Uniting a divided nation: Americanism and anti-Americanism in post-war Germany

In the context of the Iraq war, ‘Anti-Americanism’ has become a European fact but also an instrument of political controversy, part of a simplifying argument of either/or. The essay probes into the various implications of European ‘Anti- Americanism’ and then concentrates on German cultural history where the influence of American culture (‘Americanization’), after both wars, was fought by cultural nationalists on the right as well as on the left but was also embraced by those who wanted to break up rigid social and cultural structures in the name of innovation and democracy. Resentment and ambivalence run deep but should not hide a basis of shared values as well as the new global fact of a mutual dependency which makes multilateralism a necessity.