American Pop Culture Invades Germany: Some Love It—Some Don't

A specter is haunting Europe, the specter of Americanization. Neither Adenauer nor De Gaulle, Italian chefs or French farmers have been able to stop it. Some, especially in Germany, apparently have not even tried. It has been claimed that "West Germany is beyond question the most Americanized country outside America."'1 A casual tourist walking through the streets of Frankfurt would probably agree. Advertisements for anything from automobiles to airlines may be addressing the viewer in English as likely as in German. Popular music blaring out of radios is probably sung in English. While France has made headlines with legal attempts to block such subversive terms as "weekend" or "sandwich" from polluting the purity of the Gallic tongue, few such stories have ever emanated from Germany. After the unconditional surrender of its military in 1945, it seems the country has raised the white flag to all imports wrapped in red, white, and blue. West Germany permitted coca-colazation without a whimper. Obviously, the story is not that simple. While lots of popular music is indeed imported from the Anglo-Saxon countries, the Berlin Philharmonic still exists. Mercedes-Benz has not surrendered to Detroit. On the contrary, it has spread its wings across the Atlantic and it is not the only one. German companies regularly invest in the United States, and U.S. companies reciprocate in Germany. Both countries are prime actors in our global economy. Nevertheless the strong degree of Americanization of Germany cannot be denied. The question may be raised: why Germany, and why to that extent? A closer look at the issue will show the incredible material and psychological imbalance between the two countries after the Second World War, but it will also show considerable resistance to the blind adoption of cultural imports from the United States. More often than not, "Americanization" carries a negative connotation. It is frequently being used as a metaphor for a variety of different phenomena. They include materialism and material prosperity, mass culture or the cheapening of "high" culture, convenience, reliance on technology, social mobility, political equality, and social egalitarianism. Sometimes "Americanization" may simply imply modernism and social, political, or economic progress. Before the Second World War, the contact Germans had with American popular culture was largely sporadic and indirect. The New World, literally, was still worlds apart from the old one. The way to get there was by ocean liner. Tickets were expensive, travels were long, while average earnings were low and vacations short. After 1945, the picture changed dramatically. On May 8, 1945, the war in Europe came to an end. Germany was not just defeated, it was crushed. It ceased to exist as a sovereign nation. Towns, cities, and industries were destroyed; the population was decimated; housing, clothing, food-basic necessities to sustain life-were in short supply. Germany had become a moral outcast among nations. Its entire political and social system, even its very culture had become suspect in the eyes of the world. Germans refer to the collapse of their state as "Stunde Null"-"Zero Hour." Where there used to be a country and a nation, there was now a void, a deep psychological vacuum. Something new had to fill it. What were the choices? In contrast to Germany, the United States had reached the zenith of its prestige and power. It was the very symbol of democratic stability, -its national pride steeled by victories in two global wars. The United States seemed to have it all: a victorious army, a humming economy, a political and social system that successfully resisted the onslaught of the world's two most formidable military powers simultaneously. Even the most unreflective and unpolitical Germans, who may not have cared about the relative merits of political systems, had to be struck by the images of the well-fed American soldiers while they themselves lacked all necessities. …