Enemies to Allies

Cold War Germany and American Memory

Brian C. Etheridge

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780813166407
• eBook ISBN: 9780813166421
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

1

“Tomorrow the World”

Images of Germany before the Cold War

On 2 May 1863, the Eleventh Corps of the Army of the Potomac, a unit dominated by soldiers of German descent, was routed in a surprise flanking maneuver executed by Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson during the American Civil War. Four days later, the Union army was forced to retreat in what became known as the battle of Chancellorsville. While in hindsight General Robert E. Lee’s victory at Chancellorsville is often seen as his greatest—a testament to his bold, daring, and audacious military style—at the time the losing side laid the blame squarely on the Eleventh Corps, and particularly at the feet of its predominantly German troops. Before a Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Union army leaders faulted the cowardice of German troops for their losses. When asked if the Eleventh Corps put up “reasonable resistance,” Major General David Birney exemplified the response when he replied: “Portions of it may have fought, but the flight, stampede of artillery, transportation, officers and men, has been described to me, by officers who saw it, as disgraceful in the extreme.” Fellow soldiers likewise held the German performance in complete disdain; one Ohio soldier wrote to his son that “every Dutchman was making for the river … trying to save his own cowardly body.” The Anglo press picked up the theme; the New York Times reported: “Threats, entreaties, and orders of commanders were of no avail. Thousands of these cowards threw down their guns and soon streamed down the road toward the headquarters. … General Howard, with all his daring and resolution and vigor, could not stem the tide of the retreating and cowardly poltroons.” Writing about the incident and the reaction it engendered, one historian concludes that blaming German cowardice for the loss simultaneously “set the stage for the strongest nativist and anti-German backlash since the rise of the Know Nothing Party in the previous decade” and restored the overall morale of the Army of the Potomac “at the expense of its ethnically German element.”¹

These images of cowardly Germans from the Civil War era stand in stark contrast to the stereotypes that Americans have become familiar with since World War II. While Americans in the last sixty years have fought vigorously over the meaning of Germany—indeed, these representations and conversations form the heart of this book—they nevertheless have shared a general understanding of Germans rooted in narratives of power and strength. Few Americans in the post–World War II period would recognize the view of Germans offered by Major General Birney in the report cited above. And yet recovering images of Germans from the pre–Cold War period, many of which, like those associated with Chancellorsville, would be unexpected in modern times, is an essential starting point for fully understanding the relationship between these representations and the larger culture in which they have been manufactured and received. When they are viewed against the backdrop of American interactions with Germans in the last three hundred years, it becomes clear that representations of Germans in the last century have not been natural or foreordained—they have been, like those before them, contingent upon historical circumstance. Moreover, throughout American history, narratives of Germans and Germany have been instrumental in the construction of American identity—but the role cast for Germans in the story of America has varied significantly in different eras. Like Americans in the post–World War II period, Americans in earlier eras formed these impressions as they attempted to define themselves in the context of both their German American neighbors and a globalizing world. And because narratives of Germany have been contingent upon their historical context, certain stereotypes endured because they remained useful, while others disappeared because they became less relevant. Throughout all of this, Germans have been most effective in defining themselves when they have understood the contours of the story in which they have been cast and found relevant ways to present themselves and manage their own representations. Along these lines, this chapter provides a necessary backdrop for understanding the issues and debates of the Cold War period, while at the same time foreshadowing a number of themes that will reappear repeatedly in subsequent chapters.

From the first waves of German settlement in British North America in the late seventeenth century to the Allied invasion of Germany almost 350 years later, narratives about Germans, Germany, and Germanness (Deutschtum) played a crucial role in the formation and evolution of American identity. More specifically, Germans often functioned as the “other,” a people upon whom Anglos and later Americans projected both their fears and their ambitions. In the period before the establishment of the German Empire, a time when most Americans formed their impressions based on their German neighbors in the New World, many Americans incorporated Germans in American narratives of self-sufficiency, democracy, manliness, and loyalty. After the formation of the German Empire and the emergence of a formidable rival, Americans both admired and feared the power unleashed by an organized—and ultimately dangerous—authoritarian regime. With the advent of World War II, these shifting tropes of Germans become modernized and crystallized but not resolved. In the last days of the war, as American troops entered Nazi-held territory, Americans still debated the nature of Germans and, flowing from that, what should be done with them once the war was finally won.

“The Most Ignorant Stupid Sort of Their Own Nation”

In contrast to the ways that Germanness is typically understood in the modern period, that is, principally through the nation-state of Germany and its citizens, it is important to note that before the late nineteenth century, almost all American knowledge of and interaction with Germans took place in North America. During the American colonial period, the only way that British colonists gained knowledge of and formed impressions of Germans was through the immigrants they encountered. The first German in the American colonies was Dr. Johannes Fleischer Jr., who came to Jamestown in 1607, but sustained American exposure to Germans and German culture came only with the founding of Germantown in Pennsylvania in 1683 and the ensuing wave of German immigration that brought approximately one hundred thousand Germans to British North America before the Revolutionary War. Attracted by the promise of land, religious tolerance, and freedom from oppression, Germans became the single largest immigrant group in the eighteenth century. Living, in the words of one historian, “in highly visible ethnic enclaves in largely segregated, rural landscapes,” they made a significant, although by no means uniform, impression on their neighbors. Because the notion of a unified “Germany” was far from a reality during the eighteenth century, English colonists struggled to define these strange immigrants, offering various misnomers from “Palatines” to “Dutch.” But as many Americans understood and, in many cases, feared Germans as inhabitants of separate enclaves, others, primarily British officials responsible for managing German immigrants, engaged more closely with their German neighbors. And because they dealt with them in a more intimate way, their impressions became more complex as they tried to reconcile their own need for labor with the German desire for land and political and cultural autonomy. Because for most of this period British colonists still viewed themselves as British, not as distinctly American, the Germans were often treated as “others” whose acceptance was often predicated on their usefulness—their tractability and industry. Despite their concerns about their German neighbors, colonists generally agreed that the Germans were a hardworking people—a stereotype that would endure through the twentieth century.²

In many ways, the first significant German enclave in America foreshadowed the major elements of the American encounter with Germans during the colonial period. The initial wave of Germans relocated to the British colonies to flee religious persecution. Led by Francis Daniel Pastorius, Johannes Kelpius, and Daniel Falkner, they headed to Pennsylvania, drawn by William Penn’s utopian vision. Although small in number (perhaps three hundred), they exerted a major influence, establishing and solidifying the first permanent German presence in the colonies. Over time, the tide of German immigrants to Pennsylvania generated sharply conflicting impressions. On the one hand, the Germans were praised by their neighbors for their industry and practicality. On the other, they were feared for their numbers, clannishness, and ignorance. In 1723, for example, Governor William Keith, desiring their labor, encouraged the relocation of German immigrants from New York to Pennsylvania. But the colonial assembly, responding to nativist fears, sought to ban all immigration. When that failed, the assembly empowered local officials to assess the suitability of immigrants wishing to live in Philadelphia. In 1726, John Hughes referred to the idea of a multiethnic society as a “monstrous Hydra.”³

These dueling impressions persisted and were best articulated by Benjamin Franklin. In the 1750s, Franklin supported the continued admission of Germans into the colony, observing that “their industry and frugality is exemplary; They are excellent husbandmen and contribute greatly to the improvement of a Country.” At the same time, however, he referred to them as “the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation” who, “not being used to Liberty … know not how to make modest use of it.” In 1751, Franklin worried, “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of Anglifying them”? Concerned that the colony would be overrun by inferior aliens, Franklin counseled that the German enclave should be broken up and distributed among the Anglo settlers.⁴

For their part, the Germans in Pennsylvania, while appreciative of the opportunities they encountered there, clearly found fault with their British neighbors. Accustomed to firm guidance in secular and religious affairs, Germans argued that the colony suffered from a lack of strong leadership. In 1742, a Moravian spokesman claimed that “the refusal of authority to maintain honesty and public standards of behavior” led to loose standards. The German settlers also chafed at the condescending efforts of the British to change German ways. One religious leader reacted strongly to allegations that “we were German boors and oxen, we did not know how to live, we had not the manners to associate with gentle folk etc.”⁵

Present in Pennsylvania, then, were many of the elements indicative of the American encounter with Germans during the colonial period (and beyond): the German desire for land and a continuation of their ways; the English desire for German labor (in large part because of the perception that Germans were industrious); the attendant fear and negative reaction, when they came, that they were inassimilable and could overrun the area; and the bitter counterreaction from the Germans about their shoddy treatment.⁶

The story of German immigration to New York, in what is often thought of as the second major wave of German immigration into the United States during this period, replicates many of these same contours. Similar to other migrants from German lands, the immigrants to New York were lured by stories of free passage and land across the ocean in British North America. And here, too, the German focus on acquiring land and autonomy inspired diverse reactions. Throughout their experience in migrating to and settling in the New World, their handlers interpreted the Germans in relation to their tractability and cooperativeness. But thanks to work by Phil Otterness, we have a better sense of the Germans’ own agency in this process. In examining how the Germans responded to the impressions of others, we gain a clearer sense of how they manipulated them to their own advantage.⁷

The dynamics involved asserted themselves even before the Germans came to America, as they huddled together in London in preparation for the ocean voyage. Whigs, like Daniel Defoe, who supported immigration because they equated the strength of the nation with a high population, crafted enduring narratives of the German immigrants to support their position. In a persuasive piece of propaganda on their behalf, “A Brief History of the Poor Palatine Refugees,” Defoe claimed that the immigrants were ideal for settling the hinterlands of Britain because they were “laborious and skillfull—Industrious to Labour, and ingenious in working, and exceeding willing to be employ’d in anything—In a word, They every way recommend themselves as a People, that shall bring a Blessing, and not a Curse to any Place that shall receive them.” To generate sympathy for their plight and to link their story with that of another group favorably viewed by the British public, the Huguenots, he framed all of the “refugees” as Protestants fleeing “the Oppression of Popish persecution.” In lumping them together as Palatines and Protestants and arguing for their utility in settling undesirable areas of Britain, he ignored both their diverse origins (many did not come from the Palatinate and some were Catholic) and their desire to continue on to America. For their part, the leaders of the immigrants embraced these images to achieve their own ends, namely, immediate assistance and eventual passage to America. They issued a petition, “The State of the Poor Palatines,” in which they claimed their “utter Ruin was occasion’d by the merciless Cruelty of a Bloody Enemy, the French.” They signed it “the poor distressed Protestants, The Palatines.” It was immediately successful in jump-starting a charity drive on their behalf, although sympathy for their position rapidly dwindled as British citizens discovered that many of them were actually Catholic.⁸

After the Germans made it to America in 1710, however, British impressions soured further as the German colonists proved difficult to control. The crown decided to locate them in New York, where they could settle along the Hudson and make tar and pitch to support the British navy (and serve as a buffer against the nearby Native American tribes). Believing that they had been treated unfairly, many German colonists became sullen, uncooperative, and “threatened the social order by needling the colonial elite and by challenging conventions of proper behavior.” Exasperated New York officials called the Germans “rascals” who were “worse than northern savages” and “liars and imposters”; at best, they were “a laborious and honest but a headstrong ignorant people.” The Germans proved particularly stubborn and nettlesome in their relations with non-British residents of the colony. They consorted with slaves, opening their Lutheran churches to them. More troubling, they developed close relationships with Native American tribes, some going so far as to learn their language and customs. Their independence led one official to grumble that their attitude, “together with some words they now and then drop gives me some Reason to doubt their Fidelity.” The clear disconnection between British and German expectations in New York set up understandable conflicts. The Germans took advantage of British stereotypes as far as they could to advance their interests. But the British insistence that the Germans serve the interests of the empire led to predictable resistance. These conflicts, and the perceived desire for German autonomy, colored colonial narratives of the Germans for much of the first half of the eighteenth century.⁹

Elsewhere in North America, colonists viewed Germans in very much the same ways. Georgia’s founders had mixed views of the Germans, based on their assessment of German productivity and tractability. The captain of the ship who brought a large group of Palatines to Savannah in 1737 complained that it would be hard to find among the indentured servants “a more lazy, obstinate, and dissatisfyd people.” Later that year, he charged that they were a “slothful and mutinous Crew, always complaining of too much Work, and too little Victuals, and that they were daily growing more and more troublesome.” On the other hand, James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony, praised the industry of Georgia’s German immigrants, observing that “the Germans seem to take more to Planting than English do.” Another British leader marveled at their economic independence, writing that “the Palatines on the German Village of St. Simon’s (being six or seven Families) have no other Dependence but the Produce of their Lands.” Several officials reached the same conclusion that Franklin had in Pennsylvania: the Germans were most effective if they could be separated and handled individually.¹⁰

The French and Indian War and the ensuing American Revolutionary War resolved some of these tensions. Initially, however, the advent of the French and Indian War intensified these conflicts and pressures. Worried about the allegiance of their German colonists, British administrators and neighbors demanded their loyalty and assistance in the coming conflict. Overestimating their own autonomy, the Germans, for the most part, believed that they could remain independent and neutral; the German community in New York, for example, attempted to negotiate a separate peace with the Iroquois. But the attacks by French and Indian forces against German settlements in the late 1750s transformed the nature of the relationship between the Germans and British. The Germans understood that the protection of British forces was absolutely necessary for safeguarding their own interests. As a result, Germans in the colonies quickened the process of acculturation and assimilation by integrating into colonial political life, rediscovering a shared Anglo-Saxon history, and forging a common identity. This rapprochement strengthened throughout the war, so much so that by the time the revolution began in the colonies a decade later, the Germans had clearly cast in their lot with the upstart Americans. Baron von Steuben, the ideali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Answering the German Question
• 1. “Tomorrow the World”: Images of Germany before the Cold War
• 2. “Germany Belongs in the Western World”: Germany and Consensus Politics in America, 1945–1959
• 3. “Your Post on the Frontier”: Germany in an Age of Consensus, 1945–1959
• 4. “The Anti-German Wave”: Maintaining and Challenging Consensus in an Age of Chaos, 1959–1969
• 5. “We Refuse to Be ‘Good Germans’”: Germany in a Divided Decade, 1959–1969
• 6. “The Hero Is Us”: Representations of Germany since the 1960s
• Conclusion: The Significance of the German Question in the Twenty-First Century
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index