The Cultural Contradictions of Cold War Education: The Case of West Berlin

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Notes

The author would like to thank the following people for their helpful comments on this article: Alison Alter, Frank Costigliola, Michael Cox, Jeffrey Engel, Seth Fein, John Lewis Gaddis, Paul Kennedy, Hiroshi Kitamura, Andrew Preston and Gaddis Smith.

 1. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1996, originally published in 1976), especially pp.33–84.

 2. Michael Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). This emphasis on inventiveness in American institutions does not, of course, negate the regimenting influences of Cold War culture within the United States. On this point see, Hogan, A Cross of Iron, especially pp.1–22, 419–62; Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997); Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). Science and technology were not free of regimenting influences in the United States, but they greatly benefited from unprecedented resources and encouragement for innovative research.

 3. See Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Jeremi Suri, ‘Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?’ Journal of Cold War Studies 4 (Fall 2002), pp.60–92.

 4. See William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), pp.507–77; John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp.261–6.

 5. For a more extended discussion of the foreign policy aims behind Cold War education, and the statistics on student enrolments, see Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp.88–130, 269–71.

 6. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. Marilyn Butler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Shelley initially published her novel in 1818.

 7. For an account of the Ford Foundation and its Cold War investments in Europe, see Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone Between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp.143–213.

 8. On American attempts to attract East European citizens and states away from Soviet control, see Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, The Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp.235–7; John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp.65–71.

 9. See James F. Tent, The Free University of Berlin: A Political History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp.1–176.

10. See ibid., pp.277–320.

11. See, for example, how even a staunch anti-communist like West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was careful to distinguish between the asserted evils of communism and the goodness of ordinary citizens, especially those suffering under Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. Adenauer Rede in der Freien Universität, West Berlin, 5 Dec. 1958, 16.25, 1958/Band 2, Adenauer Nachlaβ, Stiftung Bundeskanzler-Adenauer-Haus, Rhöndorf, Germany.

12. See Alexandra Richie, Faust's Metropolis: A History of Berlin (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1998), pp.770–78.

13. Jürgen Habermas, ‘Student Protest in the Federal Republic of Germany’, reprinted in idem, Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1970), p.15. Habermas originally delivered this lecture in November 1967.

14. Ibid., p.18.

15. See Wolfgang Kraushaar, 1968 als Mythos, Chiffre und Zäsur (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2000), pp.37–41; Wilfried Mausbach, ‘Auschwitz and Vietnam: West German Protest Against America's War During the 1960s’, in Andreas W. Daum, Lloyd C. Gardner and Wilfried Mausbach (eds.), America, the Vietnam War, and the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.279–98. The seminal text on this subject is Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik:: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (München: Beck, 1996).

16. ‘Protest!’ circa Nov.–Dec. 1966, Folder: Berlin, 1966–67, Box 87, German Subject Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California (hereafter German Collection). See also Rolf Uesseler, Die 68er: APO, Marx und freie Liebe (München: Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, 1998), pp.192–207; Gerhard Bauβ, Die Studentenbewegung der sechziger Jahre (Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 1977), pp.34–41.

17. For the circumstances surrounding this event in West Berlin, see Jacques Schuster, Heinrich Albertz – der Mann, der mehrere Leben lebte: eine Biographie (Berlin: Alexander Fest Verlag, 1997), pp.183–98. American writers often confuse the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund in West Germany with Students for a Democratic Society in the United States. Both used the initials SDS. The two groups were very different in origin, and they never created significant organizational ties. The Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund, initially formed in September 1946, remained closely associated with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Western Germany until 1960. From 1960 through 1970 the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund acted as an independent student group, growing progressively more radical in its criticism of the established West German parties. Torn by internal disputes, the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund dissolved itself in 1970. Students for a Democratic Society, in contrast, emerged only in 1959–60 without any party affiliation. It had no explicit socialist tradition, and it began as a very moderate organization committed to ‘participatory democracy’, civil rights and nuclear disarmament. During the course of the 1960s Students for a Democratic Society grew more extreme in its criticism of established political institutions in the United States. The organization moved far to the ideological Left – the ‘New Left’ – but it never embraced socialist traditions in the way that the German student group did. Students for a Democratic Society also disbanded in the early 1970s, torn by internal strife. On the history of the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund see Jürgen Briem, Der SDS: Die Geschichte des bedeutendsten Studentenverbandes der BRD seit 1945 (Frankfurt: päd.extra Buchverlag, 1976). On the history of Students for a Democratic Society see Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973). For an analysis of the parallels and divergences between the Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund and Students for a Democratic Society, see Michael A. Schmidtke, ‘Reform, Revolte oder Revolution?: Der Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund (SDS) und die Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) 1960–1970’, in Ingrid Gilcher-Holtey (ed.), 1968 – Von Ereignis zum Gegenstand der Geschichtwissenschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), pp.188–206.

18. See Schuster, Heinrich Albertz, pp.183–98; Tent, The Free University of Berlin, pp.321–2; Richie, Faust's Metropolis, p.779.

19. The Manifesto of the NPD, first promulgated in 1965, reprinted and translated in Ivor Montagu, Germany's New Nazis (London: Panther Books, 1967), pp.127–31, quotation on p.127. See also Fred Richards, Die NPD: Alternative oder Wiederkehr? (München: Günter Olzog Verlag, 1967), pp.126–9; David Nagle, The National Democratic Party: Right Radicalism in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1970), especially pp.35–122; David Childs, ‘The Far Right in Germany since 1945’, in Luciano Cheles, Ronnie Ferguson and Michalina Vaughan (eds.), Neo-Fascism in Europe (London: Longman, 1991), p.72.

20. The Manifesto of the NPD, pp.128–31; Patrick Moreau, Les Héritiers due IIIe Reich: L'extrême Droite Allemands de 1945 à nos Jours (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1994), pp.7–14, 76–8, 91–4; David P. Conradt, The West German Party System: An Ecological Analysis of Social Structure and Voting Behavior, 1961–1969 (London: Sage Publications, 1972), pp.38–42.

21. See ‘Akademisches Proletariat?’, Folder: Berlin 1966–67, Box 87, German Collection; Uesseler, Die 68er, pp.65–84.

22. See ‘Stand der Deutschlandfrage’, 24 May 1965, Band 5, IIA1 – 80.00, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Bonn, Germany [hereafter PA/AA]; Klaus Hildebrand, Von Erhard zur Groβen Koalition, 1963–1969 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1984), pp.202–18, 283–301, 365–83.

23. See Telegram from Secretary of State Dean Rusk to the Department of State, 14 Dec. 1965, Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1964–68, Vol. 13, pp.283–4. For a detailed discussion of US–West German government relations during this period and the issues of ‘off-set payments’ for American soldiers in Europe and nuclear non-proliferation, as well as the Vietnam War, see Thomas Alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

24. Aufruf, circa 1967, Folder: Berlin, 1967, Box 87, German Collection. See also Mausbach, ‘Auschwitz and Vietnam’, pp.279–98. On the various strands of the West German ‘extra-parliamentary opposition’ that came together in late 1966, see Pavel A. Richter, ‘Die Auβerparlamentarische Opposition in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1966 bis 1968’, in Gilcher-Holtey (ed.), 1968, pp.37–46.

25. See Richie, Faust's Metropolis, p.779; Andreas W. Daum, Kennedy in Berlin (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003), p.182.

26. See John F. Kennedy, Remarks in the Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin, 26 June 1963, Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1963, pp.524–5; idem, Address at the Free University of Berlin, 26 June 1963, ibid., pp.526–9, quotations on p.529. See also Richie, Faust's Metropolis, pp.771–3; Tent, The Free University of Berlin, p.281; Daum, Kennedy in Berlin, pp.112–45; Suri, Power and Protest, p.28.

27. See Tent, The Free University of Berlin, p.322; Daum, Kennedy in Berlin, p.182; ‘11 Seized in Berlin in a reported Plot to Kill Humphrey’, New York Times, 6 April 1967.

28. For the text of Humphrey's speech see The Department of State Bulletin 56 (1 May 1967), pp.680–81. On Humphrey's West European tour between 28 March and 8 April 1967 see Carl Solberg, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), pp.304–6.

29. Summary Notes of the 569th Meeting of the National Security Council, 3 May 1967, FRUS, 1964–68, Vol. 13, pp.572–3. These quotations are from Bromley Smith's summary of Humphrey's remarks. Humphrey's comments were uncharacteristic because he had a long record in the US Senate as an active internationalist, confident in the future prospects of transatlantic political partnership. See Solberg, Hubert Humphrey, pp.181–98.

30. See Tent, The Free University of Berlin, pp.322–3.

31. See Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kiesinger mit Schah Reza Pahlevi, 28 May 1967, Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [hereafter AAPBD], 1967 (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1998), Vol. 2, pp.797–808. See also Aufzeichnung des Staatssekretärs Rolf Lahr, 4 Jan. 1967, AAPBD, 1967, Vol. 1, pp.19–22. On the early development of post-1945 West German ‘Weltpolitik’ – expansion of influence in the developing world – see Karl Carstens an Ludwig Erhard, 4 Oct. 1963, Band 159, B2 – Büro Staatssekretäre, PA/AA; Karl Carstens an Willy Brandt, 5 Dec. 1966, Mappe 641, N1337 – Karl Carstens Nachlaβ, Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, Germany.

32. See Tent, The Free University of Berlin, p.323.

33. James Bill argues that the Shah of Iran pursued a policy of controlled ‘reform from above’. He sought to modernize the Iranian economy by encouraging land reform and industrial development, according to Bill, while also retaining tight control on political behaviour. The growth of vocal opposition groups within Iran during the 1960s motivated the Shah to use force against domestic reformers. The Shah would not allow citizens to challenge his dictatorship. See James A. Bill, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American–Iranian Relations (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), pp.141–9, 161–9.

34. See ibid., pp.169–76.

35. ‘Warum Wir demonstrieren’, in ‘Dokumente des 2. Juni 1967 und der Zeit danach’, Folder: Berlin, 1967, Box 87, German Collection.

36. Ibid.

37. See the eyewitness accounts in Der Spiegel, 12 June 1967. See also Uesseler, Die 68er, pp.244–55; Schuster, Heinrich Albertz, pp.199–226; Tent, The Free University of Berlin, pp.323–4.

38. See Der Spiegel, 12 June 1967.

39. Ibid.

40. Heinrich Albertz, ‘Sicherheit und Ordnung müssen gewährleistet bleiben’, in ‘Dokumente des 2. Juni 1967 und der Zeit danach’, Folder: Berlin, 1967, Box 87, German Collection.

41. Anzeige, in ‘Dokumente des 2. Juni 1967 und der Zeit danach’, Folder: Berlin, 1967, Box 87, German Collection. See also Rudi Dutschke's diary entry for 3 June 1967, in Gretchen Dutschke (ed.), Rudi Dutschke – Jeder hat sein Leben ganz zu leben: Die Tagebücher, 1963–1979 (Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 2003), pp.39–41.

42. See Schuster, Heinrich Albertz, pp.227–32.

43. Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kiesinger mit dem iranischen Botschafter Malek, 15 June 1967, in AAPBD, 1967, 2, pp.911–17, quotation on p.916.

44. On Dutschke's background, his emergence as a protest leader, and his subsequent decline, see Ulrich Chaussy, Die drei Leben des Rudi Dutschke: eine Biographie (Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag, 1993); Gretchen Dutschke, Wir hatten ein barbarisches, schönes Leben: Rudi Dutschke, eine Biographie (Köln: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1996); Kraushaar, 1968, pp.89–129; Bernd Rabehl, Rudi Dutschke: Revolutionär im geteilten Deutschland (Dresden: Edition Antaios, 2002). Both Kraushaar and Rabehl emphasize Dutschke's indignation regarding the enforced division of the German nation.

45. See Rudi Dutschke, ‘Mallet, Marcuse “Formierte Gesellschaft” und politische Praxis der Linken hier und anderswo’, (1965) in Wolfgang Kraushaar (ed.), Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung: Von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail, 1946–1995 (Hamburg: Rogner und Bernhard, 1998), Vol. 2, pp.186–7.

46. See Rudi Dutschke interview in Der Spiegel, 10 July 1967.

47. Radical students formed a parallel ‘Critical University’, offering their own seminars and ad hoc courses. See ‘Kritische Universität: Provisorisches Verzeichnis’, Wintersemester 1967/68, Folder: Berlin, 1967, Box 87, German Collection; Bernd Rabehl, Am Ende der Utopie: Die politische Geschichte der Freien Universität Berlin (Berlin: Argon, 1988), pp.225–38.

48. See ‘Akademisches Proletariat?’ circa late 1967, Folder: Berlin, 1966–67, Box 87, German Collection; ‘Zur Situation an der FU’, 6 Dec. 1967, Folder: Berlin, 1966–67, Box 87, German Collection.

49. See Uesseler, Die 68er, pp.256–96; Tent, The Free University of Berlin, pp.328–32.

50. See Rudi Dutschke, ‘Professor Habermas, Ihr begriffloser Objektivismus erschlägt das zu emanzipierende Subjekt’ (9 June 1967), in Kraushaar (ed.), Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, pp.251–3; Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance, trans. Michael Robertson (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), pp.617–19.

51. Rudi Dutschkes Tagebuch, 17 June 1967, in idem., Mein langer Marsch: Reden, Schriften und Tagebücher aus zwanzig Jahren (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1980), p.70; Gretchen Dutschke (ed.), Rudi Dutschke, pp.53–4. See also Kraushaar, 1968, pp.81–8; Jeffrey Herf, ‘War, Peace, and the Intellectuals: The West German Peace Movement’, International Security 10 (Spring 1986), pp.172–4.

52. Dutschke, ‘Rebellion der Studenten’ (1968), in Mein langer Marsch, pp.68–69.

53. Ibid.

54. Students at the Free University organized the ‘Vietnam Congress’ in conjunction with students at the Technical University in West Berlin. See Einladung 30 Jan. 1968, Folder: Berlin, 1968, Box 88, German Collection; Erklärung zur Internationalen Vietnamkonferenz – Westberlin, 17/18 Feb. 1968, Folder: Berlin, 1968, Box 88, German Collection; Bauβ, Die Studentenbewegung der sechziger Jahre, p.95; Rabehl, Am Ende der Utopie, pp.256–68.

55. Dutschke, Tagebuch, Jan. 1968, in Mein langer Marsch, p.122.

56. See Dutschke, Mein langer Marsch, pp.71–2.

57. See Offener Brief an die Regierung der Volksrepublik Polen, 12 March 1968, Folder: Berlin, 1968, Box 88, German Collection.

58. ‘Freunde und Genossen!’, 11 April 1968, Folder: Berlin, 1968, Box 88, German Collection.

59. See Aktuell 1 (12 April 1968), Folder: Periodicals, Aktuell – Berlin, Box 86, German Collection; Report from the Rector of the Free University, Folder: Berlin, 1968, Box 87, German Collection.

60. On this point, see Suri, Power and Protest, pp.245–58.

61. See Stefan Aust, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1985), especially pp.103–320; A.D. Moses, ‘The State and the Student Movement in West Germany, 1967–77’, in Gerard J. DeGroot (ed.), Student Protest: The Sixties and After (New York: Longman, 1998), pp.144–9. Jeffrey Herf argues that the youth revolt in the late 1960s gave rise to a West German peace movement that refused to acknowledge serious security threats from the Soviet Union during the 1970s and early 1980s. See Herf, ‘War, Peace, and the Intellectuals’, pp.172–200.