American Perceptions

German Historical Institute
Washington, D.C.
Occasional Paper No. 12
THE MANICHAEAN TRAP

American Perceptions
of the German Empire,
18711945
Detlef Junker
with an Introduction by
Klaus Hildebrand
and a Comment by
Paul W. Schroeder
THE MANICHAEAN TRAP
American Perceptions of the
German Empire, 18711945
Detlef Junker
Occasional Paper No. 12
____________
Edited by Detlef Junker,

Manfred F. Boemeke, and Janine S. Micunek
Copyright 1995
Published by the
GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE
1607 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
Tel. (202) 3873355
Introduction
Klaus Hildebrand
The Manichaean Trap:

American Perceptions of the
German Empire, 18711945
Detlef Junker
The Missing Dimension

in the Manichaean Outlook:
A Comment
Paul W. Schroeder
Preface
THE GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE is pleased to present as the

latest in its series of Occasional Papers the inaugural address of its new
Director, Professor Detlef Junker of the University of Heidelberg. A
professor of modern history specializing in twentieth-century German and
American history and international relations, Professor Junker assumed his
position in Washington on October 1, 1994. On the occasion of his formal
inauguration on November 22, in addition to Professor Junker's lecture,
remarks and greetings were delivered by Volker Knoerich of the Federal
Ministry for Research and Technology, the chairman of the Foundation
German Historical Institutes Abroad; Thomas Matussek, Minister, German
Embassy in the United States; Professor Vernon Lidtke of the Johns
Hopkins University, Chairman of the Friends of the German Historical
Institute; Professor Hartmut Keil of the University of Leipzig, former Acting
Director of the Institute; and Professor Klaus Hildebrand of the University of
Bonn, Chairman of the Institute's Academic Advisory Council.
We are grateful to Professor Paul W. Schroeder of the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a member of our Academic Advisory
Council, for agreeing to comment on Professor Junker's address for this
publication; and to Professor Hildebrand for providing a brief introduction to
both essays.
Introduction
IN THEIR THOUGHTFUL OBSERVATIONS on the relationship between

Germany and the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
Detlef Junker and Paul W. Schroeder find much to agree upon as they
describe and analyze the path of German-American relations from the period
of Reconstruction and the unification of the German Empire to the rise of the
imperial republic as the leading world power and the decline of the German
Empire. There are, however, two differences that may be considered
noteworthy:
To begin with, Detlef Junker, with a certain logical consistency,
concentrates in his essay on America's perception of what was essentially
the Bismarckian Germany in the decades between 1871 and 1945. Thus, he
bases his discussion on the kleindeutsch solution of the "German question,"
a solution that excluded Austria from any designs for a united Germany and
that became a historical reality with the founding of the Empire on January
18, 1871. By contrast, it is this very framework that Paul W. Schroeder
suggests to transcend, and his arguments are well worth considering. By
referring to the "fraternal war" between Prussia and Austria in 1866 as an
example, he points out that, in its relations to Germany, the United States
was often inclined to disregard, or even ignore entirely, the fact that, beyond
the kleindeutsch Bismarckian state, it was necessary to pay attention to the
existence of the "German question" in various other manifestations, not the
least of which was the Central and East Central European context. Anybody
who deals closely with the history of the international order will not fail to
notice immediately that, in certain ways, the same disregard for conditions in
Central and East Central Europe was also characteristic of the policy of
Great Britain, the dominant sea power and guardian of the European balance
of power. As the arbiter and hegemon of global politics, Britain seems to
have been the predecessor of the United States in many, if by no means in
all, respects.
Secondly, in putting forth his thesis of the Manichaean trap, Detlef
Junker has made the thought-provoking attempt to portray American politics
and history as something specific, something extraordinary, something
unique in the history of the world. By compari-
8 Introduction
son, Paul W. Schroeder argues in his reply that a blending of elements of

power politics with moral aspects is not exactly unknown in history. Indeed,
reading Detlef Junker's article serves as a reminder of the history of the
British Empire: Britain regularly resorted to a "black legend" in morally
ostracizing those peopleswhether the Spanish, the French, or the
Germanswho set about to strive for hegemony on the continent.
However, it is indicative of the reflective method of both historians that
they do not view the moralization of the political sphere primarily as the
result of purposeful, deliberate, even diabolically designed plans of
individuals with Machiavellian inclinations. Rather, they regard this
phenomenon as something evolving, a given condition, an almost natural
state of affairs. One of them sees it as specific to American history, the other
perceives it as part of the political sphere in general. In this way, both
historians call attention, although from different points of view, to a
seemingly timeless problem of the international system that is as crucial for
the past as it is for the present and the future: the enigmatic relationship
between power and morality. Both of these historical forces contradict each
othera fact that is often painfully evident; yet, they undoubtedly depend
on each other just as much. For, it is well known that power without
morality cannot endure, while morality without power cannot be effective.
And, finally, the contributions of Detlef Junker and Paul W. Schroeder are
apt to show the importance for all historical developments of a phenomenon
which the great French scholar Raymond Aron has characterizedwithout
diminishing the effective influence of other factors on the history of states
and peoples, of societies and individualsas the significance, even the
"primacy of the international system."1
March 1995 Klaus Hildebrand

Bonn
1
Raymond Aron, Die Letzten Jahre des Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1986), 29.
The Manichaean Trap:
American Perceptions of the German Empire,
18711945
Detlef Junker
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, several momentous things happened
simultaneously. The Soviet tanks remained in their depots, the famous
American strategy of containing both the Soviet Union and Germanya
policy of double containment most succinctly expressed as keeping the
Soviets out, the Americans in, the Germans down, and the Europeans
happybegan to crumble, and the question of German unity once again
topped the agenda of world history. At that juncture, the government of the
United States reacted precisely as one might have expected given the path of
German-American relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The American reaction is a striking example of historical continuityit
could have been virtually predicted.
Americans welcomed the prospect of German unity, liberty, and self-
determination in 1989, just as they had welcomed it in 1848 and 1871.
America's joy about the fall of the Wall was genuine and spontaneous. The
United States supported a possible German reunification sooner and more
decisively than any of the other victorious powers of the Second World War.
The documents published so far, as well as the diaries of Chancellor Kohl's
advisor Horst Teltschik, show clearly and emphatically the decisive role
played by the United States from December 1989 onward, at a time when
President Franois Mitterand and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried to
derail the train and President Mikhail Gorbachev was still unwilling to
accept NATO membership for a united Germany.
Chancellor Kohl traveled to the United States during February, May, and
June of 1990. When he received an honorary Ph.D. degree at Harvard
University, people called out to him: "Mr. Chancellor, we are all
Germans!"1meaning: we are all delighted that
1
Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage. Innenansichten der Einigung (n.p. 1991), 264. For the
perspective of the Foreign Ministry, see Richard Kiessler and Frank
10 Detlef Junker
freedom has proved victorious. In the beginning of February 1990, close

German-American consultations between Secretary of State James Baker
and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and their advisors led to the
idea of a "Two-plus-Four Conference," after Kohl had categorically rejected
the Soviet suggestion in January that the victorious powers of World War II
convene a four-power conference on Germany. "We do not need four
midwives,"2 Kohl had insisted. The United States actively supported the
process of unification at every one of the many international meetings that
year, be it at Ottawa, Malta, Houston, Dublin, Paris, or London. Secretary of
State Baker was therefore quite accurate when he stated at a press
conference in Paris on July 17, 1990, one day after the famous meeting
between Gorbachev and Kohl: "The terms of the agreement that were
reached between Chancellor Kohl and President Gorbachev are terms that
the United States has supported since at least as early as last December,
when we called for a unified Germany as a member of the NATO alliance."3
The other complementary aspect of U.S. policy toward Germany that
could be expected as a result of the history of German-American
Elbe, Ein runder Tisch mit scharfen Ecken. Der diplomatische Weg zur deutschen Einheit, with a
preface by Hans-Dietrich Genscher (Baden-Baden, 1993).
2
Ibid., 105.
3
Adam Daniel Rotfeld and Walter Sttzle, eds., Germany and Europe in Transition (Oxford,
1991), 179. For the early support by the United States, see Teltschik, Innenansichten, 48, 77, 123,
129, 137. This fact is unanimously agreed upon by the growing number of monographs dealing
with the international dimension of German unification: Elizabeth Pond, After the Wall:
American Policy toward Germany (New York, 1990); id., Beyond the Wall: Germanys Road to
Unification (Washington, D.C., 1993); Stephen F. Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification
(New York, 1992); Konrad H. Jarausch, The Rush to German Unity (New York and Oxford,
1994), 15776; Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of
the End of the Cold War (Boston, 1992); Renate Fritsch-Bournazel, Europe and German
Unification (Providence, R.I., and Oxford, 1992); A. James McAdams, Germany Divided: From
the Wall to Reunification (Princeton, N.J., 1993); Frank A. Ninkovich, Germany and the United
Staus: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945, updated ed. (New York, 1994),
15379; Philip Zelikow and Condolezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A
Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming).
The Manichaean Trap 11
relations was a continuation of the policy of containment under different

conditions. Unified Germany was to remain a part of NATO and of a general
European and Atlantic design; its neutralization or isolation was to be
avoided at all costs. The rest of Europe had to be reassured in the face of
newly rekindled fears about Germany, and America's influence in Europe
had to be confirmed.
In the end, the Americans were satisfied. The Two-plus-Four Treaty
resulted in the kind of Germany that the United States had, in a way, desired
ever since 1848: it had found its political borders within its geographic
limits. For the first time in their history, the Germans were enjoying (in the
words of their national anthem) "unity and justice and liberty"; prosperity in
the East, Americans and many others hoped in 1990, would follow in due
course. The unified Germany, as it turned out, does not pose a military threat
to its neighbors: Within the terms of the Treaty, it is incapable, on its own,
of either attacking others or defending itself. The world was confident in
1990 that it would remain an integral part of the West through its ties with
NATO, the European Union, and numerous other organizations, and that
Germany's industries would continue to depend on an open world market.
The United States would remain Germany's most important ally, despite the
permanent German diplomatic balancing act between France and the U.S.
As a country dedicated to the rule of law, Germany guarantees democratic
basic rights, maintains a federalist structure, and is devoted to the principles
of a social market economy.
These expectations of 1990of a reunited Germany as a Western-style
democracy, of a small European replica of the United Statesare
reminiscent of the hopes raised in 1871 and the initial American reactions to
the newly founded German national state. Only three weeks after the
proclamation of the second German Empire at Versailles, President Ulysses
S. Grant stated in an address to Congress on February 7, 1871, that the
unification of Germany under a form of government that, in many respects,
mirrored the American system was received with great sympathy by the
American people. "The adoption in Europe," he declared, "of the American
system of union under the control and the direction of a free people,
12 Detlef Junker
educated to self-restraint, can not fail to extend popular institutions and to

enlarge the peaceful influence of American ideas.4
This and other statements by the president of the United States, which
were probably representative of the opinion of a majority of the American
people,5 reflected America's hopes for the best of all possible Germaniesa
far-away Old World country, freedom-loving, peaceful, Protestant, and with
a federal structure; a country of considerable size and weight, but one
without territorial ambitions in Europe, let alone any other part of the world;
a country whose internal structures were shaped primarily by its sages and
artists, its musicians and poets, by farmers, tradespeople, technicians,
engineers, merchants, and entrepreneurs and not by its soldiers, priests, or
landed aristocrats; a country without any serious conflict of interests with the
United States, called upon, as a freedom-loving European state, to emulate
the historical mission of the United States by promoting the progress of
liberty throughout history. The United States chose to interpret German
unity from this providential perspective, as it had done with other national
and democratic movements in Europe during the nineteenth century, be it in
Greece, Hungary, Italy, or a republican France.
This observation leads directly to my first thesis: From 1871 to 1945, the
United States judged the German Empire by the extent to which Germany
did or did not approximate this hopeful ideal. The varying images that the
Americans formed of Germanytheir opinions, their prejudices, their
clichs and stereotypes, the images
4
Quoted in Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History (Ithaca,
N.Y., and London, 1984), 15. The American minister and historian, George Bancroft, had
recommended that the president make the statement; see Peter Krger, "Die Beurteilung der
Reichsgrndung und Reichsverfassung von 1871 in den USA," in Norbert Finzsch et al., eds.,
Liberalitas: Festschrift fr Erich Angermann zum 65. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1992), 26383.
5
For the American reaction to the founding of the Empire, see, in addition to Krger, Jonas,
United States and Germany, 1534; Otto Graf zu Stolberg-Wernigerode, Deutschland und die
Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika im Zeitalter Bismarcks (Berlin and Leipzig, 1933), 98146;
John Gerow Gazley, American Opinion of German Unification (New York, 1926); Christine
Totten, DeutschlandSoll und Haben. Amerikas Deutschlandbild (Munich, 1964), 7682; Hans
L. Trefousse, "Die deutschamerikanischen Einwanderer und das neugegrndete Reich," in Frank
Trommler, ed., Amerika und die Deutschen. Bestandsaufnahme einer 300jhrigen Geschichte
(Opladen, 1986), 17791.
expressing enmity or hategenerally followed the overall political

developments, i.e. the changing political fortunes and America's political
judgments concerning the German Empire.
Depending on the political situation, Americans would pick certain
stereotypes out of a set of typical images of Prussia or Germany that they
had developed early on. These images would then dominate the public
debate, while others would remain in the background. Thus, there existed,
and still does exist, (1) a Germany that is romantic and "gemtlich,"
characterized by enchanted landscapes, castles, and palaces (coming from
Heidelberg, I am only too familiar with this view, of course); (2) a Germany
that is the home of philosophers, poets, and artists, one that is industrious,
efficient, reliable, productive, and technologically first-rate; and (3) a
Germany that is arrogant, cynical, presumptuous, subservient, unable to
handle freedom; it is aggressive, militaristic, notoriously war-mongering,
anti-Semitic, and racist, striving for world power, indeed world domination.
In the second thesis of my address, I argue that, at the end of both world
wars, the opinion of Germany was so negative that there was no alternative
to dissolving the Empire in 1918 and the Third Reich in 1945.
The third observation is based on the recognition that even the most
negative American judgment during those two wars never resulted in any
serious doubts on the part of either the American government or the
American public about the legitimate existence of a united Germany, based
on the principle of self-determination, in the center of Europeif we leave
aside, that is, the brief and inconsequential interlude of the plans concerning
the division of Germany or the Morgenthau Plan during the Second World
War. In order to question Germany's existence and right to self-
determination, Americans would have had to renounce their own best
traditions.
My fourth thesis maintains that any judgment concerning the present and
future status of the German Empire also involved, at the same time, a
decision about the present and future status of Europe, since American
policies toward Germany always remained a crucial part of its policies
toward Europe as a whole. Any judgment concerning Germany was the
result of relating it to judgments about other European powers, especially
England, France, and Russia or the Soviet Union. Indeed, one might be
tempted to ask whether a
14 Detlef Junker
purely bilateral relationship, a distinct German policy, ever really existed in

the United States.
In any event, during the first decade after the establishment of the
German Empire in 1871, the political relationship between Bismarck's Reich
and the United States remained excellent, if only of secondary importance to
both. This remained true even though, of course, the newly founded German
Empire, in its actual existence, differed considerably from the American
image of the best of all possible Germanies; even though the young French
Republic elicited a lot of sympathy after the fall of Napoleon III and the loss
of Alsace-Lorraine and the massive French reparations led to harsh criticism
among some segments of the American public. North America remained the
center of interest for the United States, while the German Reich focused on
Europe. Hence, there were no significant areas of conflict.
Almost all of Americas energies were absorbed by the reconstruction of
the South, by industrialization and the settlement of the continent. Whatever
foreign policy there was, it was essentially concerned with the Western
hemisphere: with Canada, the acquisition of Alaska, and the attempt to
expand the U.S. position in the Caribbean. The initial stirrings of an East
Asia policy were as yet quite confused and without any clearly defined
goals. As far as Europe was concerned, George Washington's advice not to
get entangled in the quarrels and alliances of the Old World remained
unchallenged.
As is well known, Bismarck's policies after 1870/71, on the other hand,
remained focused on Europe; the United States remained a cura posterior, of
secondary concern. Still, for Bismarck it was in Germany's self-interest, as
he understood it, to retain America's good will, and he continued to treat the
United States with remarkable acuity and circumspection. In particular, he
was careful to respect the Monroe Doctrine and U.S. sensibilities in the
Western hemisphere, whenever he was called upon to protect the interests of
German citizens in such places as Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Nicaragua, or
Hawaii. On December 18, 1871, he instructed the German ambassador, von
Schlzer, to inform the American Secretary of State as follows: "We have no
interest whatsoever in gaining a foothold anywhere in the Americas, and we
acknowledge unequivocally that, with regard to the entire continent, the
predominant influence of the United States is founded in the nature of things
and corresponds
most closely with our own interests."6 Such an acknowledgment could not
be obtained at the time from any of the old European colonial powers, which
the United States proceeded to displace in the Western hemisphere one by
one: neither Great Britain nor France nor Spain would have granted as much.
It was thus no accident that the United States turned to Emperor William I
for the settlement of a border dispute between British Columbia and the
Washington territory on the northwestern coast of the United States. William
complied by declaring the American claims legitimate. Obviously, the
Americans had no reason to complain about the German Empire.
In addition, I would like to at least mention some domestic factors that
helped create a generally benign image of a German Empire that was
respected, indeed even admired, in the United States, even though critical
voices in some parts of American society were not absent during those first
decades. Among those reasons, one can name the German immigrants,
whose sense of their own significance had been measurably increased by the
German victory during the Franco-Prussian War, or the German university
system, re-organized by Wilhelm von Humboldt, which served as a model
for the reform of American higher education during those first decades after
the founding of the Empire. Neither the Kulturkampf nor the anti-Socialist
laws tarnished the high estimation enjoyed by Bismarck and the German
Reich in the eyes of most Americans. During the celebrations of the first
centennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1876, Bismarck and
Emperor William I exchanged friendly messages with President Grant, in
which Bismarck, with some justification, could allude to the one hundred
years of friendship that had existed between the two countries, going back to
the days of Frederick the Great.7
This kind of continuity, however, began to dissolve in a long and gradual
process. Beginning with the early 1880s, and increasingly after Bismarck's
fall, a profound change, the so-called "great transformation," took place in
German-American relations. By 1914, it had led to such a transformation of
America's image of Germany
6
Quoted in Stolberg-Wernigerode, Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten, 321.
7
Jonas, United States and Germany, 33.
16 Detlef Junker
that, in marked contrast to 1870, the majority of the anglo- and francophile
elites in the United States sympathized with the Western Allies at the
outbreak of the Great European War. This change in the image of Germany
was in part responsible for the policy of partial neutrality pursued by the
United States between 1914 and 1916 and for justifying its entry into the war
against Germany in April 1917.8 The Wilhelminian Empire had become an
integral part of America's image of the enemyalthough, until 1916, all
conflicts between the two countries had been settled peacefully, be it in
Europe, East Asia, or Latin America, in the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean,
and the diplomatic relationship could best be characterized as a combination
of limited conflict and cooperation. Now the German Empire occupied the
position previously held by the Indians, by France, England, Mexico, and
Spain.9
8
For the change of the image, see Clara Eve Schieber, The Transformation of American
Sentiment toward Germany, 18701914 (New York and Boston, 1923); Melvin Small, The
American Image of Germany, 19061914 (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Michigan, 1965); Jrg Nagler,
"From Culture to Kultur: Changing American Perceptions of Imperial Germany, 18701914," in
David Barclay and Elizabeth Glaser-Schmidt, eds., Mutual Images and Multiple Implications:
American Views of Germany and German Views of America from the 18th to the 20th Centuries
(New York, forthcoming). For the American perception of Germany, see Konrad H. Jarausch,
"Das amerikanische Deutschlandbild in drei Jahrhunderten," in Klaus Weigert, ed., Das
Deutschland- und Amerikabild. Beitrge zum gegenseitigen Verstndnis beider Vlker (St.
Augustin, 1986), 1020; id., "Huns, Krauts or Good Germans? The German Image in America,
18001980," in James F. Harris, ed., German-American Interrelations: Heritage and Challenge
(Tbingen, 1983), 145159.
9
For German-American relations to 1917, see esp. Jonas, United States and Germany, 35
124; Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A Special Relationship? (Cambridge,
Mass., 1980), 2751; Alfred Vagts, Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten in der Weltpolitik
(New York, 1935); Reiner Pommerin, Der Kaiser und Amerika (Cologne and Vienna, 1986);
Ragnhild Fiebig-von Hase, Lateinamerika als Konfliktherd der deutsch-amerikanischen
Beziehungen, 18901903 (Gttingen, 1986); id., "The United States and Germany in the World
Arena, 19001917," in Hans-Jrgen Schrder, ed., Confrontation and Cooperation: Germany
and the United States in the Era of World War I, 19001924 (Oxford, 1993), 3368; Raimund
Lammersdorf, Anfnge einer Weltmacht. Theodore Roosevelt und die transatlantischen
Beziehungen der USA 19011909 (Berlin, 1994); Reinhard R. Doerries, Imperial Challenge:
Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German-American Relations (Chapel Hill, N.C., and
This qualitative change had to do with the changing position of both

states in relation to each other and within the economic and political
framework in the age of imperialism. Both states moved beyond the confines
of regional interests, became, or at least sought to become, world powers
that participated in the contest of all major powers for what they perceived
as the final division of the globe and thus found themselves confronting each
other as rivals in the Pacific, in East Asia, and in Latin America. They also
became enmeshed in trade controversies, such as the pork war of the mid-
1880s. This development has been exhaustively researched on both sides of
the Atlantic and need not detain us here. Let us just hypothesize then that the
changing image of the German Empire was not merely grounded in the real
conflicts of the two states, but that it also derived from the fact that these
two nouveaux riches, these upstarts of world politics, showed a lot of
similarities and parallels in the substantive aspects of their foreign policies.
The tremendous economic growth of both states had increasingly turned
Germany and the United States into both partners and competitors in trade.
In both countries, political parties and powerful interest groups exerted
successful pressure upon their own governments to adopt protectionist
measures. While the United States continued to soak up an unlimited supply
of people and capital from Europe, the development of its economy since
1861 took place behind a growing wall of protectionist tariffs, which
impaired above all the importation of industrial products. The protectionist
tariff policy pursued by the German Empire, on the other hand, was
primarily intended to protect its agrarian interests. Thus, the basic pattern
was set for the mutual accusations exchanged during the protracted conflicts
over tariffs: the United States kept complaining that the Germans protected
their agrarian markets, while the German Empire was unhappy that the
Americans kept shielding their industrial markets.
Both states, as has been noted, became imperialist states. By 1914, the
United States had created its own informal and formal
London, 1989); id., "Kaiserreich und Republik. Deutsch-Amerikanische Beziehungen vor 1917,"
in Trommler, Amerika und die Deutschen, 35366; Holger H. Herwig, The United States and
German Naval Planning 18891941 (Boston and Toronto, 1976).
18 Detlef Junker
empire in the Pacific and the Caribbean. It had also strengthened its position
in East Asia where, in spite of its own protectionism, it attempted to enforce
the open-door policy, sometimes with the support of the German Empire.
Both states also fairly burst with a sense of self-importance. In both
countries, aggressive nationalism linked up with ideologies specific to the
times, such as navalism, racism, and theories of world power. Thus, all the
expansionists and naval strategists in the United States would have
essentially agreed with Emperor William's grandiloquent statement that
posited "world policy as the task, world power as the goal, and a great navy
as the instrument" of all policies. It is no accident that Alfred Thayer
Mahan's bestseller of 1890, The Influence of Sea Power upon History,
became required reading in all the navies of the world.
In both countries, the navy existed also as a pressure group, supported by
vociferous naval lobbies. In specific German-American confrontations, such
as over Samoa, the Philippines, or Venezuela, the American "yellow press"
was easily up to the level (or is it down to?) of its English or German
counterparts. Published opinion in both countries nursed a special kind of
self-righteous nationalism and intensified images of the enemy. Thus, the
stereotype of the German peril developed in the United States, while the
stereotype of the American peril gained prominence in Germany.
Both countries also had a problem in common, one that they shared as
world powers on the rise: the old, long-established world power, Great
Britain. It became a crucial aspect of America's changing image of Germany
that England won out in the race for America's favor, because England's
dowry turned out to be considerably more opulent than that of the stingy
German suitor. The most valuable part of Britain's wedding present turned
out to be her strategic withdrawal from the Caribbean and her express
acceptance of the Monroe Doctrine, while the German Empire of William II
chose to abandon the conciliatory approach of Bismarck on this as on many
other issues.
This great transformation during the age of imperialism meant that, by
1914, the German Empire had lost its position as "Little America" in
Europe. Simultaneously, American admiration for German culture had
subsided substantially, while the cultural influences of France and England
had grown in the United States during the 1890's. Clumsy attempts on the
part of William II and the German
Empire to counter this worrisome trend by increased cultural exchanges and

inappropriate gifts did not materially alter the situation. After all, a statue of
Frederick the Great could hardly compete with that brilliant French gift, the
Statue of Liberty.10
The criticism of an autocratic, militaristic, rude, presumptuous Germany,
a Germany that may turn out a menace to civilization, had become more
pronounced in the United States, since "Kaiser Bill" represented Wilhelmine
Germany in the eyes of many Americans. His obsession with uniforms, his
predilection for anything military, and his war-like speeches reinforced the
impression that Germany was a militaristic state. His infamous speech about
the "Huns," in particular, delivered while sending off German troops to help
put down the Boxer Rebellion in China, left a disastrous impression in
America. During the First World War, this speech was endlessly exploited
by British and American war propaganda to influence the world by equating
Germans and "Huns."
This transformation is crucial for the explanation of the most important
aspect affecting the development of Americas image of Germany in the
course of World War Ithat is, how the German Empire came to be caught
in the Manichaean trap, as I would like to call it, of Americas historic
mission. Let me develop this term and this assertion a little more fully.
Individuals or nations in the process of defining their own identities seem
to have a hard time tolerating the idea of being merely the equals of others.
They attempt to arrogate to themselves some special significance that is
supposed to render them different from and superior to other individuals or
nations, indeed make them unique. In the process, they frequently invoke
notions of exalted generality, such as God, History, Providence, Progress, or
the Salvation of Mankind(all with capital letters, of course). Like so many
other nations before them or since, Americans, too, have claimed to be a
chosen people. The idea of America's special mission has been a part of
American political culture that has gone without saying since the founding
of the nation. The founding fathers of the union were deeply shaped by the
spirit of the Enlightenment. They integrated Christian and Puritanical
missionary ideas of New England's
10
Nagler, "From Culture to Kultur," 15; Garzke, Germany and the United States, 45.
20 Detlef Junker
settlers such as "the chosen people," "the Covenant people," "God's new
Israel," and "God's last American Israel" into the idea of a secular mission
for America. It was this fusion of Christianity and Enlightenment that
brought forth the civil religion so specific to America, that unmistakable
admixture of Christian Republicanism and Democratic faith that created a
nation with the soul of a church. The American nation does not have any
ideologies, she herself is one.
The goals of America's mission have, of course, oscillated over time;
they have combined with the dominant aspects of the Zeitgeist of different
agessuch as, for example, racism in the age of imperialismonly to
uncouple themselves again from such tendencies. They have transformed
themselves, moving from the Puritanical mission of completing the work of
the Reformation to the political mission of bringing freedom and democracy
to the worldor, in the words used by President Woodrow Wilson in his
declaration of war against Germany in 1917: "to make the world safe for
democracy." Thus, the missionary goals of the United States have changed
from the passive notion of turning America into a new Jerusalem whose
example would be a beacon for the world to the active missionary duty to
elevate backward, less civilized nations to the American level, to create a
new world order, save the world, and bring about the millennium.
Every sense of mission grounded in a teleological view of history
requires for its realization some concrete negation, its counter-principle, an
evil empire that has to be overcome in war in order to enable progress and
fulfill the mission. This missionary zeal tends to cultivate a radical dualism,
it has to divide the world and its governing principles into good and evil.
This dualistic system of beliefs is known as Manichaeism, named after
Mani, the Persian philosopher of late antiquity. A nation with the soul of a
church can thus justify entering an actual war only on ideological grounds. It
cannot fall back on material interests, reasons of state, orhorribile dictu
a violation of the balance of power. By the way, it took Henry Kissinger
almost a lifetime to come to terms with this problem. At best, it can refer to
a violation of rights, because in this kind of reasoning, legality and morality
are interchangeable. Thus, whoever gets involved in any conflict or war with
the United States automatically finds himself caught in the Manichaean trap
of America's sense of a special mission.
The first enemy caught in this trap were the Indians. It was with them
that the battle for territory and for room to live was waged most ferociously,
particularly after the greatest catastrophe of New England in 1675/76. Under
the leadership of chief Metacon, the Indians managed to almost destroy the
New England settlers in a war that, in relation to the total number of
inhabitants, was the bloodiest conflict in American history. Since those days,
the Indians were perceived as savages who could not be civilized, indeed as
devils; the wilderness was equated with hell. The Indians had lost any right
to stand in the way of the conquest of the Westa conquest that was pushed
ahead during the nineteenth century by the massive employment of troops
and capital. The Manichaean pattern of the ideology and mythology of the
Indian Wars has determined the foreign policy behavior of the United States
throughout its history, up to and including the administration of President
Ronald Reagan.11 Even after the secularization of America's sense of
mission, this dualistic interpretation of the world played a key role in U.S.
foreign policy. All the enemies of the United States were caught in the
Manichaean trap: following the Indians were the French and the Britishin
America's first political best seller, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and in
Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, it was King George III
who embodied the principle; later it was the Spaniards and the Mexicans,
and, in the twentieth century, mainly the Germans, the Japanese, the
Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Iraqis.
I would argue that it was this transformation of the German Empire into
the evil empire that enabled the American people in general and President
Wilson in particular to put an end to the deeply ambivalent U.S. policy
toward Europe of the years 19141916, a policy that could not be
maintained indefinitely. Wilson had, after all, won the election of 1916
because he had kept America out of the war. So the battle for the American
soul, which was anything but ready for war, had to be won by
revolutionizing the "threat perception" of the American people in order to be
able to cross the Rubiconthat is, the Atlanticand declare war on
Germany. And, finally, after the entry into the war, the propaganda
11
Dieter Schulz, "Rothute und Soldaten Gottes. Amerikanische Ideologie und Mythologie
von der Kolonialzeit bis Ronald Reagan," in Jan Assmann and Dietrich Harth, eds., Kultur und
Konflikt (Frankfurt/M., 1990), 287303.
22 Detlef Junker
machinery had to be set in motion, producing grotesque scenarios about the

threat posed by German machinations in the Western hemisphere to the
domestic and external security of the United States. The same pattern was
repeated, more or less, between 1939 and 1941, with the exception of the
witch hunts against German-Americans, whose ethnic identity had already
been destroyed during World War I.12 Moreoverif I am here permitted to
make a value judgmentthe situation in the Second World War was, of
course, different, in that Germany actually was an evil empire; prior to 1914,
on the other hand, a comparison of social and legal aspects, as well as of
democratic theory, between Imperial Germany and the United States
(including the South) would result in a highly complex and differentiated
picture.
Wilson's deep ambivalence was based on the fact that he neither liked
Europe, nor could he leave the continent alone; that he wanted to isolate the
morally superior New World from the rotten Old World while also saving
mankind and the international system from the ancient evils.
Thus, he appealed to his fellow Americans on August 19, 1914, to remain
neutral not only in deed but also in their thoughts and asserted that the
effects of the European war on the United States depended entirely upon
how Americans themselves thought and acted, an assertion he repeated as
late as December 7, 1915.13 The deeply partial and anglophile U.S.
ambassador in London, Walter Hines Page, had insisted to Wilson as early
as August 1914 that the system of Prussian militarism had to be excised like
a tumor, while
12
See Frederick L. Luebke, German-Americans and World War I: Bonds of Loyalty (De
Kalb, Ill., 1974).
13
Declaration of Neutrality, in Henry Steele Commager, Documents of American History,
vol. 2: Since 1898, 10th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1973), 96f. See also Wilson's "Annual
Message on the State of the Union" of December 7, 1915, esp. the following statement: "We are
at peace with all the nations of the world, and there is reason to hope that no question in
controversy between this and other Governments will lead to any serious breach of amicable
relations, grave as some differences of attitude and policy have been and may yet turn out to be. I
am sorry to say that the gravest threats against our national peace and safety have been uttered
within our own borders." Arthur S. Link et al., eds., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 35
(Princeton, N.J., 1980), 306.
Wilson himself had maintained in November 1914, speaking to his equally

pro-British intimate Colonel Edward Mandell House, that Germany did not
pose any danger to America and that the U.S. could not attack Germany
even if the latter should be victorious in Europe.14 During the election year
of 1916, he repeatedly assured his compatriots that America had nothing to
do with the causes and objectives of the war in Europe; no statement
concerning Germany's war guilt crossed his lips at that time. As late as
November 1916, he regarded both German militarism and British navalism
as mankind's two greatest scourges.15
America's neutrality was, however, no end in itself to Wilson. Until
January 1917, he regarded it as the precondition for fulfilling his historic
mission, i.e. to bring an American peace to an exhausted Europe that was
bleeding to death and to go down in history as God's instrument, as a servus
servorum Dei. His famous speech to the U.S. Senate, delivered on January
22, 1917, in which he proclaimed the principles of a "peace without victory"
and a revolution in international politics, ended with the statements of his
civil religion which contain the essence of Wilson's idea of America's
mission; Wilson himself and the American people appear as the
representatives of all mankind: "These are American principles, American
policies. We could stand for no others. And they are also the principles and
policies of forward looking men and women everywhere, of every modern
nation, of every enlightened community. They are the principles of mankind
and must prevail."16
Wilson's profound hatred of and contempt for the German Empire arose
only when Germany's announcement of its unlimited submarine warfare and
the Zimmermann telegram not only posed a threat to the interests and the
prestige of the United States, but also imperiled his historic mission. Now an
agonizing Wilson faced the alternative of either renouncing his mission or of
realizing it by means radically different from those just recently
proclaimednot by "peace without victory" but by "war and victory." As far
as the president himself was concerned, all other reasons for America's
14
Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Woodrow Wilson: A Life for World Peace (Berkeley, Calif.,
Los Angeles, and Oxford, 1991), 142, 180.
15
Ibid., 201.
16
Commager, Documents, vol. 2., 128.
24 Detlef Junker
entry into the war paled into insignificance by comparison to this ideological
need for action, including even the possible loss of the balance of power
through a German victory or the golden chains by which America's
industries had tied themselves to the Allied economies.
Wilson broke out of his dilemma by using the idea of America's historic
mission to legitimize and elevate to a universal level the impending war
against Germany. In his message to Congress of April 2, 1917, which he had
written himself, he called Germany's submarine warfare a war against all
nations, indeed against mankind itself. The very existence of autocratic
governments whose organized power was controlled only by themselves and
not by the will of their people posed a danger to peace and freedom in the
world. Moreover, Prussian autocracy had threatened the domestic peace of
the United States by spies and criminal intrigue; it was thus the natural
enemy of freedom. The U.S. had no selfish interests of its own. It fought
only for a permanent peace and the liberation of all peoples, including the
German people, for whom the United States felt nothing but sympathy and
friendship. The world, he declared, must be safe for democracy.
Wilson ended his declaration of war with the following words: To such
a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and
everything that we have, with the pride of those who know the day has come
when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the
principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace she has treasured.
And he closed in a Lutheran vein: God helping her, she can do no other.17
17
Ibid., 132. Among the abundant literature on Wilson and world politics, see Lloyd E.
Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in
Perspective (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); id., Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal
Internationalism during World War I (Wilmington, Del., 1991); John Milton Cooper, The
Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1983);
Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight Woodrow Wilsons Neutrality (Oxford, 1975); Robert H.
Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 19171921 (New York, 1985); Lloyd C. Gardner,
Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution (New York, 1984); N. Gordon
Levin, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution (New
York, 1968); Arthur S. Link, The Higher Realism of Woodrow Wilson and Other Essays
(Nashville, Tenn.,
It was a final and necessary consequence of the Manichaean trap that

Wilson was unable to conclude either an armistice or a peace treaty with the
evil empire; all the more so, since wartime propaganda had, in the meantime,
turned the "autocratic" Empire and its tumor, Prussian militarism, into an
"outlaw." The slogan of "Hang the Kaiser" turned the situation into a kind of
"shoot-out at high noon," nationalistic Republicans demanded unconditional
surrender, and Wilson's Democrats feared heavy losses in the upcoming
congressional elections. For all those reasons, Wilson felt he had to respond
to the request for a cessation of hostilities, that the government of Max von
Baden presented on October 4, 1918, with a demand for the end of the
German Empire in its previously constituted form, for a change of
government, and for a democratic legitimation of any party to future
negotiations. It is well known that the "revolution from above," that is, the
change from a constitutional to a parliamentary monarchy, staged by
Undersecretary of State Paul von Hintze and by Hindenburg and Ludendorff,
took place because the leadership of the German Empire had anticipated
Wilson's desire. It is equally well-known that a large part of the German
public had drawn the conclusion from the deliberately vague wording of
Wilson's statements that the American president was actually demanding
also the abdication of the emperor and the transition to a German republic.
Thus, the pressure on William II increased from all sides, because everyone
expected that sacrificing
1971); id., Wilson, vols. 3, 4, 5 (Princeton, N.J., 19601965); id., ed., Woodrow Wilson and a
Revolutionary World, 19131921 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982); Ernest R. May, Imperial
Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power (New York, 1961); id., The World
War and American Isolation, 19141917 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959); Arno J. Mayer, Political
Origins of the New Diplomacy, 19171918 (New Haven, Conn., 1959); and Schulte Nordholt,
Woodrow Wilson.
A new interpretation of Wilson is presented by Frank Ninkovich, who portrays Wilson as the
founding father of the principles underlying the domino theory. See also his conclusions on
Wilson's missionary diplomacy. "The Wilson vision in its full amplitude oscillated between the
promise of secular redemption through collective security and the peril of damnation in another
world conflagration." "Wilson, as founder of a secular religion, may have been a false prophet,
but in his capacity as definer of evil, Americans remained his spiritual children." Modernity and
Power. A History of the Domino Theory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 1994), 678.
26 Detlef Junker
the emperor would mean better conditions for an armistice and a peace
settlement.18
In actuality, neither the end of the Empire nor the changes in Germany
altered in the least the harsh conditions for peace that Germany had to
expect; neither did the German strategy of invoking the Fourteen Points or
the right to self-determination as a basis for a future peace treaty. On the
contrary, several factors combined to increase Wilson's tendencies toward a
punitive peace. There was his newly found conviction that Germany was
responsible for the outbreak of the European wara conviction that,
according to Clemenceau, was shared by the entire civilized world.
Moreover, during the course of the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson also
came to believe increasingly that the new Germany represented nothing but
the old Germany in a new guise; and, finally, he had to take into account the
strategies and interests of the Allies, especially concerning possible threats
to the establishment of the League of Nations idea and to his own role as an
arbiter mundi by the bitter German criticism.
On the other hand, a peace of punishment and revenge was not to lead to
a Carthage on the Rhine. The right to self-determination even for the
Germans, considerations of the overall future European order, as well as the
fear of the Bolshevik threat kept Wilson from questioning seriously the unity
of a German national state. He was strictly opposed to any dissolution of the
Empire founded by Bismarck and would not permit France to separate
permanently from Germany the territories left of the Rhine. Thus, Wilson
was forced to practice at Versailles the very policy that he himself had
pilloried as the greatest evil of the system of European powers and that he
had intended to supersede by establishing the League of Nations. In other
words, he had to act according to the principles governing the balance of
power. In terms of power politics, Wilson's European policies already appear
to be those of a triple containment: they aim at containing the threat to
Europe posed by the Soviet Union and by Germany, coupled with the desire
to meet French
18
For Wilson and Germany in 19181919, see esp. Klaus Schwabe, Deutsche Revolution und
Wilson-Frieden: Die amerikanische und deutsche Friedensstrategie zwischen Ideologie und
Machtpolitik 1918/19 (Dsseldorf, 1971); id., Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany, and
Peacemaking, 19181919 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985).
security concerns, without, at the same time, allowing France to become the
hegemonic power in Europe.19
As Far as America was concerned, the establishment of the Weimar
Republic had brought a de facto end to the old Empire, even though the
Weimar Constitution postulated a continuity with the nation-state founded in
1871 in the very first sentence of Article I, which stated: "The German
Empire is a Republic." The Manichaecan trap was empty again. As America
saw it, Germany deserved the chanceafter an appropriate period of
remorse, repentance, and reformto return to the family of nations as a
respected power and to prove herself as a liberal, capitalist democracy, as
"Little America" in Europe.
Given such conditions, a revision of the Versailles Treaty, which the
Senate had not ratified in any case, was quite possible as far as America was
concerned. In contrast to French desires, it had never been the objective of
U.S. policies to cement the status quo of 1919. Peaceful change was part of
the core belief underlying American policies in Europe. It was part of
America's enlightened self-interest to support such a change, which would
ultimately serve to integrate Germany once again into Europe politically and
into the world economically.
19
In addition to the titles mentioned in notes 17 and 18, the following studies are relevant for
Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference: Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Preparations
for Peace, 19171919 (New Haven, Conn., 1963); Maurice Hankey, The Supreme Control of the
Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (London, 1963); Michael Hogan, "The United States and the
Problem of International Economic Control: American Attitudes toward European
Reconstruction, 19181920," Pacific Historical Review 46 (1975): 84103; Melvin Leffler, The
Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 19191933 (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1979); Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and
Counterrevolution at Versailles, 19181919 (London, 1968); Keith L. Nelson, Victors Divided:
America and the Allies in Germany, 19181923 (Berkeley, Calif., 1975); Carl R. Parrini, Heir to
Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 19161923 (Pittsburgh, 1969); Jan Willem Schulte
Nordholt, "Wilson in Versailles," Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 80 (1967): 17799; David F.
Trask, The United States and the Supreme War Council, 19171918 (Middletown, Conn., 1961);
Arthur C. Walworth, Americas Moment: 1918 (New York, 1977); and id., Wilson and His
Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (New York, 1986).
28 Detlef Junker
As is well known to historians of the Weimar Republic, these were the

general tendencies of German-American relations, especially between 1923
and 1929. The decisive turning point was the Dawes Plan of 1924, a
concrete result of America's attempt to stabilize the situation in Europe. The
economic stability provided by the Dawes Plan made possible the political
stability achieved by the security treaty of Locarno, Germany's entry into the
League of Nations, and the withdrawal of Allied troops from the Rhineland.
This economic intervention by the United States marks the beginning of the
end of France's attempt to dominate Central Europe after World War I.
American support had freed Germany from its role of helpless object that the
country had assumed in 1919. The massive influx of American capital made
the U.S. dollar rise like the sun over Germany, as one contemporary noted
ironically; it remained an important condition for the period of stability
enjoyed by the Weimar Republic until the outbreak of the most serious
economic crisis since the beginning of the industrial revolution.20
Similar to the years after 1945, when the Americans found in Konrad
Adenauer the political powerhouse among the Germans eager to support
their plans for the integration of the Federal
20
For German-American relations during the period of the Weimar Republic and the
American perception of Germany during those years, see Peter Berg, Deutschland und Amerika
19181929. ber das Amerikabild der zwanziger Jahre (Lbeck and Hamburg, 1963); Manfred
Berg, Gustav Stresemann und die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Weltwirtschaftliche
Verflechtung und Revisionspolitik 19071929 (Baden-Baden, 1990); id., Gustav Stresemann.
Eine politische Karriere zwischen Reich und Republik (Gttingen, 1992); Frank C. Costigliola,
Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919
1933 (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1984); Peter Bruno Gescher, Die Vereinigten Staaten von
Nordamerika und die Reparationen 19201924 (Bonn, 1956); Robert Gottwald, Die Deutsch-
Amerikanischen Beziehungen in der ra Stresemann (Berlin, 1965); Peter Krger, Die
Auenpolitik der Republik von Weimar (Darmstadt, 1985); Leffler, Elusive Quest; Werner Link,
Die amerikanische Stabilisierungspolitik in Deutschland 19211932 (Dsseldorf, 1970); William
C. McNeil, American Money and the Weimar Republic: Economics and Politics in the Era of the
Great Depression (New York, 1986); Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Predominance in
Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (Chapel Hill, N.C.,
1976); Eckhard Wandel, Die Bedeutung der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika fr das deutsche
Reparationsproblem 19241929 (Tbingen, 1971).
Republic into the West, they were fortunate, during the middle period of
Weimar, to have in Gustav Stresemann a congenial politician who correctly
interpreted the goals of U.S. foreign policy in Europe: to be present
economically, though abstain from any entangling alliances; to be open to
revisionism by peaceful means; and to pursue a multilateral approach.
To the right-wing nationalists in Germany, who had attacked the loss of
sovereignty and of control over the German economy inherent in the Dawes
Plan, Stresemann replied: The greater U.S. economic interests in Germany,
and the larger American credits granted to Germany, the greater would be
America's interest in peaceful change, a change whose ultimate goalin
Stresemann's viewcould only be the revision of the Treaty of Versailles
and the restoration of Germany to its position as a major power with equal
rights in Europe.
World War I had made the United States the dominant economic and
trade power in the world; during the 1920s, it further strengthened that
position. It increased its status as the leading productive power and became
the largest export country as well as the largest consumer of raw materials in
the world. America's share of the worldwide production of industrial goods
grew from 35.8 percent in 1913 to 46 percent, if one uses the average of the
years 192529 as a base. In dollars, the national income generated by the
United States was as large as that of the next 23 nations taken together,
including Great Britain, Germany, France, and Canada. New York became
the second leading financial center of the world, rivalling London. The
world's economic system had become bicentric if not America-centric.
America's cultural influence increased as well; its film industry, for example,
began to conquer Europe. Under the catchword of "Americanism," an
intense debate ensued in Germany and in other European countries about the
influence of the United States, which was (and is) both admired and feared.
The tremendous difference in power between the victorious United States
and a defeated Germany resulted in the virtual disappearance of the Weimar
Republic from public view in the United States; only a small, informed
segment of the public remained involved in developments in Germany. That
small group harbored considerable doubts, at least until 1923, whether the
German republic would survive and not give way to a dictatorship. Even
Stresemann was met with a good deal of skepticism at first; his
30 Detlef Junker
metamorphosis into a republican by reason (Vernunftrepublikaner) and a

politician pursuing a policy of rapprochement had first to be tested.
Hindenburg's election as president of the Republic in 1925 met with utter
horror and disbelief. In a message to President Calvin Coolidge, the
Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) demanded Hindenburg's arrest and a new
election for the office of Reichsprsident.21 It was only after Locarno, after
the German cooperation in preparing the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and after
Stresemann had received the Nobel Peace Prize that the political classes in
the United States began to look at the survival chances of Germany's first
democracy with muted optimism. Nothing symbolized the new quality of
German-American relations and tensions in the relationship between the
United States and France better than the events of May 5, 1928, in
Heidelberg, which was both a dies academicus and a dies politicus. On this
day, the University of Heidelberg bestowed an honorary doctoral degree
upon both Gustav Stresemann and U.S. Ambassador Jacob Gould Schurman.
Stresemann used the occasion to sum up the objectives and methods of his
foreign policy, while Schurman stated that he had been struck increasingly,
in the course of the preceding three years, by the similarity of the basic
ideals inspiring the government and people of the two countries. He
continued: "Germany and the United States are marching forward in a great
and noble adventure in the cause of human civilization." This statement of
the American ambassador met with fierce French criticism. Secretary of
State Kellogg realized the threat to the precarious balance of America's
European policy, and he issued a statement to the effect that Schurman's
speech had not been cleared with the State Department before its
publication.22
As could have been expected, the result of the National Socialists' rise to
power in 1933 and the subsequent installation of dictatorship was a dramatic
deterioration of the image of Germany and the Third Reich in the United
States. Thanks to the new polling techniques of
21
Berg, Stresemann und die Vereinigten Staaten, 23173; for the reaction to the election of
Hindenburg, see ibid., 248ff.
22
Detlef Junker, "Jacob Gould Schurman, die Universitt Heidelberg und die deutsch-
amerikanischen Beziehungen," in Semper Apertus. Sechshundert Jahre Ruprecht-Karls
Universitt Heidelberg 13861986. Festschrift in sechs Bnden, vol. 3 (Berlin, etc., 1986), 328
58; id., "Die USA und die Weimarer Republik," Heidelberger Jahrbcher 35 (Berlin and
Heidelberg, 1991), 2734.
Gallup and Roper, this decline in sympathy can even be quantified quite
accurately from the mid-1930s on. To the question, which European country
they liked best, 55 percent of Americans polled in January 1937 replied
England, 11 percent stated France, and 8 percent mentioned Germany.
Asked in November 1938 which side they would like to see victorious in a
possible war between Germany and Russia, 83 percent answered Russia and
only 17 percent preferred Germany. And in a poll taken between September
1 and 6, 1939, 82 percent believed that Germany was responsible for the
outbreak of the current war, followed by 3 percent for England and France, 3
percent for the Versailles Treaty, and 1 percent for Poland. At the beginning
of March 1940 the question was: Which side would you like to see
victorious in the present war? In their answers, 84 percent favored England
and France, 1 percent Germany. And a poll taken between June 26 and July
1, 1941, asked a similar question with regard to Russia and Germany, with
the result that 72 percent preferred a Russian victory, only 4 percent were on
the German side.23
During the 1930s, Americans grew increasingly apprehensive that the so-
called "League of Friends of the New Germany" or Bund, that presumptive
Trojan horse of the NSDAP in the United States, could pose a threat to the
domestic security of the United States.
23
Printed in Detlef Junker, Kampf um die Weltmacht. Die USA und das Dritte Reich 1933
1945 (Dsseldorf, 1988), 7078; for a bibliography of works on German-American relations
during this period, see ibid., 17379. The following remarks are based on my own research: see
Detlef Junker, Der unteilbare Weltmarkt. Das konomische Interesse in der Auenpolitik der
USA 19331941 (Stuttgart, 1975); id., Franklin D. Roosevelt. Macht und Vision: Prsident in
Krisenzeiten, 2d. ed. (Gttingen, 1989); id., "Deutschland im politischen Kalkl der Vereinigten
Staaten 19331945," in Wolfgang Michalka, ed., Der Zweite Weltkrieg (Munich, 1989), 5773;
id., "The Impact of Foreign Policy on the U.S. Domestic Scene, 1939 to 1941," in Maurizio
Vaudagna, ed., The United States in the Late Thirties, Special Issue of Storia Nordamericana,
vol. 6, nos. 12 (Turin, 1989); id., "Hitler's Perception of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the United
States of America," in Cornelis A. van Minnen and John F. Sears, eds., FDR and His
Contemporaries: Foreign Perception of an American President (New York, 1992), 14556; id.,
"The Continuity of Ambivalence: German Views of America, 19331945" (forthcoming in a
volume of collected essays published by Cambridge University Press); id., Von der Weltmacht
zur Supermacht. Amerikanische Auenpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert. Meyers Forum (Mannheim,
1995).
32 Detlef Junker
Simultaneously, the foreign policies of the Third Reich were seen as a threat
to world peace. This dual fear, however, did not lead to a policy of
preventive intervention in Europe. On the contrary, it intensified the very
basic isolationism of the American people and its tendency not to interfere in
European affairs in the face of impending danger. This basic tendency and
the objective judgments it contained about America's national interests were
the most important determining factors of American foreign policy until the
outbreak of World War II in 1939. By passing the neutrality laws and
keeping the United States out of Europe and restricted to the Western
hemisphere, the U.S. Congress had done during the 1930s what Hitler tried
to achieve in vain later on by concluding the Three Power Pact in 1940, by
attacking the Soviet Union in 1941, and by forging an alliance with Japan.
While aggression and expansion proceeded apace in Europe and Asia,
Congress had completed the index of foreign activities prohibited to the
Roosevelt administration in time of crisis or war. Thus, on the level of
official U.S. foreign policy that was supported by Congress, legislation, and
public opinion, President Roosevelt had become an unarmed prophet, a
quantit negligeable when the European war erupted; Hitler treated him
accordingly.
Roosevelt, on the other hand, knew only too well that he would be able to
regain his freedom to act and to influence world politics only by changing
the "threat perception" of his people, the perception held by Americans
about the threat potential to the United States posed by a National Socialist
Germany. He had to demonstrate and explain to the American people that it
was a dangerous illusion for the United States to restrict its national interests
to the Western hemisphere, to isolate itself in a "Fortress America," and to
let the changes in Eurasia take their course. Until 1941, "preparedness" was
the overriding goal of his foreign policythe industrial, economic, and
ideological preparation for a possible war. In this sense, foreign policy
became, in large measure, domestic policy. Roosevelt himself had given the
title "The Call to Battle Stations" to his Public Papers and Addresses for
1941. Like many others who had lived through World War I, Roosevelt, who
had been an ardent Wilsonian and had served as Undersecretary of the Navy
at the time, knew that only a threatened nation would be willing to prepare
for war, let alone fight in one.
During this educational campaign, this public debate with an isolationist
majority, Roosevelt developed both of the major compo-
nents of U.S. global policies in the twentieth century: on the one hand, the
warning against the impending world domination by an enemy power (in
this case the Third Reich) and, on the other hand, a global definition of U.S.
national interest with regard to both its content and its extent. One might
even be tempted to assert that it was only the tough domestic debate about
the threat posed by the Third Reich and the attack on Pearl Harbor that led
most Americans to perceive their country as a global power with interests in
all continents and on all the oceans of the worldat least up to the end of
the Cold War.
It was only recently that Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., has reminded us
quite correctly, I believeof the tradition established by Roosevelt's
internationalism and globalism.24 Like Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt,
and the naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan before him, FDR shared the
opinion that a balance of power on the European continent was of vital
interest to the United States. Like Woodrow Wilson, he believed in the ideal
of a world in which the free self-determination of nations and the principle
of collective security would guarantee world peace. He shared the conviction
held by his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, that only a free and open world
economy would produce the goods and services needed to maintain world
peace in the long run. Hitler obviously threatened all of the above
simultaneously: the balance of power in Europe, world peace, and a free
world economy. That is the reason why Roosevelt articulated his warning,
his globalism, as a threefold anticipation of the future. I have argued along
these lines extensively elsewhere and will thus only summarize here in
conclusion.25
Every military success by Hitler brought closer an economic future
whose realization meant the ultimate catastrophe for America's economy in
Roosevelt's eyes and in those of the internationalists. Its
24
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "Franklin D. Roosevelt's Internationalism," in van Minnen and
Sears, eds., FDR and His Contemporaries, 116.
25
I am glad to note that Ninkovich, though arguing within a different framework of
interpretation, arrives at the same conclusion. Cf. Ninkovich, Modernity and Power, 11222, with
Junker, Der unteilbare Weltmacht, 163278. Patrick Hearden obviously does not read German,
otherwise he would have noticed that his book Roosevelt Confronts Hitler: Americas Entry into
World War II (DeKalb, Ill., 1987) essentially repeats the findings of my Der unteilbare
Weltmacht.
34 Detlef Junker
basic structure can be described in a few sentences. Any victory by Germany

and Italy in Europe and by Japan in the Far East would force those two
regions into systems of planned economies that would be virtually autarkic.
The U.S. would lose its investments, trade volume would be drastically
reduced, and foreign trade would take place under conditions dictated by the
Axis powers, if at all. South America, a natural supplier of Europe, would
come more and more under the influence of Hitler's Europe. The reduction
of both U.S. import and export industries and the related secondary effects
generated throughout the domestic economy of the United States would
radically intensify the problem of unemployment, as yet unsolved by the
New Deal, and would create social tensions that could not be alleviated
within the framework of the existing system. In other words: as far as the
internationalists were concerned, an open and undivided world market was
one of the basic preconditions for the very survival of the American system.
There was a military aspect as well. At the beginning of Roosevelt's
presidency, Americas security area contained the Western hemisphere and
half of the Pacific, or roughly one-third of the globe, as it had done ever
since 1898. After Munich and after Japan's proclamation of the "New Order"
in East Asia, Roosevelt pushed the limits of U.S. security out further and
further until they reached global dimensions in a literal sense by the time the
Lend-Lease Program was signed in 1941.
This new global definition of American security became one of the
cornerstones of its political re-orientation. To limit oneself to defending the
Western hemisphere was viewed as suicidal. The oceans of the world had to
be controlled lest they become "highways," as Roosevelt liked to call them,
which the Axis powers could use to attack the United States any time they
chose. But such a control of the high sea could not be assured by the U.S.
Navy on its own. It was possible only if Europe and Asia were not controlled
by the Axis Powers, who had the shipbuilding capacity of two continents
under their control. France, England, China, and, as of mid-1941, the Soviet
Union as well, had to be supported, since they also defended the United
States by defending themselves. Thus, the U.S. also had a vital military
interest in restoring the balance of power in Europe and Asia.
The third component in redefining U.S. national interests before the entry
into World War II was ideological. Roosevelt repeated
again and again, almost ad nauseam: the right of all peoples to free self-
determination and the duty of all nations to conduct their international
policies according to the principles of international law are indivisible.
These principles, he argued, applied to all nations anywhere in the world and
without reservation. Force and aggression were illegitimate means to
achieve any change in the status quo. Roosevelt's administration had thus
accepted as its own the Stimson Doctrine of 1932, according to which the
United States would refuse to acknowledge territorial changes achieved by
force.
As Roosevelt saw it, the impending conflict with the Axis Powers was
not merely a conflict between the "Have's" and the "Have-Not's." He
interpreted the coming fight as a universal battle for the future shape of the
world, a battle between aggressors and peaceful nations, between liberal
democracy and fascism, between Western, Christian-humanist civilization
and barbarism, between decent citizens and criminals, between good and
evil. However, he never even once mentioned the Nazi persecution of the
Jews publicly before Hitler's declaration of war. Like Wilson, Roosevelt thus
unfolded his Manichaean world view; like the Kaiser's Empire, the Third
Reich found itself locked in the Manichaean trap.
In conclusion, one can posit that Roosevelt's ideas combined an
ideological and economic globalism of freedom (Wilson's liberal globalism)
with a new military globalism created by the development of a new military
technology and the assumed plans for world domination on the part of Adolf
Hitler. The United States ultimately had to enter the war itself, both in order
to destroy the "New Orders" in Europe and Asia and to secure its own
position as the future world power, to create that novus ordo seclorum
proclaimed on every dollar bill.
In contrast to Wilson, Roosevelt was determined from the very first day
of the war to bring about the destruction of the Empire. For Roosevelt, Hitler
was not an exception or aberration; rather, he saw National Socialism as the
embodiment of a major tendency of the aggressive Prussian-German
national character. Germany had to surrender unconditionally; a negotiated
settlement was out of the question for both political and moral reasons. For a
long time, he believed that the dismemberment and division of Germany
would be the only effective way to keep the evil empire from plunging the
world into a third global war.
36 Detlef Junker
Although Roosevelt grew somewhat more skeptical of Stalin and the

Soviet Union after the Yalta Conference, he could hardly have envisioned
before his death the breathtaking reversal of the American "demonology"
from 1945 to 1950. The evil Germans, good Russians, evil Japanese, and
good Chinese of World War II had turned into the good West Germans, evil
Russians, good Japanese, and evil Chinese of the Cold War. At this juncture,
it was not Hitler and the Third Reich but Stalin and the Soviet Union who
were locked in the Manichaean trap. After the demise of the Soviet Union,
the trap is empty. There are a number of potential candidates, but,
fortunately, the present-day democratic Germany is not among them.
The Missing Dimension
in the Manichaean Outlook:
A Comment
Paul W. Schroeder
The main thesis of Professor Junker's perceptive and well-reasoned essay

seems to me unquestionably sound: that the American government and
people from 1871 to 1945 consistently perceived and judged Germany on
the basis of whether Germany at different times apparently conformed to
American ideals or clashed with them. These ideals, derived from a
religiously-inspired sense of mission, cast the United States in the role of
leading the world toward freedom, constitutional government, capitalism,
democracy, and other noble ends. As Professor Junker knows and indicates,
this moral vision of America's mission in the world was more than Janus-
faced. It could be reconciled with, and serve to justify, almost any policy,
domestic and foreignan isolationist one of leading and enlightening the
world by example, as a city set upon a hill, or an interventionist one of a
crusade for democracy; a domestic polity serving to abolish or preserve
slavery; the ideal of a Jeffersonian agrarian republic or an active,
expansionist commercial-industrial state spreading its goods and know-how
around the globe; a stance of solidarity with new democracies and newly
liberated or oppressed peoples, or of militant expansionism, hegemony, and
empire. Yet, for all its Protean character, America's sense of mission and
manifest destiny never became merely a cynical pretext for pursuing
American interests while flouting those of others (though it also certainly
promoted this). Instead, as the author argues, it genuinely influenced
American perceptions and policies generally, and on Germany in particular.
There are certain details of Professor Junker's interpretation I might
question (one of the interesting aspects of doing this commentary is that I, an
American specializing in European international history, seem to judge
American policy, especially in World War II, more severely than Professor
Junker, a German authority on American foreign policy). Yet the
disagreements are so minor, in the nature of "Yes, but-" rather than, "Here I
think you are wrong,"
38 Paul W. Schroeder
that they cannot serve as the focus of my comments, especially on an essay

that ranges so widely and presents so broad and general an interpretation.
Therefore, having little to disagree with or to add directly to the theme, I
must also range widely. I propose to discuss another aspect of American
perceptions of Germany not included here, not in order to criticize or correct
this essay, but to complement it. Professor Junker deals with what
Americans knew and took into consideration in their perceptions and
judgment of Germany and the German question. I wish to point out
something they failed to know or take into consideration. He shows the
latent or patent tensions between the ideals that Americans wanted to see
realized in Europe and the world and the practical necessities and realities of
great-power balance politics. I see an equally striking gap between American
ideals and international realities in regard to an aspect of the German
question that Americans failed to consider. He points up the remarkable
persistence and continuity in the ideals and the Manichaean outlook that
Americans displayed. I intend to argue that, in at least one important respect,
there was discontinuity. The American outlook toward Germany in the
nineteenth century was rooted in ignorance and illusions, which rendered its
Manichaean character especially unrealistic and dangerous. By the late
twentieth century, however, American ideas about Germany had become
much more informed and sophisticated, so that whatever Manichaeism still
adhered to them had become at least more tolerable and less dangerous, if
not actually benign. This change, I will suggest, was the result not simply of
a general growth in American knowledge and sophistication in world affairs,
but also of acquiring a better understanding of a particular dimension to the
German question long ignored and neglected. Given the limited space
available for these remarks, I can naturally only sketch out my argument, not
develop it or, still less, prove it. It may, however, contribute something to
our reflections on "the Manichaean trap."
The missing dimension in American perceptions of Germany was the
failure to see Germany and the German question in its full, essential Central
and East European setting. By this I mean that Americans, as Professor
Junker indicates, thought of Germany in terms of the Little German Reich
created in 1871, or an idealized version of it that coincided with their image
of the world, of the United States, and of Americas role in it. Germany was
expected to be a normal nation-state and a European great power that, led
by
The Missing Dimension 39
Prussia and basically Protestant, progressive, and constitutional, would

grow in commerce and industry, evolve toward democracy, and play a
moderating, peaceful role in the European balance. They never thought
seriously about the historic Central and East European settingthought,
that is, of Germany and the Germans as one large, dynamic element in the
larger arena of Central and Eastern Europe, intimately and inseparably
bound up with it. Therefore, they never considered what unification and
self-determination for the Germans must mean for the existence of other
multinational empires in the region (Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and,
above all, the Habsburg Monarchy), and for the fates and aspirations of all
the smaller peoples living intermingled in the space between Germans and
Great Russians. The pattern of American perceptions and reactions is thus
something as follows: a certain amount of attention, interest, and even
Platonic friendship is given Prussian Little Germany as the legitimate
representative of German aspirations, and Germany's right to self-
determination and nationhood is recognized; but this initial sympathy turns
into aversion and mounts to hatred and hostility to the degree to which
Germany disappoints American expectations, crosses American interests,
rivals American power, and, above all, violates American ideas of the
correct world order. At the same time, however, ignorance, inattention, and
indifference prevail with regard to Germany and the German question in
relation to Central and Eastern Europe as a wholeto the Habsburg
Monarchy and the Balkans, to the relations between Germans and the other
smaller peoples inhabiting Central and Eastern Europe, to the tensions and
ethnic conflicts created by the rise of nationalism and the triumph of
Realpolitik, and the growing belief in a great racial and cultural conflict
being fought out in that region, a struggle for mastery between Teuton and
Slav. Note: I do not claim that Americans were wholly ignorant of these
developments, though their knowledge of them was doubtless slight and
superficial. I only wish to stress that they saw these developments as
Austria-Hungary's problems, or Balkan problems, or individual state
rivalries, or general ethnic and nationality and religious problems, and not
as a vital dimension of the German question.
Once aware of this pattern, this missing dimension, one sees evidence of
it in every period. Going back a bit before 1871, one sees it in the American
reaction to the 1848 revolutions and their aftermathgeneral sympathy for
the Frankfurt Parliament and Ger-
man nationalism, popular enthusiasm for Italian liberation and Hungarian

independence, but indifference verging on contempt for the Habsburg
Monarchy in its life-and-death crisis and for the possible consequences of its
demise. It is illustrated in the way the United States immediately recognized
the Kingdom of Italy in January 1861, approving both the nationalities
principle on which the new state rested and the revolutionary power politics
used to found it, and then tried with remarkable persistence to send an ardent
advocate of Italian self-determination, unification, and further territorial
claims against Austria to Vienna as the American ambassador.1 As Professor
Junker explains, Americans noted and generally approved the results of
187071. But they hardly noticed the developments of 1866, whose impact
was far greater on the German question, the Habsburg Monarchy, and the
emerging nationalities questions of East Central Europe. Washington
gradually became disillusioned with Imperial Germany, especially after
Bismarck fell, because Germany developed into a naval, colonial, and trade
rival that tried to bluster its way onto the world stage (an instance, one might
remark, of seeing the mote in the other's eye but not the beam in one's
own)but not because Germany was repressing its Polish inhabitants,
encouraging an anti-Slav, German-Hungarian dualist policy in Austria, and
preparing for a Teuton-Slav confrontation in Eastern Europe.
Nowhere is the contrast between American attention to Germany and
indifference verging on contempt toward Austria and the rest of Central
Europe more clear than in World War I. German-American quarrels over
neutral rights and submarine warfare were real and serious, repeatedly
threatening a breach in relations and war. Yet Germany could get away with
one of its most serious violations, the Ancona affair, because Austria
accepted responsibility and made the necessary apologies, and the United
States did not take Austria
1
To be sure, when the American Union collapsed a few months later, with the Confederate
states claiming their right to secede on grounds of self-determination, the Union government,
fearing that Austria might recognize the Confederacy on the same grounds on which the United
States had recognized Italy and contemplated recognizing Hungary, pleaded that it not do so,
arguing that the situations were entirely different. The Austrian government readily complied,
remarking dryly that its consistent policy was not to recognize rebels against a legitimate regime.
seriously. Wilson at least paid attention to the German peace move of

December 1916 and made it the basis for his own; no Austrian attempt to
enlist neutral America as a peacemaker ever got anywhere. Despite being
directly challenged by the German declaration of unconditional submarine
warfare and the Zimmermann telegram, Wilson hesitated long before calling
for war on Germany, and, to the end, there was some opposition to war in
Congress. But, when the administration decided in December 1917 on
purely expedient political and military grounds to go to war with Austria-
Hungary as well, the Congress threw out the administration's war message
that justified the move merely on general principles, substituted its own list
of fabricated charges against Austria, and declared war virtually
unanimously. The Fourteen Points were reasonably clear on the German
question and ensured that, whatever Germany had to do or pay for losing the
war, it would still continue in existence as a large united state. No one could
say precisely what was meant in the Fourteen Points by autonomy for the
peoples of Austria-Hungary. A sensible observer, however, could see that,
combined with other provisions concerning gains for Serbia and Italy and
independence for Poland, they spelled the doom of the historic Habsburg
Monarchy, and, by mid-1918, the American government had itself
recognized this.
The same trend would continue in the peace settlement and the postwar
era. The Treaty of Versailles, whatever its faults, was at least a serious
attempt at a peace settlement, negotiated long and carefully between the
main allies if not with Germany, and with Germany's grievances given some
attention. The treaties with Germany's allies, in contrast, were written in
almost indecent haste and recklessness and were considerably harsher and
more unenforceable than Versailles. Despite the American rejection of
Versailles and the League, the United States, as is well known, actively
participated in Western European affairs after the war, especially in
economic diplomacy, and was a main source of loans to Germany. But
Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other countries sought similar attention and
help in vain.
Even the American reaction to the rising German threat in the 1930's,
where President Roosevelt, if not American leaders and the public as a
whole, must be credited with considerable perceptiveness, shows this same
pattern of attention to Germany, but only a limited understanding at best of
the Central and East European context. What Roosevelt and other
internationalists saw in Nazi Germany
was a strategic threat to Europe, in particular its Western neighbors France

and Britain, and therefore ultimately to the security of the United States, and
a general threat to the values of liberal Western civilizationall of which
Nazi Germany certainly represented. What they did not clearly see, however,
was the special, immediate, and main threat that Germany posed to Central
and Eastern Europe. This, it seems to me, helps explain why Roosevelt,
though anti-Nazi and even anti-German, could play a minor role in
encouraging the Munich Settlement and commend Chamberlain for having
concluded it.
Even during the war, when anti-German sentiment was at its height in the
United States, one notes this same gap in understanding in the dominant
American analysis of the German menace and the necessary remedy to it. As
Professor Junker notes, what Americans, including Roosevelt and many
other leaders, saw as the root evil behind Nazism and German aggression
was Prussian militarism and traditional German obedience to authorityto
cite the then-current phrase, the line from Luther to Hitler. Without wishing
to whitewash Prussian militarism and traditional German authoritarianism or
deny the German people's share of responsibility for Nazi crimes and
aggression, one can, I think, recognize that the main sources of Nazism were
not these, but a combination of historic Austro-German and Volksdeutsch
nationalism and racism and an extreme Social Darwinist-biological world
view that targeted first and foremost the "inferior" peoples of Central and
Eastern Europe, above all the Jews, for decimation and/or extinctiona
program both reactionary and modern, but distinctly not traditionally
Prussian or German authoritarian. This particular American understanding of
the German problem contributed significantly to American wartime and
immediate postwar policy on Germany (and here I may disagree slightly
with Professor Junker in taking more seriously what he terms "the brief and
inconsequential interlude of the plans concerning the division of Germany or
the Morgenthau Plan during the Second World War"). Roosevelt and other
American officials were seriously bent on a permanent, sweeping territorial
partition of Germany and a long-term policy of holding Germany down and
preventing any resurgence of its power. The Morgenthau Plan was real
American policy, endorsed by the president and accepted by the British,
which failed to be executed except in certain of its lesser occupational
provisions, not because Roosevelt reconsidered, but because it broke
down over its own inherent absurdities and the reaction against it from other
American leaders and the press when it became public. This American (or at
least Rooseveltian) determination to destroy Germany permanently as a
unified independent state and major economic power is important, I think,
not just as a break with America's oft-proclaimed ideals and war aims of
self-determination and freedom (which Roosevelt, in any case, interpreted
very opportunistically, not just in regard to Germany and other enemies, but
also in regard to France, Poland, and many other smaller countries); nor just
as a reflection of the American Manichaean view of Germany as an evil
empire (a view, as Junker says, that is justified by the Nazi record); but also
and specifically as another evidence of a failure to see the German question
in its full Central and East European context. For this policy coincided with
and conformed to a bigger and more fundamental American determination:
to rest its hopes for world peace on the continuation of the wartime alliance
with the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China. Essential to that alliance
was the acceptance of Soviet domination of the greater part of Europe,
embracing all of Eastern Europe and much of Central Europe including
eastern Germany, not simply because it was unavoidable militarily and
expedient politically, but because Soviet hegemony was an integral part of
the general scheme by which the Four Policemen would police the world for
peace. This scheme, of course, contradicted the concept of a balance of
power in Europe and Asia, as well as historic American ideals of self-
determination, national sovereignty, and a world order of independent,
juridically equal and coordinate states. But it also, like the American policy
on Germany, specifically ignored the central historic problem of Central and
Eastern Europehow to have a reasonable independence and security for its
various peoples without domination and oppression by either Germany or
Russia or both.
Thus, consistently from 1871 to 1945, American perceptions of Germany
were colored not only by a general Manichaean outlook derived from
America's moral ideals and sense of mission, but also from a specific failure
to see Germany in its Central and East European context and to consider the
rights and fates of its other countries and peoples together with Germany's in
accordance with the same ideals.
What changed this? I think it was clearly the Cold War. Two main things
happened, as everyone knows: Germany became, once
again, the focal point of a new European and world rivalry between the
United States and the Soviet Union, and East Central Europe, including part
of Germany, became part of the Soviet empire, cut off from Western Europe.
It would be far too simple to say that Germany's (better, West Germany's)
image in American eyes was changed from evil empire to good ally because
Americans shifted the designation of evil empire to Soviet Russia. That did
happen, of course, with surprising speed, though not without much debate,
controversy, and hesitation. More important for our purposes, however, is
the fact that the Cold War for the first time forged an effective link in
American minds and American policy between the German question and the
broader Central and East European questions. It meant that Germany would
be viewed not simply in terms of its role in an overall European and world
balance of power (though that was certainly important and often foremost),
or as a disputed prize and center of confrontation and possible conflict in the
East-West struggle (though that, too, tended to dominate, especially at
critical stages), but quite specifically as the key factor in the ultimate fate of
all of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe as well. In a strange, ironic way,
Americans learned better to appreciate Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria,
Hungary, and other states as independent countries and vital contributors to
a common European civilization and a particular European region after all of
them but Austria had lost their independence and become Soviet satellites.
They perceived the unity of Europe, and the special mediating character of
Central and Eastern Europe with its ties to the West as well as East, only
after the Iron Curtain had divided Europe and Soviet-style communism was
threatening to extinguish those ties. This recognition derived not just from
sentiment or nostalgia but from practical politics. While the prime goal of
American policy on Germany was no doubt to tie West Germany firmly to
the Western alliance and use it to bolster the West's military, economic, and
political defenses in the Cold War, nonetheless this had to be done in such a
way as would not revive German nationalism or revanchism or drive Poles,
Czechs, and others more deeply into the Soviet camp. Hence, the United
States could not support West Germany, however important it was as an
ally, without considering the implications of that support not only for other
allies like the other NATO countries, but also Germany's neighbors in the
Soviet bloc.
This seems to me, though I am no expert on American postwar policy, to

have affected American policies and attitudes in various ways. It helped
insure, that is, that American rhetoric about liberation, rollback, and self-
determination for Central and Eastern Europe would not be translated into
action during any of the major postwar crises (194849, 1953, 1956, 1961).
No doubt, the main motives were fear of nuclear war and the advice and
pressure of America's allies, but another reason also was the reluctance to
encourage German revisionism or alienate the peoples within the Soviet
bloc. The same holds true generally of American words and actions in regard
to the Oder-Neisse line, the 1937 German frontiers, German reunification,
German rearmament, the Hallstein Doctrine, and other issues: limited verbal
support, often more pro forma than real, for German rights, but careful
avoidance of any suggestion of action, or the notion that German rights were
the only ones that counted. Even more important was the American
acceptance and encouragement from 1961 on of West Germany's own
initiatives intended gradually to overcome the division of Germany and of
Europe, now rightly seen as inseparable phenomena: dtente, Ostpolitik, the
recognition of East European regimes and their frontiers, expansion of trade,
travel, and cultural contacts, even distasteful and one-sided deals with the
East German regime for humanitarian purposes.
The importance of this hitherto missing dimension seems to me most
clear and dramatic in the American reaction to the events of 198990, which
Professor Junker analyzes. German unification could be so readily endorsed
and supported by the United States precisely because it was part and parcel
of a general process of Central and East European liberation, extending
beyond the Soviet empire even finally to the breakup of the Soviet Union
itself. This endorsement and support, moreover, was not given in order to
exploit a victory over a defeated foe, but build and consolidate a new order
that would, in time, include that foe. German unification was supported not
simply because Germans and Germany had changed decisively since 1945
and were now on the side of the angels in the Manichaean scheme of things
(though they had changed decisively), but because Poles, Czechs, Baltic
peoples, and a host of others including even the Russians were now also on
the side of the angels. More concretely, a united Germany was willing to
confirm its abandonment of historic claims to East Prussia, Silesia, and parts
of Bohemia
(the Americans were as firm as other governments in insisting on this

condition); because a united Germany firmly tied to the West and without
independent armed forces would not threaten its neighbors but build bridges
and potentially support their independence; and because even Russia could
be reconciled to a united Germany as an asset in its own transformation.
If this general thesis is correct, that along with the Manichaean aspect of
American perceptions of Germany from 1871 to 1945 went a missing
dimension, the absent sense of the Central and East European context, and
that a big difference in the American outlook after 1945 was made by the
acquisition of that missing dimension, it calls for two final observations.
First, as Professor Junker suggests and Henry Kissinger stresses
(overstresses, in my view) in his recent work Diplomacy (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1994), there is something special about the role of America's
moral vision, ideals, and sense of mission in historic American policy. It is
certainly not unique. Many states develop a strong sense of mission, often
including moral ideals or based on them, and these can at times strongly
influence policy. One thinks, for example, of the England of Gladstone or
the Russia of Alexander I's Holy Alliance. But it is true that most states in
modern European history at least have tended to separate their sense of a
national mission and ideals from the working rules and practical realities of
international politics more consistently than have Americans. If, however,
we compare the American view of Germany from 1871 to 1945 with that of
other countries on the score of the missing dimension I have discussed, then
we immediately see that, in this respect, Americans represent not an
exception but the rule. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, even
Germans themselves saw Germany and the German question not in its
Central and East European context, inseparable from, and requiring to be
addressed in conjunction with, the rights and destinies of all the other
countries and peoples of the region, but as a self-standing problem, a
question of how a great power should act in relation to other great powers.
This was one major source of the tragedy.
Second, Professor Junker's penetrating discussion of the Manichaean trap
suggests that Americans need to escape it, get over this way of thinking,
without attempting to prescribe just how. Others, like Henry Kissinger,
propose an answer: without abandoning their ideals, Americans must come
to terms with the permanent, unchang-
ing realities of international politics; namely, the preeminence of national

interests and the exigencies of power politics and the balance of power. This,
in my view, is the wrong answer, or at least an inadequate and misleading
one. The Manichaean trap is not the only one into which states and peoples
can fall. There is also its opposite, the power-political Machiavellian trap,
and many more, I think, have fallen into it than into the former, with worse
results. The answer to the shortcomings of a Manichaean vision is not an
abandonment of legitimate ideals or their relegation to a purely hypothetical
and secondary influence on policy, but deeper historical understanding
seeing problems, dangers, and potential solutions in broad contexts and
applying one's ideals realistically to those contexts. This proved vital in
198990, as often before, and as it often will be again. Which, in turn, means
that, however little power we historians possess to influence day-to-day
decisions in policy, and however little competence we may feel to exert any,
what we do or fail to do in our daily task ultimately makes a difference.

American Perceptions

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German Historical Institute

THE MANICHAEAN TRAP

Edited by Detlef Junker,

The Manichaean Trap:

The Missing Dimension

THE GERMAN HISTORICAL INSTITUTE is pleased to present as the

IN THEIR THOUGHTFUL OBSERVATIONS on the relationship between

son, Paul W. Schroeder argues in his reply that a blending of elements of

March 1995 Klaus Hildebrand

freedom has proved victorious. In the beginning of February 1990, close

relations was a continuation of the policy of containment under different

educated to self-restraint, can not fail to extend popular institutions and to

expressing enmity or hategenerally followed the overall political

purely bilateral relationship, a distinct German policy, ever really existed in

This qualitative change had to do with the changing position of both

Empire to counter this worrisome trend by increased cultural exchanges and

machinery had to be set in motion, producing grotesque scenarios about the

Wilson himself had maintained in November 1914, speaking to his equally

It was a final and necessary consequence of the Manichaean trap that

As is well known to historians of the Weimar Republic, these were the

metamorphosis into a republican by reason (Vernunftrepublikaner) and a

basic structure can be described in a few sentences. Any victory by Germany

Although Roosevelt grew somewhat more skeptical of Stalin and the

The main thesis of Professor Junker's perceptive and well-reasoned essay

that they cannot serve as the focus of my comments, especially on an essay

Prussia and basically Protestant, progressive, and constitutional, would

man nationalism, popular enthusiasm for Italian liberation and Hungarian

seriously. Wilson at least paid attention to the German peace move of

was a strategic threat to Europe, in particular its Western neighbors France

This seems to me, though I am no expert on American postwar policy, to

(the Americans were as firm as other governments in insisting on this

ing realities of international politics; namely, the preeminence of national

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