Greening Democracy: The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Political Environmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968–1983 by Stephen Milder (review)

The West German antinuclear movement is fascinating and confusing. Emerging from the ground up, diversity, fragmentations, and scope are integral to the movement's history. Scholarly studies have long tried to make sense of it all—including its role within (West) German and European postwar history and historiography. More recently, and thanks to Andrew S. Tompkins's monograph Better Active Than Radioactive! (2016), discussions have shifted toward a broader emphasis on the transnational character of the movement. Now, Stephen Milder's volume Greening Democracy adds to these discussions by centering on "the democratic concerns of the protestors" and "transnational communities" (3). He "asserts … that concerns about democracy … enabled that locally rooted movement against nuclear energy to grow across Western Europe and take on particular resonance in high politics within the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)" (3–4). Throughout the book, he then aims to address the relationship between environmentalism and democracy by analyzing how activists probed perceived geographic and political boundaries. By doing so he tries to confirm "the nature of fracturing that is said to epitomize the final third of the twentieth century" (7–8).

Greening Democracy is organized chronologically, beginning with the origins of the movement and the importance of protests in the town of Wyhl am Kaiserstuhl. Milder takes the reader back to the late 1960s and early 1970s to discuss the "kitchen table" activism centered on localized concerns (29); he also captures the slow start of the movement in general. He seeks to situate the origins within larger debates, an effort that might have benefited from thinking about the not-in-my-backyard framework so widely popular within discussions of environmental justice. At the same time, Milder touches on "transnational-community building" (53) when he highlights "how anti-nuclear activists imagined the Alemannic community" (51) without overlooking national, regional, and local issues. A section Milder titles "A Movement of Provincials" (67) opens additional avenues for individual characters and stories reminiscent of historian Celia Applegate's discussion of German Heimat; this segment also first introduces readers to growing opposition to the proposed construction of a nuclear power plant in Wyhl. A photograph, for instance, shows local reactor opponents carrying a coffin with the word "democracy" written on it (78). This image suitably encapsulates a growing distrust of democratic processes. Protests eventually escalated, culminating in the occupation of the construction site. In that sense, misgivings about the planned nuclear power plant in Wyhl had existed prior to this moment; Milder points that out throughout his narrative and he wrestles with the myth that arises from the events there. After all, that takeover became the origin story of the movement, not least because it gained publicity well beyond the region. He adds many details as he retells these and other events, and he is ultimately successful in showing "that grassroots protest had the potential—over time, at least—to initiate profound cultural changes, which might eventually alter citizens' political outlook" (162).

The trends that emerged after Wyhl are the next focus of Greening Democracy. Milder traces debates and events, transnational networks, and the rise of different initiatives and organizations, but never losing sight of personal stories and concerns: for these became increasingly important as bottom-up environmentalism came to shape discussions. Not surprisingly, the rise of the Green Party plays a key role here, with Milder illustrating how national politics soon overshadowed the role of grassroots antinuclear actions. More protests materialized in the 1980s, of course, but Milder spends much less time discussing these. He concludes by commenting on more recent events—Germany's Atomausstieg or phasing out of nuclear energy, for example, as compared to the expansion of nuclear power in neighboring France. He also assesses "the significance of these new democratic subjectivities" (242), emphasizing the unifying character of the movement as it stitched together "individuals...