Christoph Müller's thesis is that “the early years of the [Federal Republic of Germany] experienced a substantial, vocal and well-funded minority that used anti-American and anti-Western sentiment in order to reject the project of modernization” (p. 178). The argument has two parts. Müller first claims that anti-American views were held by a significant number of West Germans, largely on the right of the political spectrum, and that these views were both intense and unambiguous. He thus takes issue with several common interpretations found in the historical literature on the subject, including the positions that postwar anti-American feeling was, while widespread, moderate or ambivalent, or that it was limited to numerically insignificant fringe groups. Second, Müller argues that the anti-American feeling he describes was primarily a response to the experiences and circumstances of West Germany, and reflected little understanding of American politics or society. It was for this reason “not a meaningful attack on the USA” (p. 178).

Müller begins by examining the role played by the suffering and humiliations of the postwar period in promoting anti-American resentments. Scarcity of food and coal was often blamed on the policies of the occupiers (pp. 22–3). Stories of mistreatment in American prisoner-of-war (POW) and internment camps, some with and some without foundation, provided another basis for a sense of victimization (pp. 30-2). Efforts to identify and punish individuals responsible for Nazi crimes led many to feel unjustly persecuted, and these resentments were directed especially at the United States as the most aggressive advocate of such policies. Müller considers the popularity of Ernst von Salomon's partly fictional account of German suffering at the hands of thuggish American soldiers, The Questionnaire, as evidence of the prevalence of resentments of the last two types. The book was published in 1951 and quickly sold more than 200,000 copies, becoming one of the best sellers of the decade (pp. 32–3). Müller suggests that the fact that in 1959 Die Zeit serialized Salomon's next work of autobiographical fiction, a portrayal of the German experience in the mid-twentieth century that also emphasized German victimization, suggests the extent to which such positions, and Salomon himself, were salonfähig (pp. 33, 38). Müller finds that the widespread attention devoted to the Morgenthau plan to deindustrialize Germany bore little relation to the actual damage caused by the plan, and was largely a product of the desire of a significant number of Germans to see themselves as victims (pp. 44–50). Critiques of the racism of American society, while often entirely justified, served to relativize Nazi crimes against Jews, Poles, and other “non-Aryans” (pp. 54–61).

Conservatives who rejected the new parliamentary political order in West Germany attacked the United States both in its roles as an occupying power that insisted on the establishment of a parliamentary regime and a leading model of republican government. Individuals and groups with such antidemocratic views often operated in the shadows after 1945, but Müller suggests that their influence extended well into the mainstream. Despite a more than dubious career in the Nazi period, Carl Schmitt found a significant audience on the academic right even after having been deprived of his professorship (pp. 74–89, 115–9). A secretive association that promoted ideas similar to those of Schmitt, the “First Legion,” had members who were leading figures in both the Christian Democratic Union and the Free Democratic Party (pp. 66–74).

Anxieties about threats to the traditional social order and distinctive German cultural forms provided further grounds for anti-Americanism. Some of the changes conservatives observed reflected American influences, but most were a result of the massive damage inflicted on German society by the war and by changes that had more generic causes than the influence of the United States. Thus, conservative critics blamed juvenile crime and other forms of delinquency on American films and rock and roll (pp. 126–58). The partial breakdown of traditional roles in German families during the final years of the war and in the postwar period was one reason for conservatives' focus on the various alleged failings of American women (pp. 158–61).

Müller's first claim, that antidemocratic and anti-American positions were neither fringe phenomena nor thoroughly ambivalent, is supported by a very substantial and eclectic source base. One can wonder whether certain of the individuals he discusses, for example, Otto Strasser, had much of a following in the Federal Republic, but on the whole, Müller convinces that the attitudes he describes were held by a significant part of the political right. A range of secondary studies provides further support for this position. Dirk van Laak's 1993 analysis of the influence of the Schmitt circle after the war clearly is a key text for Müller. Gabriela Wettberg's examination of the “negative constants” found in the postwar West German literature on the United States and Marcus Payk's recent dual biography of the conservative journalist Karl Korn and the liberal Peter de Mendelssohn both offer further evidence that supports Müller's claims regarding the extent and content of anti-American feeling. Studies by Ulrich Herbert and Christina von Hodenberg, while not focusing especially on anti-American feeling, stress the wide influence of antiliberal positions in West Germany in the first half of the 1950s.

Müller also convinces that West German critics of American society and culture were often responding to changes in West Germany, but he is less persuasive when he argues that the anti-American rhetoric he analyzes was usually subjective in the sense of not being accurate. Thus, he writes that the authors he discusses did “not even strive for accuracy,” that they relied on clichés and generalities rather than “factual discussion” (pp. 10, 177). It is certainly true that some of the works he discusses have this character (pp. 28–37, 170). On the other hand, many of the criticisms of the United States and of democracy discussed in Müller's book did have some basis in fact, in some instances, quite a considerable basis. American racism did violate democratic principles. The cultural level of American television was often not above reproach. As Hans Mommsen argued in an essay published some twenty years ago, the experiences of the interwar period had left most Germans with a very accurate and factual sense of the weaknesses of republican forms of government. It is not surprising that these memories strongly influenced initial responses to democracy in the Federal Republic, and that it was not until the new republican government of West Germany demonstrated that it could produce stability and prosperity that these attitudes changed.

It lies in the nature of Müller's undertaking that his book gives short shrift to West German critiques of the views he analyzes. Thus, he quotes at length from Leo Matthias's scathing depiction of American society, but does not mention Golo Mann's pungent rebuttal. His discussion of Peter von Zahn's reports from the United States does not make clear that in his radio and television broadcasts Zahn often called into question one-sided and purely negative perceptions of American society and culture.

One can also question the periodization suggested by Müller's title. Most of his evidence regarding the vigor and influence of anti-Americanism in West Germany comes from the 1950s, and within this period, from the first two-thirds of the decade. His argument is therefore most convincing with respect to the earlier part of the period he undertakes to characterize.

Despite the reservations noted above, this reviewer finds that Müller's book makes a significant contribution to the history of the Federal Republic. It combines significant original research with a synthesis of the findings of other scholarship. As have other recent works on postwar West Germany, it demonstrates that the process of liberalization that took place after 1945 cannot be taken for granted, but is very much in need of explanation.