Some German Reactions to Donald Trump’s Early Presidency

A few days before Clio’s Psyche’s Call for Papers on aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency, I bought a book in Salzburg, Austria, which attempts to explain Americans to Germans. Christoph von Marschall wrote What Is It About the Americans? About

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Our Conflicting Relationship with the U.S. [German titles were translated into English by the author] a few years earlier with a different subtitle, and republished it in 2016. He reworked the book not because of Trump’s arrival in the White House, but to explain the significant differences between German and American thinking and behavior. He wrote from the context of a German journalist assigned to the U.S., including places such as the White House.

Several of von Marschall’s points make immense sense. As a group, Germans view the state as a guarantor rather than a restraint on their freedoms and liberties. By contrast, Americans traditionally have viewed the state’s activities as an intrusion into their freedoms and liberties. Health care is a good example of this difference. Germans consider health insurance for all a guarantee for their continued wellbeing, if not independence, in case of a catastrophic illness; it is a societal obligation. Americans generally perceive a federally mandated obligation for everyone to have health care a government intrusion that results in them losing the freedom to have or not to have health insurance. Von Marschall astutely points out an obvious, more recent contradiction in American thinking and behavior. While Germans resist the state’s incursion into their private lives with various security measures, Americans are almost eager, since 9/11, to allow their federal government to grant access to almost every aspect of their private lives so as to assure them of a greater sense of security.

Because of books like this, as well as extensive and continuous media coverage of the U.S., Germans generally know more about the United States than Americans do about Germans. Trump’s uninformed rhetoric reinforces the American ignorance. Let me confirm only these few facts: Germany is one of the four largest economies in the world and its relatively small family businesses that are the engine of the economy are doing well; for 2017, economists anticipate a growth rate of 1.6% for the country. It is a very middle-class nation, especially Bavaria, the state in the southeast part of the country, with its mostly Catholic, conservative population, and with a literacy rate of 99%. A few decades ago, it was the most backward German state, but thanks to astute political leadership, it is now one of the most successful.

As von Marschall indicates, even before Trump, because of high tax rates, the German federal and state governments can afford expenses that would make many Americans cringe or envious. They looked at America’s supposed wealth and wondered why we

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run such enormous deficits, do not have health care for everyone, have an infrastructure that is crumbling, and are constantly in a fight about the role of the federal government. Also, why did so many hate Obama so much? Why did we not close Guantanamo? Why? Why? Why?

In the area of Bavaria east of Lake Chiem where we live right now, men, women, and their offspring seem to be outside their homes the moment the sun shows itself, walking, sitting, and in conversation with each other and anyone else near them. That is why, for the most part, I let this talkative group have their say without imposing my questions and ideas. I’d like to sort the 40 or so individuals who spoke with us into two basic categories. First, there were the men and women of farm and working backgrounds who usually asked questions. Second, there were women and men in the middle to upper classes like doctors, intellectuals, and owners of businesses who tended to share clearly developed opinions. They rarely asked questions.

The most frequent questions I heard this winter were: Why did so many people vote for Trump? Are they nuts? What is this Electoral System? Why is Trump against the EU and Germany? Why is the German press so obsessed with this man?

Before discussing the observations I heard, I will set the scene with a relevant political joke, since Germans love to tell them. The announcer of the Bavarian classical radio station warned his audience that a lone driver is headed in the wrong direction on Autobahn A9. “Please watch out for a car headed east.” The man headed east looks at the on-coming traffic and mutters to himself: “He must be wrong. All these cars…they are all headed in the wrong direction.”

One doctor, our primary care physician, whose brother is an exchange faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh, commented that it is odd to him that the university’s president expressed to the faculty his support of their opposition to the travel ban against seven Muslim countries. He added: “Things must really be bad!” A neurosurgeon whom I see for my back problems told me that his whole world has been shaken up. He understood the world in which we (Europe and the U.S.) stood by each other until now and cannot fathom how things will continue “in this unsettled way.” He asked, “Are they all afraid? Why?” “Well,” he finally said, “I am definitely concerned about what I am hearing and reading.”

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A neurologist said that he can hardly believe that so many American voters chose Trump. “Did they not read or hear that he is a total liar and has rather unique views of the world?” In this older man’s opinion, Donald Trump is untrustworthy. In contrast to this, Peter Lange, a journalist with Deutschlandradio who is now stationed in Berlin and Prague, and recent author in Clio’s Psyche, in an email dated February 13 doubts that Trump is the only one to blame. “Trump did not win,” he wrote, “because so many people wanted to vote for him but rather because Hillary Clinton was so pitifully weak” as a candidate.

A close friend, an active psychologist in her mid-80s, sees in Trump the textbook version of the narcissist. She said that in her 50-plus years of counseling, “I have never seen such an obvious version of this phenomenon.” Although, as she put it, she hesitated to analyze from afar, her greatest fear is that he will lash out at the whole society if he is hindered in a significant way, or sees a connected opportunity to assume complete control over the government. She additionally expressed her concern that Trump scowled every time she saw him in interviews: “He never seems to smile.” Most importantly (she emphasized this twice), she perceives him as cold, brutal, aggressive, and manipulative. After she had made the last point, she ventured, “There is an obvious lack of self-control… and deep inner anger.”

The owner of a furniture store commented, “We had this before in this country, twice really [the National Socialists regime and the communist German Democratic Republic], we do not need it again.” I asked if she was afraid that Trump’s presidency would encourage right-wing groups in Germany and in Europe, to which she said, “Natürlich!” (“Naturally!”) Others offered the opposite view, namely that Trump’s erratic behavior encourages people to think twice about supporting right-wing groups. This opinion was expressed strongly for a few days in various dailies.

Initially several other persons, knowing or sensing somehow that we are Americans, saw Trump as another Berlusconi (the former Italian prime minister): laughable at best. But since early February, more conversations and TV analyses mention Trump in the same breath as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The authoritarian tendencies in all three and the similarities in their aspirations are seen as more obvious. I am not certain about the origin of this awareness, but the press, TV, and the Internet definitely play a role. Hans-Ulrich Jörges, a member of

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 Stern’s editorial board (#5, January 25, 2017, 14) strongly urged Europeans to stand by what has been accomplished since 1945 and 1989, admonishing them to not turn from the world and traditional values by embracing right-wing types like Trump.

On February 10, I watched a conversation on TV between Michael Krons and the political scientist and Humboldt University of Berlin professor Herfried Münkler. Münkler is the author of numerous books, including The New Germans: A Country Before Its Future (2016) and The New Wars (2004). He took it for granted that Trump, Putin, and Erdoğan belong in the same category of authoritarian personalities and that they consciously undermine democratic institutions, having used them to attain power in the first place. He noted that Trump is using familiar tactics to attain his goal of undermining democratic institutions, namely spreading fake news with the intent to erode the authority of the press, ignoring traditional bureaucracies, co-opting the legislature, and attacking the court system.

Maybe I should not have been surprised how rarely Hitler is mentioned in this context. My daughter, who lives in Germany and writes extensively in different venues, says that she is reminded of the period before the accession of Hitler in 1933. The political chaos in the U.S. is to her indicative of what is about to happen; namely, the complete splitting into aggressive camps as well as false and abusive language that enabled an authoritarian figure like Hitler’s success.

One of my childhood friends, the conservative author of some 25 books and hundreds of articles, shared a different opinion: “Stephen Bannon reminds me of Joseph Goebbels.” Goebbels was the Third Reich’s propaganda minister and one of Hitler’s closest confidants and aides. When I doubted this assertion, he offered, “Look at his extreme nationalistic program and where he sits in the hierarchy.”

Peter Lange shared my doubt about the connection to Goebbels. In the same email from February 13, he wrote, “Hitler and Goebbels are unique and cannot be used as a club against Trump.” He argued instead that “whenever ‘conservative revolutions’ are pronounced, Caesarian, Napoleonic, and Pre-fascist regimes are not far off.” These are authoritarian figures who have entered into an alliance with the lower classes and in this way pushed or push out traditional elites. The Argentinian President Juan Peron is a perfect

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example of this phenomenon. Lange wrote, “This is where I see the most significant parallel to Trump.” Connecting the Third Reich with Trump gives the American too much importance.

One theme that returned often in these conversations is that American voters must be dumb to have voted for Trump. A secretary in a doctor’s office said that she cannot believe such foolishness, commenting “What’s wrong with them?” Münkler’s response was unique. He said that it may well be that many white male voters were disillusioned with the American system because of their exclusion from access to good jobs and prospects. But he added that while some voters have a deep understanding of aspects of a society, the majority has neither the time nor capacity to analyze the complexity of many issues facing most modern societies. Münkler did not say so, but some of our conversation partners indicated that Trump’s ignorance is an appeal to some; an ignorance that reflects their own and his prejudices and in his case a concentration on real estate and not on the complexities of his own country, let alone those of the world.

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