Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-05T02:27:20.611Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grassroots Transnationalism(s): Franco-German Opposition to Nuclear Energy in the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2016

ANDREW TOMPKINS
ANDREW TOMPKINS*
Affiliation:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Lehrstuhl für die Geschichte Westeuropas und der transatlantischen Beziehungen, Unter den Linden 6, D-10099Berlin; [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the 1970s opposition to nuclear energy was present in countries around the world and thus eminently ‘transnational’. But what did it mean to participate at the grassroots of such a transnational movement and (how) did cross-border connections change protest? This article answers these questions by differentiating three categories of transnational engagement that were accessible to grassroots activists. ‘Thinking transnationally’ involved extrapolating from, decontextualising and recontextualising limited information in order to rethink one's own situation. ‘Acting transnationally’ entailed accessing transnational spaces; it therefore required more mobility, but could be useful as a means of challenging and deconstructing state power. Intermediaries at the grassroots engaged in ‘being transnational’, which affected their personal and political identities as well as life histories. These examples of transnational agency illustrate how grassroots activists, including some without vast wealth or institutional resources, participated in transnational processes in ways that enriched, but also complicated protest.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 2016 , pp. 117 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 The term ‘new social movements’ (NSMs) was widely used by social scientists until the late 1990s to describe protest that was supposedly concerned with post-materialist issues or identities rather than material, class-based interests. It has fallen into disuse as scholars have increasingly questioned the novelty of such movements and the assumptions about prior protest on which it depends. See Duyvendak, Jan Willem, The Power of Politics: New Social Movements in France (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995)Google Scholar; Koopmans, Ruud, Democracy from Below: New Social Movements and the Political System in West Germany (Boulder: Westview, 1995)Google Scholar; Kriesi, Hanspeter, Koopmans, Ruud, Duyvendak, Jan Willem and Giugni, Marco G., New Social Movements in Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Plotke, David, ‘What's So New About New Social Movements?’, in Lyman, Stanford M., ed., Social Movements: Critiques, Concepts, Case-Studies (London: Macmillan, 1995), 113–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weir, Lorna, ‘Limitations of New Social Movement Analysis’, Studies in Political Economy, 40 (1993), 73–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Kenney, Padraic, ‘Borders Breached: The Transnational in Eastern Europe since Solidarity’, Journal of Modern European History, 8, 2 (2010), 179–95, here 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This is informed by the debate on entangled history, as elaborated in Werner, Michael and Zimmermann, Bénédicte, ‘Penser l’histoire croisée : entre empirie et réflexivité’, Annales, 58, 1 (2003), 7–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kocka, Jürgen, ‘Comparison and Beyond’, History and Theory, 42, 1 (2003), 39–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hartmut Kaelble, ‘Die Debatte über Vergleich und Transfer und was jetzt?’, H-Soz-u-Kult, 8.2.05 (2005); Lässig, Simone, ‘Übersetzungen in der Geschichte – Geschichte als Übersetzung?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 38, 2 (2012), 189–216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 On 1968, see Suri, Jeremi, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Varon, Jeremy, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Wolin, Richard, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On human rights, see Eckel, Jan, Die Ambivalenz des Guten. Menschenrechte in der internationalen Politik seit den 1940ern (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014)Google Scholar; Moyn, Samuel, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010)Google Scholar. On environmentalism, see McCormick, John, The Global Environmental Movement, 2nd edn (Chichester: Wiley, 1995)Google Scholar; Zelko, Frank, Make it a Green Peace! The Rise of Countercultural Environmentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

5 Kristin Ross has argued that commemorations of 1968 in the French media led to the personalisation (around a handful of media-savvy protagonists) of a collective story. Analogously, one might argue that mass media have ‘nationalised’ for domestic consumption an otherwise markedly transnational narrative. Ross, Kristin, May 68 and its Afterlives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Davis, Belinda, ‘A Whole World Opening Up: Transcultural Contact, Difference, and the Politicization of ‘New Left’ Activists’, in Davis, Belinda, Mausbach, Wilfried, Klimke, Martin and MacDougall, Carla, eds., Changing the World, Changing Oneself (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 255–73Google Scholar; Gildea, Robert, Mark, James and Warring, Anette, eds., Europe's 1968: Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenney, Padraic, A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Nehring, Holger, ‘National Internationalists: British and West German Protests against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communications and the Social History of the Cold War, 1957–1964’, Contemporary European History, 14, 4 (2005), 559–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scalmer, Sean, Gandhi in the West: The Mahatma and the Rise of Radical Protest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Slobodian, Quinn, Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 This study draws on sixty-four individual and group interviews with (former) anti-nuclear activists born between 1929 and 1962. Interviews were conducted in French and German, averaged 90–120 minutes in length and followed a life history format. Activist archives and existing organisations helped establish contact with initial interviewees, who then suggested further interview partners. Most interviewees were grassroots activists (including local leaders, but seldom nationally known ones) engaged in one or more of approximately ten specific local struggles of (trans)national importance. Special attention was given to identifying activists with foreign contacts. On the utility of oral history for examining protest, see Gildea, Robert and Mark, James, ‘Introduction: Voices of Europe's ’68’, Cultural and Social History, 8, 44 (2011), 441–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; more generally, see Portelli, Alessandro, ‘The Peculiarities of Oral History’, History Workshop Journal, 12 (1981), 96–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See especially Bjork, James E., Neither German nor Pole: Catholicism and National Indifference in a Central European Borderland (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Judson, Pieter, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar; Zahra, Tara, ‘Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis’, Slavic Review, 69, 1 (2010), 93–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 On this period, see also von Eschen, Penny, ‘Locating the Transnational in the Cold War’, in Immerman, Robert H. and Goedda, Petra, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 451–68Google Scholar.

10 Wirsching, Andreas, Therborn, Göran, Eley, Geoff, Kaelble, Hartmut and Chassaigne, Philippe, ‘Forum: The 1970s and 1980s as a Turning Point in European History?’, Journal of Modern European History, 9, 1 (2011), 8–26, here 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 See Connelly, Matthew, ‘Future Shock’, in Ferguson, Niall, Maier, Charles S., Manela, Erez and Sargent, Daniel J., eds., The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010), 337–50Google Scholar.

12 Uekötter, Frank, Am Ende der Gewissheiten. Die ökologische Frage im 21. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2011), 80–111Google Scholar.

13 On the history and range of actors involved in environmental and anti-nuclear protest in France and West Germany, see Bess, Michael, The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960–2000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Engels, Jens Ivo, Naturpolitik in der Bundesrepublik: Ideenwelt und politische Verhaltensstile in Naturschutz und Umweltbewegung 1950–1980 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006)Google Scholar; Hasenöhrl, Ute, Zivilgesellschaft und Protest: Eine Geschichte der Naturschutz- und Umweltbewegung in Bayern 1945–1980 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011)Google Scholar; Hecht, Gabrielle, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Mende, Silke, ‘Nicht rechts, nicht links, sondern vorn’: Eine Geschichte der Gründungsgrünen (München: Oldenbourg, 2011)Google Scholar. On right-wing environmentalism in Germany (not discussed in detail here), see also Olsen, Jonathan, Nature and Nationalism: Right-wing Ecology and the Politics of Identity in Contemporary Germany (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999)Google Scholar; Radkau, Joachim and Uekötter, Frank, eds., Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt: Campus, 2003)Google Scholar.

14 For a partial review of the social science literature on ‘place-making’, see Nicholls, Walter, ‘Place, Networks, Space: Theorising the Geographies of Social Movements’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 34, 1 (2009), 78–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On ‘popular politics’, see Davis, Belinda, ‘What's Left? Popular Political Participation in Postwar Europe’, American Historical Review, 113, 2 (2008), 363–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 The motivations of – and tensions between – anti-nuclear protesters are discussed in further detail in Tompkins, Andrew, Better Active than Radioactive! Anti-Nuclear Protest in 1970s France and West Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See Rucht, Dieter, Von Wyhl nach Gorleben. Bürger gegen Atomprogramm und nukleare Entsorgung (München: C.H. Beck, 1980)Google Scholar.

17 Vigna, Xavier and Zancarini-Fournel, Michelle, ‘Les rencontres improbables dans « les années 68 »’, Vingtième siècle, 101, 1 (2009), 163–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Many of the processes described below were as much translocal as they were transnational, but gained greatly in symbolic significance when they crossed state boundaries. Transnational communication across dramatic cultural differences could also take place within a shared language, as it did for Gandhian pacifists in India and the United States. See Chabot, Sean, ‘Framing, Transnational Diffusion, and African-American Intellectuals in the Land of Gandhi’, International Review of Social History, 49, Supplement (2004), 19–40, here 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 More often, European institutions were targets of protest, sometimes by nuclear opponents within their ranks, such as Petra Kelly. However, the ‘Europe from below’ to which many grassroots activists referred was defined in explicit opposition to such institutions, which funded nuclear projects and fostered police cooperation. French and German activists often referred to ‘Europe’ primarily in the narrower sense of post-war reconciliation. The early anti-nuclear movement's transnationalism and (lack of) engagement with ‘Europe’ thus differed considerably from those of subsequent Green parties. See Milder, Stephen, ‘Between Grassroots Activism and Transnational Aspirations: Anti-Nuclear Protest from the Rhine Valley to the Bundestag, 1974–1983’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 191–211Google Scholar; Meyer, Jan-Henrik, ‘“Where do we go from Wyhl?” Transnational Anti-Nuclear Protest targeting European and International Organizations in the 1970s’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 212–35Google Scholar. See also the denunciations of ‘the Europe of Schmidt and Giscard’ and calls to create, ‘after the Europe of parliamentarians,. . .the Europe of struggles and the Europe of peoples’ in Arbeiterkampf/l’étincelle, 29 April 1977 and ‘Larzac en RFA’ (folder), Joseph Pineau private archives, Millau.

20 This is not to say that ‘European’ or ‘global’ anti-nuclear movements can be reduced to the experiences of activists in France and West Germany, where protest was in many ways more intense than elsewhere. However, I do argue that the insights gained from studying transnational relationships between activists in these two countries are more broadly applicable, even well beyond Western Europe. For a systematic sociological comparison of anti-nuclear movements in eighteen countries, see Kolb, Felix, Protest and Opportunities: The Political Outcomes of Social Movements (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007), 193–237Google Scholar.

21 See, for example, the newspaper articles, informal studies and scientific reports from France, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands brought together in Esther Peter-Davis, Annique Albrecht and Françoise Bucher, Fessenheim: vie ou mort de l’Alsace (Saales: schmitt-lucos, 1971). On counter-expertise, see Topçu, Sezin, ‘Nucléaire : de l’engagement « savant » aux contre-expertises associatives’, Natures Sciences Sociétés, 14, 3 (2006), 249–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 ‘Contre-campagne antinucléaire’, 1 Oct. 1976, 1391 W 18, Archives départementales (AD) du Haut-Rhin, Colmar.

23 AG Katastrophenplan, Fessenheim Katastrophenplan (1977); écologie et survie, Plan ORSEC allemand (1977).

24 See, for example, Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg, ‘Kritischer Reisebericht. . .zu den Wiederaufarbeitungsanlagen Karlsruhe und Cap de la Hague’, 16–18 May 1977, SBe 730 (box 1), Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Hamburg.

25 Sociologists usually explain this sort of transnational thinking in terms of ‘diffusion’, while historians prefer to speak of ‘transfer’ or ‘influence’. However, these terms poorly describe long-term, recurring, multi-directional exchanges among shifting sets of actors in disparate national spaces. I thus refer below instead to a ‘transnational learning process’. On diffusion within protest movements, see Chabot, ‘Transnational Diffusion’; Kenney, Padraic, ‘Opposition Networks and Transnational Diffusion in the Revolutions of 1989’, in Horn, Gerd-Rainer and Kenney, Padraic, eds., Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 207–23Google Scholar; McAdam, Doug and Rucht, Dieter, ‘The Cross-National Diffusion of Movement Ideas’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 528, July (1993), 56–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On more long-term learning processes, see Scalmer, Gandhi in the West.

26 The same was true of squatters’ movements. See Müller-Münch, Ingrid, Prosinger, Wolfgang, Rosenbladt, Sabine and Stibler, Linda, Besetzung – weil das Wünschen nicht geholfen hat (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1981)Google Scholar.

27 Brown, Timothy Scott, West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Antiauthoritarian Revolt, 1962–1978 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 See Nössler, Bernd and de Witt, Margret, eds., Kein Kernkraftwerk in Wyhl und auch sonst nirgends: Betroffene Bürger berichten (Freiburg: Inform-Verlag, 1976), 238–42Google Scholar.

29 Regional identities contributed to the particular strength of anti-nuclear and environmental protest across France, most notably in Alsace, Brittany and Occitanie. They were also a factor in protest mobilisation in parts of West Germany, such as South Baden and Wendland.

30 Marie-Reine Haug and Raymond Schirmer, Interview, 17 Apr. 2010; ‘Le Larzac rencontre l’Alsace à Marckolsheim’, 1974, 24416, Archiv Soziale Bewegungen, Freiburg.

31 On ‘legend’ in transnational protest, see Kenney, ‘Opposition Networks’, 210–11.

32 Joanne Sheehan and Eric Bachman, ‘Seabrook – Wyhl – Marckolsheim: Transnational Links in a Chain of Campaigns’, War Resisters’ International, available at http://www.wri-irg.org/node/5182 (last visited 20 Febuary 2015). Within social movements, information usually flows through multiple channels, so these contacts are likely not the only relevant ones, and they may or may not have been the most important.

33 Bedford, Henry F., Seabrook Station: Citizen Politics and Nuclear Power (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 77Google Scholar.

34 Gorleben-Handbuch für Trainings zur Besetzung der Bohrstelle 1004, new edn (1980).

35 See Günter Zint, ed., Republik Freies Wendland. Eine Dokumentation (1980).

36 Protests against the expansion of Frankfurt airport (Startbahn West), for example, continued to develop these ideas.

37 This arguably still holds true today, in spite of sometimes euphoric assessments of the internet's role in the so-called ‘Arab spring’ of 2011.

38 One non-violent activist in Wyhl conceded that ‘we might not have reoccupied the site if some among us hadn't shown themselves to be aggressive, but I’m certain we could largely have avoided the violence that did occur’. ‘Wyhl – l’enjeu nucléaire’, Ionix 10, Mar. 1975, 28.

39 ‘Brokdorf’, Super-Pholix 12, [June] 1977, 18; ‘Brokdorf: c’était pas mal hein!’, Super-Pholix 13, [July] 1977, 4.

40 Jean Moalic, Interview, 29 Sept. 2010. See also Porhel, Vincent, Ouvriers bretons. Conflits d’usines, conflits identitaires en Bretagne dans les années 1968 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 232–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon, Gilles, Plogoff: l’apprentissage de la mobilisation sociale (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 262–80Google Scholar; Conan, Renée and Laurent, Annie, Femmes de Plogoff, 2010 republished edn (Baye: La Digitale, 1981), 28–31Google Scholar.

41 Plogoff: Eine Einführung in die Guerillataktik des bretonischen Dorfes Plogoff im Widerstand gegen den Atomwahn (Hamburg, 1981); Le Diournon, Théo, Cabon, André, de Lignières, Guy, Perazzi, Jean-Charles, Thefaine, Jean and Yonnet, Daniel, Plogoff-la-Révolte (Plonéor Lanvern: le signor, 1980)Google Scholar.

42 Gildea, Robert and Tompkins, Andrew, ‘The Transnational in the Local: The Larzac plateau as a site of transnational activism since 1970’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50, 3 (2015), 581–606CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 596–98. See also Kenney, ‘Opposition Networks’, 210.

43 If, as Luhmann argues, communication can be instructively regarded as ‘improbable’, this is all the more true for transnational communication. See Nehring, ‘National Internationalists’, 561.

44 ‘Wer Malville vergisst macht Mist!!’ (unidentified clipping), 1977, Ordner ‘AKW+Widerstand’, ‘Malville 77’, Archiv Aktiv, Hamburg.

45 ‘Compte-rendu de la réunion du 27.10.74’, Le ‘Que Voulons Nous’! 1, 1974, 2–3; ‘Bericht über die Versammlung am 27.10.1974’, Was Wir Wollen 1, 1974, 2–3.

46 Robert Joachim, Interview, 23 Apr. 2010.

47 See for example Gildea, Robert, Mark, James and Pas, Niek, ‘European Radicals and the ‘Third World’: Imagined Solidarities and Radical Networks, 1958–1973’, Cultural and Social History, 8, 4 (2011), 449–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fink, Carole, Gassert, Philipp and Junker, Detlef, eds., 1968: A World Transformed (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998), 3, 14–15, 21–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehrenreich, Barbara and Ehrenreich, John, Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

48 These are but a few of the factors traditionally identified by social scientists to explain differences in protest and its outcomes. See Kitschelt, Herbert, ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies’, British Journal of Political Science, 16, 1 (1986), 57–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kolb, Protest and Opportunities.

49 Unterelbe, Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz, Brokdorf: Der Bauplatz muß wieder zur Wiese werden! (Hamburg: Association, 1977), 135Google Scholar. This follows the pattern by which identification ‘precipitates locals to transform what had been a highly localised battle into one particular front in the general struggle.’ Nicholls, ‘Place, Networks, Space’, 87.

50 Padraic Kenney, drawing on Vacláv Havel's concept of ‘living in truth’, argues that Polish protesters took an important step towards overthrowing communism by imagining themselves ‘as if in Europe’. See Kenney, Carnival of Revolution, 93–94.

51 Like liminality, transnational thinking ‘breaks, as it were, the cake of custom and enfranchises speculation’. Turner, Victor, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93–111Google Scholar, here 106.

52 In this sense, it differs considerably from translocal action within one country.

53 As the numbers for Malville indicate, police and organiser estimates often differed greatly. Gilbert Roy, ‘Rapport’, 5 Aug. 1977, 6857 W 36, AD Isère, Grenoble; ‘60 000 sous la pluie’, Super-Pholix 14, Aug. 1977, 1; Kommunistischer Bund, Kalkar am 24.9. (1977), 2.

54 On ‘pilgrimage’, see Kenney, ‘Opposition Networks’, 211–14. The focus on being concerné or betroffen was central to the anti-nuclear movement's pattern of organisation, which depended on place-based solidarities to anchor the broader cause and structure activists’ relationship to it in space. See Nicholls, ‘Place, Networks, Space’, 79–83. Protest actions by the later movement against nuclear weapons in the 1980s shared a similar goal but went largely in the opposite direction, trying to make the broad, abstract threat of nuclear war relevant within local spaces. See Schregel, Susanne, Der Atomkrieg vor der Wohnungstür: eine Politikgeschichte der neuen Friedensbewegung in der Bundesrepublik 1970–1985 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), 9–20Google Scholar.

55 Gildea, Mark and Pas, ‘European Radicals’, 453–4. My use of this term is not pejorative, as Jobs argues it was to contemporaries in the late 1960s. See Jobs, Richard I., ‘Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968’, American Historical Review, 114, 2 (2009), 376–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 403. For a related example with more positive connotations, see ‘malville, naussac, larzac: le tourisme social marque des points’, GO/CNV 171, 18 Aug. 1977, 1.

56 Activists claimed that, after trying several other methods, they managed to smuggle illegal conscientious objectors across the border by hiding them within a ‘carrousel’ of other participants walking back and forth (legally, with passports displayed) between the French and German checkpoints in order to confuse border guards. ‘Donnez-nous notre flicaille quotidienne’, GO/CNV 167, 21 July 1977, 2–3.

57 ‘Arthur’ (pseud. Henri Montant), ‘Haguenau-Larzac, via Malville: la racaille écologique est en marche’, GO/CNV 160, 2 June 1977, 7.

58 René Jannin, prefect of Isère at the time, stated at a press conference the night before the demonstration that ‘for the second time, Morestel is occupied by the Germans’. Quoted in Le Monde, 2 August 1977, 1.

59 Eleven Germans, two Swiss and six French citizens were arrested. Of these, five Germans and one French citizen were ultimately sentenced to prison terms of three to six months.

60 See Aujourd’hui Malville, demain la France, (Claix: La Pensée sauvage, 1978), 167; ‘Die Eiferer’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 Aug. 1977.

61 CRS (riot police) units reported that they used 295 GLI (exploding tear gas) and 885 CB (Chlorobenzalmalononitrile, also known as CS gas) grenades as well as 116 ‘grenades’ (i.e. grenades offensives, or stun grenades). Gendarmerie Mobile units were also present, but their separate report does not include munitions statistics. Roger Roustang [Commandant CRS de Lyon], ‘Rapport technique de fin de service’, 1977, 19850718 art. 25, Archives nationales, Fontainebleau.

62 Bernard Dréano, Interview, 20 Jan. 2010.

63 See Tompkins, Andrew, ‘Transnationality as a Liability? The Anti-Nuclear Movement at Malville’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 89, 3–4 (2011), 1365–80Google Scholar, here 1377–78.

64 This is most often described in terms of a ‘boomerang effect’, whereby NGOs in more powerful countries help ‘less developed’ allies by lobbying their own governments to pressure the original offending state. (The assumed hierarchy is analogous to that between ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ in some models of transfer history.) However, this model does not fit well for 1970s grassroots anti-nuclear activists, many of whom eschewed lobbying in favour of confrontational protest, and who, in France and West Germany, faced pro-nuclear states of similar stature that collaborated in developing nuclear technology. Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn, ‘Transnational advocacy networks in international and regional politics’, International Social Science Journal, 51, 159 (1999), 89–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lässig, ‘Übersetzungen in der Geschichte’, 193; Tauer, Sandra, Störfall für die gute Nachbarschaft? Deutsche und Franzosen auf der Suche nach einer gemeinsamen Energiepolitik (1973–1980) (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2012)Google Scholar.

65 Sheehan, James J., ‘The Problem of Sovereignty in European History’, American Historical Review, 111, 1 (2006), 1–15, here 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Mireille Caselli, Interview, 12 Apr. 2010; Mireille Caselli, ‘Radio Grün Fessenheim’, in Christoph Büchele, Irmgard Schneider and Bernd Nössler, eds., Wyhl – Der Widerstand geht weiter (Freiburg: Dreisam-Verlag, 1982), 53–6.

67 Collin, Claude, Écoutez la vraie différence! Radio verte Fessenheim, radio S.O.S. emploi-Longwy et les autres (Claix: La Pensée sauvage, 1979), 48–9Google Scholar.

68 « Jean », Elsass. Kolonie in Europa, 2nd edn (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1976), 6–8.

69 ‘Manifestation à Fessenheim. . .’, 7 Apr. 1971, 1391 W 17, Marche sur Fessenheim, AD Haut-Rhin, Colmar.

70 Though no reliable numbers are available, several separate incidents involving French and Dutch activists are noted in ‘Wir, das Volk. . .’ Eine Dokumentation (Köln: Graphischer Betrieb Henke, 1977), 34–6; Kommunistischer Bund, Kalkar am 24.9., 28–32.

71 See the map in Rucht, Von Wyhl nach Gorleben, 294.

72 The ‘passports’ declared that bearers did not regard as theirs ‘a state which does not guarantee the inviolability of its people in body, mind, and soul, which cannot retain the natural equilibrium between humans, plants, animals and minerals; which clings to the deadly misunderstanding that domestic and international security can be produced by weapons and uniforms. . .’. Quoted in Müller-Münch, Prosinger, Rosenbladt and Stibler, Besetzung, 162.

73 See Hertle, Wolfgang, ‘Hart an der Grenze’, in Buro, Andreas, Geschichten aus der Friedensbewegung (Köln: hbo-druck, 2005), 93–5Google Scholar; ‘Aktion an der Grenze beendet’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 9 July 1983; Ehmke, Wolfgang, Zwischenschritte. Die Anti-Atomkraft-Bewegung zwischen Gorleben und Wackersdorf (Köln: Kölner Volksblatt-Verlag, 1987), 100Google Scholar.

74 ‘Handlungen der “Demonstranten”’, 27 Jan. 1982, no. 23–31, DVH 48/138758, BArch, Freiburg.

75 ‘Beendigung der Besetzung. . .’, (telex), 8 July 1983, no. 60, DVH 48/139083, BArch, Freiburg. When the Gorleben site was planned in 1977, the East German state publicly kept quiet so as not to jeopardise its own site for radioactive waste along the border in Morsleben (in spite of concern that 81 per cent of the population within 50 kilometres of Gorleben lived on GDR territory). ‘Vorgehen gegenüber der BRD. . .’, 16 Jan. 1978, no. 201–209, DY 30/3128, BArch, Berlin.

76 ‘Castor so lang wie noch nie unterwegs’, tageszeitung, 28 Nov. 2011.

77 This was a slogan of both the French and West German movements: ‘ni ici, ni ailleurs’ and ‘nicht hier und auch nicht anderswo!’

78 In May 1978 Didier invited artists Iri and Toshi Maruki to display their paintings about Hiroshima in Cherbourg and speak to local anti-nuclear groups.

79 Didier Anger, Interview, 22 Sept. 2010.

80 On multi-sited protest by sailors in the eighteenth century, see Featherstone, David, ‘Towards the Relational Construction of Militant Particularisms: Or Why the Geographies of Past Struggles Matter for Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation’, Antipode, 37, 2 (2005), 250–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 255.

81 See, for example, Gilcher-Holtey, Ingrid, ‘Der Transfer zwischen den Studentenbewegungen von 1968 und die Entstehung einer transnationalen Gegenöffentlichkeit’, in Kaelble, Hartmut, Kirsch, Martin and Schmidt-Gernig, Alexander, eds., Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2002), 303–25Google Scholar, here 313–15; Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, Le grand bazar (Paris: P. Belfond, 1975), 51–62Google Scholar; Milder, Stephen, ‘Thinking Globally, Acting (Trans-)Locally: Petra Kelly and the Transnational Roots of West German Green Politics’, Contemporary European History, 43(2010), 301–26Google Scholar; Kirchhof, Astrid Mignon, ‘Spanning the Globe: West-German Support for the Australian Anti-Nuclear Movement’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 254–73Google Scholar.

82 See Kenney, Carnival of Revolution, 109.

83 On the potential of transnational connections to ‘unsettle’ identities, see Featherstone, ‘Relational Construction of Militant Particularisms’, 267–8.

84 See Zahra, Tara, ‘The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands’, Contemporary European History, 17, 2 (2008), 137–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 « Jean », Elsass, 95.

86 Jean-Jacques Rettig, ‘Elsass: Umweltgeschichte, Familiengeschichte und Regionalgeschichte’, available at http://www.bund-rvso.de/rettig-umweltgeschichte.html (last visited 2 May 2015).

87 s’ Weschpenäscht. Die Chronik von Wyhl (1972–1982), film, 111 mins (1982).

88 Jean-Jacques Rettig, Interview, 19 Apr. 2010.

89 Ginette Skandrani, Interview, 11 Jan. 2010.

90 Bernadette Ridard, Interview, 25 Aug. 2010.

91 Among those interviewed for this project, Günter Hopfenmüller of the Kommunistischer Bund and Bernard Dréano of the Organisation communiste des travailleurs had extensive transnational contacts through ‘Third World’ solidarity work that sometimes overlapped with their anti-nuclear activities.

92 Wolfgang Hertle, Interview, 22 July 2010.

93 Hertle, Wolfgang, Larzac, 1971–1981. Der gewaltfreie Widerstand gegen die Erweiterung eines Truppenübungsplatzes in Süd-Frankreich (Kassel-Bettenhausen: Weber Zucht & Co., 1982)Google Scholar.

94 Hervé Ott, Interview, 18 Sept. 2010.

95 Hertle, Interview.

96 See ‘Le Cun du Larzac’ (box), Archiv Aktiv, Hamburg.

97 On transcultural contact in post-war West Germany, see especially Davis, ‘A Whole World Opening Up’.

98 Conny Baade, Interview, 19 Sept. 2010.

99 Something analogous can be seen in some East Germans’ memories of Poland as a ‘window to the West’ or as a place representative of the wider world. See Logemann, Daniel, Das polnische Fenster: Deutsch-polnische Kontakte im staatssozialistischen Alltag Leipzigs 1972–1989 (München: Oldenbourg, 2012), 25–30Google Scholar.

100 In a similar manner, West German opponents of the Vietnam War had established ties with American activists through official student exchanges. See Klimke, Martin, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

101 Caselli, Interview.

102 Kirchhof, Astrid Mignon and Meyer, Jan-Henrik, ‘Global Protest against Nuclear Power. Transfer and Transnational Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 165–90Google Scholar. The same authors very rightly point out that more attention needs to be paid to the ‘scope and relevance of transnational exchange’ rather than merely to identifying and ‘emphasising the existence of transnational connections’.