The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties - Paperback

by Martin Klimke (Author)

Using previously classified documents and original interviews, The Other Alliance examines 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 Alliance is a pioneering work of transnational history.

Back Jacket

"As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the sixties upheavals, there is much to discover about the global character of those radical days. It all seemed more spontaneous than coordinated, spread by media images rather than transnational organizations. But Martin Klimke's book illustrates some of the little-known interactions that linked the movements in the United States and Germany in a quest for a new international resistance. This is the most original and well-written academic contribution to understanding those times that I have read."--Tom Hayden, author of The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama.

"This fantastic book offers a completely new vantage point on the history of the cold war. It demonstrates brilliantly the value of serious attention to transnationally interconnected and critically idealist social movements, and to the challenges faced by the U.S. government in grappling with them."--Dagmar Herzog, Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Klimke's meticulous research and serious reflection greatly deepen and widen our knowledge of the turbulent years of transatlantic protest from a half-century ago. His book is also a considerable contribution to our thinking about modern social movements--and the response of beleaguered elites to crises for which they are, almost invariably, intellectually unprepared. It is, therefore, as contemporary as the most recent demonstrations on Capitol Hill or at the Brandenburg Gate."--Norman Birnbaum, Georgetown University

"Aptly titled, The Other Alliance rethinks the generational revolt of the sixties era. Klimke brings to life a transnational movement that linked radicals on both sides of the Atlantic to a global struggle for power and justice. Must reading for '68ers and those who seek to understand the history they made."--David Farber, author of The Age of Great Dreams

"The book's execution is impressive and the research is breathtaking: meticulous work in archives, numerous interviews with key figures, and comprehensive readings of the secondary literature. Klimke uncovers all kinds of links between the American and West German student movements; contextualizes these within social movement theory and other models; and teaches readers a great deal about the American and West German New Left and the rebellions of 1968. This book is clearly a labor of immense passion, discipline, intelligence, and insight."--Jeremy Varon, Drew University

"Martin Klimke's sparkling look at the stormy, transatlantic Sixties illuminates the startling cultural, intellectual and political threads of internationalism at the heart of the myriad youth revolutions then storming the ramparts. This brilliant young historian has unearthed a dazzling array of US/German interconnections woven into the jumble of GI resistance, women's rebellions, Black liberation, student militancy, government surveillance, and the common, fierce determination--here and there, not to be 'good Germans.'"--Bernardine Dohrn, Northwestern University, School of Law

"Unlike most accounts of 1968, Martin Klimke bursts the boundaries of nationalist histories in this well-crafted portrayal of the New Left's transnational origins. His evidence of the simultaneous emergence of common tactics, ideas, and dreams among activists in Germany and the US illustrates both autonomy and connections between the two movements. By tracing protesters' effects on the White House and US foreign policy, Klimke provides evidence of their impact at the highest levels of world power."--George Katsiaficas, author of The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968

Author Biography

Martin Klimke is research fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg.