The Last Battle of the Cold War: Peace Movements and German Politics in the 1980s

Citation

Nehring H (2015) The Last Battle of the Cold War: Peace Movements and German Politics in the 1980s. In: Nuti L, Bozo F, Rey M & Rother B (eds.) The Euromissile Crisis and the End of the Cold War. Cold War International History Project. Stanford, CA, USA: Stanford University Press, pp. 309-330. http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25241

Abstract
First paragraph: This chapter examines societal reactions to NATO's "dual-track decision" and their implications for understanding the last decade of the Cold War. Instead of focusing on the peace movement as a direct reaction to NATO's and the superpowers' politics in the late 1970s, it shifts our attention to the longue durée of activism and how activists framed the question of nuclear weapons. The chapter argues that peace movements emerged from a profound uncoupling of German (both East and West) and superpower (both US and Soviet) conceptions of international security that had its roots in the mid-1970s. It was this perceived uncoupling of transatlantic security relations that in the 1980s led to the "last battle of the Cold War," which paradoxically created the conditions of possibility for a peaceful end to the Cold War.

People

Professor Holger Nehring

Chair in Contemporary European History, History