Peter Von Zahn's Cold War Broadcasts To West Germany: Assessing America (palgrave Studies In The History Of The Media)
by Eli Nathans /
2017 / English / PDF
8.1 MB Download
This book examines the pioneering radio broadcasts and television
documentaries about the United States made in the 1950s by the
influential West German journalist Peter von Zahn. Part
intellectual biography, part analysis of significant debates in
West Germany, part study of an intensive encounter with the
United States, the book helps explain the transformation of
postwar West Germany. As a soldier in the Wehrmacht in World War
II, Zahn held the militantly elitist views typical of young men
in Germany’s educated middle class. He reconsidered these
positions in his postwar broadcasts. At the same time he coldly
assessed the capacity of the United States to win the Cold War.
His broadcasts examined McCarthyism, the African-American civil
rights movement, and numerous aspects of American culture and
politics. Zahn’s broadcasts were one important voice in West
German debates about the defects and virtues of modern democratic
societies and especially of the United States, debates whose
intensity reflected recent German experiences with the failure of
the Weimar Republic and with Nazism. Zahn’s analyses of the
United States remain startlingly relevant today.
This book examines the pioneering radio broadcasts and television
documentaries about the United States made in the 1950s by the
influential West German journalist Peter von Zahn. Part
intellectual biography, part analysis of significant debates in
West Germany, part study of an intensive encounter with the
United States, the book helps explain the transformation of
postwar West Germany. As a soldier in the Wehrmacht in World War
II, Zahn held the militantly elitist views typical of young men
in Germany’s educated middle class. He reconsidered these
positions in his postwar broadcasts. At the same time he coldly
assessed the capacity of the United States to win the Cold War.
His broadcasts examined McCarthyism, the African-American civil
rights movement, and numerous aspects of American culture and
politics. Zahn’s broadcasts were one important voice in West
German debates about the defects and virtues of modern democratic
societies and especially of the United States, debates whose
intensity reflected recent German experiences with the failure of
the Weimar Republic and with Nazism. Zahn’s analyses of the
United States remain startlingly relevant today.