ON SOLIDARITY AND IGNORANCE:

Jim Bass writes about his father's participation in the Berlin Airlift in 1948. His post Germany's Memory Loss criticizes that history is being rewritten in Germany today and that the US role is increasingly left out. Jim lives in California and writes for the group blog Attack Machine.  

Loren Cobb is the editor of The Quaker Economist. In Thanks, Germany, he describes Germany's contribution to pump the water out of New Orleans. He is

truly surprised by the silence with which this help has been greeted in the American media. President Bush and Ambassador Timken have officially thanked the German government for this timely and effective assistance. But has any trace of these official communications made it into print, or into our wall-to-wall television coverage?

 (This is not supposed to be a comparision. Obviously, the airlift was much bigger and much more important.)

ANTI-AMERICANISM: 

Kathy Krajco from Wisconsin reminds us that Anti-Americanism did not start with the Iraq war, but is older than the United States and a natural consequence of the exodus from Europe to America, which exists as a rejection of European ideals at the time. With no dreaded common enemy in the Soviet Union anymore, the hostility rises to the surface again over virtually any excuse, explains her post The Roots of Anti-Americanism.  Kathy has written many more interesting posts about Anti-Americanism in her blog At The Zoo.  

Ray D. submitted Germany's Lilipuz: Indoctrinating Tomorrow's Little America Haters Today about a radio program for kids with biased Iraq news: "One of the most sinister media programs in Germany is one aimed at an audience too young to differentiate bias and think critically about the political messages directed at it." He also asks "Is there some law against reporting on positive things happening in Iraq in the German media?" Ray D. is one of two editors at the watchblog Davids Medienkritik – Politically Incorrect Observations on Reporting in the German Media. 

THE GERMARICAN:

Michael Meyn is a Germerican in Las Vegas, i.e. a German, who emigrated to the United States and became an admirer of President Bush and a US citizen after 9/11, because "America has been very good to me. America has been very good to millions of people from all over the world who have come to this wonderful country to start a new life, a better life, a life they couldn’t think possible in the countries they’ve left for good." With Come as you are he pays tribute to the Statue of Liberty and his new home. Michael is one of the three Misunderestimated Germans. 
  

LEARNING FROM THE US:

Carsten Boesel is the Berlin based editor of TransatlanTicker, which "aims to provide a broad German audience with useful news and commentary on the full range of educational opportunities in the United States and important trends in transatlantic cultural exchange." He submitted his English language blog post Wanted: A Bit of Berkeley for Germany.
 

NOW MORE GERMAN-US CONFRONTATION OR COOPERATION?
Bruce Miller is puzzled that "the Bush administration really seemed to think that a new government in Germany headed by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would pursue much better relations with the US." He points out: "The previous German government, the one that Bush fans loved to hate, that government is now being criticized by German members of parliament across the political spectrum for not being more opposed to" the alleged CIA rendition flights. His post German-American relations is one of many posts on US-German relations in his Old Hickory's Weblog.

SOVEREIGNTY AND INDEPENDENCE:

Sandra Plas is the editor of Transatlanticist -- Informed Comments about the US and Transatlantic Relations and a Dutch citizen currently based in Brussels, who spends a lot of time on the other side of the Atlantic. In her post Eagle Nations, she describes Germany's opposition to the US-led invasion of Iraq as a big surprise to Americans and as "a first manifestation of a unified Germany that is looking for a new independent voice in international politics."

Clemens Wergin, Editorial Writer and Political Book Editor of Berlin's leading newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, submitted his article Die neue Freiheit about the Schroeder era, which was printed in November 2005. Clemens provided the following summary in English:

After the 2 plus 4 treaty it took some years until the German governments fully realized that Germany had regained complete sovereignty in its foreign policy. It was not until the red-green coalition took power that German foreign policy began to break the mold of the cold war years. This essay examines the legacy of the seven Schroeder years, new traits of Germany's foreign policy that should be kept and others that are in desperate need to be mended. The article argues that Germany should regain the middle ground again, between the US and France in transatlantic issues and between the British and the French approach in European matters, because this is the only way to regain influence on Germany's major partners in the world. Schroeder postured as somebody whose aim was to build a new self-confident foreign policy, but instead of increasing Germany's foreign policy options he actually reduced them by almost unconditionally binding himself to the French in international and European issues. It' s about time that German politics but also the German public dropped fantasies of building a counterweight to the US. Almost no one in the world profits as much from America's stabilizing role on the globe as Germany, the worlds export champion. So the biggest threat to the world is not the US, as many Europeans think, but the fact that one day the Americans might not be willing anymore to shoulder the enormous burden of their stabilizing role. Germany's foreign policy also in remote regions like Asia should do everything to ease this burden instead of making it even more heavy. One of the most disappointing features of his foreign policy are in the field of human rights and transformation, issues that once had been at the core especially of the foreign policy thinking of the greens. But in the very moment that Moralpolitik became a function of Realpolitik through 9/11, highlighting the fact that the Middle East policies of the West of stability and blocked reforms had utterly failed, the social democrats and greens missed the chance of making transformation and democratization their top priorities and didn't take up the chances of Bush's Greater Middle East initiative that was actually much more in tune with European policy approaches than the regime change doctrine of the first Bush term.

If you can't read his Tagesspiegel-article in German, you could try this automatic Google translation. Clemens Wergin blogs at Flatworld.

THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS:

Clive Davis lives near London, writes for The Times and The Washington Times and blogs about Politics and Culture from both sides of the Atlantic. He submitted his interview with Jeff Gedmin, director of Berlin's Aspen Institute, which has been described as the "de facto U.S. embassy". It is the first interview of his outstanding Transatlantic Voices series.

Olaf Petersen from the German-Danish border describes the transatlantic relationship as Broken China and says it's up to the US to fix it. Olaf is "enraged that the U.S. didn't win the Iraq war even though it was based on lies." Most of his Extrablog posts are in German, but this post (and some others) are in English.

OTTO VON BISMARCK:

Starling Hunter blames Germany's first chancellor Otto von Bismarck for many of today's problems and hopes that "the German people now reclaim what Grand Theft Otto helped steal from them and their forefathers- a firmly established Democracy." Starling is a professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and blogs at The Business of America Is Business.

Bill Rice blogs at By Dawns Early Light and submitted Germany's Angela Merkel the Next Bismarck? Bill opines: "As a woman who grew up in communist East Germany, she has a clearer understanding than her predecessor of the value of not playing politics with your country's long-term national security interests."

 
Similarly, but also differently, Shah Alexander from Tokyo contends that Angela Merkel will improve the US-German relationship, as she is from "New Europe." In Bush Foreign Policy: Improving with Europe, Straining with Asia, he regrets that there is no "New Asia" to improve the US-Asian relations. Shah Alexander aka H. Ross (Hiroshi) Kawamura directs the hawkish and pro-American NGO New GEAR.

GERMANY'S ECONOMY:

George A. Pieler, a Senior Fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation and former Tax Counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, submitted Merkel Outfoxed, or Leading the Pack?, which he wrote for Tech Central Station – Where Free Markets Meet Technology with Jens F. Laurson. George is concerned that the new German government's economic policy "seems designed for failure" and he describes the tension between the US economic model as opposed to the European social model and the way Germany is caught between the two.

Ralf Goergens submitted his Postmortem of the 2005 German general elections, where he explains that "fear of the flat tax served to mobilize Social Democratic voters and to demobilize many Christian Democratic voters this year, while in 2002, Schroeder's opposition against the war on Iraq and his anti-American rhetoric had rallied his disaffected party base around him." Ralf emailed us that "it seems that from the American point of view the 2002 election campaign especially had been exclusively about anti-Americanism. This is an misunderstanding, caused by the way American media had reported about the campaign, making it look as if Schröder had been solely campaigning on an anti-American platform." Ralf blogs at Chicagoboyz. 

MERKEL, GERMAN ANCESTRY, UNITED FRONT AND MORE 

Rob gives an overview of US-German relations, writes about Angela Merkel's rise to power, the potential for better US-German relations and the Khaled al-Masri case. He also has a great US map showing the centers of Americans with German ancestry. Rob lives in New York. "Following 9/11 I went through the stereotypical transformation into a hawk with regard to the Iraq war and the War on Terror. I still consider myself liberal on almost all social issues," he writes on the About me page in his blog Quick Rob. 

   
Rosemary opines in Knickerbocker News that the Iraq war might have been avoided if Germany and France had joined the US and Britain in forming a united front against Saddam. Rosemary looks forward to Chancellor Merkel to Visit USA Jan. 11, 2006.

Erik P. Hauth with Ringfahndung submitted his fictive plea to Arnold Schwarzenegger not to execute the convicted murderer Tookie.

Our co-host of the first carnival GM's Corner contributed New German Leadership; Or Just A New Wrapper? which provides info on Angela Merkel and Germany's economic challenges.

And the Atlantic Review submitted Germany's Aid to Katrina's Victims about new feelings of solidarity.

 
That concludes our first ever Carnival on German-American Relations.  Both George M. Roper of GM's Corner and we at the Atlantic Review thank you very much for participating, and for reading our contributors.  The next of our quarterly Carnivals of German American Relations will take place on March 11th, which happens to be the second anniversary of the Madrid terrorist attacks. If you would like to host it, send us an email at editors@atlanticreview.org.

We hope these carnivals become a great tradition and enhance ties between the Western and Eastern blogosphere and improve the transatlantic friendship.