The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (review)

Martin Klimke examines international student protest connections between West Germany and the United States during the 1960s. He argues that "this system of international exchange provided a favorable climate for the emergence of transnational subcultures and protest movements that were to shape the ideas and actions of sixties' activists" (3). The book describes in detail how ties between the American SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) and German SDS (Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund) were made. From these loose and informal ties, more formal cooperation followed, and soon German youth drew inspiration from the African American civil rights movement, Berkeley antiwar protests, and even the Black Panthers. Klimke uses a range of sources, including interviews with key figures, to understand not only the transnational activity of the student protests, but also the official government reaction that influenced U.S. diplomatic cultural activity in West Germany during the Cold War. The book is a well-detailed and even-handed examination of how the "other alliance" between the United States and West Germany was formed.

The Other Alliance contains six chapters that explore the chronological evolution of student exchange between the United States and West Germany. The first chapter maps the origins of the New Left networks with Michael Vester, who was active in the German SDS and traveled from Germany to the United States for study. He then worked with the American SDS, where the two groups found "common ground" (19). Klimke highlights the importance of personal relationships in the early 1960s in opening communication channels between the countries. The second chapter details the establishment of transatlantic networks, with particular attention given to the American influence over German protest tactics. Specifically, the author focuses on the role the antiwar movement had as an "internationalizing force" (41). With West German opposition to the Vietnam War, protest techniques from Berkeley were adopted by Germans and used against U.S. institutions in West Berlin. The author concludes, "American concepts of 'direct action' and the example of the civil rights, free speech and antiwar movements were therefore a formative factor present at the creation of what can be considered the anti-authoritarian breakthrough within SDS" (74).

Once a loose network of exchange was founded, there were several failed attempts at forming a "second front." In the third chapter, Klimke discusses the attempts to unite the various factions of the New Left under an umbrella movement. For U.S. activists, European movements took on renewed interest following the 2 June 1967 protest against the Shah of Iran in Berlin, which led to the fatal shooting of a demonstrator. Subsequently, the American SDS held a convention in Michigan with the goal to turn SDS "into a professional revolutionary organization," but as it turned out, the organizations were too heterogeneous to officially unite under one banner (79). Though it lacked official declarations, a "permanent channel of transatlantic communication" was opened between the Munich SDS chapter and the U.S. organization (87). Ties were so strong that Karl-Dietrich Wolff of the German SDS gave voice to this "other alliance" when he spoke to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee in 1969 about international ties, and he walked out of the hearing. More importantly for the German radicals, while Wolff was in the United States, he was introduced to Bobby Seale from the Black Panther Party. Following the failure to establish a "second front," the West Germans drew from the Black Panther's Black Power ideology, especially its focus on militancy for liberation from imperialism and capitalism. Klimke argues that the reason Black Power ideology resonated with German youth was that some perceived that West Germany became an "external colony" of the United States, which "helped justify even violent resistance against it and contributed to rise of terrorist groups" like the Red Army Faction (109).

With some West Germans contesting the German-American alliance in...