Emeritus Professors Gerald R. Kleinfeld and David E. Barclay spent the better part of their long academic careers considering the parallel and inter-connected histories of Germany and the United States – countries that were central to shaping the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. In 2025 they entered into a retrospective, long-form conversation about these two countries that was recorded over three sessions and transcribed for this book.
This free-ranging engagement covers issues including the changing relationships between German chancellors and US presidents, the communist German Democratic Republic, the western-oriented Federal Republic, and their eventual unification. It further deals with the way NATO and the East viewed each other in the Cold War, and how the uncertainties of the present going into the future will likely be amplified. Not least because the institutions that once helped bind Germany and the United States together, indeed helped bind the West, have been weakened and may no longer be fit for purpose.
But their conversation also indicates the way forward. As they discuss, in 1976 Kleinfeld founded the Western Association for German Studies (later renamed the German Studies Association) with the remit to engage with contemporary Germany, not just its historical antecedents. As it evolved, this group then found a way to help bring people together from across the politcal divide of the Cold War – and it is an outome like this that reminds us of the genuine efficacy of soft power
The German-American Relationship not only reveals the details of the engagement between Germany and the United States, but in its mode it also reveals the power of conversation. In fractious times, an ability to sit down and discourse, with reason and evidence, is a vital bulwark against powerful forces that attempt to divide us. In conversation, whether that be between two professors or two countries, we can identify what unites us.
Format
PDF:
First Edition, August 2026
© 2026 Ueberschwarz Pty Ltd
ISBN 978-1-922686-15-2
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND