EDITH KURZWEIL
831
can economic imperialism, soon put on a par with fascism, began to
mushroom just as Americans felt their political and economic power
to be fading away. As john Vinocour put it, Watergate, the hostage
crisis, the decline of the dollar and the car industry, the fourteen per–
cent rate of inflation (Germany's was three percent) not only put
Helmut Schmidt into a leadership role, but made his
Ostpolitik
plausible. By the time the American economy improved, the German
public had become overtly hostile. Fantasizing about rapprochement
with the East, while electing Chancellor Kohl, the ambivalences could
be turned outward only. Still, even those who oppose this conser–
vative government accept the "orderliness" they reject, and here too
they can favorably compare Germany to the United States. (Gar–
bage removal, public transportation, and social services function.)
President Reagan's shrill and bombastic pronouncements at the be–
ginning of his term, however, were most damaging: they were taken
to be the tangible evidence of American bad intent, of our "war–
mongering," and it seemed to legitimate the already rampant anti–
Americanism and the view of Kohl as Reagan's puppet. So, in a
curious way, a great part of the chancellor's constituency as well be–
gan to feel justified in hating America. In this atmosphere of Left
and Right cant, and in a newly revived "fear of fascism," no one
recalls that American presidents are not
Fuhrers,
that they are more
or less responsible to Congress and the public, or that high interest
rates may be the result of bungling rather than of malicious intent
alone. Altogether, the hodgepodge of misinformation that has con–
structed a worldview where evil emanating from America must be
demolished seems to have become impermeable. Love of clean air,
of the Third World (but
not
in the form of guest workers), or hiking
in the woods (expressed in high flown idealistic language) are coun–
terposed to "high technology," another code word for American eco–
nomic imperialism. And our unsuccessful Latin American policy
(who knows that Reagan would not move in and out of Germany as
he did in Grenada) has made the proverbial ugly American look
uglier than ever. (As it is, no German believes that a number of
Americans wouldjust as gladly drop NATO and retreat into a retro–
grade isolationism.)
One person at the conference mentioned that anti-Americanism
might have taken the place of anti-Semitism . Had this point been
pursued, some of the myths helping to unite Germans of opposing
persuasions conceivably might have been exploded: that the Marshall
Plan was a conspiracy intended to turn Germany into a consumer
