Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany by Quinn Slobodian (review)

Quinn Slobodian’s Foreign Front is a refreshing new sociocultural history of the relationship between the West German student movement of the 1960s and the Third World. The book is packed full of useful insights not only for scholars of the West German sixties, but also for those interested in the global sixties. Slobodian challenges accepted interpretations of this topic, which view the United States as a more important influence on the West German student movement and the Third World as a secondary symbolic inspiration, by providing a wealth of evidence on how Third World students in West Germany began the protest movement and worked with German-born activists in its early years. Although the Third World remained prominent in the rhetoric and symbolism of the West German New Left through 1968, the internationalism of the New Left shifted away from human rights campaigns based on individuals and direct collaboration between Third World students and their West German counterparts toward anti-imperialist actions which used the Third World in the abstract as part of a larger critique of global imperialism. Overall, Slobodian succeeds in his goal of restoring agency to Third World actors and complicating the existing narrative of the West German student movement of the sixties.

Foreign Front begins in 1961 with Asian and African students collaborating with and inspiring their West German colleagues in major protest campaigns against the actions of the Shah of Iran and the murder of Patrice Lumumba. Indeed, Slobodian proposes that histories of the global sixties begin with the Lumumba protests, rather than the Berkeley Free Speech protests of 1964. Especially interesting are his nuanced discussions of how state violence led West German students to identify themselves with the Third World as oppressed victims. He next explores how two of West Germany’s leading activists, Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl, developed their activist strategies partly as a result of their collaboration with Third World students, viewing their Third World colleagues as role models in the global struggle against imperialism. Slobodian then discusses the impact of the Vietnam War on the West German student movement, arguing persuasively that this war discredited the rhetoric of liberal human rights propounded by the United States and its allies, and gave rise to antiauthoritarianism and anti-imperialism within the movement. In chapter four, Slobodian explores the infamous police murder of West German activist Benno Ohnesorg in a 1967 protest against the Shah of Iran. In a well-evidenced and compelling argument, he shows how the meaning of the protest shifted from a Third World demonstration, inspired by Iranian scholar Bahman Nirumand and led by Iranian students, to a seminal event in the history of the West German student movement which demonstrated the reactionary violence of the West German authorities and general public, and justified the movement’s shift away from legal protest toward more shocking acts of civil disobedience. Slobodian changes gears in the next chapter, entitled “Corpse Polemics,” skillfully analyzing the strategic use of photographic and film imagery of the brutalized corpses of Third World victims in the West German movement. Chapter six moves abruptly to a discussion of the impact of the Chinese cultural revolution on the West German student movement in 1967–68. Lastly, Slobodian includes a brief conclusion reiterating his argument and a very brief discussion of the legacies of Third World Activism in the 1970s.

This is a well-written and meticulously edited book, with extensive reference notes, bibliography, and index, and a strong argument providing valuable new insights into the West German student movement and the global sixties in general. It may, however, leave some readers wondering about the rest of the story at times. For example, Slobodian briefly mentions the 1967 Vietnam Congress in Berlin, which was significant in bringing together student activists from across Europe, but he never explores the role of Third World students who...