West German Rearmament Protests and the Reframing of Germany as Pacifist

Abstract

This paper tracks the reactions of British and U.S. officials to a wave of anti-rearmament protests in West Germany in the early 1950s. The conversations that these protests encouraged were significant in that they represented the beginning of a gradual change in the reputation of the German people – whereas in 1945 the Germans were widely considered a militaristic and aggressive people, by the end of the Cold War they were seen as largely pacifist. This change speaks to the power of social movements to drive new trends in international relations.