Public Diplomacy began in Germany.

• Author: Richmond, Yale

Editor's Note: Public Diplomacy existed long before the common use of the term and a case can be made that the modern form of Public Diplomacy was "perfected" in postwar Germany. -Ed.

The United States is currently debating whether Public Diplomacy--talking directly to the people of another country--should be conducted by the State Department, with its more qualified personnel, or by the Department of Defense, with its much greater financial resources.

However, it is not well known that Public Diplomacy began in the late 1940s in occupied Germany under the Office of Military Government, US (OMGUS), and long before the term Public Diplomacy was coined.

The "Reorientation Program," as it was called, was the first Public Diplomacy effort of the US government, and its objective was to reorient the Germans to democracy by communicating directly with the people. "Reorientation" was chosen over "democratization" because the Russians, in their zone of Germany, had so abused the word democracy; and "reeducation" was rejected because it sounded too patronizing. The Program was carried out by U.S. Military Government Officers (MGOs), most of whom were civilians, as was I, and were stationed in each county of the US Zone.

At war's end, German newspapers and radio stations had been established, directed, and staffed first by US military personnel, and then by Germans appointed by OMGUS. In major cities of the US Zone, American cultural centers, "America Houses, as they were called," were opened with a variety of cultural and information programs for the German people. They proved so popular that, years later, when some of them had to be closed for budgetary reasons, some German cities offered to pay all of the costs required to keep them open.

At the local level, the Reorientation Program consisted mainly of encouraging the Germans to hold Burgerversammlungen (town meetings), an innovation that was revolutionary for Germany. The objective was to encourage Germans to question their elected officials on local issues and make the officials more responsive to the citizenry. The meetings also had the support of owners of the inns where they were held, and where barrels of the good German beer were rolled out to be quaffed by the thirsty Burgers and Bauern (townspeople and peasants) as they voiced their many complaints to their elected officials, and also to the MGOs, as representatives of the occupying power.

Documentary film showings were another...