Hey, Jason Toon here. After growing up in the very Germanic burg of St. Louis, I was surprised to learn that not every American city had lager running in its gutters and polka bands at every street fair. This Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh about consumer culture, looks at how Americans rediscovered Germany after, it’s safe to say, a low point in the country’s image. In 1959, when New York adman George Lois landed the Volkswagen account, he described his task as “selling a Nazi car in a Jewish town.” Lois hoped that enough time had passed since World War II that the Volkswagen could shed the stain of its origins and be taken for what it was, an efficient, high-quality, well-engineered little car. A decade earlier, a different organization had faced a much more daunting task: luring American tourists to visit Germany itself in the years immediately following the war, while much of the country still lie in rubble and under military occupation. Could there have been a tougher sell in tourism history?
“Cobbled streets and beer-stained inns”After Germany surrendered in 1945, the nation was broken up into American, British, French, and Soviet occupation zones. By 1947, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Allies were not going to agree on a plan for reuniting Germany. The Soviet zone would effectively become its own country, the German Democratic Republic (usually shortened to GDR or “East Germany”), while the other three zones became the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or “West Germany”). Germany thus became the frontline of the Cold War conflict while the ruins of the last conflict was still smoldering. The US and its allies needed an economic miracle in West Germany to prove their ideological superiority over the Soviets, which meant reviving the FRG’s industries to bring in hard currency - in other words, American dollars. Just as importantly, the Western bloc needed to normalize West Germany as a regular old country, a member in good standing of the Free World, not least among the American, British, and French people themselves. Remember, this is the country that had started the worst war in human history. Revelations of Nazi atrocities were still coming to light. A million awful memories were all fresh in American minds. How would Germany, of all countries, be rehabilitated? A first glimpse came in the cover story in the July 21, 1947 issue of Life magazine. “Life Visits ‘Heidelberg High’” was a three-page photo journal following a group of American students currently studying in Heidelberg. This wasn’t the Germany of fanatical kommissars and rumbling tanks, but of “cobbled streets, wine cellars, and beer-stained inns.” The article’s sparse text made no mention of postwar hunger or destruction - Heidelberg had suffered less war damage than most German cities - despite the very visible presence of ruins in its bobbysoxer-in-lederhosen cover shot.
“All of the ultra-modern conveniences and comforts”That was the first image of Germany that the travel industry would sell, a colorful but non-threatening open-air beer hall. And doing the selling would be the German Central Tourist Association. Authorized by the Allied High Command, they opened German tourism offices in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Montreal in 1949. The GCTA’s free magazine, German Review, would develop this “folky, not völkisch” picture of America’s recent opponents with features like “Over the Silvery Slopes” and “Ivory Carving in Odin’s Forest”. Germany’s traditions of high culture were emphasized, too, with features on German painting, music, and ballet. Ad campaigns underscored the point.  We have ways of making you cozy The tourist offices also served as a PR agent for Germany as a whole, landing tidbits in US papers with fun facts like the 25 millions pets kept by Germans, “making Germany the world’s most pet-conscious country.” It was all aimed at furthering the image of a safe, benign, friendly, reassuringly normal nation. The, ahem, accomplishments of the previous 20 years were studiously ignored. But even those Americans ready to forgive, forget, and fly over would have found a Germany still in ruins after the war. A 1950 guidebook advised that “the average traveller will find little enjoyment in its devastated cities and its limited facilities.” Contemporary travel stories consistently mention “heaps of rubble” alongside the castles and museums that were still standing. Under the occupation, the economy was still being run on a ration system well into the 1950s, with local restaurants off-limits to foreigners. Sanitation could be spotty, too: as late as 1958, US newspapers were warning that “American tourists who plan to visit the Bundes Republik would do well to be cautious in what they eat and where they eat it.” So another angle taken by the tourist board was to emphasize Germany’s fast modernization. “An up-by-the-bootstraps vigor has built a new nation that now again has all of the ultra-modern conveniences and comforts,” as one ad put it. Berlin, in particular, took center stage in this story as a 24-hour, full-speed-ahead European capital that made Paris and London look stuffy: “the gayest night life in all Europe await you in this sophisticated city.”  Berlin is beckoning... the west side, anyway Again, the message underlying all of this was that the Germans, so recently our opponents, were now a trustworthy, reliable, and valuable ally. And they were ready to show Americans a good time. Putting out the wilkommen matAll in all, the rehabilitation of Germany in the postwar American mind happened remarkably quickly and thoroughly, given how recent and devastating the war was, and how completely Germany had been responsible for starting it. Maybe that was partially thanks to the tens of million of Americans of German descent, with family connections and memories dating back to before the war. The ongoing stationing of US military personnel in West Germany also helped, exposing the country’s ever-more-everyday reality to thousands of young Americans who may not otherwise have traveled abroad. Whatever role travel may have played in that rehabilitation, it’s definitely been a success for the German travel industry. From zero during the war, annual American visitors grew to 400,000 in 1950 and 900,000 by 1970. Today, some 7 million Americans visit Germany every year, making the US generally one of the country’s top two or three sources for overseas travelers. And it’s been many decades since those travelers needed reminding that there’s more to Germany than its darkest days.
I’ve been to Germany a few times, most recently on a Rhine River cruise that I’d recommend to anyone who’s able. It’s a little surprising how little remnant of the relatively recent WWII there is, and in fact how many centuries-old cathedrals and beer halls are still around, at least where I visited. How about you, ever been to Germany? Let’s hear about it in this week’s Shoddy Goods chat. These past Shoddy Goods stories combine Old World craftsmanship and Atomic Age energy into an enchanting getaway for the whole family:
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