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113 both Germany and the United States saw growing public interest in air pollution control in the 1950s. As a result, administrative oversight began to grow, but that meant very different things in each country, with the position of industry making for the greatest contrast. American entrepreneurs were in many cases represented on boards of directors and were thus able to directly influence the relevant agencies, whereas German industrialists, shaped by constant contact with a self-confident and assertive bureaucracy, probably did not even dare to dream of such a strong position. To be sure, German officials, too, were by no means anti-industrial in their attitude, but on the whole there was a considerable measure of bureaucratic autonomy in Germany, something that was usually missing in the United States. In other ways, as well, German officials enjoyed a much more favorable position: German agencies seem to have had far less of a recruitment problem than their American counterparts; German air pollution control comprised the whole country, while the authority of American officials often ended at the city line. Further, unlike in the United States, where air pollution control had arisen out of the tradition of smoke inspection and where the fight against smoke was therefore long pursued with much greater vigor than the fight against other emission problems, German officials from the outset directed their attention at the totality of all pollutants. This allowed German authorities to act from a fairly strong position, while American officials were more or less dependent on the assent of the business community. When American industrialists demanded cooperation from the authorities, they were for the most part asserting authority. When German entrepreneurs spoke of cooperation , they were more likely acknowledging the unavoidable. All in all, it seems that there was clearly more of a balance of powers in 4 beyond the Pall of Smoke 114 beyond the Pall of Smoke Germany, and this was crucial for future developments. Before outlining the policy debates in detail, however, it is worthwhile examining more closely the actors involved: industrialists, engineers and researchers, officials, and the general public. In all these groups, postwar transformations implied new challenges for air pollution controls. The changes in policy grew from the ground up, from the interactions of myriad people on local, regional, and state levels. The time of great environmental master plans, with their promise to clean the environment through vigorous federal action, was still more than a decade in the future. The United States around 1950 More than any other period, the two and a half decades following World War II can be seen as a self-contained chapter in American efforts to combat air pollution. Two sharp turning points bracket these twenty-five years: first, the spectacular campaigns in St. Louis and Pittsburgh and the subsequent broadening of the movement’s agenda; and second, the passage of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. The 1970 events, however, have exerted an enduring influence on the historiographic perception of the 1950s and 1960s: 1970 is generally seen as “year zero” of modern environmental policy in the United States. This perception is not without reason: 1970 did in fact see the establishment of a regulatory style that was new in several respects and that continues to shape American environmental policy. However, the unfortunate side effect is that the period before 1970 is commonly measured against the standard of this modern, ecologically inspired policy, appearing in a thoroughly negative light as a result. Thus, air pollution policies of the 1950s and 1960s are often viewed as a great failure, reaffirming in retrospect the need in 1970 for a turning point.1 But when the activities of the late 1940s and early 1950s are viewed against the backdrop of contemporary perceptions, a different picture emerges: the postwar period was in fact characterized by an unprecedented upsurge in efforts at air pollution control, leading to significant improvements in local air quality. Thus, what seemed like a grandiose failure in 1970 was indeed quite an impressive success story in 1950. Both perspectives, of 1970 and of 1950, contain a measure of truth, of course. If anything, post–World War II air pollution control presents an ambivalent picture. Between 1945 and 1970, American industry was willing to advance on the clean air front more energetically than before or after, but at the same time, this willingness brought air pollution control into a fateful dependence on industry’s goodwill. As...

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