Before the CIA

With the defeat of the Third Reich and the rapid collapse of the antifascist alliance, the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other in a geopolitical war that included a conflict for cultural preeminence on a global scale. In 1947 the USSR launched the Cominform to control the totality of the world Communist parties, and developed a centralized agenda of cultural warfare. Although the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created in 1947, its covert programs of cultural anticommunism only began in the 1950s. In this paper I show that, starting in 1946, a handful of cultural and political officers of the Office of Military Government U.S. in Germany (OMGUS) implemented overt and covert operations to attract German artists and intellectuals in the American Zone and Sector. They fostered political and personal links between German artists and the democratic West by forming cultural associations, subsidizing artists, and sponsoring exhibits and publications. Moreover, they relied on nongovernmental agents and private institutions to bypass the U.S. Congress and avoid domestic scrutiny of their actions. I will analyze a few examples of American actions aimed at the reintroduction of modern art in postwar Germany—the Prolog art group (1946), the Koerner exhibit (1947), and the von Rebay collection of abstract art (1948)

Alliance · Communism · Democracy · Economic history · Geopolitics · German · Government (linguistics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Scrutiny · Sociology · Superpower · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law · Public Administration

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  Charlotte M Canning, Charlotte Canning•Theatre Journal•2009

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• Kultur auf Trümmern

  Brewster S Chamberlin•Kultur Auf Trümmern•1979

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• The Berlin Secession

  Peter Paret•Berlin Secession•1980

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