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pathology of late capitalism. These intellectuals provided the conceptual
lenses through which the NATO counter-mobilization was interpreted
by the peace movement and by writers for the influential news
magazines,
Der Spiegel
and
Stern.
As a result, the rank and file of the SPD
increasingly embraced the peace movement's concern that it was not the
Soviet Union but the United States which posed the greatest threat to
West German security.
Yet, as Herf shows, using quantitative data on West German elite
opinion, the radicalization of the SPD led a significant portion of the
elites of the mass-media and universities to move from the center-left to–
ward the center-right. He provides what may be the only account in
English of the Bund Freiheit der Wissenschaft, an organization of uni–
versity professors who fought the institutionalization of radical students
demands within the academy. The tendency of Social Democratic gov–
ernments to acquiesce in the radicalization of the universities turned some
liberal academics away from the SPD. The new leader of the Christian
Democrats, Helmut Kohl, made an effort to reach out to German intel–
lectuals alienated from the Social Democrats.
In
what became known as
the
Tendenzwende,
intellectuals once identified with the Social Demo–
cratic left set forth their reasons for abandoning the party. Though an
embattled minority of older Social Democats remained commmitted to
anti-communism and Atlanticism, in the debate on the stationing of the
Euromissiles it was primarily spokesmen for the Christian Democrats and
the Free Democrats who set forth the arguments against communism and
the strategic necessity of countering the Soviet buildup. The intellectual
and electoral swing from the SPD toward the CDU led to a German
government, under Helmut Kohl, committed to stationing the NATO
missiles.
Since the publication of Herfs book, it has come to light that at
the height of the anti-missile demonstrations Soviet negotiators repeat–
edly urged their NATO counterparts to acquiesce to Soviet demands,
arguing that the peace movement would make it impossible for NATO
to deploy its weapons. The success of NATO in countering the Soviet
buildup of intermediate-range missiles came as a surprise to Soviet leaders.
As Herf suggests, the Western victory in the dispute over the Euromissiles
marked a defeat for the old-style thinking of the Brezhnev era, and
helped to set the stage for the "new thinking" under Gorbachev. The
rest, as they say, is history.
The speed with which the Cold War ended has been exceeded
by
the speed with which its memory has disappeared from the political cul–
ture of Western intellectuals. The role of the Western response in the
crackup of the Soviet empire has yet to be adequately analyzed.
War
by
