In the two decades after World War II, Germans on both sides of the iron curtain fought vehemently over American cultural imports. This book traces how westerns, jeans, jazz, rock 'n' roll, and stars like Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley reached adolescents in both Germanies, who eagerly adopted the new styles. It reveals that East and West German authorities deployed gender and racial norms to contain Americanized youth cultures in their own territories and to carry on the ideological Cold War battle with each other.

American Culture in East and West German Reconstruction -- The Wild Ones: The 1956 Youth Riots and German Masculinity -- Lonely Crowds and Skeptical Generations: Depoliticizing and Repoliticizing Cultural Consumption -- Jazz and German Respectability -- Presley, Yes-Ulbricht, No? Rock 'n' Roll and Female Sexuality in the German Cold War.

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