German Peace Movement Research Articles

Fulda Gap: A board game, West German society, and a battle that never happened, 1975–85

This article explores the reception of the American-made board game Fulda Gap: The First Battle of the Next War in the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1980s. The German peace movement used the game, which depicted conventional, chemical, and nuclear war on German territory, as a potent symbol of what they believed to be American and NATO disregard for German lives and sovereignty. The controversy over the game reflected the changing character of German-American relations during the ‘Second Cold War’ and increasing concerns among Germans about the possible consequences of superpower conflict in Central Europe.

Memory and Protest in the West German Peace Movement of 1960s

When thinking the West German 1960s, the focus is often on the student movement and its radicalization after 1968. Nevertheless, the 1960s was a period of continuous political fermentation in country, that evolved connected to social and protest movements. This paper explores the role memory and historical culture had in these movements, especially to the extent that it was connected to recent, Nazi, past. It raises the argument that historical and memory culture shaped the environment within which protest movements evolved and at the same time was a main component of the political contestation they were part of. In order to do so, the paper will trace the process of memory work, especially as far as the conceptualization of the recent past was considered. More specifically, it will do so by examining the journal Informationen zur Abrüstung, which was published by the peace movement that developed in the political and cultural environment of the extra-parliamentary left, and focusing on the its references to the past, their contextualization and the meanings attributed to them.

Materializing German Old Testament Exegesis: The Social Historical Method in the Work of Willy Schottroff (1931–1997)

The progressive German-speaking scholarship produced by Old Testament exegete Willy Schottroff (1931–1997) is often neglected in historical reviews of biblical studies. Schottroff adhered to a marginalized intellectual tradition in German Protestant late twentieth-century Hebrew Bible scholarship that preserved and nurtured exegetical integrity and theological ethics in resistance to imperial intellectual and political ambitions and practices. This essay traces Schottroff’s exegetical efforts to read the Hebrew Bible with a method, called social historical criticism, not much known outside German-speaking contexts. Three sections depict Schottroff as standing in this liberationist-materialist view of historical criticism. A first section surveys my personal encounter with Schottroff’s work in the West German Post-Holocaust, Post Civil-Rights, and Peace Movement era of the late 1980s. A second section connects Schottroff’s reliance on social historical criticism to Gerhard von Rad’s insistence of historical criticism during the Nazi and Post-Holocaust German era. A third section analyzes the materialist German Hebrew Bible exegesis as it appears in the work of Willy Schottroff. A conclusion reflects on the politics of biblical historiography in German Post-Holocaust Old Testament exegesis.

The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s

The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s

Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp, editors. The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s.

Journal Article Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp, editors. The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s. Get access Christoph Becker-Schaum, Philipp Gassert, Martin Klimke, Wilfried Mausbach, and Marianne Zepp, editors. The Nuclear Crisis: The Arms Race, Cold War Anxiety, and the German Peace Movement of the 1980s. (Protest, Culture and Society, no. 19.) New York: Berghahn Books, 2016. Pp. xvii, 374. $120.00. The American Historical Review, Volume 122, Issue 2, April 2017, Pages 623–624, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/122.2.623c Published: 30 March 2017

Politics of Emotions: Journalistic Reflections on the Emotionality of the West German Peace Movement, 1979-1984

This article analyzes the reaction of the West German press to the powerful peace movement that gripped the Federal Republic of Germany between 1979 and 1984. Following NATO's double track decision and Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of pacifist and peace activists participated in rallies, meetings, and sit-ins to protest above all the politics of NATO. Unnerved by the amassing of nuclear, protesters expressed their fears and anxieties highly visible on placards and in pamphlets. This public display of “fear of atom” led to an intensive media debate about the validity and possible dangers of the protesters' emotionality. The press's coverage of the peace movement and the question of how protesters expressed their fears turned into a discussion over legitimate political participation.

Demilitarization in the Contemporary World, edited by Peter Stearns

in the Contemporary edited by Peter Steams. Urbana, Chicago and Springfield, University of Illinois Press, 2013. 265 pp. $55.00 US (cloth). Only a book on the imminent outbreak of world peace could be more unexpected than a volume dedicated to the contemporary state of demilitarization. A look at a newspaper in any country, any place in the world carries news of wars of every variety and the growing militarization, particularly in the US, of the police force, of civil society, of the government itself. Yet the editor and essayists in Peter Steams' collection in the Contemporary World make the case that the history of demilitarization is particularly important for the current moment. The word demilitarization can mean no more than demobilization in any given post-war period. Thought of this way it does not have much purchase--for mobilizations follow demobilization with depressing frequency. But a focus on particular cases of demilitarization allows an expanded definition and an analysis of the devolution of the militarization. The case studies include essays on post-war and post-unification Germany by Andrew Bickford and Jay Lockenour and an important discussion of the role of German peace movements by Holger Nehring. A second section focuses on Japan, with a discussion of constrained rearmament by Yoneyuki Sugita, Gerald Hook on the domestic and foreign pressures on Japanese security policies, Christopher Hughes on the push toward constitutional revision and a comparative essay on post-World War II demilitarization by Stephanie Trombley Averill. A concluding set of essays address, surprisingly, Central America. Peter Steams opens and closes the book with summary essays. Germany appears here not singly but doubly, even triply: the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and the Berlin Republic as Jay Lockenour names Germany after reunification. Under the Allied Occupation all of Germany was demilitarized in the sense that it was demobilized. (However, unlike the recent American occupation of Iraq, a German police force was maintained in all four zones to keep order.) The same was true in Japan. In both places, remilitarization came at the behest of the United States, though both countries acquiesced. In both countries too there was popular resistance based directly on the recent experience of total war. In both, remilitarization was at best partial or, as Sugita puts it about Japan constrained. We can read the cases of Japan and Germany in two ways: how remilitarization is inevitable or how fierce the ongoing resistance to full military mobilization remains. The opening sentences of Stephanie Trombley Averill's essay, Demilitarization and Democracy in the Post-World War II World, evokes what seems a distant historical era when it was axiomatic that democracies did not begin wars, and the words demilitarization and democracy were synonymous (p. …

Nuclear Politics, Past and Present: Comparison of German and Japanese Anti-Nuclear Peace Movements

This article addresses the question of what has contributed to the difference between German and Japanese nuclear politics in the post-Fukushima era. Germany has decided to phase out nuclear energy, but Japan has done the opposite. The origin of this difference can be traced back to the development of the anti-nuclear peace movement in the early 1980s. West Germans turned against nuclear energy as well as nuclear weapons, whereas Japanese peace activists carefully avoided the nuclear energy issue because of their concern over U.S.-Japan relations. The West German peace movement in the following years was in a position to foster cooperation between East and West Germans, whereas the Japanese movement missed the chance to go beyond the Cold War mentality.

Commemorating ‘Heroes of a Special Kind’: Deserter Monuments in Germany

Germany is one of the very few countries in the world with deserter monuments. Sparked by the Filbinger affair of 1978 and the protests of the German peace movement against NATO rearmament in the 1980s, a deserter monument movement emerged in numerous German cities, and by 2010 some 25 deserter monuments had been established across the country. These monuments fall into two main categories: those which specifically commemorate German soldiers who deserted from the Wehrmacht in the Second World War and those which are dedicated to honouring desertion as a matter of principle. Both types of monument qualify as a form of counter-monument, seeking to provoke reflection about traditional soldierly values and to challenge existing war memorials. The deserter monument movement and the monuments which it has spawned have played a significant role in shifting public perceptions about deserters from the Wehrmacht – leading to legal rehabilitation of the deserters in May 2002 – and have also contributed to the broader public debate about the role of the Wehrmacht in Hitler’s ‘war of annihilation’. The monuments occupy an important place in the evolving ‘memory culture’ ( Erinnerungskultur) of contemporary Germany, representing one example of continuing German attempts to rewrite the public narrative of German war experience.

Petra Kelly als Mittlerin in der transnationalen Friedensbewegung gegen den NATO-Doppelbeschluss

As the peace movement against the NATO Double-Track Decision should be seen as a transnational phenomenon – like it is argued in this article – the (West-)German politician of Alliance ’90/The Greens, Petra Kelly, can be interpreted as an important mediator in this transnational movement. While claiming to represent the interests of the social movement in the German Bundestag, Kelly established relations between members of the governments and anti-war protesters, acted herself as peace activist, held speeches at protest meetings in several West European Countries, in Japan and in the United States. In addition, Kelly also acted as a contact person for the East German civil rights activists and dissidents. Her widespread engagement for the peace movement evoked national and international response. By reference to relevant sources this article aims at portraying Petra Kelly’s role within both the East and the West German peace movement – embedded in a transnational context.

The Code of Protest: Images of Peace in the West German Peace Movements, 1945–1990

The article examines posters produced by the peace movements in the Federal Republic of Germany during the Cold War, with an analytical focus on the transformation of the iconography of peace in modernity. Was it possible to develop an independent, positive depiction of peace in the context of protests for peace and disarmament? Despite its name, the pictorial self-representation of the campaign ‘Fight against Nuclear Death’ in the late 1950s did not draw on the theme of pending nuclear mass death. The large-scale protest movement in the 1980s against NATO's 1979 ‘double-track’ decision contrasted female peacefulness with masculine aggression in an emotionally charged pictorial symbolism. At the same time this symbolism marked a break with the pacifist iconographic tradition that had focused on the victims of war. Instead, the movement presented itself with images of demonstrating crowds, as an anticipation of its peaceful ends. Drawing on the concept of asymmetrical communicative ‘codes’ that has been developed in sociological systems theory, the article argues that the iconography of peace in peace movement posters could not develop a genuinely positive vision of peace, since the code of protest can articulate the designation value ‘peace’ only in conjunction with the rejection value ‘war’.

Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany 1871-1932 (review)

Reviewed by: Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany 1871-1932 Guy Stern Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany 1871-1932, by Alan T. Levenson. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. 194 pp. $55.00. Virtually every aspect of the relationship between the Jews living in German-speaking countries and their non-Jewish contemporaries during the sixty-odd years prior to the Nazi accession to power has been analyzed and interpreted. Frequently and understandably a dismal, well-documented diagnosis of open or latent antisemitism emerged. Yet was there no countervailing trend in Germany and Austria, a validation of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish contributions, even as antisemitism and indifference became ever more dominant? That is precisely the question that Alan L. Levenson asked himself and, in the search for an answer, wrote the first cohesive study of philosemitism in Germany during the period of the Wilhelmine Empire and the Weimar Republic. Arising initially during the Wilhelmine Empire, as a counterforce to a politically inspired conservative and chauvinistic crop of philosophizing antisemites, philosemitic proponents never gained the coherence of the hate-groups. [End Page 189] As a result many individual champions became ultimately ineffective while fighting a defensive battle against the antisemites. To these non-Jewish apologists for their stigmatized Jewish contemporaries Levenson affixes the useful appellation of anti-antisemites. Yet even in taking this cautious position these defenders of the Jews would repeat such old bromides as "some of their best friends were Jewish" (p. 6) and they would take the additional defensive stance of credentialing themselves as non-Jews. To do otherwise would have made their advocacy suspect. At times the effort to shield oneself against the appearance of a pro-Jewish bias became tortuous. Members of the Abwehrverein, the Society for the Defense against antisemitism, would try to demonstrate their objectivity by simply appealing to Christian tolerance and equality under German law or even by "admitting" to certain flaws in the Jewish character as a show of objectivity. Levenson meticulously traces the various attitudes of these defenders of German Jewry during the duration of the Empire, highlighting the pioneering writings of Count Heinrich von Coudenhove-Kalergi (father of the founder of the Pan-Europe Movement), also on the benign stance of the Empress Augusta and, in a particularly enlightening excursus, on the ambivalent writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Equally enlightening is his finding that there was a frequent concinnity between the German Peace movement and philosemitism. In fact Bertha von Suttner, the pioneer of the peace movement and the recipient of the first Nobel Peace Price, became one of the earliest advocates of Theodor Herzl's Zionism. Levenson seeks further evidence for the existence of a philosemitic tendency by examining German-Christian literature. Unearthing examples that contrasted with the plethora of literary (and sub-literary) antisemitic texts does great credit to Levenson's research skills. But the results are meager: five novels and one drama, plus a few honorable mentions in the book's footnotes. Most are by authors little remembered, perhaps because "scholars in German studies appear to have neglected literary philosemitism entirely" (p. 44). The one text that for a while reached near-canonical standing, Wilhelm von Scholz's Der Jude von Konstanz stands, as Levenson points out, at a borderline between philo- and antisemitism. To be sure we encounter greatly sympathetic protagonists in these texts, but however well intentioned, the authors assign them usually to tragic, often brutal endings. With great surefootedness and elegance Levenson leads us next through the abnormality of missionary Protestants, especially Franz Delitsch and Hermann Strack, taking up the cause of anti-antisemitism. For example, they laid to rest the blood libel, and, even more laudable, they became exponents of philosemitism. Their goal of converting Jews did not hinder, perhaps even intensified, their [End Page 190] appreciation of Judentum. After careful analysis of the theology that induced this stance Levenson concludes, "Delitsch and Strack mounted the most aggressive defense of Judaism in Germany before World War I. . . ." (p. 89) In the second part of his study Levenson fills in the details. How did various groups across the political and theological spectrum react to Herzl...

Between philosemitism and antisemitism: defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany, 1871-1932

Philosemitism, as Alan T. Levenson explains it, is any pro-Jewish or pro-Judaic utterance or act. The German term for this phenomenon appeared in the language at roughly the same time as its more famous counterpart, antisemitism, and its emergence signifies an important, often neglected aspect of German-Jewish encounters. Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism offers the first assessment of the non-Jewish defense of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness from the foundation of the German Reich in 1871 until the ascent of the Nazis in 1932, when befriending Jews became a crime. Levenson takes an interdisciplinary look at fiction, private correspondence, and published works defending Jews and Judaism in early twentieth-century Germany. He reappraises the missionary Protestant defense of Judaism and advocacy of Jewry by members of the German peace movement. Literary analysis of middle-brow novels with positive Jewish characters and exploration of the reception of Herzlian Zionism further illuminate this often overlooked aspect of German-Jewish history. Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism shows the dynamic process by which a generally despised minority attracts defenders and supporters. It demonstrates that there was sympathy for Jews and Judaism in Imperial and Weimar Germany, although its effectiveness was bounded by the values of a bygone era and scattered across the political and social spectrum.

The Gender of War and Peace: Rhetoric in the West German Peace Movement of the Early 1980s

This article attempts to trace some of the gendered sources in drawing great numbers of feminists alongside other groups of Germans into the unprecedentedly large peace movement of the early 1980s. It examines some of the tensions and paradoxes of these sources, including concerning the relation between everyday violence and war, and regarding the relation between feminine characteristics and pacifism, and whether these characteristics could apply to both men and women. Finally the piece looks at the ways in which a gendered rhetoric became mapped onto the question of rearmament alongside disarmament in a fashion simultaneously extremely effective and potentially problematic, in setting up more and less useful visions of self' (as women and as West Germans) and other, and the relationship between them.

Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy

Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy

Air War Legacies: From Dresden to Baghdad

In the months leading up to the Anglo-American war against Saddam Hussein's regime, the legacies of the 60-year-old air war against German cities infused the German peace movement and its growing opposition to Washington's unilateralism. While all over Europe the massive opposition to the war was politically justified, the German case displays a curious mix of memory and forgetting that sets it apart. The use of treacherous and facile historical analogies was ubiquitous in Germany, and it seemed to point to a new paradigm of thinking temporality and space in our post-utopian times. Contemporary media culture generates uses of the past that tend to blur temporal and spatial boundaries in deeply problematic ways. The fast pace of change and anticipations of the future so characteristic of an earlier modernity have radically slowed down in recent years. In a world in which visions of the future are largely discredited, the present comes to be ever more expanded, and the past looms large, partly as a result of a wave of transnational memory politics, but also because of new media technologies of cultural recycling. We are now witnessing a kind of time-space expansion in the imaginary that stands in tension with the very real time-space compression of modernity that David Harvey has described so well.1 But what precisely is the nature of this time-space expansion? Are we exposed to substantive historical narratives, or are these mediated pasts

Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy. By Steve Breyman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Pp. xx+364. $23.95 (paper).

<i>Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy</i>. By Steve Breyman. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Pp. xx+364. $23.95 (paper).

Why movements matter: the West German peace movement and U.S. arms control policy

Why movements matter: the West German peace movement and U.S. arms control policy

Why Movements Matter. The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy

Why Movements Matter. The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy

Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy

Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy