Kalter Krieg und Propaganda: Die USA, der Kampf um die Weltmeinung und die ideelle Westbindung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1945-1955, and: Cold War Politics in Postwar Germany (review)

Germany was on the front line of the Cold War, and perhaps in no other European country did the geopolitical split between East and West have such a profound impact on domestic politics. Germany's division along this great divide was a powerful symbol of the Cold War and a lived reality for millions of Germans. The books reviewed here indicate the crucial role of West Germany in American plans to construct a postwar Western Europe that could resist the threat of Soviet expansion. They also highlight the fundamental importance of foreign political considerations in structuring political priorities at home.

In Kalter Krieg und Propaganda Frank Schumacher draws on a vast array of documentation from the National Archives, the Truman and Eisenhower papers, and other archival collections to tell the story of U.S. attempts to ensure that West Germans would develop a democratic political culture that would lead them into a U.S.-led Western military and political alliance in the decade after the war's end. Schumacher is particularly interested in exploring how the United States consciously deployed propaganda to convince West Germans that they should not only resist Communism but should also avoid "emotional neutrality." Particularly after the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, the United States was intent on seeing West Germans in uniform and gaining Bonn's acceptance of the presence of American nuclear weapons in the Federal Republic. The true measure of anti-Communism became a willingness to rearm.

When the administration of President George W. Bush appointed Charlotte Beers, an advertising executive, as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy in November 2001 in an attempt to "sell" America to Muslim countries that were suspicious of U.S. intentions in Afghanistan, it offered a variation on a familiar twentieth- century theme that Schumacher traces back to American beliefs that the security of the United States could best be ensured by exporting American ideals of democracy. These principles took on institutional form in Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information, the organization created to rally world opinion in favor of American aims in the First World War. By the end of the Second World War the United States sought not only to sell the American way but also to convince the rest of the world that the most visible alternative—Soviet Communism—was unacceptable. Schumacher describes the extensive network of government agencies established to combat Communism with American culture and a "Marshall Plan of ideals" (p.81) in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and parts of Europe, but he focuses in particular on how America's "Campaign of Truth" sought to reveal Soviet campaigns of deceit and falsehood aimed at the Federal Republic. The United States was armed not only with nuclear weapons but also, as Dwight D. Eisenhower put it, with "Truth ... our T-bomb" (p.110) in a propaganda battle for the hearts and minds of West Germans. Not just ideas but also consumer goods could be depicted as embodying American values. Entrepreneurs were encouraged to remember that "when you sell your product, sell America and the concept of freedom too" (p.95).

With exchange programs for West German students, "Amerika-Häuser" that sponsored libraries and cultural programs, propaganda campaigns to demonstrate that nuclear power could be used for peace, and traveling exhibitions that celebrated the benefits of American-style capitalism, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG) sought to ensure that West Germany would stay firmly within a Western alliance. In 230 surveys of public opinion the High Commission...