Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9780691131276

Table of Contents

Reviews

The Other Alliance takes the protest movements in West Germany and the United States ... as a case study of how activists in different countries shared political ideas and forms of protest an in doing so influenced and inspired each other. But unlike some other analyses, his focuses on the 'exact processes' by which the two movements constructed a 'collective identity'... What emerges from Klimke's study is an impressively nuanced picture. -- Hans Kundnani, Times Literary Supplement This logically organized, persuasive study of the transnational character of the 1960s student protest movement focuses on the relationship between New Left groups in the US and West German. Klimke, utilizing an impressive array of sources ranging from official archives to oral history interviews, examines the interaction between Students for a Democratic Society and its West German counterpart, the German Socialist Student League, as he makes his case for the significance of a student-led 'other alliance' that emerged in response to the perceived inadequacies and inanities of the official Western transatlantic partnership that evolved after 1945... Klimke's examination of one aspect of the international protest movement that took shape during this era is impressive. -- Choice Martin Klimke's new study, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany & the United States in the Global Sixties, represents an important attempt to go beyond vague generalizations about the 'global' to find ways of accessing and analyzing the pronounced interconnectedness that characterized the rebellion of the 1960s... Klimke makes excellent use of a range of sources, including classified American government documents that open up a fascinating perspective on how intelligence agencies viewed the threat of student unrest... [W]e can be grateful for Martin Klimke's excellent study, which represents an important addition to the vast and growing historical literature on the global sixties. -- Timothy Scott Brown, Journal of American History Klimke brings important new information about international connections that concretizes the often (overly) general discussions of the international student movement... Klimke has produced a valuable addition to the burgeoning literature on 1968. He has contributed to the effort to rescue 1968 from the 68ers and to specify what happened as opposed to what people 'remember.' -- Michael L. Hughes, Central European History The Other Alliance is a great read. It is an ambitious work that performs the valuable service of forcing us to think in new ways about the sixties as an aspect of globalization. Not only scholars of the sixties, but also those interested in transnational aspects of protest movements will need to take this work seriously. It is a valuable book for scholars well beyond the boundaries of German and American studies. I recommend it strongly, and have already begun to incorporate it into my work. -- Lorenzo Bosi, Mobilization

The Other Alliance takes the protest movements in West Germany and the United States ... as a case study of how activists in different countries shared political ideas and forms of protest an in doing so influenced and inspired each other. But unlike some other analyses, his focuses on the 'exact processes' by which the two movements constructed a 'collective identity'... What emerges from Klimke's study is an impressively nuanced picture. -- Hans Kundnani, Times Literary Supplement

The Other Alliance takes the protest movements in West Germany and the United States ... as a case study of how activists in different countries shared political ideas and forms of protest an in doing so influenced and inspired each other. But unlike some other analyses, his focuses on the 'exact processes' by which the two movements constructed a 'collective identity'... What emerges from Klimke's study is an impressively nuanced picture. -- Hans Kundnani Times Literary Supplement

Author Information

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

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available