A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany. By Maria Hohn and Martin Klimke (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. xxvii plus 254 pp.)

Abstract

Maria Höhn and Martin Klimke's A Breath of Freedom, which takes its title from a phrase by Colin Powell (1, 175), interweaves US military, African American, and European histories to explore the transnational dimensions of the Civil Rights Movement from 1945 onward. By assessing this often overlooked but important chapter in the Civil Rights Movement and Cold War European politics, the authors shed light on the centrality of African American soldiers' experiences overseas and Germany's critical role in the history of US race relations and postwar Europe. A Breath of Freedom also serves as a companion to the website and digital archive, “The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany” (www.aacvr-germany.org). Intended for a general audience, the volume, website, and archive will benefit educators, scholars, and students interested in transnational activism, internationalizing US history, and Cold War culture in Europe. Höhn and Klimke analyze how African American GIs' exposure to a country without an American-styled color line motivated them to agitate for civil rights at home and abroad. They contend that it was in Germany, during the Allied occupation and then the Cold War, that the international community witnessed the contradictions of America's ideals. The US military's efforts to democratize and denazify postwar Germany coexisted with officially sanctioned Jim Crow segregation in the army.