Detlef Junker, ed. The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook, Volume 1 (1945-1968). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xxiii + 664 pp. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-79112-0.
Detlef Junker, ed. The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook, Volume 2 (1968-1990). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xviii + 590 pp. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-83420-9.
Reviewed by Daniel E. Rogers (University of South Alabama)
Published on H-German (July, 2005)
Beyond Handbook and Encyclopedia
It's not quite apt to render the word Handbuch in the original German title of these volumes as "handbook" in English. "Handbook" connotes both conciseness and portability. With a length of over 1,200 pages and a weight of over six pounds, these two volumes have actually been fairly difficult for me to lug around as I have tried to come to terms with, deal with, and master them. But labeling them an "encyclopedia," while more accurately reflecting their girth, would not fairly describe their unique and valuable approach, for each of the volumes offers a series of essays grouped under five major themes: politics, security, economics, culture, and society. An obviously decisive date, 1968, separates the volumes into roughly equal lengths.
The editors and the 132 contributors labored under the assumption that Germany and the United States have exercised manifold, ongoing, serious reciprocal influences on each other in each of the five thematic areas. But the reciprocity is far more evident in the second volume covering the years after 1968. The first volume, with its essays on CARE packages and American popular culture in Germany, on the Marshall Plan and American cultural policy, is dominated by an America acting in or on Germany, or on a Germany pondering many things American. The second volume has a more balanced approach, in which one sees bilateral influences in areas such as architecture, church politics, and the women's movement.
A leading scholar begins each of the five sections with an interpretive essay, and the entire work is introduced with an essay by Detlef Junker, former director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, which sponsored and produced the work. The section editors do not simply uncritically list and describe the contents of their section; at times they clearly differ with their authors. As one powerful example, Thomas A. Schwartz, who introduces the section on politics in the first volume, disagrees explicitly with authors in his section who blame the United States for betraying the promise of the wartime Grand Alliance and for preventing a fundamentally remade German society and polity. It is a tribute to the scholarly balance and fairness of this project that opposing viewpoints are presented and sometimes juxtaposed.
The section on politics is heavily dominated by diplomacy and has less to do with any meddling by one or the other country in the politics of the others, although the idea of American influence on German political parties is well covered. Major topics include the U.S. Congress and Germany; relations with countries outside Europe; the role of France in German-American relations; Ostpolitik; various aspects of the Cold War; the ambassadors of the Federal Republic in Washington and of the United States in Bonn; Allied occupation from 1945 to 1955; and denazification. Certain German institutions could have been helpfully focused on either in this section or elsewhere, especially the Bundesbank and the court system (indeed, the model of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation is often cited as a vital American influence on postwar West Germany). Another helpful dedicated topic might have been the influence of shifting parliamentary coalitions in the Federal Republic on German-American relations.
The section on security tackles such issues as transfers of military technology, American bases in Germany, NATO strategy, arms control, intermediate range nuclear forces, and intelligence. An essay devoted solely to the rearmament issue of the 1950s would have been extremely welcome here if for no other reason than that it is a subject frequently discussed by itself, although rearmament is in fact detailed in two of the handbook entries. The section on economics covers such topics as reparations, U.S. economic policy toward Germany (including toward cartels), currency reform, the Marshall Plan, trade, technology, occupation costs, capital investment in both countries, monetary policy, and U.S. influence on German economic thought.
Probably the most comprehensive section in each volume is that dealing with culture. The wide scope of the culture section may reflect both the all-encompassing concept of "culture" and the increasing amount of scholarship recently devoted to cultural topics. In this section are included the cultural policy of each country toward the other, the study of each country inside the other, U.S.-East German cultural relations, the reception of the literature of each country inside the other, the influence of America on the German language, music, Hollywood, television, theater, visual arts, architecture, and confrontations with the Holocaust.
The last section in each volume, on "society," serves as a catch-all for topics that were not easily incorporated into other sections. These include race relations inside Germany, migrations, Jews, women, labor, consumerism, urban development, media relations, stereotypes, anti-Americanism, and Americanization.
The Handbook is a work about the United States and the Federal Republic above all. East Germany and its people, agencies, and culture appear in a few dedicated essays per volume, but such essays represent only a minor part of each volume. Instead, the German Democratic Republic often appears an object of joint American-Federal Republic efforts or as an irritant between Washington and Bonn.
The German Historical Institute has amply fulfilled its mission by sponsoring this project and undertaking the enormous editorial work and expense of producing the volumes in both German and English. The overall effect of the Handbook is to document the existence of profound and multifaceted bilateral influences that call for continued historical research. The result is an invaluable research tool for serious scholars and a more general audience interested in German-American relations. A well-done index that features both names and concepts allows those who might have preferred an encyclopedia rather than a collection of essays to dip in anywhere they choose. The introductions to each of the five sections in each volume contain bibliographic essays that will assist serious scholars and students. The Handbook will thus be an essential part of any library whose mission is to support research on Germany, U.S. foreign policy, and the Cold War.
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Citation:
Daniel E. Rogers. Review of Junker, Detlef, ed., The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook, Volume 1 (1945-1968) and
Junker, Detlef, ed., The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945-1990: A Handbook, Volume 2 (1968-1990).
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
July, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10724
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