for national continuity disappeared
during the Cold War. Participation in the Golden Age of the American
Way of Life, which stretched from 1949 to 1973, compensated West
Germans through social progress for the nation’s division. The American
promise arrived. Even the protest and youth culture can be under-
stood as a part of this desired and accepted Americanization. This
was not the case in the East where, in the shadow of the Red Army,
national continuity was monopolized in the face of the unwanted
transformation of society to state socialism. The communist parties
sought to curry favor with the Volk, especially after the painful experi-
ences of June 1953 in East Germany, and then of 1956 in Poland and
Hungary. In the Soci
alist Bloc, a dream America also existed. This
dream was not as strong in East Germany as it was in Poland—with its
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Is There a New Anti-Americanism?
89
Greater Poland that included Poles who had migrated to America. In
the GDR, the need for compensation on a national level prevailed
over the societal shortages because, shoved between the GDR and the
United States, the homeland of consumer capitalism, was the Federal
Republic with its well-stocked West Berlin acting as a capitalist show-
case. In the East, the collapse of the economy of shortage was thus
experienced that much more as a clash of culture. Once the crisis-
prone reality of West Germany, which in addition to internal problems
also had to digest a collapsed East German economy, was recognized,
the typical socialist idealization of western society quickly collapsed.
In this way, the long-nurtured East German need for national conti-
nuity arrived at its anti-American destination. For many East Germans,
the long awaited for modernization of society turned out to be an
existential threat. Faced with this situation, claiming national mem-
bership seemed more important than trusting in the power of society
to change. The eastern part of Germany made it through this process
in the years 1989 and 1990 with breathtaking speed. No one longed
for a new Germany, but rather for “reunification”—in other words, a
reestablishment of the past national status quo. The dream America of
“actually existing socialism” quickly transformed itself into the nightmare
America of globalization.
To get a sense of the unique mixture of the old and new in German
self-understanding, one has to grasp that united in one country are
two different senses of reality that are products of two different social
systems. For both parts of Germany, America remains, no matter what
it does, a symbol of the new. Ambivalence toward the new is projected
onto America: the more social life is experienced as prone to crisis,
the stronger the fears over the new reality. In the summer of 2002, the
worst flood in memory affected Germany. It was rightfully called the
flood of the century. While the opposition candidate went on vaca-
