The German peace movement: an American student's view

By , Stephen Brockmann, a student at Columbia University, spent his junior year in West Germany.




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The German peace movement is in no way dependent on the Soviet Union for support, although there are Communists in it. But these Communists are few in number and insignificant in proportion to the total movement. The DKP (German Communist Party) never gets more than 1 or 2 percent of the vote in national elections, and it is safe to say that the German populace is decidedly anti-Communist. The West Germans have no reason to love the Soviet Union, and they know perfectly well the drawbacks of the system that 20 million of their countrymen across the border in East Germany live under.

The extraordinarily strong importance of religious beliefs in German politics has almost totally escaped notice in the US. Germany is an overwhelmingly Christian country, and the Germans take their religion seriously. The strength of the peace movement is due in large part to the support it has received from organized religious groups. These groups have increasingly called attention to the Fifth Commandment and the Sermon on the Mount in accusing national and international leaders of ignoring the basic tenets of a religion they pretend to believe in.

If a war breaks out, the Germans know that they will be the first to be engulfed in and destroyed by it. Ronald Reagan can talk about the possibility of a limited nuclear war, but the Germans can't because for them any nuclear war whatsoever means apocalypse.

Mr. Reagan ordered the production of neutron warheads after Secretary of State Haig assured the Germans that this was not in the offing. At the same time , Germans were told to follow the American example and spend less on social programs and more on the military. (Helmut Schmidt appropriately reminded President Reagan that the US has no mandatory military service, while Germans have been required to serve in the German army - and thus to serve NATO - for over 25 years.)

Germans are also disappointed by the failure of SALT II. If the world can already be destroyed many times over by both sides, they ask themselves, why are more nuclear weapons needed?

The unrest is healthy and democratic, since it represents the desire of a people to avert nuclear war. The wonder is not that there are protests and demonstrations in Germany but that there are not more in America.

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