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Using previously classified documents and original interviews,The Other Allianceexamines the channels of cooperation between American and West German student movements throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, and the reactions these relationships provoked from the U.S. government. Revising the standard narratives of American and West German social mobilization, Martin Klimke demonstrates the strong transnational connections between New Left groups on both sides of the Atlantic. Klimke shows that the cold war partnership of the American and German governments was mirrored by a coalition of rebelling counterelites, whose common political origins and opposition to the Vietnam War played a vital role in generating dissent in the United States and Europe. American protest techniques such as the \"sit-in\" or \"teach-in\" became crucial components of the main organization driving student activism in West Germany--the German Socialist Student League--and motivated American and German student activists to construct networks against global imperialism. Klimke traces the impact that Black Power and Germany's unresolved National Socialist past had on the German student movement; he investigates how U.S. government agencies, such as the State Department's Interagency Youth Committee, advised American policymakers on confrontations with student unrest abroad; and he highlights the challenges student protesters posed to cold war alliances. Exploring the catalysts of cross-pollination between student protest movements on two continents,The Other Allianceis a pioneering work of transnational history.

The anti-authoritarian revolt of the 1960s and 1970s was a watershed in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The rebellion of the so-called '68ers' - against cultural conformity and the ideological imperatives of the Cold War, against the American war in Vietnam, and in favor of a more open accounting for the crimes of the Nazi era - helped to inspire a dialogue on democratization with profound effects on German society. Timothy Scott Brown examines the unique synthesis of globalizing influences on West Germany to reveal how the presence of Third World students, imported pop culture from America and England, and the influence of new political doctrines worldwide all helped to precipitate the revolt. The book explains how the events in West Germany grew out of a new interplay of radical politics and popular culture, even as they drew on principles of direct-democracy, self-organization and self-determination, all still highly relevant in the present day.

Many of the most iconic moments of Germany's “1968” took place in the walled confines of West Berlin, the emblematic Cold War city often referred to as the “capital of the revolt.” Most accounts portray the events in West Berlin as having been characterized by confrontations between the leftist student movement, on the one hand, and a conservative press and generally hostile, older, urban population, on the other. This article rethinks and refines existing historiographical narratives of the 1968 student movement in West Berlin, as well as of West Berlin's place in the student movement. It examines the actions and experiences of student activists in West Berlin, who rarely feature in the familiar narrative—namely, Christian Democratic activists, particularly those from the Association of Christian Democratic Students (RCDS). Using oral history interviews, memoirs, and a wide array of archival sources from German and US archives, the article sheds light on the background of some of the most important conservative players and discusses the manifold ways in which they engaged with the goals of the revolutionary left in the city. The analysis pays special attention to the effects that German division and life in West Berlin had on Christian Democratic activists, to the sources of their anti-Communism, and to their views about the US-led war in Vietnam, a major Cold War conflict that carried special resonance in the divided city. The article concludes that there were important (yet shifting and often porous) dividing lines in West Berlin's “1968” other than those that separated politicized students from an older and more conservative city leadership and population, a conclusion that calls for a modification of the familiar storyline that simply pits Rudi Dutschke and others on the left against the city's “establishment.” The article suggests that this has repercussions for interpretations of the student movement that center on generation. It argues, in short, that Christian Democratic students—activists who were, in effect, other ’68ers—helped to shape and were, in turn, shaped by the events that took place in West Berlin in 1968. Viele der zentralen Ereignisse der westdeutschen 68er-Bewegung spielten sich in West Berlin ab, einer Stadt, die wie kaum eine andere durch den Kalten Krieg geprägt wurde und die oft als “Hauptstadt der Revolte” bezeichnet wird. Die meisten Studien über “1968” in West-Berlin sehen die zentrale Konfliktlinie dieser Zeit zwischen der linken Studentenbewegung und einer älteren, konservativeren und anti-kommunistisch geprägten Stadtbevölkerung verlaufen, die den politisierten Studenten mehrheitlich feindlich gegenüberstand. Dieser Aufsatz hinterfragt dieses gängige historiographische Narrativ, indem er einerseits bisher wenig bekannte Aspekte der studentischen Mobilisierung in West Berlin um 1968 analysiert und andererseits den Ort West Berlins in der Geschichte der Studentenbewegung neu auslotet. Im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung stehen die Erfahrungen und Handlungen einer Gruppe studentischer Aktivisten, die in der Historiographie bislang kaum belichtet worden ist—Aktivisten aus dem West-Berliner Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten (RCDS). Basierend auf Oral History Interviews, autobiografischen Texten und einer Vielzahl zeitgenössischer Quellen aus deutschen und amerikanischen Archiven stellt der Aufsatz einige der Protagonisten dieser studentischen Hochschulgruppe vor und diskutiert ihr Verhältnis zur revolutionären linken Bewegung. Die Auswirkungen, die der Krieg in Vietnam, die deutsche Teilung, sowie die Existenz der Berliner Mauer auf die handelnden Akteure hatten, stehen im Fokus der Analyse. Es wird argumentiert, dass “1968” nicht nur eine bedeutende Trennlinie zwischen der politisierten Studentenschaft und der Berliner Bevölkerung verlief, sondern dass es ebenfalls signifikante politische Auseinandersetzungen innerhalb der Studentenschaft gab, die bisher nicht eingehend untersucht worden sind. Der Artikel zeigt auf, dass die Beteiligung christdemokratischer Akteure an den Schlüsselereignissen der Studentenbewegung darüber hinaus etablierte generationelle Deutungen von “1968” in Frage stellt. Christdemokratische Aktivisten werden hier als “andere ‘68er” interpretiert, die von dieser Zeit ebenso geprägt wurden-und sie wiederum prägten—wie ihre linken Kommilitonen.

George Orwell said that all writing is political; but the writers of some nations and some periods are more political than others. German writers after 1945 have exemplified such heightened politicization, and this book considers their contribution to the democratic development of Germany by looking principally at their directly political, non-fictional writings. It pays particular attention to writers and the student movement of the 1960s and '70s, when some proclaimed the death of literature and called for a turn to direct political action. Yet writers in both parts of Germany gradually came to identify with their respective states, even if the idea of one Germany never entirely disappeared. The unification of 1989-1990, in which this idea astonishingly became reality, posed a major (and some would say unmet) challenge to writers in both East and West. After looking at this period of intense political activities, the book considers the continuing East/West division and changing attitudes to the Nazi past, asking whether the intellectual climate has swung to the right. It also asks to what extent political involvement has been a generational project for the immediate postwar generation and is less important for younger writers who see the Federal Republic as a 'normal' democratic state. Stuart Parkes is Emeritus Professor of German from the University of Sunderland (UK).

'Spiel Appeal' offers a cultural reading of one important element of the youth consciousness which underpinned events in West Germany between 1967 and 1969 and which shaped the legacy of those years: drug consumption. Drugs were part and parcel of a new vision of leftism, primarily among the nation's young adults, that helped enable West Germany's 1968. Sixty-eighters did not use recreational drugs as a simple form of juvenile protest or as a pure escape, nor was drug use a regrettable excess, as some rueful sixty-eighters later argued. In the individual life stories of sixty-eighters, as reflected in both autobiographies and novels, the drugs' primary roles were as facilitators of community and 'awakening'. They were essential elements of the playful leftist counterculture which youth and leftists invented concretely throughout Germany at the onset of the 1970s in the form of urban sub-cultures and alternative 'scenes', the invention of which constitutes one of the most important social legacies of 1968.

A small group within the German student movement of the 1960s expressed its critique of society in humorous protests that condensed the urge for a non-materialist, individualistic, and libertarian change. In the early phase of an emerging cycle of protest, Spassguerilla [fun guerrilla] contributed to shaping the face of the student movement, despite differences with the more traditional groups within that movement. In happenings, pamphlets, and judicial trials, humorous activists derided conventional ways of thinking and living. A responsive environment played a decisive role in shaping the image of the insurgents, thus reinforcing the impact of their actions and drawing in sympathizers.