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THOMAS MERGEL the Unknown and the Familiar Enemy: the Semantics of Anti- Communism in the USA and Germany, 1945-1975

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THOMAS MERGEL the Unknown and the Familiar Enemy: the Semantics of Anti- Communism in the USA and Germany, 1945-1975 THOMAS MERGEL The Unknown and the Familiar Enemy: The Semantics of Anti- Communism in the USA and Germany, 1945-1975 in WILLIBALD STEINMETZ (ed.), Political Languages in the Age of Extremes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) pp. 245–274 ISBN: 978 0 199 60296 4 The following PDF is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND licence. Anyone may freely read, download, distribute, and make the work available to the public in printed or electronic form provided that appropriate credit is given. However, no commercial use is allowed and the work may not be altered or transformed, or serve as the basis for a derivative work. The publication rights for this volume have formally reverted from Oxford University Press to the German Historical Institute London. All reasonable effort has been made to contact any further copyright holders in this volume. Any objections to this material being published online under open access should be addressed to the German Historical Institute London. DOI: 10 The Unknown and the Familiar Enemy: The Semantics of Anti-Communism in the USA and Germany, 1945-1975 THOMAS MERGEL lnJanuary 1947, the American magazine Life issued an illustrated report on French Communists. The text accompanying the pic- tures revealed a certain amazement because the report included photographs not only of the relevant politicians, but also of the party headquarters. Above all, it gave an account of a meeting of a Communist cell. So much publicity? The magazine called the report 'a pictorial scoop' and emphasized the difference between Europe and America: 'This could not possibly have been taken in the U.S., where Communists usually work in secrecy, or in the Soviet Union, where they select their own type of publicity. But the French party, now standing halfway between the two posi- tions, is eager to look like a democratic party and thus induce the voters to put it into power.' 1 The amazement of Life points to differences in the organiza- tional forms of Communism in Europe and America, and also to different perceptions of what Communism was. In the USA the movement was a secretive phenomenon; in Europe it shamelessly appeared in public. In the USA it consisted of faceless men and women, whereas European Communists appeared in public, and had faces and names. Although Life did not have the slightest doubt that the French party was as dictatorial as its Soviet role model, it was still surprised that the French Communists behaved like a normal political party. In the eyes of an American maga- zine, this could only be tactics and camouflage. As I shall argue in this essay, taking the examples of America and Germany, these differences were the expression of nationally different anti- Communisms. Moreover, distinct images of the enemy not only 1 'French Communists', Life, 13Jan. 1947, 49. THOMAS MERGEL mirrored specific experiences with Communism, but also reflected normative ideas of what one's own society should be like. After the Second World War the 'anti-Communist consensus' formed the basis of political culture in both the USA and Germany.2 Opinion polls in both countries left little doubt that Communism was a political option only for a marginal minority. The degree of rejection in Germany is revealed by the fact that in the late 1940s a large majority of Germans, given the choice, would have preferred National Socialism to Communism.3 This was not an option in the USA. But in 1949, more than two-thirds of those interviewed wanted membership of the Communist Party to be prohibited by law. 4 Thus the refusal was consensual. However, the semantics of anti-Communism were quite different in the two countries under consideration, and this points to dif- ferent views of the enemy, different functions of Communism, and even to different ideas of what Communism ultimately was. 5 In the USA as in Germany, Bolshevism had, after 1917, pro- voked panic reactions and created images which deeply permeated 2 In my terminology, therefore, anti-Communism does not mean a pathological and undemocratic attitude which is necessarily reactionary because it rejects the humanitarian and progressive message of (utopian) Communism. A political-moralistic evaluation of this sort, long widely shared, viewed the pathologies of the lunatic fringe as the true face of anti-Communism. For analytical purposes it is not helpful. Instead, anti-Communism will here be understood as a political attitude that identifies (real) Communism as the antipode of one's own society and thus attempts to influence one's own society. This definition enables a far wider range of attitudes, and it abstains from a normative assessment of polit- ical attitudes. Cf. 'Antikommunismus', in Hanno Drechsler et al. (eds.), Lexikon der Polilik (roth edn. Munich, 12003). 3 Patrick Major, The Death ef the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 194s-1956 (Oxford, 1997), 272; the rates of approval for Communism fell from 35% (Nov. 1945) to 2% (Feb. 1949), while National Socialism was approved by 19% in 1945 and 43°/o in 1949· 4 George H. Gallup, The Gallup Poll· Publ:ic Opinion 193s-1971, 3 vols. (New York, 1972), ii. 194g-1958, 873. For the anti-Communist consensus during the 1950s, see Michael Heale, American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within (Baltimore, 1990), 16t90. 5 For German anti-Communism see, in addition to Major, Death efthe KPD, Klaus Korner, 'Die rote Gefahr': Antikommunistische Propaganda in der Bundesrepublik 1950---2000 (Hamburg, 2003), emphasizing the lunatic fringe; Alexander von Briinneck, Politische Justi;:, gegen Kommunisten in der Bundesrepublik Deutsch/and 194g-1968 (Frankfurt, 1978); and most recently Till Kessler, Abschied von der Revolution: Kommunisten und Gesellschafl in Westdeutschland 194s-1968 (Dilsseldorf, 2005). For the USA, where the debate is highly politicized and shaped by a policy of coming to terms with the past, see Richard Gid Powers, Not without Honor: 77ze History ef American Anticommunism (New Haven, 1995) (conservative); and Ellen Schrecker, 'Ma11)1 Are the Crimes:· McCarthyism in America (Princeton, 1998), who stresses the pathological dimension. For a discussion of this debate see Thomas Mergel, "'The Enemy in our Midst": Antikommunismus und Amerikanismus in der Ara McCarthy', ,?pitschrift far Geschichtswi.ssenschefl, 51 (2003), 23,57. The Unknown and the Familiar Enemy 247 the political imaginations of both countries. In the USA the Communists came from the outside and were thus viewed as aliens; 90 per cent of the members of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) were immigrants. But it was not only this that gave rise to the idea that Communism was something un-American. This idea also grew out of a religious-political tradition which tended to see Communism as an antithesis to religion. In Germany, by con- trast, after 1918 Communism had grown into a powerful mass movement with solid roots in the labour movement. Although in Germany Communism was linked to another old tradition, that of the 'other', namely, 'Asiatic' Russia, it was a highly visible phenom- enon associated more with the masses than with obscurity. These perceptions outlasted 1945, but were changed by new experiences with Communism. After the Second World War it was revealed that Stalin had used the intense cooperation of the war years to build up a dense network of spies in the USA It was not until the Soviet Union came to an end that his success in this endeavour became apparent.6 Yet since the late 1940s Americans had been angst-ridden that Soviet agents could be part of the US government's inner circle. This experience shaped a widely shared notion that Communists did their work of infiltration in obscurity or underground. By contrast, in Germany after 1945 Communism was, if not a popular movement, at least something familiar. It was closer than ever before, now being associated with the other part of Germany. Moreover, Communism was also closely linked with violence. In the light of the new experience of West German democracy, which also pushed forward a process of political sec- ularization, Communism was perceived as a political religion to be confronted with rationality and democratic belie£ These are the opposite poles of the two political cultures: con- trasting ideas of Communism which were also shared by those who considered themselves to be moderates. I do not claim that there was a clear distinction between German and American per- ceptions. Especially in the realm of ideological conflict, interna- tional transfers of ideas and languages were frequent. An outstanding example of these transfers is the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its liberal anti-Communism. 7 In 1950 this interna- 6 Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America-the Stalin Era (New York, 2000). 7 Peter Coleman, The liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle.far THOMAS MERGEL tional movement united intellectuals from different countries, including many renegades who were considered to speak about Communism with a different kind of authority from those who had never personally experienced it. The Congress for Cultural Freedom promoted a determinedly 'Westernized' concept of anti- Communism. It focused on individual freedom, was doubtful about religious arguments against Communism, and decidedly critical of authoritarian and restorative trends in society. This earned the Congress the dubious honour of coming under scrutiny by the American Communist-hunter Joseph McCarthy. As an international network, the Congress understood its anti- Communism as self-enlightenment, so to speak, and to this extent it was an elitist organization. But the ideas of the Congress for Cultural Freedom also found a response in Berlin's Social Democratic circles around Ernst Reuter and Willy Brandt. 8 However, this organization is not the focus of the following analy- sis because its influence was limited.
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