The experience of an American abroad
She wasn’t culture-shocked when she arrived.
“It’s the same in the sense that it’s the Western standard of living,” Yvonne Dunham says of Dresden, Germany. Besides, the senior English major has had practice adjusting to new scenery: Dunham moved to Prague with her parents her senior year of high school.
In spring of 2003, she was living on campus at the Dresden University of Technology, learning to teach English as a second language.
Days before she arrived, the United States began bombing Iraq.
“It was so immediate,” says Dunham, a senior English major. “If I made a new acquaintance, American politics would come up. Generally, most Germans dislike what we’re doing politically as a country.” Despite this, Dunham says people asked to know her opinions before labeling her a “dumb American.”
The German government had been against the use of military force in Iraq, favoring continued negotiations with the United Nations instead.
Criticism of President Bush’s foreign policies was not only spoken in the streets — it was written on banners and signs hanging from windows and balconies in the city, Dunham says.
The Germans’ reaction must be understood within its historical context. “To Germany, it’s being too nationalistic,” Dunham says. “Americans need to realize what we’re doing looks to (Germans) like what Nazi Germany was doing.” Fervid nationalism was a tool the Nazi Party used to command unwavering loyalty.
“I think it’s very reasonable that Germany would think that about Americans,” Dunham says.
After word of German sentiment reached newscasts and front pages in the United States, the U.S. popular boycott of German, as well as French, imports began. Freedom food names were coined. U.S. patriotism became visible, with American flags flying from car antennas and “God Bless America” signs hanging in windows.
The children of one elementary school in Germany had their own ideas about the war. Covering the windows of their school, flocks of construction-paper doves suggested the children’s alternative.
— Jessica Rothschuh
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