Euromedia

NPR report - America Seen Through European Eyes

This is a 4 part series that aired on National Public Radio in October of last year.

There are reports from France, Poland, Italy and Germany. It's pretty interesting how they choose to report these stories. For instance they talk about the French fascination with American pop culture, Polish admiration for American business practices and German interest in Native Americans. It's both an interesting listen, and instructive for how to put together (or not put together)our stories.

I am including a link to the audio files on NPR's website and transcripts to the pieces.

National Public Radio: America Seen Through European Eyes

History of French anti-Americanism and how it bears on France's relationship with the US today
October 15, 2003 Wednesday

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

The day after the attacks of September 11th, France's leading newspaper, Le Monde, ran a sympathetic headline: We Are All Americans. Maybe not since Lafayette helped George Washington defeat the British had the French been so pro-American. But it didn't take long for that attitude to sour. After a brief demonstration of solidarity with Washington, France once again began waving its age-old banner of anti-Americanism. Now differences over the war in Iraq have plunged French-US relations to their lowest point since the days when a proud Charles de Gaulle led France to boycott NATO in the 1960s.

In the second part of our series "America Seen Through European Eyes," NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on the history of French anti-Americanism and how it bears on France's relationship with America today.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:

Autumn is the 'rentre literare,'(ph) the height of the French publishing season, and this year the number-one topic is America. In this bookstore in central Paris, shelves are filled with conspiracy theories and diatribes against the US-led war in Iraq, titles such as "Bush's Secret World," "Who Profits from the War?," "The United States and Planetary Manipulation." There are also novels inspired by September 11th, such as this English title "Windows on the World." And there's the unexpected "Loving Dictionary of America." One of the biggest best sellers is "The American Enemy," the first scholarly analysis of the roots of French anti-Americanism. Its author, Philippe Roger, was in New York on 9/11. When he returned home he found the French media's condescending coverage of the terrorist attacks a frightening confirmation of his main thesis.

Mr. PHILIPPE ROGER (Author, "The American Enemy"): That anti-Americanism was so entwisted in the French intellectual identity that people were able to repeat the same stereotypes just as if nothing had happened.

(Soundbite of children laughing)

POGGIOLI: Here in the Paris Botanical Garden, schoolchildren with large notebooks crouch near the elegant flower beds. They're drawing asters, roses and dahlias. Towering above them are bronze statues of the French greats of natural history. One of the most prominent is the 18th century scientist Georges-Luis Buffon, a man who never visited the New World but who could be considered the founding father of anti-Americanism. Buffon elaborated a theory that everything in the New World was degenerate and that its flora and fauna were stunted. Buffon was a man of the Enlightenment, and his theories soon led to the widespread conviction that in America dogs don't bark and birds don't sing as they do here. Philippe Roger says that Buffon's followers extended the naturalist theory of New World degeneration to its human beings.

Mr. ROGER: And they made a point that if a dog that was transferred from England to America couldn't bark anymore, humans themself would become weaker, less intelligent, less potent; that Europeans, after one or two generations in America, had lost their fertility, they had lost most of their impetus or intellectual stamina, so on and so forth.

POGGIOLI: Thomas Jefferson was so infuriated by Buffon's claims that he decided to combat them scientifically. He got himself a dead moose and brought it to Paris, where he displayed the seven-foot-tall carcass in the entry hall of his hotel. Buffon was invited to inspect the American mammal, but the French scientist, himself less than five feet tall, was unimpressed and refused to revise his theory on the inferiority of American nature.

Mr. FREDERIC BEIGBEDER (Author): What I don't like about anti-Americanism is that it's naive and it's caricatural, it's grotesque.

POGGIOLI: Frederic Beigbeder is another best-selling French writer focusing on America.

Mr. BEIGBEDER: Because if we think about it, a long, long time ago the French were very powerful, and they were a very big nation. And now it's over, I think.

POGGIOLI: Beigbeder, author of a novel about 9/11, says that for the last two centuries French anti-Americanism always had a large dose of irrationality. Philippe Roger goes further. He claims that contemporary French anti-Americanism is the result of sedimentation, a 200-year-old layering process in which each generation of intellectuals added its own contribution to what has now become a coherent national conviction that America poses a danger to everything the French hold dear.

The symbolist poet Baudelaire coined the expression 'Americanization,' which he described as 'materialistic heartlessness.' In "Remembrance of Things Past," Proust invented a character who symbolizes the United States' late entry into World War I. According to the French, that was a calculated move, so America, taking advantage of a war-weakened France, could become the arbiter of Europe's destiny. And a book called "The American Cancer" excoriated Woodrow Wilson for his self-righteousness and his failure to persuade Congress to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.

A dangerous form of Ameriphobia emerged in the inter-war period, says Philippe Roger.

Mr. ROGER: The French were so obsessed by America as a negative, an utterly, completely negative model, that they failed to see that an obvious ally should have been America against the rise of political totalitarianism.

POGGIOLI: While Hitler and Mussolini were consolidating their axis on France's doorsteps, the high priests of French culture were thundering against what they saw as the American peril: the mediocrity of American culture.

Mr. ROGER: 'Oh, they are null, zero. They will never have anything: no painters, no writers. I mean, let's not worry about it.' And suddenly in the 1930s everything changes, and the major factor is, of course, the cinema. It's a movie thing. It's Hollywood.

(Soundbite of movie music)

Unidentified Woman: (French spoken)

Unidentified Man: (French spoken)

(Soundbite of movie music)

POGGIOLI: By 1939, half of France's movie theaters were American-owned, a blow to the proud, prewar French cinema. The influx of things American accelerated after World War II, and many saw this as the sign of the definitive loss of French stature in the world. The novelist Roger Vagnon(ph) denounced what he called the 'barbarity of comfort,' saying the refrigerator was part of an American conspiracy to destroy French domestic culture. And the newspaper Le Monde sniffed that Coca-Cola was a 'social menace.' And then came television.

(Soundbite of "Bonanza" theme music)

POGGIOLI: French TV stations were soon filled with American-made sitcoms and series, imports a French minister denounced as part of a cultural imperialist plot.

(Soundbite of "Charlie's Angels" theme music)

POGGIOLI: Today France is perhaps the most visibly Americanized country in Europe. The Les Halles area in Paris is a landmark for eateries, but don't come here for foie gras or Beaujolais. Around the outdoor plaza people are lining up at McDonald's, Haagen-Dazs, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut, while shoppers browse the aisles of Foot Locker and Skechers. And the first French Starbucks is coming soon. Writer Frederic Beigbeder believes the voracious French appetite for Americana, which is baffling to outsiders, resembles a dirty little secret.

Mr. BEIGBEDER: There is this fascination for luxury, fascination for power. This ideology of comfort, the American way of life, being beautiful, being famous, being rich, this is what's making people crazy, guilty and jealous.

POGGIOLI: Envy and resentment are among the root causes cited by many analysts for French anti-Americanism. America's perceived as having displaced France as a major world power, a position it held with Great Britain and Germany a century ago. It was the US-led war in Iraq that further widened the Franco-American divide. In a recent poll, 70 percent of the French say they are opposed to the United States holding the dominant position in the world.

Yet another writer about America is Patrick Farbiaz. A leader of the French Green Party, he's co-author of the recently published "Dangereuse Amerique." Farbiaz says that despite the French president's conservative credentials, Jacques Chirac has become the flag bearer not only of the anti-war movement but also of a specific European philosophy of life.

Mr. PATRICK FARBIAZ (Author, "Dangereuse Amerique"): (Through Translator) The war in Iraq was just the first round of a clash of civilizations, not between Islam and the West but within the West itself, between two views of the future. There's a European model of society and its environment, of relations between people and communicating, which is moving further and further away from the American model. So Americans must ask themselves why millions and millions of people in the world are opposed to this American model of always wanting to be the most powerful in the world.

POGGIOLI: The Pompidou Center is Paris' whimsical monument to pop art. Upstairs its library is crowded with university students. It's lunchtime and we join a group of friends sitting cross-legged on the floor munching sandwiches. The topic America hits a chord.

Ms. ALICE LEHENNE(ph) (Student): (Through Translator) There is a sort of anti-Americanism in France, which is real, which is cultural. It's something in the population. You can feel it.

POGGIOLI: Twenty-three-year-old Alice Lehenne studies history.

Ms. LEHENNE: (Through Translator) For us, America is very powerful, very dominating in the world. The country wants to impose its economy on the world. For us, it seems an economy without any rules, completely out of control, a sort of wild capitalist.

POGGIOLI: Next to her, 22-year-old Damien Glen Arec(ph) says the French are a bit ambivalent.

Mr. DAMIEN GLEN AREC (Student): (Through Translator) There is anti-Americanism, but at the same time we admire the United States. We buy the country's movies, literature and music. We dream about the country and how we'd love to go there. After September 11th, we felt America's suffering. So despite the war in Iraq, there are still feelings of love: I love you, I hate you.

POGGIOLI: As the success of the crop of new French books about America demonstrates, the events since 9/11 have opened up a new debate here. Author Philippe Roger says he's pleased the French are beginning to examine the origins of their animosities more rationally.

Mr. ROGER: But it must be said that Mr. Bush is the perfect embodiment of the stereotypes the French have about America, starting with trigger-happy Texans and excessively religious manners. So it doesn't make things particularly easier at this point. On the other end, that should not prevent anybody in France or elsewhere from exerting a legitimate criticism of whatever we see as unsatisfying in American policy.

POGGIOLI: This process of anti-Americanism soul-searching comes at a time when French disapproval of American policy has never been so intense. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.

BLOCK: You can find more on this series, including an essay by Sylvia Poggioli, at our Web site npr.org. Tomorrow on the program we'll head south to Italy.

You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

History of Italian attitudes toward the United States
October 16, 2003 Thursday

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.

When the United States decided to go to war in Iraq, the Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi was one of a handful that wholeheartedly supported the Bush administration, but the Italian people were overwhelmingly opposed. Today, in part three of our series America Seen Through European Eyes, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports on Italy and its long history of complex and contradictory relations with the US.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:

A vast, freshly mowed lawn reaches all the way to the horizon.

Mr. SILVANO CASALDI (Curator, Allied Forces Museum): We just passed the gate and we are actually in the United States territory.

POGGIOLI: Silvano Casaldi, curator of the Allied Forces Museum in Nettuno, takes us on a tour of one of the largest US cemeteries in Europe.

Mr. CASALDI: There are 7,861 soldiers buried here.

POGGIOLI: In the shade of Roman pines and cypresses, there's row upon row of white marble markers, crosses and Stars of David stretching over 77 acres. Many of them are American GIs who landed in Anzio nearly 60 years ago.

(Soundbite of waves hitting the shore)

POGGIOLI: It's along this southern Italian beach that one of the most ferocious battles of World War II took place.

(Soundbite of vintage recording; explosions)

POGGIOLI: This is a recording of the landing of more than 50,000 Allied soldiers at Anzio on January 22nd, 1944. The amphibious operation was a dress rehearsal for D-Day six months later. Trench warfare against the Nazis lasted nearly six months. With no safe place on the beachhead, soldiers described it as a turkey shoot, and there were nearly three times as many casualties at Anzio as at Normandy. Despite huge losses, Anzio pinned down Hitler's elite units, thus hastening the dictator's defeat. Amerigo Salvini was born just after the Americans arrived. He was named after his country's liberators.

Mr. AMERIGO SALVINI: I remember my father's story. He goes to the window and see three soldiers. They are Americans, 3rd Division Infantry. And he was very, very emotional because my father--he was an anti-fascist. OK? He don't like Mussolini. And when he see for the first time the American people, he say, 'Liberatore! Oh, thank you. Grazie! Grazie!'

(Soundbite of waves hitting the shore)

POGGIOLI: The American campaign progressed northward and in June, Rome became the first European capital to be liberated from the Germans. War-weary Italians cheered and welcomed the American GIs ecstatically and with gratitude.

Mr. GIULIANO MONTALDO (Film Director): (Through Translator) It was triumphant. I remember the soldier tossing us cigarettes, Lucky Strike cigarettes, and then chocolate. And we were so hungry.

POGGIOLI: Film director Giuliano Montaldo was 14 then. He describes the exciting new world the Americans brought with them.

Mr. MONTALDO: (Through Translator) We had boogie-woogie for the first time, "The Chattanooga Choo-Choo" and then Abbe Lane and Armstrong and Ella, all those voices. It was constant discovery. And then Rita Hayworth with those lips, those thick lips made for kissing. It was freedom, freedom of behavior and customs. In the movies, we saw people drinking, drinking like Hemingway, and for the first time, we heard the sound, the 'tinkle, tinkle' of ice in a whiskey glass.

POGGIOLI: The next few years were heady. With the injection of massive US aid under the Marshall Plan, Italy had an economic boom. And although its large Communist Party put Italy on the East-West front line during the Cold War, the country enthusiastically embraced American pop culture and the consumer society. It was cool to be American.

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Man #1: (Italian sung)

POGGIOLI: Then came the years of 'la dolce vita.' The Cinecitta Studios turned Rome into Hollywood on the Tiber, and in the mid-'60s, a new genre was born, inspired by the quintessential American myth: the West as seen through Italian eyes.

(Soundbite of music from "A Fistful of Dollars")

POGGIOLI: With "A Fistful of Dollars," director Sergio Leone introduced the world to spaghetti Westerns.

(Soundbite of "A Fistful of Dollars")

Unidentified Man #2: (Italian spoken)

(Soundbite of gunshots)

POGGIOLI: Giuliano Montaldo worked with Leone. He says the director amplified the Western myth more than any American movie maker ever did.

Mr. MONTALDO: (Through Translator) The American myth is made of wide, open spaces, horses, silences, wind, of harsh gazes of strong men who have to conquer immense territories. Leone had the American Dream, but he knew that in the soul of every people there is 'the good, the bad and the ugly.'

POGGIOLI: By the late '60s, in response to America's involvement in Vietnam, spaghetti Westerns turned political and began to stress the ugly. Leftist screenwriters wrote proletarian Westerns where the US was depicted as the oppressor of the poor. Italy began to be openly and stridently anti-American.

Mr. GUILIANO FERRARA (Editor in Chief, Il Foglio): I think that during the anti-Vietnam War fights, the key motto was that we would defend l'altra America, the other America.

POGGIOLI: Guiliano Ferrara is an Italian neocon, the editor in chief of the conservative daily Il Foglio. But he used to be a party apparatchik. It was the time when the Italian Communist Party was the biggest in the West. Taking its cues from Moscow, the party ranted against American imperialism during the Cold War. Ferrara says he and his comrades were convinced that the entire American counterculture was a fellow traveler.

Mr. FERRARA: It was the idea the America contained two opportunities: the opportunity to be with Joan Baez, with Bob Dylan, with the universities, with Martin Luther King, with the civil rights movement, and at the same time, there was an America of the government, of Lyndon Johnson, of Richard Nixon, which was the bad Americans, the bad guys. We had this kind of mechanism with--I mean, the Italian Communist Party.

(Soundbite of neighborhood activity)

Unidentified Child: (Italian spoken)

POGGIOLI: The working-class neighborhood of San Morenzo is a bastion of the left. In July 1943, an errant American bomb was dropped here, killing perhaps as many as 3,000 people. That tragedy is commemorated with a monument at the center of a run-down little park: four old artillery shells around a marble column, the names of the dead carved on sheets of Plexiglas.

Unidentified Man #3: (Italian spoken)

POGGIOLI: In a corner, groups of old men are playing card games. For them, the wounds of 60 years ago have not healed. It's immediately clear that Americans are not welcome here. Franco Paupa(ph) was six years old during the bombing. He remembers the bodies strewn all over the streets.

Mr. FRANCO PAUPA (San Morenzo Resident): (Through Translator) What do I think about Americans? They machine-gunned us down while we were running to them, our liberators.

POGGIOLI: His friend Dob di Rossi(ph) is even more blunt.

Mr. DOB DI ROSSI (San Morenzo Resident): (Through Translator) Well, if Bush were not around, there wouldn't be any war in Iraq. It would be all over.

POGGIOLI: Political analyst Ernesto Galli Della Loggia says Italian anti-Americanism is not limited to the left. He says equally strong sentiments can be found in both Italian fascism and Catholicism.

Mr. ERNESTO GALLI DELLA LOGGIA (Political Analyst): (Through Translator) All three ideologies perceive America the same way: as a materialistic society dominated by materialistic values, a society with an arrogant, actually an imperialist foreign policy, a system with no social solidarity which keeps the poor on the margins while the treatment of blacks is seen as the symbol of the injustice that dominates American society.

POGGIOLI: The Catholic Church's antipathy for American society has deep roots. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII condemned the supposed heresy of Americanism. After World War II, Pope Pius XII opposed Italy's entry into NATO, fearing the alliance was a Trojan horse for Protestant domination of Catholic Europe. And in the '50s, the governing Christian Democrat party bowed to Vatican concerns and expelled from the country numerous American Protestant missionaries. In recent months, it was Italian Catholics who were in the forefront of opposition to American military actions in Iraq.

Pope JOHN PAUL II: (Italian spoken)

POGGIOLI: In his appeals against waging war in Iraq, Pope John Paul II became unofficial spokesman for the anti-war movement. Alberto Merloni(ph) is a church historian.

Mr. ALBERTO MERLONI (Church Historian): The voice of the pope really became an important reference for Catholics. The voice of the pope did express a strong anti-American feeling in Italian public opinion and in the Catholic public opinion. And what is not so acceptable from a Catholic point of view is that the US administration is making choices that are not simply inspired by Realpolitik, but are made in the name of moral values.

(Soundbite of shop activity)

POGGIOLI: The Ave Bookshop(ph) is a few hundred yards from St. Peter's Square. It sells books about religion and theology. Inside, we meet Father Claudio Bucciarelli, who is eager to tell us what he thinks about the American president.

Father CLAUDIO BUCCIARELLI: (Through Translator) In his speeches, Bush takes God's name in vain. It is wrong when religion is identified with politics, but it is equally wrong when politics identifies with religion. This is fundamentalism. This is just like Islamic fundamentalism. It has nothing to do with the Word of God.

POGGIOLI: This spring, thousands of windows and balconies throughout the country were festooned with a made-in-Italy rainbow peace flag. The anti-war movement brought together Catholic activists, the traditional left and young anti-globalists. Polls indicated 70 to 80 percent of the public opposed the war in Iraq, according to Roberto Menotti, a researcher at the Italian Aspen Foundation. He says this is a manifestation of the multiple strains of anti-Americanism in Italian society.

Mr. ROBERTO MENOTTI (Researcher, Italian Aspen Foundation): Italians have always had a somewhat contradictory, maybe paradoxical relationship with the US as a country and as a nation and as a great power. There was a love affair, but it was complex and constantly shifting.

POGGIOLI: Menotti believes the gap between the two societies is widening, and that many Italians feel Americans have developed a dangerously simplistic mind-set.

Mr. MENOTTI: The sense that the world is essentially black and white, is essentially good people and bad people, good countries and bad countries. And this explains why we tend to feel that America is going essentially the wrong way.

POGGIOLI: Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

NORRIS: We conclude our series tomorrow with Poland.

(Soundbite of music)

NORRIS: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

America as seen through Poland's eyes

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.

People in Poland often say they love America more than Americans do. Next to Britain, Poland was Europe's most fervent supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. Since the collapse of communism, Poles have embraced a Western-style free market. Poland has become a NATO member and hopes to gain full membership in the European Union. Today Poland concludes our series America Seen Through European Eyes. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, despite their enthusiasm for America, Poles are increasingly worried about tensions between their European neighbors and the US.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:

The Fakro Skylight Factory(ph) is the poster child of Poland's gung ho entrepreneurial spirit.

(Soundbite of machinery)

POGGIOLI: We're at company headquarters in Novi Sonch(ph) near Poland's southern border. Fakro was founded in 1991 when a man bought not much more than a shed.

Mr. GREGOS BALLAS(ph): This is that garage where Fakro started.

POGGIOLI: Gregos Ballas is chief operating officer.

Mr. BALLAS: We started preparing the first roof window together with 15 persons here in this small room, and today the Fakro group employs 1,700 people all over the world.

(Soundbite of machinery)

POGGIOLI: Today this state-of-the-art plant sprawls across a huge expanse, towering over the humble garage. Fakro now covers 15 percent of the global skylight market and has just opened for business in the United States. Ballas says the secret of the company's success is American-style management training.

Mr. BALLAS: I think that if we are joining the European community, this can be our advantage to have this American spirit here because we can--we'll have some advantages against the European companies which are very European.

POGGIOLI: By implication, European means too much outside bureaucracy and meddling.

Mr. BALLAS: I don't think that the people really need the union here because they have own representations. Every department has own manager. The manager is really protecting their people. We just don't need the union here.

POGGIOLI: This statement sounds odd in the country that fought to give birth to Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the communist world. But the heyday of the Solidarity union is long gone. Poland now has a jobless rate of nearly 20 percent. There's been little retraining of workers, and no one dares strike for higher wages.

(Soundbite of trams)

POGGIOLI: In the working-class town of Nowa Huta, which means new steelworks, the trams are still running, but they're all nearly empty. Nowa Huta was built as an ideal city for the new communist man, the dedicated worker at the massive Lenin Steel Plant. No churches were envisioned here, and the rigid geometry of its architecture was a model for Stalin's brave new world. In the '80s, Nowa Huta was a bastion of Solidarity agitation, the times when a union poster depicted Gary Cooper the sheriff as its champion.

(Soundbite of whistle)

POGGIOLI: The steel mill is still in operation, but Lenin's nowhere to be seen. A train carrying cylinders of sheet metal chugs for miles around the plant's perimeter, but production has plummeted and the number of workers plunged from 40,000 at the height of communism to just above 8,000 after the government sold a majority share of the factory to a foreign company. Vladislad Quillien(ph) is the Solidarity trade union leader at the plant. We asked him how he feels now that Poland is back in the Western world.

Mr. VLADISLAD QUILLIEN: (Through Translator) The fact that Poland supported the US on Iraq I think politically was a very good move. But support for US actions over there does not mean that we automatically want to adopt the economy. When I think of the word 'capitalism,' I see people who have everything and people who have nothing. There are people with no safety net. There's no way for them to live a life of dignity.

POGGIOLI: Commentator Constanti Gebberd(ph) says Poland's have-nots feel not only exploited but also humiliated.

Mr. CONSTANTI GEBBERD: The concept of dignity of labor has been lost, and the idea, 'If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?' is very much in.

(Soundbite of shouting in foreign language)

POGGIOLI: Since the fall of communism, downtown Warsaw has become one big construction site. The city's skyline used to be dominated by the boxlike Palace of Culture, a gift from Stalin to his Polish communist brothers. Today the ground floor houses a movie theater and the building is dwarfed by new glass and steel skyscrapers and by towering cranes used to build even more. Constanti Gebberd.

Mr. GEBBERD: Poland is reinventing itself socially as it moves on. And this is much more American than European. We almost never had this kind of Western European approach to business which essentially considers business success a sin to atone for, right?

POGGIOLI: There's an MBA boom at the many new Szkola Biznesu, and Poland is also undergoing a cultural transformation. The sounds of Chopin have been drowned out by a Polish version of hip-hop.

(Soundbite of hip-hop music with singing in foreign language)

POGGIOLI: Young Poles, like their European counterparts, are passionate about American pop culture. Hip-hop rules the airwaves, songs about wanting to have more money, nice digs and a cool set of wheels.

(Soundbite of hip-hop music with singing in foreign language)

Unidentified Announcer: (Foreign language spoken)

POGGIOLI: MTV Poland arrived three years ago and is also a big success, already in two million homes. The creative director at MTV PL is Derrick Ogrodny. A Polish-American from Chicago, he's found his land of opportunity in the homeland, where he says American qualities are highly appreciated.

Mr. DERRICK OGRODNY (Creative Director, MTV Poland): The thing that most people notice about me being from there is my positive attitude towards things and my ambition. If there's a problem, I look for ways to solve it. There's this kind of John Wayne-like, 'All right, boys, we've got to get rid of these cattle rustlers. What are we gonna do?' You know, 'And let's form a posse and, you, you're gonna do this and you're gonna hold the gun,' and everything's well thought out and organized, and it works. And I think that's one of the things they look up to in America.

POGGIOLI: Poland's pro-American feelings are rooted in gratitude for US support throughout the 20th century, as well as the weight of the large number of Polish immigrants in the United States. Commentator Constanti Gebberd also cites the Poles' affinity for America's classless society and their embrace of the rags-to-riches American Dream. But on a political level, Gebberd says, Poland's strong support for the United States has to do with security.

Mr. GEBBERD: I hope it will never come to it, the proposal that America would be willing to risk New York to save Bialystok, that this proposal would be ever put to a test. But if somebody is going to risk their neck to save Bialystok, it's slightly possible it might be the Americans. It's simply not imaginable it would be anybody else.

POGGIOLI: But not all Poles are quite so sure.

Ms. ANYESKA MORISHINSKA(ph) (Pentor Poli Institute): I've got here one interesting survey. Where was it?

POGGIOLI: Anyeska Morishinska is a researcher at Warsaw's Pentor Poli Institute.

Ms. MORISHINSKA: I was very surprised because of the result. The question was, 'What do you think? Who can give Poland greater security, United States or European nation?' And 51 percent European Union, and 24 percent United States.

POGGIOLI: While the majority of Poles did side with the United States in waging war in Iraq and Polish peacekeeping troops have been sent there, there was one strong anti-war voice in Poland.

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

POGGIOLI: Radio Maria is the mouthpiece of one of the conservative movements in the Polish Catholic Church.

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

Unidentified Caller and Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken in unison)

(Soundbite of music)

POGGIOLI: It has persistently opposed not only the war in Iraq, but also Poland's entry into the European Union, which it fears will undermine Poland's Catholic values. And the movement's priests have often preached against the Western secular and materialistic society most closely associated with the United States. But most Poles don't seem to be listening, especially those who belong to what's being called Generation E, where E stands for Europe. They are university students and young urban professionals who did not grow up under the heavy yoke of communism. We meet some members of Generation E on a warm Sunday afternoon in a Warsaw park. They are students at the American Studies Department of Warsaw University who want to discuss their feelings about the United States and its relations with Poland and Europe.

Katarjina Dujik(ph) is writing her thesis on the Native American in American cinema. She has doubts about American foreign policy.

Ms. KATARJINA DUJIK (American Studies Department, Warsaw University): Many people from my generation, we perceive it a bit different than the older generations. I think that with all the power and influence that the United States have, they could act in a more, I think, positive way towards other countries. I mean, they could forget about selfishness and behave more multilaterally.

POGGIOLI: Fellow student Marios Kitsiana(ph) is studying the US Supreme Court, focusing on the issue of individual rights.

Mr. MARIOS KITSIANA (American Studies Department, Warsaw University): There could be a very positive scenario of Poland being the link between Europe, or the old Europe, and the US. Well, and I think that will be the best development for the future.

POGGIOLI: Janusz Onyszkiewicz was one of the early dissidents in the Solidarity movement and a defense minister in one of the first post-communist governments. He's openly pro-American, but he also suggests that America could show more willingness to work collectively with its allies.

Mr. JANUSZ ONYSZKIEWICZ: I think that American unilateralism should be somehow restrained, and perhaps US should try to build Europe as an important US partner. But I am afraid that there will be a temptation in the United States to divide Europe and to work with those European countries which will be more ready to accept American leadership.

(Soundbite of trumpet)

POGGIOLI: Every day, on the hour, a golden trumpet appears at the top of the spire of Krakow's Church of St. Mary. The signal is broadcast live on nationwide radio at noon.

(Soundbite of trumpet)

POGGIOLI: Starting in the middle ages, the signal warned citizens of an impending attack. The melody stops abruptly before its last note, commemorating a 13th-century trumpeter shot with an arrow through his throat as he played.

(Soundbite of trumpet)

POGGIOLI: Today, Poland is not under threat from any direction, and wants to be friends with everyone. But trans-Atlantic tensions are creating new insecurities. Many Poles fear they may be forced to choose between Europe and America. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.

NORRIS: You can hear the other stories from this series and find photos and links by going to our Web site, npr.org.

You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

America as seen through the eyes of the German people

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

And I'm Michele Norris.

When terrorists struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just over two years ago, sympathy and outrage poured out from around the globe, and there was great understanding, especially from Europe, when Washington declared its war on terrorism. But many recent opinion polls show that the image of America as a victim has been replaced with that of a bully. To its longtime European allies, the United States has become an imperial power bent on using its military muscle preemptively.

BLOCK: Today, we begin a series of reports, "America Seen Through European Eyes," and we start with Germany. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has emerged as a strong critic of the United States. That would have been unthinkable during the Cold War when West Germany was strategically dependent on the US. Now anger over the war in Iraq has weakened the historically strong ties between Washington and Berlin. As NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, there's a growing mistrust in Germany of the country that has long been its ally.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:

Bad Segeberg is a lake resort an hour's drive south of Hamburg. It's best known for its 8,000-seat open-air theater, originally built during the '40s for Nazi rallies. After the war, Teutonic folklore was considered tainted by the Third Reich and, therefore, off limits. So city authorities turned the Bad Segeberg arena(ph) into a shrine for the German cult of 'der vild vest.'

(Soundbite of "Ring of Fire")

Mr. JOHNNY CASH: (Singing) And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire.

POGGIOLI: Tonight's crowd, an equal number of adults and children, have come to see a play.

(Soundbite of applause)

POGGIOLI: The spectators are rapt as they follow the story of an Apache brave named Winnetu(ph) who comes to the rescue of his cowboy friend.

(Soundbite of play; gunshot)

Unidentified Man #1: (German spoken)

(Soundbite of gunshots)

Unidentified Man #1: (German spoken)

POGGIOLI: When it comes to German fascination with the mythology of America, it's the Native American who captures the imagination.

(Soundbite of play)

Unidentified Man #2: (German spoken)

(Soundbite of music; applause)

POGGIOLI: Many in the audience have painted faces and are wearing headbands with feathers. One of them is Andreas(ph), a youth counsellor who has brought 12 children to see the play. He says that identifying with Native Americans is a way to take a stand against what he calls America's unresolved past.

ANDREAS: (Through Translator) It has to do with compassion and empathy with those who were killed by the white man. I really blame Americans for killing nearly all the Indians who were there first. It also has to do with the Holocaust in Germany. Americans often blame us for our recent history. They point their fingers at us Germans without realizing what they did to the Indians.

POGGIOLI: Such a critical and confrontational tone is a new post-Cold War phenomenon. Following Germany's defeat in World War II and its partition, West Germany became a virtual American protectorate. The purpose of the American occupation was to create a Western democracy, a pro-American democracy that was essentially a replica of the United States. Close relations and dependency were cemented by the Berlin Airlift. In 1948, Soviet troops sealed off the city, and for nearly a year, Berlin was supplied exclusively from the air by Allied planes bringing in coal, food and machinery.

(Soundbite of crowd noise)

POGGIOLI: Fourteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany's relationship with its former protector is the topic of a special John F. Kennedy exhibition at Berlin's German Historical Museum.

(Soundbite of vintage recording)

President JOHN F. KENNEDY: Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was (Latin spoken).

POGGIOLI: For months, large crowds of visitors have been lining up to watch a grainy black-and-white film that captures one of the iconic events of the Cold War.

(Soundbite of vintage recording)

Pres. KENNEDY: ...the proudest boast is 'Ich bin ein Berliner.'

(Soundbite of applause)

POGGIOLI: At the show's opening in June, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the trans-Atlantic partnership is more important than ever. Unintended irony perhaps since relations between Berlin and Washington were at their worst in decades. Anti-war German demonstrators had carried banners with the words, 'Bush, you are not a Berliner.'

Karsten Voigt is the man in charge of US-German relations at the foreign ministry. He says the Bush administration's pressure on Germany to take part in the Iraq war undermined those non-aggressive principles the United States had fostered in post-Nazi Germany.

Mr. KARSTEN VOIGT (German Foreign Ministry): Now quite all of a sudden, some people are saying to us, 'If you stick to that position, you are not part of the solution of a problem; you are part of the problem.' So they said we should change our policy, our culture, our values, which we got from the US and which everybody wanted for us for 50 years.

POGGIOLI: Voigt says that Germany has overcome its Cold War angst of being attacked and now is looking inward.

Mr. VOIGT: Germany is now increasingly moving in a direction where pursuit of happiness is on the top of the agenda. For the first time, Germany is surrounded by countries who are friends, or at least give the impression as if they are friends. This is the most happy situation in which we have been since centuries.

(Soundbite of applause)

Ms. GAIL TUFTS: Danke schoen. This is the big show.

(Soundbite of applause)

POGGIOLI: Gail Tufts is the new Sally Bowles, a Yank who's brought cabaret back to Berlin.

(Soundbite of performance)

Ms. TUFTS: (Singing) It's the... big show, yes, the big show. (German sung).

POGGIOLI: She delights German audiences with her invention, a hybrid Deutsche-English lingo she calls Denglish. A Berliner by adoption, she says America is no longer calling all the shots.

Ms. TUFTS: It's not the only game in town.

POGGIOLI: And she believes Germany won't be treated like a teen-aged kid.

Ms. TUFTS: The kid is in college now. The kid is a young adult and maybe has a mind of its own, not in a bratty kind of a way, but in saying, 'Hey, listen. I've read a few things. I have an opinion of my own now, and I'm allowed to have an opinion of my own.'

POGGIOLI: As Germany begins to sever its umbilical cord with the US, it's trying to forge a new identity out of its two long-divided halves. While the American way of life shaped West German society, it was painted as the number-one enemy on the Communist eastern side of the Berlin Wall.

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Choir: (German sung)

POGGIOLI: The German Democratic Republic was laid to rest more than a decade ago, but its anthem still stirs emotions among some Ossies, those raised in Communist East Germany.

(Soundbite of song)

Unidentified Choir: (German sung)

Mr. HAGEN KOCH: (German spoken)

POGGIOLI: Hagen Koch is 63 years old. He's the man who in 1961 literally painted the white line around Berlin where the dividing wall was to be built. He still lives in a Communist-era apartment block stuffed with maps, photos and other archives. Koch is the self-appointed curator of the legacy of the Berlin Wall. He tells us how a distorted view of America was implanted in East German minds.

Mr. KOCH: (Through Translator) There was this summer when there were a lot, a huge of amount of potato beetles destroying the harvest.

POGGIOLI: Koch says children were taken out of school and sent to potato fields to remove the bugs. It was at the time of the airlift when US planes were often flying overhead on their way to Berlin. East German propaganda exploited the coincidence and turned it into an American plot; (German spoken), the dumping of potato beetles.

Mr. KOCH: (Through Translator) And these two events--on the one hand, a blight of these insects, and on the other, the airlift--were linked by the Communists in order to brainwash the children. Their aim was to create fear and loathing of the enemy, which was the United States.

POGGIOLI: East Germans like Koch, who was indoctrinated to hate America, have been overwhelmed by the recent Westernization of their society. But even younger Easterners feel displaced. Free-lance journalist Silke Schumann says she's still trying to adapt to what she calls the West German 'elbow society.'

Ms. SILKE SCHUMANN (Journalist): By 'elbow society,' I mean that you have to push other people away to make your way. You have to show self-confidence. And this wasn't so in East Germany; it was the contrary. You had to be a group member who fit in and then you were allowed to progress. Of course, I do think that the American way of life did shape West Germany. It influenced the people who live there.

POGGIOLI: Many East Germans are now questioning the cost of freedom, both emotional and practical, that has come with reunification. TV shows and movies reflect a new wave of "ostalgie," nostalgia for the East.

(Soundbite of "Good bye, Lenin!")

Unidentified Woman: (German spoken)

POGGIOLI: "Good bye, Lenin!" has been a box office success for months. The movie satire tells the story of a hard-line Communist woman who in November 1989 has a heart attack and falls into a coma. When she wakes up eight months later, the wall has fallen, capitalism has triumphed and East and West are on the path to reunification. But her son believes this turn of events would be too devastating for her, so he undertakes an elaborate subterfuge to recreate the socialist world. He has to find disappearing East German groceries such as Spreewald pickles. He shoots fake newscasts and pays children to sing kitsch socialist tunes.

Outside the theater, we talk to Reinhold(ph). A man in his 40s, he has come to "Good bye, Lenin!" for a second time with his 14-year-old daughter. He says the movie has revealed to West Germans that real people lived in the East, each with their own personal narratives. It's a step, he says, toward psychological reunification.

REINHOLD: There was a certain dimension of Western life which was designed in the US, and there was a certain element of East German life that was designed in Moscow. Now things are moving, moving towards each other, moving towards Europe into a common future.

(Soundbite of traffic noise)

POGGIOLI: Today as Germans from West and East try to forge their new identity, many old taboos that solidified in the post-Nazi period are being broken. For the first time, books are being written on German suffering during the war. And two years after 9/11, fierce anti-Americanism is now more openly expressed than before. One of several conspiracy-based best-sellers even claims that the American and Israeli intelligence services brought down the World Trade Center. The book was written by a former government minister. And a recent poll in the magazine Der Spiegel showed that one in five Germans believes the US government was behind the attacks. Josef Joffe, co-editor of the weekly Die Zeit, says this new animosity toward the United States is rooted in simple fear.

Mr. JOSEF JOFFE (Co-editor, Die Zeit): America inflicts itself on the rest of the world. It's forcing people to become more competitive. It's forcing an enormous change on our economy, which makes people very uncomfortable. And so America is this ruthless, relentless engine of modernity.

POGGIOLI: Even those Germans who do not embrace the new anti-American conspiracy theories are increasingly wary of the United States. Michael Hoenisch is a professor of American studies at Berlin's Freie University. He's among those whose passion for all things American is being tested.

Professor MICHAEL HOENISCH (Freie University): It's a crisis in the love affair, one could say. The feeling of security that was spread by the United States is gradually being replaced by a feeling of being made at least uneasy.

POGGIOLI: There is a growing concern in Germany that America is less predictable than it was in the past. In fact, it's America's new angst about its own security that Germans find deeply unsettling. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.

BLOCK: We continue our series tomorrow with France. There's more on this story at our Web site, npr.org.

You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

LOAD-DATE: November 10, 2003

Posted by Ira Spitzer at February 24, 2004 12:08 AM