Anti-Americanism and Americanization in Germany

Abstract

Contemporary German anti-Americanism is not a continuation of earlier anticapitalist, antimodern, and often anti-Semitic anti-Americanism. Rather, since the late 1960s a political anti-Americanism, which accepts capitalism and the extensive Americanization of German society, has emerged. It is a response to specific American foreign policies, but its roots lie in the uneven Americanization of twentieth-century Germany. Anti-Americanism has been fostered by Germany’s nonliberal variety of capitalism, by its more egalitarian social policies, by its greater secularism, by its more influential environmental movements, and by memories of World War II. Political anti-Americanism is likely to last beyond the current Iraq War crisis.