Voice of America, part I
What if, instead of the fitful and incompetent pro-American propaganda the U.S. has attempted to beam into the Islamic world, we had gone into Iraq and set up a team of Kurdish and Shi'ite expatriates who had fled Saddam in the decade or two before the war and gave them a television network.
They would have been chosen for their commitment to a tolerant, democratic, free Iraq, and given training in media. But they would not have been kept on a tight leash. They would be free from any taint of the old regime but not unwilling to question or criticize the occupation of the liberators. They would fully understand the centrality of religious and tribal identities in their country, but they'd be able to use that knowledge to both lure an audience and draw it away from those old foundations, in the ways Iraqis must change if they are to form a strong, free, modern state.
The question is, almost, "what if Americans had set up their own Al Jazeera." The answer is not quite hypothetical. Something similar was done in Germany after World War II, in the form of the newspaper Neue Zeitung, published for the German population from 1945 to 1955. Printed on the Munich presses of Goebbels' old Völlkischer Beobachter newspaper, the Neue Zeitung was set up by the U.S. Office of Military Government in Germany to be "an American newspaper for Germans" and to instill in them values that would ensure peace.
As usual, with American projects, this was not a matter of brilliant planning or careful ideology. U.S. officials "were articulate in saying what kind of paper they did not want. But they never clearly said what they did want apart from vague allusions such as 'a democratic newspaper' or 'an official organ of OMGUS.' Consequently, the Neue Zeitung, like a chameleon, continually changed its color. As such, it represents a quite accurate example of the often confused, reluctant, and incoherent course of U.S. policy in postwar Germany."
From the start, a few opportunists at the helm of the Neue Zeitung took advantage of bureaucratic confusion and lax rules and turned what had started as a regional Army newspaper meant to dictate to and re-educate the vanquished people into the first strong voice of modern, post-Nazi Germany. It was a smashing success with its readers, and it helped awaken a beaten-down Germany.
[The information in this series of posts largely will be drawn from the academic historical study "Transmission Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany 1945-1955," by Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht. The quotes, unless otherwise indicated, are from that book.]
With the important distinction that the Americans ruled in Germany in 1945 as part of a team of theoretically equal allies, and that they came ostensibly as conquerors, not liberators, it's difficult to read "Transmission Impossible" (written in 1999) and not be struck by comparisons to the situation in Iraq.
President Roosevelt refused to commit to a definitive plan. The War Department and the State Department wanted to let the Germans up easy in a "soft peace;" the Treasury Department on the other hand wanted to dismantle the Prussian military-industrial complex and turn Germany back to pre-modern pastoral state, while the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) wanted to transform the Germans and unleash their potential for modern democracy. None of them quite got their way.
The American effort in postwar Germany benefitted, however, from the fact that, in four years of warfare, a team of German-speaking émigré intellectuals who had fled the Third Reich had been brought together and trained at Camp Sharpe in Maryland in information media, psychological warfare, and psychology. Many were Jewish, and many had lived in America for decades. But largely they loved and understood Germany, and when they went back there after the fall of Hitler, they were home again.
Heading the newspaper in its crucial early years was Hans Habe, dandy, scion of a Hungarian-Jewish publishing family, who had edited a Viennese paper before the anschluß and had revealed to the world in 1935 that the Führer's family name was not "Hitler" but "Schicklgruber." Habe agreed with U.S. strategies of democratizing Germany to restore it to a place of honor among nations. But he loudly disapproved of strategies.
"Kuktur" meant an emphasis on high art, as opposed to popular culture. It meant long articles by intellectuals, a gray front page, and ponderous prose. Yet Habe and his staff successfully wove into these recognizable German frameworks themes of freedom, creativity, individualism, and tolerance.
The exiles and émigrés assumed the role of "cultural middlemen." "The émigrés at the Neue Zeitung believed that reeducation could not consist simply of familiarizing Germans with American culture and showing them the advantages of democracy. Instead, they encouraged local readers to broaden their closed notion of Kultur and accept other concepts and ideas. They packaged American culture and ideas in the context of German highbrow culture, Bildung, and gender conceptions, and emphasized core democratic values, such as tolerance and individualism, by appealing to very traditional German interpretations of Kultur, such as elitist art."
In addition to the émigrés, the Neue Zeitung staff consisted in part of native German journalists who had been more or less untainted by Nazi publishing. The Germans in the newsroom included communists and socialists as well as conservatives and non-Nazi nationalists. But they, too, brought a mix of ideas. Two of the editors had been in the German army but deserted to the American side during the fighting in Italy in 1944. They had been sent stateside to reeducation camps.
Another former tank soldier on the staff had kept a diary during the war in which he consistently referred to Hitler as "that pig." The book was found, the soldier was court-martialed, and likely would have been hanged had not a sympathetic judge produced an opinion ruling the man was insane due to a past unhappy love affair.
The Neue Zeitung was a phenomenal success. Three months into its existence, circulation had jumped from 500,000 copies per issue to 1.6 million. And from the very start, American authorities slammed the paper for the exact reasons that Germans loved it.
[to be continued]
They would have been chosen for their commitment to a tolerant, democratic, free Iraq, and given training in media. But they would not have been kept on a tight leash. They would be free from any taint of the old regime but not unwilling to question or criticize the occupation of the liberators. They would fully understand the centrality of religious and tribal identities in their country, but they'd be able to use that knowledge to both lure an audience and draw it away from those old foundations, in the ways Iraqis must change if they are to form a strong, free, modern state.
The question is, almost, "what if Americans had set up their own Al Jazeera." The answer is not quite hypothetical. Something similar was done in Germany after World War II, in the form of the newspaper Neue Zeitung, published for the German population from 1945 to 1955. Printed on the Munich presses of Goebbels' old Völlkischer Beobachter newspaper, the Neue Zeitung was set up by the U.S. Office of Military Government in Germany to be "an American newspaper for Germans" and to instill in them values that would ensure peace.
Its purpose was to foster the democratic 'reeducation' of German society; to inform locals of U.S. foreign policy, viewpoints, and the American way of life; and to present them 'with a model of U.S. journalistic practice.
As usual, with American projects, this was not a matter of brilliant planning or careful ideology. U.S. officials "were articulate in saying what kind of paper they did not want. But they never clearly said what they did want apart from vague allusions such as 'a democratic newspaper' or 'an official organ of OMGUS.' Consequently, the Neue Zeitung, like a chameleon, continually changed its color. As such, it represents a quite accurate example of the often confused, reluctant, and incoherent course of U.S. policy in postwar Germany."
From the start, a few opportunists at the helm of the Neue Zeitung took advantage of bureaucratic confusion and lax rules and turned what had started as a regional Army newspaper meant to dictate to and re-educate the vanquished people into the first strong voice of modern, post-Nazi Germany. It was a smashing success with its readers, and it helped awaken a beaten-down Germany.
[The information in this series of posts largely will be drawn from the academic historical study "Transmission Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany 1945-1955," by Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht. The quotes, unless otherwise indicated, are from that book.]
With the important distinction that the Americans ruled in Germany in 1945 as part of a team of theoretically equal allies, and that they came ostensibly as conquerors, not liberators, it's difficult to read "Transmission Impossible" (written in 1999) and not be struck by comparisons to the situation in Iraq.
At the end of the war, American troops flooded into Germany with no coherent overall national policy for the occupation, let alone for Germany's reeducation.
President Roosevelt refused to commit to a definitive plan. The War Department and the State Department wanted to let the Germans up easy in a "soft peace;" the Treasury Department on the other hand wanted to dismantle the Prussian military-industrial complex and turn Germany back to pre-modern pastoral state, while the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner of the CIA) wanted to transform the Germans and unleash their potential for modern democracy. None of them quite got their way.
In the end, the occupation became the army's job for more than four years. This develoment exacted its price. The rather abstract and idealistic definition of reeducation endorsed by scientists, policy makers, and intellectuals proved useless to U.S. military officials. Trained as soldiers, they expected clear orders rather than philosophical concepts. 'I had no policy given to me as to what kind of democracy we wanted,' [U.S. Military Governor Gen. Lucius D.] Clay recalled many decades later. 'I did not have very much experience in the field myself, never having voted myself.'
The American effort in postwar Germany benefitted, however, from the fact that, in four years of warfare, a team of German-speaking émigré intellectuals who had fled the Third Reich had been brought together and trained at Camp Sharpe in Maryland in information media, psychological warfare, and psychology. Many were Jewish, and many had lived in America for decades. But largely they loved and understood Germany, and when they went back there after the fall of Hitler, they were home again.
Heading the newspaper in its crucial early years was Hans Habe, dandy, scion of a Hungarian-Jewish publishing family, who had edited a Viennese paper before the anschluß and had revealed to the world in 1935 that the Führer's family name was not "Hitler" but "Schicklgruber." Habe agreed with U.S. strategies of democratizing Germany to restore it to a place of honor among nations. But he loudly disapproved of strategies.
In his opinion, the Allies had to make democracy appealing by presenting it like a movie, not a lecture, to the German audience. Like moviegoers, the Germans would view the reeducation program with both curiosity and skepticism, always considering if they should continue watching or leave the theater. In order to make the audience 'stay,' as in a theater, the political reformation had to catch the Germans' attention, stir their natural curiosity, cater to their historical experience, and woo their taste in matters of Kultur. And as with a good movie, the program had to include famous actors, a dynamic plot, and many dramatic scenes.
"Kuktur" meant an emphasis on high art, as opposed to popular culture. It meant long articles by intellectuals, a gray front page, and ponderous prose. Yet Habe and his staff successfully wove into these recognizable German frameworks themes of freedom, creativity, individualism, and tolerance.
The exiles and émigrés assumed the role of "cultural middlemen." "The émigrés at the Neue Zeitung believed that reeducation could not consist simply of familiarizing Germans with American culture and showing them the advantages of democracy. Instead, they encouraged local readers to broaden their closed notion of Kultur and accept other concepts and ideas. They packaged American culture and ideas in the context of German highbrow culture, Bildung, and gender conceptions, and emphasized core democratic values, such as tolerance and individualism, by appealing to very traditional German interpretations of Kultur, such as elitist art."
The editors' effort to cloak U.S. values in a German guise is most obvious in their handling of Americana. They chose not to emphasize American material lifestyles because the vast gulf between the prosperity of postwar America and the sense of hopelessness in defeated Germany would have made the contrast even more painful to their readers. When covering the United States they usually wrote from the perspective of a cosmopolitan observer and focused on the country's political significance, culture, way of life, and German-American mutual perceptions. European academics, POWs, and prominent émigrés enthusiastically recounted their experiences in U.S. cities, camps, and universities.
In addition to the émigrés, the Neue Zeitung staff consisted in part of native German journalists who had been more or less untainted by Nazi publishing. The Germans in the newsroom included communists and socialists as well as conservatives and non-Nazi nationalists. But they, too, brought a mix of ideas. Two of the editors had been in the German army but deserted to the American side during the fighting in Italy in 1944. They had been sent stateside to reeducation camps.
They admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and preferred the American admixture of philosophy, sober pragmatism and basic optimism, over the cultural pessimism (Kulturpessimismus) of Heidegger and Spengler. [Alfred] Andersch returned from the United States not with a knapsack full of canned food, as did many of his fellow prisoners, but with loads of American books.
Another former tank soldier on the staff had kept a diary during the war in which he consistently referred to Hitler as "that pig." The book was found, the soldier was court-martialed, and likely would have been hanged had not a sympathetic judge produced an opinion ruling the man was insane due to a past unhappy love affair.
The Neue Zeitung was a phenomenal success. Three months into its existence, circulation had jumped from 500,000 copies per issue to 1.6 million. And from the very start, American authorities slammed the paper for the exact reasons that Germans loved it.
[to be continued]
Labels: Cold War, journalism, Lucius D. Clay, Neue Zeitung, terrorism, World War II
