OCCUPATION, AMERICANIZATION,

WESTERNIZATION:
LESSONS FROM THE GERMAN CASE?
GIOVANNI BERNARDINI

Introduction
Although historical similarities between post-war West Germany and
Japan cannot be overestimated, a parallel reflection on the long-lasting
cultural influence of the Unites States on both defeated and occupied
countries could open stimulating opportunities for research beyond
national specificities. As a starting point, in fact, the Federal Republic of
Germany and Japan shared a common condition of penetrated systems
(according to a popular German definition) after the conclusion of the war;
a state implying that decisive allocations of values were steered from
outside their boundaries.1 This paper aims at proposing some possible
ground for comparative analyses through an overview of the recent
German historiographical debate. The perception of American influence
has been discussed in Germany since the early XX century, as a recurrent
subject of wishful or dreadful thinking. 2 Nevertheless the events of the
1990s cast new interest on this topic in historical perspective. For reasons
stemming from the German geopolitical specificity, the end of the Cold
War and the reunification of the country entailed a reassessment of the
countrys self-perception in the international arena. This collective
reflection was also fostered by highly symbolic events such as the first
deployment of German military forces abroad since the end of the Second
World War (during the NATO bombing over Serbia), and the fiftieth
anniversary of the Federal Republic in 1999.3 Later, further inspiration
came from the abrupt end of Post-Cold War triumphalism as a
consequence of the September 11 events, and especially from the
Transatlantic rift that occurred about military intervention in Iraq: in that
case and for the first time, the German government, one of Washingtons
most loyal partner in the past, voiced its opposition to the U.S. resolution
to wage war, protesting the incoherence of preemptive and total war

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with Western values.4 Even more striking, this opposition paid electoral
dividends to the German government, thus proving that a vast majority of
German voters shared the opinion of their government against the Bush
Administration: an attitude which some worried observers hastened to
label as rampant Anti-American.5

The interpretative paradigm of Westernization

At the academic level, the debate was reignited by a new theoretical
approach, proposed by a group of historians gravitating around Anselm
Doering-Manteuffel at the Tbingen University. Explicitly adopting the
research track of intercultural transfer from the 1990s cultural debate on
globalization, Doering-Manteuffel proposed Westernization as a broader,
more encompassing paradigm than the mere Americanization for
interpreting the pattern of German-American cultural relations after World
War II.6 Such analysis considered this particular phase against the
background of U.S.-European relations in the longer term. Focusing on the
role of ideology and on the agencies responsible for its transmission, these
authors emphasized the long-term emergence of a Transatlantic community
of values bounding Western Europe and the United States at a deeper level
than the occasional transfer/adoption of specific lifestyles or production
techniques.7 Thus, the interpretative paradigm of Westernization accords
an overriding importance to the Cold War of ideologies, which is
interpreted suggestively as the last battle for the heritage of Enlightenment,
opposing liberal democracy and communism.
In his seminal work, Doering-Manteuffel does not underplay the
meaning of U.S. military intervention and continued presence in Europe
after 1945 as a starting point for a reprise of this process: without Nazi
unconditional surrender, the looming Cold War, the division of Europe,
and the impact of the Marshall Plan, German historians simply would not
have the opportunity to debate freely about the forms Transatlantic
exchange and interaction. Furthermore, both the government and nongovernmental agencies of the United States actively sought to foster such
community of values since the late 1940s, in order to supply an ideological
foundation to the emerging Western security and economic community. 8
However, those values were never transferred to Europe in a pure form,
but rather merged with European ideas and traditions. While
Americanization would imply a U.S. hegemonic imposition of values
and practices, Westernization takes into consideration the interplay of
American and non-American heritages in shaping this Transatlantic
community of values by means of cultural transfer. The acculturation of

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Occupation, Americanization, Westernization

consensus liberalism, as the ideological base of this community, took

different forms in different national settings; nevertheless it was adopted in
principle almost everywhere in Western Europe. Democracy was not
confined to the political practices, but became a social principle, as society
increasingly perceived itself as the element influencing and altering the
state and its institutions, instead of the opposite.9 Furthermore, the
principled affirmation of pluralism in every field of personal and social
life was aimed at undermining gradually the harsh polarizations and the
traditional class allegiances which had conditioned so dramatically the
political life of the interwar era. Other features of this Transatlantic
community of values were a representative system of government and
social pluralism; in the economic sphere, equal opportunities for
individuals and free market tempered by a variable degree of state
intervention; in the cultural sphere, individualism and the postulate of
freedom in art and research. Also religion and science progressively found
their place into this societal self-depiction, thereby creating a nexus from
which traditions and a sense of intellectual-epistemic community were
able to develop across national borders. Thus, the post-1945 evolution was
the last step of a process of reciprocal acculturation which had been
bringing ideas and practices back and forth across the Atlantic during two
centuries.10
Germany plays a relevant part in this context in a twofold sense: first,
many of its elites in exile influenced the cultural and political debate
developing in the U.S. about the postwar order and democratization,
carrying with them their experience of German authoritarianism and Nazi
brutality.11 Even more important, Westernization carries considerable
explanatory power in terms of the German divergence from the West:
according to Doering-Manteuffel, this Transatlantic community of values
was shaped at least partially against the negative example of the long
tradition of German authoritarianism and warmongerism, which reached
its peak during the Nazi era. 12 Only after the end of World War II and the
collapse of Hitlers regime, German pretenses of exceptionalism came to
an end, and the new national leadership fully acknowledged its active
participation in the Transatlantic community. The authors of the
Westernization paradigm concede that the process occurred between 1945
and 1960 could be called Americanization, meaning a phase of massive,
indeed overwhelming transmission of American intellectual impulses to
Europe. Although the two levels overlapped partially in that period,
historians should not underestimate the active role played by local
leaderships, which shared with the Americans a common interest in

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193

shoring up the West against the twin threats of Soviet influence and
communist insurgence.
Specifically, the research project on Westernization has focused on the
protagonists of the process of Transatlantic-community-making: this
was the case of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an informal
organization based in Berlin and grouping the elites of political parties,
trade unions and intellectuals from the United States and Western
Europe.13 This forum was an excellent Transatlantic laboratory, and a
legitimizing forum for politicians with Western credentials: leaders such
as Willy Brandt were allowed to participate even if they opposed the
politics of the Adenauer government, but accepted the values of liberal
democracy. Although it is difficult to gauge the influence that the forum
exerted on actual policy, it certainly set the stage for the debate on the socalled End of Ideologies theory, elaborated by U.S. and European
sociologists.14 The theory had a strong influence on the SPD Bad
Godesberg program and on the reform movement inside the German trade
unions. On this latter subject, other researchers have focused on the
Westernization of the German labor movement. 15 They concluded that the
influence of intercultural transfer was especially long-lasting in this case,
since the acculturation of the labor movement in exile had a crucial
impact on the programmatic reforms of the West German Trade Unions.
Other authors have rather approached those social contexts where German
national traditions were strongly articulated for example in the Protestant
milieus, in the conservative press, and among constitutional jurists. Here
the process of Westernization seems to have been much slower and
mediated than the mere support for the short-term program of adherence to
the Western defensive and economic institutions carried by the moderate
German governments.16
The Westernization approach has raised some enthusiastic reactions
due to its focus on cultural and ideological aspects, in a field of research
were economic and diplomatic paradigms have been dominant so far. 17
Some authors have seized this opportunity to raise the case against the
Americanization approach which, they stated, hide the implicit assumption
of an aggressively acting American imperial power. The same authors
blame the Gramscian interpretation of American hegemony in postwar
Transatlantic relations for reducing culture to a mere instrument of power,
without acknowledging its independent status as a foundation stone of the
Atlantic community.18 Furthermore, the Westernization model casts a new
light on aspects underestimated by previous historiography, such as the
democratization process and the cross-pollination of political cultures.

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Occupation, Americanization, Westernization

The reassessment of Americanization as a comparative

opportunity
This new pattern of analysis has exerted a positive influence even on
historians who have spent their time and energy in fine-tuning the
paradigm of Americanization through analyzing particular aspects of
postwar Transatlantic relations. Most of them admitted that Americanization
still needed to be specified beyond its heuristic value: the very concept has
been used too frequently and unproblematically to debate too many
different subjects such as culture, mass consumption, lifestyle
transformations, economic and political influence.19 However, they did not
refrain from criticisms. First, the Westernization paradigm seemed to be
shaped around the traditional historiographical problem of German
divergence from the West, but cannot be applied successfully in a
comparative perspective with other geopolitical areas, where the U.S.
became even more deeply and directly involved in the reshaping the
political culture of the post-war.20 Japan is the most typical case in point in
this respect. Besides, by overemphasizing the role played by German
exiled and local elites in planning the post-war order with the victorious
power, the authors of the Westernization paradigm seem to fall again in
the traditional search for a usable past which has characterized the
German social sciences after the Second World War. On the other hand,
empirical research often seems to disprove the theoretical model: rather
than showing the merging of national traditions in a community of values,
empirical analysis highlights a massive process of removal of cultural
elements stemming from the German heritage, which are substituted with
new and more America-oriented tendencies, ranging from the
employees role in labor relations to the relevance of non-state actors in
culture and science, from the informalization of the relations between
genders and among generations to the competition between private and
public in media broadcasting.
Thus, the overwhelming preponderance of U.S. influences after the
war seems to follow a trend common to all the West European countries
with varying degrees of pervasiveness, independently from their status of
winners or losers, and from their previous adherence to the Western
community of values.21 Finally, the Westernization authors seem to pay
scant attention to the normative use of the concept of West made by the
cultural and political protagonists of the postwar season in order to foster a
widespread sense of community, which in fact was far from being
reality.22

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195

Some historians have protested the assimilation of the Americanization

paradigm, as operated by the Westernization authors, to a strawman: on
the contrary, the scientific conceptualization of Americanization has never
reduced the term to the forced imposition of values and practices from the
United States, or the slavish emulation of its institutions. In all its
historical declinations in Europe and abroad, Americanization entailed a
process of interaction with some local cultural and political elites, and not
the mere acceptance of a foreign heritage.23 A high degree of negotiation
was needed in every moment, in order to blend with local traditions and to
seek the voluntary acceptance by most of the population. These blendings,
or creolizations, rarely achieved a perfect equilibrium between its
foreign and indigenous elements, but came out with either a stronger or
weaker American coloration.24 Needless to say, this pattern of research
in Germany owes considerably, although seldom explicitly, to some
seminal studies on the Pacific area and on the Americas. 25
Furthermore, the proponents of the Westernization paradigm seem to
underestimate the structure of the global economic and political post-war
order. Power relations are necessary to understand the comprehensive
pressure and determination that emanated from America after 1945: at that
time, unlike after WWI, the United States became the major player within
the international system, a leading power in a new geopolitical and
ideological conflict.26 The progression of Americanization was strictly
related to the (not always explicit) hegemonic pressure emanating from the
collective determination of the U.S. authorities to make use of their power
within the international system. This pressure could, and did, take a variety
of forms: political, economic, cultural. It was often direct, though it was
rarely physical; or it could be indirect, subtle, and covert. But, as the
German case illustrates, the goal of U.S. governmental and private
agencies was not to replicate their country abroad; rather they aimed at
making a new Germany structurally, institutionally and ideologically
compatible with the Pax Americana they sought to establish. 27 Their
final aim was the integration of the German economic dynamism into a
homogeneous international economic system for the prosperity and
stability of the Atlantic region, especially in the framework of the new
East-West confrontation.28 The peculiar reason for the success of
American influence in Germany after 1945 was both such collective
determination by the U.S., and the little resistance that the recipient
country offered, in contrast with the more checkered history of the same
process during the first half of the century. 29 Therefore, the model of
Westernization seems to lack concreteness. Individuals, institutions and
nations became westernized through negotiation and interaction with

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country specific models, institutions and governments, not with a fictive

and prescriptive idea of the West.30 The ruling classes, as well as
economic and cultural actors, were deliberately interventionist and
consciously manipulative. They reflected power relations that were clear at
the end of the conflict. Therefore it would be a nonsense to affirm that the
German intellectual leadership made the free choice for self
Westernization while dealing with the material and moral annihilation of
their country, the continued military occupation, the prospect of Soviet
hegemony.
A revealing analysis comes from the relatively new research field of
economic culture. Here Americanization was conceptualized as the
process by which ideas, practices, and patterns of behavior were first
developed in the U.S. and then widely spread on the other side of the
Atlantic.31 In fact, U.S. novelties in the fields of production and marketing
have aroused the interest of several Europeans since early XX century.
However, the model they sought to emulate was not necessarily America
as a whole. German manufacturers had started experimenting with
American-inspired rationalized production since the 1920s, but with
reservations. In fact, they tried to gain the economic benefits of modern
technology without any of the leveling effects experienced in America,
such as mass consumption and higher wages. In short, the authoritarian
German capitalism never accepted the Fordist assumption that the masses
would only tolerate the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of a few,
if they could derive a corresponding advantage from it. Only after World
War II, confronted with the need to adapt to an American-dominated,
competitively organized, multilateral world economy, German industry
completed the transition to mass production and embraced the idea of
mass consumption.32 Finally, this process arouse consumerist desires and
dreams of a better life among the population, thus pushing towards an
America-oriented model of mass consumption: every resistance or
attempt by the economic and political elites to mediate this social side
effect resulted in vain.
Turning to another common criticism of Westernization, some scholars
have questioned the usefulness of this paradigm for understanding the
American impact on German high and popular culture, which seemed to
follow rather different patterns. In fact, the recent proliferation of
researches on Cold War popular culture have entailed the abandonment of
older analytic definitions: today culture is being defined comprehensively
to include sciences, religious practices, and education of all levels, in
addition to high and popular as traditionally defined. This reassessment
is a preliminary indicator of how far more democratic American notions of

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culture have replaced elitist conceptions prevalent in Europe.33 However,

the emphasis on a Transatlantic community of political values overshadows
the fact that American high culture, such as avant-garde art, music or
literature, encountered considerable resistance in Germany. As has been
brilliantly documented by Hiroko Ikegami, in this respect the German case
seems to share several similarities with Japan.34 Among the dissenting
voices, it is not hard to find part of those elites who operated in favor of
the inclusion of the Federal Republic within the Transatlantic economic
and security institutions, but which did not see as a contradiction the
preservation of an autonomous cultural identity from American
influence.35 In order to overcome such resistance, U.S. authorities and big
philanthropic foundation embarked on recurrent, organized efforts of
promotion and persuasion, which amounted to a coolly calculated Cold
War strategy and value investment.36
On the other hand, this strategy did not need to include American
popular culture, and especially popular films and music which were
flowing from the U.S. to Germany soon after 1945, satisfying an evergrowing demand especially among the younger generation. 37 Hollywood
and the American music industry did not need to push their products
particularly hard, despite a varying degree of apprehension and hostility by
the local elites, even the most involved in binding transatlantic ties. 38
However, in a society proclaiming the principle of free choice in both the
political and the economic marketplace as its distinguishing character from
past and present authoritarian experiences, the inflow of such cultural
artifacts could be hardly hindered.39 Furthermore, they were comparatively
inexpensive and within the budget range of German working and lower
middle class. In this case at least, neither mediation nor bargain was
required.40 Thus researchers in this field, especially those adopting the
perspective of cultural anthropology, simply take for granted
Americanization (and sometimes self-Americanization) as describing
the transfer of goods and symbols from the U.S. to other countries, and to
focus on how societies abroad have taken up and, in the process,
transformed these influences.41 The emphasis is more on the process of
appropriation and transformation by ordinary historical actors such as the
citizens of Europe after World War II. The abused notions of cultural
imperialism and colonization of the imaginary have left room to the
metaphor of American cultural artifacts as black boxes, empty semiotic
spaces, subtracted from their original context and then filled with new
social meanings by the recipient populations. 42 Therefore, for this field of
research Americanization does not represent a grand explanatory theory or
the postwar era, but a useful aid to indicate promising areas of inquiry and

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Occupation, Americanization, Westernization

to suggest provisional understandings among social and geopolitical

processes which are remote in time and space. Some successful
experiments of comparisons between Germany and Western Europe in
general, and Japan have been published during the recent years, giving a
new significance to a wide range of interdisciplinary topics such as
cinema, popular music, youth behaviors and fashions, urban recovery and
space appropriation, and more.43

Conclusion
It would be unfair to draw a clear-cut conclusion from the rich and
stimulating debate on Americanization and Westernization. However,
even this tentative examination suggests that the real meaning of such
virtual forum of discussion is not the endless Sisyphean research of an all
encompassing analytical paradigm for the American influence on postwar
German culture. On the contrary, the debate among scholars from different
methodological approaches offers, first of all to its very protagonists,
precious and unlimited opportunities to fine-tune their research tools, and
to open new stimulating fields of scientific investigation. Thus, increasing
opportunities for comparative studies with other national cases could only
be welcome, since they will advance the general knowledge of the
dynamics of cultural transfer in the second part of XX century; in this
sense, the unresolved tension among local specificities, transnational
correspondences and broad conceptualizations will be a stimulus for
improvement rather than a reason for disciplinary retrenchment. Even a
superficial look at the German debate indicates that Japan is among main
candidates for such an endeavor.

Notes
1
Jost Dlffer, Cold War History in Germany, Cold War History 8, no. 2 (2008),
pp. 13556.
2
For an illuminating example of German love/hate attitude towards the United
States during the first half of the XX century, see: Mary Nolan, Visions of
Modernity: American Business and the Modernization of Germany (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994).
3
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Wie westlich sind die Deutschen? berlegungen
zum Verhltnis von Amerikanisierung und Westernisierung in der westdeutschen
Gesellschaft, Potsdamer Bulletin fr Zeithistorische Studien, no. 17 (1999), pp.
719.

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199

Alexander Stephan, Introduction, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism.

The German Encounter with American Culture after 1945, ed. Alexander Stephan
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), pp. 110.
5
For an authoritative dissenting opinion on this latter point, see: Mary Nolan,
Anti-Americanism and Americanization of Germany, Politics & Society 33, no.
1 (2005), pp. 88122.
6
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Wie westlich sind die Deutschen? Amerikanisierung
und Westernisierung im 20. Jahrhundert (Gttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht,
1999).
7
Holger Nehring, 'Westernization': A New Paradigm for Interpreting West
European History in a Cold War Context, Cold War History 4, no. 2 (2004), pp.
17591; Michael Hochgeschwen1der, Il Fronte Culturale della Guerra Fredda. Il
Congresso per la Libert della Cultura come esperimento di forma di lotta
transnazionale, Ricerche di Storia Politica 6, no. 1 (2003), pp. 3560.
8
Julia S. Angster, The Westernization of the Political Thought of the West
German Labor Movement, in German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the
Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic, ed. Jan-Werner Mller (New
York: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 7698.
9
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Transatlantic Exchange and Interaction The
Concept of Westernization, paper presented at the conference The American
Impact on Western Europe: Americanization and Westernization in Transatlantic
Perspective, Washington DC: German Historical Institute, 1999. All the papers
quoted here are freely available at the GHI-Washington website.
10
David E. Barclay and Elisabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds., Transatlantic Images and
Perceptions. Germany and America since 1776 (Washington DC: German
Historical Institute, 1997).
11
Alfons Sllner, Normative Westernization? The Impact of Remigres on the
Foundation of Political Thought in Post-War Germany, in German Ideologies
since 1945, ed. Mller, pp. 4060.
12
Axel Schildt, Ein konservativer Prophet moderner nationaler Integration.
Biographische Skizze des streitbaren Soziologen Johann Plenge (1874-1963),
Vierteljahrshefte fr Zeitgeschichte 35, no. 4 (1987), pp. 52370.
13
Michael Hochgeschwender, Freiheit in der Offensive? Der Kongress fr
kulturelle Freiheit und die Deutschen (Mnchen: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998).
14
Gilles Scott-Smith, The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural
Freedom, the Cia, and Post-War American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002).
15
Julia S. Angster, Konsenskapitalismus und Sozialdemokratie. Die
Westernisierung von SPD und DGB (Mnchen: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003).
16
Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Wie westlich sind die D1eutschen?; Thomas Sauer,
Westorientierung im deutschen Protestantismus? Vorstellungen und Ttigkeit des
Kronberger Kreises (Mnchen: Oldenbourg, 1999); Gudrun Kruip, Das WeltBild des Axel Springer Verlags. Journalismus zwischen westlichen Werten und
deutschen Denktraditionen (Mnchen: Oldenbourg, 1999); Frieder Gnther,
Denken vom Staat her: Die bundesdeutsche Staatsrechtslehre zwischen Dezision
und Integration 1949-1970 (Mnchen: Oldenbourg, 2004).
4

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17

Occupation, Americanization, Westernization

Some examples of the influence of the Westernization paradigm: Katja Kanzler

and Heike Paul, eds., Amerikanische Populrkultur in Deutschland: Case Studies
in Cultural Transfer Past and Present (Leipzig: Leipziger Universittsverlag,
2002); Patrick T. Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the
Invention of the West (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006); Brian M.
Puaca, Learning Democracy. Education Reform in West Germany, 1945-1965
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2009).
18
Nehring, 'Westernization'.
19
Mary Nolan, Americanization or Westernization?, paper presented at the
conference The American Impact on Western Europe.
20
Volker R. Berghahn, The Debate on 'Americanization' among Economic and
Cultural Historians, Cold War History 10, no. 1 (2010), pp. 10730.
21
Daniela Mnkel, Julia Angster: Konsenskapitalismus und Sozialdemokratie',
Sehepunkte 4, no. 11 (2004); Volker R. Berghahn, Industriegesellschaft und
Kulturtransfer. Die deutsch-amerikanischen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert
(Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), p. 134.
22
Markus J. Prutsch, Frieder Gnther: Denken vom Staat her, H-Net Book
Review, no. 1 (2008).
23
Berghahn, The Debate on 'Americanization'.
24
Charles Stewart, ed., Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory (Walnut
Creed: Left Coast Press, 2007).
25
Takeshi Matsuda, ed., The Age of Creolization in the Pacific: In Search for
Emerging Cultures and Shared Values in the Japan-America Borderlands
(Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2001); David Buisseret and Steven G. Reinhardt, eds.,
Creolization in the Americas (College Stations: Texas A&M Press, 2010).
26
For a wide-ranging analysis of the U.S. project for the postwar era at the global
scale, see: Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions
and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
27
Volker R. Berghahn, Conceptualizing the American Impact on Germany: West
German Society and the Problem of Americanization, paper presented at the
conference The American Impact on Western Europe.
28
Charles S. Maier, In Search of Stability. Explorations in Historical Political
Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 183.
29
Reinhard Neebe, Weichenstellung fr die Globalisierung: Deutsche
Weltmarktpolitik, Europa und Amerika in der ra Ludwig Erhard (Kln: Bhlau,
2004).
30
Nolan, Americanization or Westernization?.
31
Sven Oliver Mller and Cornelius Torp, eds., Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der
Kontroverse (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009).
32
S. Jonathan Wiesen, Coming to Terms with the Worker: West German
Industry, Labour Relations and the Idea of America, 1949-1960, Journal of
Contemporary History 36, no. 4 (2001), pp. 56179.
33
Berghahn, Conceptualizing the American Impact on Germany.
34
As an example, see the history of transnational resistance to the worldwide
spread of American Pop Art: Hiroko Ikegami, The Great Migrator. Robert

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201

Rauschenberg and the Global Rise of American Art (Cambridge: MIT Press,
2010).
35
Jost Hermand, Resisting Boogie-Woogie Culture, Abstract Expressionism, and
Pop Art, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism, ed. Stephan, pp. 6775.
36
Axel Schildt, Die USA als 'Kulturnation': Zur Bedeutung der Amerikahuser in
den 1950er, in Amerikanisierung: Traum und Alptraum in Deutschland des 20.
Jahrhunderts, eds. Alf Ldtke, Inge Marssolek and Adelheid von Saldern
(Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), pp. 25769.
37
Axel Schildt and Detlef Siegfried, eds., Between Marx and Coca-Cola: Youth
Cultures in Changing European Societies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006).
38
Michael Ermarth, Counter-Americanism and Critical Currents in West German
Reconstruction 1945-1960: the German Lesson Confronts the American Way of
Life, in Americanization and Anti-Americanism, ed. Stephan, pp. 2550.
39
Uta G. Poiger, Jazz, Rock and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture
in a Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
40
Kaspar Maase, 'Americanization', 'Americanness' and 'Americanisms': Time for
a Change in Perspective?, paper presented at the conference The American Impact
on Western Europe.
41
For an illuminating example of this new research field, see: Kaspar Maase,
From Nightmare to Model? Why German Broadcasting Became Americanized,
in Americanization and Anti-Americanism, ed. Stephan, pp. 78106.
42
Philipp Gassert, Amerikanismus, Antiamerikanismus, Amerikanisierung. Neue
Literatur zur Sozial-, Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des amerikanischen
Einflusses in Deutschland und Europa, Archiv fr Sozialgeschichte, no. 39
(1999): 53161.
43
Heide Fehrenbach and Uta G. Poiger, eds., Transactions, Transgressions,
Transformations: American Culture in Western Europe and Japan (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2000).