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The article talks about the construction and channels of German-U.S. perceptions since the World War II. It mentions that the U.S. had been around for decades for a regular and curiously eyed object of the media; and talks about the state-organized exchange programs for specialists and managers, multipliers, students and scientists. It mentions about less number of research on the New World at German universities.

Given their radically different historical approaches to immigration and refugees, one would expect Germany and the United States to have adopted diverging policies in these domains following the ‘9/11’ attacks. More surprising is the extent to which they have ‘traded places’ regarding their respective ‘leadiator’ and ‘laggard’ roles concerning asylum rights. Although both countries embraced restrictive practices during the 1980s, US law now concentrates on ‘security first’, relying heavily on exclusionary border control and national security framing. Whereas the old FRG used complex, exclusionary laws to limit all forms of migration prior to 1998, united Germany has redefined itself as a ‘welcoming culture’, upholding human rights, open borders and pro-active resettlement policies. Focusing on the ‘migration—security’ nexus, this study compares fundamental changes in the admission and resettlement policies each now applies to persons seeking international protection. It reviews securitisation dynamics in the USA, followed by a treatment of developments at the European level that have conditioned reforms in German since 2005. The refusal of some EU member states to accept their fair share of the humanitarian burden invoked by the 2015-2016 refugee crisis has ironically contributed to Chancellor Angela Merkel's new image as Lady Liberty, ‘lifting her lamp besides the golden door’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores and explains Germany’s pre-emptive ‘No’ to the war in Iraq and argues that the ‘No’ was not a structural break in the relationship with the US, although for many its dramatic consequences appeared as a ‘parting of ways’ of two close allies. With the European Union deeply divided and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization split into two camps, the result was a profound disunity of the West. After the war in Kosovo and the German military contribution to the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, there was no chance that the SPD/Green coalition would have been able to put together its own majority for an additional war effort in Iraq. Opposing a perceived US unilateralism was popular and an opportunity to stand up to the Bush administration. On a more fundamental level, Germany reclaimed the right to national sovereignty in spite of its commitment to multilateralism. This self-assertion was a new development for German foreign policy and it will also characterise Germany’s actions in the future. With the arrival of the Trump administration in Washington and its challenge to the liberal world order America created after World War II, the US and Germany could end up on an even more profound collision course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores and explains Germany’s pre-emptive ‘No’ to the war in Iraq and argues that the ‘No’ was not a structural break in the relationship with the US, although for many its dramatic consequences appeared as a ‘parting of ways’ of two close allies. With the European Union deeply divided and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization split into two camps, the result was a profound disunity of the West. After the war in Kosovo and the German military contribution to the ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan, there was no chance that the SPD/Green coalition would have been able to put together its own majority for an additional war effort in Iraq. Opposing a perceived US unilateralism was popular and an opportunity to stand up to the Bush administration. On a more fundamental level, Germany reclaimed the right to national sovereignty in spite of its commitment to multilateralism. This self-assertion was a new development for German foreign policy and it will also characterise Germany’s actions in the future. With the arrival of the Trump administration in Washington and its challenge to the liberal world order America created after World War II, the US and Germany could end up on an even more profound collision course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Germany's nuclear options of fielding an indigenousnuclear force, preservation of latent nuclear hedge capacity and cooperation with French to open an extended nuclear deterrent umbrella over Europe. It is noted that Germany is a supporter of nuclear nonproliferation and global disarmament. Topics include European geopolitics, political-economic power in Germany, and Germany's national security policy. Also discussed is prevention of American isolationism, U.S. President Donald Trump's views on North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia, and role of the German government.

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Scholars have long recognized American jurists' idiosyncratic commitment to a prudent, pragmatic, and political style of legal reasoning. The origins of this style have been linked to the legacy of the most American legal movement of all: the realists. Conversely, German jurists' doctrinal, idealistic, and apolitical approach can be tied to the relative failure of Germany's equivalent movement: the free lawyers. How to account for the seemingly inverse fate of realistic jurisprudential reform projects on both sides of the Atlantic? In this paper I employ transnational history to shed light on this particular instance of German-American divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented that discusses Germany's plans for involvement in international military operations. Topics include Germany cooperation with France within the European Union (EU), Germany's relations with the U.S. in light of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Program (TTIP) economic treaty, and Germany's role in the United Nations (UN).

Through an examination of American policy toward Germany during late 1918 to 1919, this article challenges widely held ideas about the attitudes of American President Woodrow Wilson toward democracy promotion. Scholars typically have seen in Wilson’s foreign policy the antecedents of several subsequent U.S. presidents’ policies of democracy promotion and democratic interventionism. This study contends that at least during the second half of Wilson’s presidency, however, Wilson did not regard it as appropriate for the United States to intervene in the internal political affairs of other nations to promote democracy. While he hoped that postwar Germany would come to embrace democracy, he believed that the Germans would have to find democracy on their own. Despite the fact that those American diplomatic officials who were most familiar with the situation in Germany continually urged a more active U.S. policy to promote democracy there, Wilson remained deeply skeptical of the new German government and adhered firmly to the view that the United States should refrain from attempting to influence Germany’s internal political affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay examines the ramifications of the debate about Vansittart's indictment of Germany in his wartime pamphlet, Black Record, among the German exiles in the United States. The issue of Vansittartism emerged as a particularly incendiary factor in the longstanding and deep rift between Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. The influence of Vansittartism on Thomas Mann also led to the failure of the Californian exiles to speak in one voice regarding the future of Germany, as they struggled to draft a political manifesto in support of a similar statement coming from German exiles and captured generals in Stalin's Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a conference on attitudes in the German labor movement and the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany, SPD) to the United States in historical perspective, held in Otzenhausen, Germany, from November 23-25, 2012. Topics of discussion included perceptions of the antebellum U.S. among German mid-19th century revolutionaries, the report on an 1887 journey to the United States by SPD leader Wilhelm Liebknecht, and the foreign policy of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt toward Eastern Europe in the context of German-American relations.

President John F. Kennedy's Berlin visit in 1963 served as an encouragement to West Germans and Berliners to keep their faith in the prevalence of Western values and continued political and economic collaboration with the United States. At the Rudolph Wilde Platz and at the Freie University in Berlin, Kennedy invited his German audience to adopt a Western identity based on the values of freedom, unity, and progress. Using Burke's Dramatistic Theory, we unveil the process of Germany's identification both with the West and with Kennedy. By depicting Germans as self-determined agents with an influence on their own historic course, Kennedy inspires his audience's hopes in a sovereign, united future, facilitating Germany's Western identity and the country's persistent cultural, economic, and political ties with the United States. We find that Kennedy's Berlin speeches illustrate the importance of cultural identification for building strong political relations across national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article deals with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a point of contention in US relations with Germany and Japan. Both countries rank among America's closest allies, but – quite contrary to the US – they have also been supporting the establishment and operation of the ICC, although each to a different extent. The article analyzes the reasons for the three countries’ diverging attitudes and policies towards the establishment and operation of the Court, and contrasts Germany's and Japan's handling of the ICC issue vis-à-vis the US. It suggests that Berlin's idealistic position and full ICC support on the one hand, as well as Japan's cautious and pragmatic approach on the other, are both rooted not only in their individual evaluations of the ICC's institutional design, but also the varying degrees of their bi/multilateral orientation and the extent of their ‘dependence’ on US security commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents an overview of the Combined Bomber Offensive's (CBO) air attacks that have destructed the refined fuel industry in Germany. It highlights the perceptions of the revisionist historians that the collapse of the industry were due to the allied ground forces that capture the natural resources needed for the refined-fuel products. It mentions the need to assess the facts associated to the event to properly ensure the CBO's effectiveness by the U.S. Airmen.

The article presents an essay by Carsten Doerfert, on the representation of Germany during World War 1, in the American periodical "Political Science Quarterly". Doerfert discusses the history and importance of the publication in the United States, and addresses in detail the articles concerning Germany, starting with the article "War of the Nations" of December 1914, to the article published in late 1920 on the Versailles Treaties and the Republic of Weimar. He discusses the American evaluation of Germany based on the articles, and the evolution of Germany's reputation in light of political and economic developments in Europe.

This article is inspired by a series of events that took place in February 2011 around the effort to negotiate a memorial in Berlin on the occasion of the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of President Ronald Reagan. A thought experiment with images is constructed to consider whether these events - produced by the ubiquity, interconnectivity and reflexivity of global media - are symptomatic of a new quantum diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hitherto neither historians nor Americanists have paid much attention to Franklin's 1766 journey to Germany. Yet his trip to the Holy Roman Empire was of the utmost importance for him as he sought to learn as much as possible about the constitutional structure of this old European body politic. He planned his tour months ahead, making sure to meet Johann Stephan Pütter, the leading authority on German constitutional law. It was Pütter's understanding of the Empire as a federation that attracted Franklin's interest at a time when he was looking for a model for a union of the American colonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

•This article presents a study of how images of the United States have changed in German media discourse since the end of the Cold War. Two leading German news papers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung, have been analysed during four time periods — from 1984 to 2009 — covering four American presidencies. The results show that the image of the USA was far more critical in 2004, during the Bush era than during the other presidencies, where positive and trustful images had a more prominent place in the discourse. Even anti-American images were found. However, the critical images were, in general, more focused on what the USA does, not what it is — even during the Bush era. Furthermore, the relationship between the USA and Germany was portrayed as being close and friendly — like a father—son relationship — with the exception of 2004, when relations were presented as somewhat strained. • [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the dynamic 1960s-1970s the world experienced a new phase in the East-West conflict: the Cold War gradually turned into Détente, the confrontation into antagonistic cooperation. The Federal Republic of Germany developed, next to the Détente-concepts of the two superpowers (USA and SU) and the multilateral Détente-concept of the CSCE, two specific forms of Détente: the Ostpolitik and the Deutschlandpolitik. The following paper aims to provide an overview of the two concepts, their practical implementation, their successes and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that a nation's 'people' are the sovereign arbiters of its affairs, exercising power through a representative leadership who govern in the name of public 'virtue', point to a concept of political legitimacy which has proven to be a guiding principle in American diplomacy. The Wilson administration's response to peace overtures by the German government between 1917 and 1918 is a good illustration of this tendency. In line with American domestic political mores and values, the Wilson administration, along with the U.S. Congress and American publicists sought to encourage a political reshaping of Germany through aggressive public diplomacy. This was achieved by apportioning war responsibility between sections of German society (guilty autocrats and subservient citizens). The legitimacy of the German state as an equal partner in international relations, was thereby questioned. This distinction, in time, collapsed showing the inconsistencies within the Wilson administration in challenging the internal workings of a foreign government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an examination of the history of the Volkswagen (VW) Beetle in the United States and discusses how the U.S. came to be seen as an attractive leader in Europe by projecting American culture internationally as well as by establishing an openness to European imports. It explores how the U.S.'s cultural openness to Western Europe was viewed in Europe and discusses what the U.S.'s acceptance of the VW Beetle meant for cultural relations between the U.S. and the Federal Republic of Germany after 1945.

Two events have fundamentally altered the trajectory of the post-war German-American relationship into the twenty-first century: the American response to the existential challenge posed to open societies by those aligned with the purposes and methods of al-Qaeda and the Taliban; and the destabilisation of the global economy initiated with the collapse of the international financial system in 2008 conjoined to the largely uncoordinated national policy responses to the ensuing global recession that bears realistic comparison with the twentieth century's Great Depression. Both episodes illustrate Germany's relative decline as a key partner on many issues at the top of the American foreign policy agenda and may be traced to the changed strategic context of the transatlantic area, the rising strategic and economic importance of China for the United States, and Germany's continuing inability and unwillingness to assume a proportionately robust and responsible role towards meeting the challenges posed by growing global disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the developments which took place in international criminal law in the year 2008. It is reported that, in the year 2008 the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts in Cambodia (ECCC) became the second international criminal tribunal to allow the victims to participate in sentencing proceedings. It is reported that, in the year 2008 the U.S. and Germany agreed to share fingerprint databases and information regarding known and suspected terrorists.

This article contextualizes the recent debates about German and European anti-Americanism by highlighting the paradoxical nature of such sentiments. Using examples from the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and the postwar period, this article shows that anti-Americanism arose less from divergent cultural trends and perceived "value gaps," as many recent authors have argued. Rather, anti-Americanism should be seen as a measure of America's continued influence and success. After all, anti-Americanism more often than not went hand in glove with "Americanization." Frequently, anti-Americans, namely those who are voicing anti-Americanism, were products of cultural transfer-processes emanating in the U.S. They also saw themselves allied with American anti-establishment forces. Thus, to a degree, anti-Americanism can be seen as by-product of westernization. Although the focus of this article is on Germany, the argument about the complex web of repudiation and embrace can be observed in other European (or even African, Arab, Asian, or South American) contexts as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American policy toward Germany in the years before Pearl Harbor can be approached from any number of angles. A rich literature already exists that emphasizes the geopolitical dimension of the German-U.S. relationship, as well as its economic and ideological complexities. I shall here explore an interpretative line that has been less fully developed in the historiography, namely, the viewpoint of U.S. diplomats posted in Berlin. Their experience in the 1930s throws into vivid relief the dilemmas posed by the Third Reich to FDR's America and its equivocal response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between the United States, France and Germany significantly determine the content and structure of the broader transatlantic relationship. Relations improved after the changes of government in Germany in 2005 and France in 2007, and they can be expected to improve further after the change of administration in the United States in 2009. Washington is likely to pay more attention to its European allies while these may become more involved in issues beyond Europe's borders. Sharing leadership will be the challenge for the United States, while bringing more intellectual and material input will be the challenge for the Europeans. At the same time, France and Germany will develop and maintain independent views. But if partnership is the aim on both sides of the Atlantic, a more promising relationship can be expected even where differences exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses public diplomacy as practiced via the medium of television current affairs programs. Examples from recent years show how effective this format can be for U.S. politicians to communicate with the German public. The article stems from the remarks made by the author at a panel session in Dresden, Germany, on "Media and Transatlantic Relations," sponsored by The Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-World War II Germany, the U.S. occupation government's Information Bulletin magazine reflected a fundamental tension between teaching the value of a free, open press and the press as a means to rally support against opposing forces. This paper examines content of the Information Bulletin from 1945, 1947 and 1950, tracing a shift over the course of this period. At the outset, the magazine reflected an emphasis on teaching the ideals of press freedom and acceptance of diverse points of view. By 1950, the tenor of the articles had shifted to a marked anti-Soviet tone, and the magazine questioned the legitimacy of communist publications in West Germany. This tension between liberal ideals of free expression and the protection of strategic interests finds parallels today in situations such as the U.S. presence in Iraq. This research also raises questions about Americans' acceptance of oppositional views and more broadly of different understandings of the mission of journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on German-American relations, specifically the similarities and differences between 1979 and 2008. It is inferred that both the United States and Germany are confronted with the same challenges and that cooperation is crucial. The author argues that Angela Merkel has re-established trust in the U.S. and could act as an interlocutor between Europe and the U.S. Particular attention is given to speculations about the effect of both the 2008 U.S. Presidential election and the 2009 German federal election outcomes.

This article investigates Germany's role in CIA "extraordinary renditions" of terrorist suspects, focusing on two cases involving German citizens of Middle Eastern descent (Khaled el-Masri and Mohammed Zammar), and one case of an Egyptian cleric who had resided in Italy and was likely transferred to Egypt via a U.S. military airport in Germany (Abu Omar). Amid recent revelations about the extent of the CIA program for transferring and interrogating terrorism suspects, the question of Germany's potential responsibility under international law has gained public attention. Against the background of international legal rules governing responsibility of assisting states, this article examines what was known in Germany about human rights abuses in the above cases and evaluates official steps taken by the government to prevent or uncover violations. In the conclusion, the article addresses the need for increased institutional safeguards to hinder German involvement in questionable U.S. counterterrorism practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relationship of the U.S. with Germany after the war in Iraq. The relationship between the two countries is not in a good state despite meetings between German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and U.S. President George W. Bush. According to U.S. National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice, there is a poisoned relationship between the U.S. and Germany. The main reason for the conflict is the argument whether Saddam Hussein is capable of building weapons of mass destruction.