| Germany played a major role in Europe for the last two centuries, especially since German unification in 1871. Germans remain the largest ethnic group in Europe and are critical to the economic fortunes of the rest of the continent. Germany led the Central Powers during the First World War, and under Hitler's leadership, started the Second World War in Europe. After the destruction of the Third Reich, both East and West Germany were part of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since its reunification 20 years ago, Germany remains a member of NATO and the European Union. For these and other reasons, German affairs often played a pivotal role in U.S. foreign policy during the twentieth century.;This is a study of how Foreign Affairs, the journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations, covered German affairs from its first issue in 1922 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Several hundred articles from the journal were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The journal's treatment of the topic was divided into five historical periods: the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Second World War, the Early Cold War, and the Late Cold War. Research revealed that the founders of the Council on Foreign Relations and the first editors of Foreign Affairs held Eurocentric worldviews, which meant that the journal's initial coverage of German affairs was extensive. However, the journal's treatment of German affairs declined during the Cold War, when regional and global issues became more important to the journal than national concerns. |
