The last battle of the Cold War. Peace movements and German politics, 1979-1989/90.

冷战的最后一场战役。

• 批准号: AH/F013442/1
• 负责人: Holger Nehring
• 金额: $ 2.95万
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2009 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FF013442%2F1
• 关键词: last; battle; Cold; War.; Peace

During the 1980s, East and West Germans protested against nuclear weapons and what they regarded as the militarisation of politics in their own society. In 1989/90, the Wall came down, turning the debate over the stationing of nuclear weapons on German soil into the last great political battle of the Cold War. 'The Last Battle of the Cold War' provides readers with the first German-German history of the peace movements of the 1980s. It tells the story of how activists countered Cold War fears by developing and practising ideas for a world beyond the bipolar logic of Cold War tensions. It also highlights how their activism profoundly changed the ways in which Germans have thought about and imagined issues of war and peace. This book will thus move beyond the conventional narratives of the Cold War which tend to ignore peace movements as irrelevant, vilify them as blunt instruments of communist power politics, or highlight their contribution to single-handedly ending the Cold War. All politics during the Cold War took place under the threat of nuclear annihilation. But what difference did this make? In order to explore this question, this project will focus on the way in which peace movements in Germany, the divided country at the epicentre of the Cold War in Europe, addressed this question during the last decade of the conflict. The last battle of the Cold War in 1980s' Germany was not waged on battlefields with traditional tanks and weapons, by officers directing armies from command hills. It was fought between East and West Germans and their governments within the civilian parameters of politics, when Germans took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands. They protested against the threat of annihilation posed by the stationing of even more nuclear weapons on German soil and challenged the binary logic of communism/anti-communism that permeated Cold War political discussions. Although protesters, especially in East Germany, had to cope with a substantial amount of police brutality and state surveillance, the essence of this battle lay in the struggle over political symbols and images. Analysing the symbolic meanings of the East and West German peace movement within the context of German politics will, therefore, form the core of this project. By paying particular attention to the connections and mutual observations between the two movements, East and West, within the context of peace politics at the time, the project will be able to unveil the profound impact of the Cold War arms race on German politics and society during the 1980s and offer important insights into the character of the Cold War. Cultural symbols might easily be dismissed as a sideshow in the real power-political conflicts. Yet this project seeks to show that the character of the Cold War as a war lay precisely in symbols and images, transmitted and magnified through the media. Real politics and symbolic politics could no longer be separated. As an all-out nuclear war never occurred, it could only be imagined, through the military's combat exercises and government officials' calculations of the destructive power of nuclear weapons on the one hand; and through the fears of anti-nuclear-weapons protesters on the other. These simulations and images of nuclear war, and the fears they created, formed the essence of the Cold War. The Cold War was primarily waged through attacks on people's imaginations, by trying to make them believe in the logic and 'rationality' of nuclear deterrence and in the bipolar ideological opposition between capitalism and communism. Activists challenged these central parameters of Cold War politics and developed their own collective imagination.

在20世纪80年代，东德和西德抗议核武器以及他们认为自己社会中的政治军事化。1989/90年，柏林墙倒塌，将关于在德国领土上部署核武器的争论变成了冷战最后一场伟大的政治斗争。《冷战的最后一战》为读者提供了第一部关于20世纪80年代和平运动的德-德历史。它讲述了活动家如何通过发展和实践超越冷战紧张局势的两极逻辑的世界思想来对抗冷战恐惧的故事。它还强调了他们的行动主义如何深刻地改变了德国人思考和想象战争与和平问题的方式。因此，本书将超越传统的冷战叙事，传统的冷战叙事往往忽视和平运动，认为它们无关紧要，将它们丑化为共产主义强权政治的生硬工具，或者突出它们对单枪匹马结束冷战的贡献。冷战期间的所有政治都是在核毁灭的威胁下进行的。但这又有什么区别呢？为了探讨这一问题，本项目将侧重于德国这个处于欧洲冷战中心的分裂国家的和平运动在冲突的最后十年中解决这一问题的方式。20世纪80年代德国冷战的最后一场战斗并不是在战场上用传统的坦克和武器进行的，而是由军官从指挥山上指挥军队。这是东德和西德及其政府之间在平民政治参数范围内的斗争，当时数十万德国人走上街头。他们抗议在德国领土上部署更多核武器所造成的毁灭威胁，并挑战贯穿冷战政治讨论的共产主义/反共主义二元逻辑。 尽管抗议者，特别是德国的抗议者，不得不科普大量的警察暴行和国家监视，但这场战斗的本质在于对政治象征和形象的斗争。因此，在德国政治的背景下分析东西德和平运动的象征意义将成为本项目的核心。通过特别关注当时和平政治背景下东西方两大运动之间的联系和相互观察，该项目将能够揭示冷战军备竞赛对20世纪80年代德国政治和社会的深刻影响，并提供对冷战特征的重要见解。 文化符号很容易被视为真实的权力政治冲突中的一个小插曲。然而，这个项目试图表明，冷战作为一场战争的特征恰恰在于通过媒体传播和放大的符号和图像。真实的政治和象征性政治再也不能分开了。由于全面核战争从未发生过，只能通过军方的作战演习和政府官员对核武器破坏力的计算，以及反核抗议者的恐惧来想象。这些核战争的模拟和图像，以及它们所造成的恐惧，构成了冷战的本质。冷战主要是通过攻击人们的想象力来进行的，试图让他们相信核威慑的逻辑和“合理性”，以及资本主义和共产主义之间的两极意识形态对立。活动家们挑战了冷战政治的这些核心参数，并发展了自己的集体想象力。