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an international system of oppression was something many German leftists took as axiomatic. Early on, they saw the Vietnam War in anti-imperialist terms and adopted the militant position of support for the Viet Cong. In 1965, German activists organized a “Vietnam Summer,” during which they both learned and educated the broader populace about the conflict in Southeast Asia (American activists would do 34
“Agents of Necessity”
the same only two summers later).34 At a May 1966 antiwar conference in Frankfurt—fully a year before American activists expressed such views in great numbers—more than 2,000 participants ratified a statement describing the armed “national and social liberation struggle of the South Vietnamese people” as an act of “political necessity,” as well as a model for other anticapitalist movements in the Third World.35
Some activists even claimed a direct affinity with the South Vietnamese rebels (the Viet Cong) based on what they saw as the close parallels between West Germany and South Vietnam: both countries had occupying U.S. armies and “puppet” governments whose true purpose—behind the rhetoric of defending democracy against foreign communists—was to contain indigenous revolts. The poet Erich Fried starkly asserted this connection: “Vietnam is Germany / its fate is our fate / The bombs for its freedom / are bombs for our freedom / Our Chancellor Erhard / is Mar-shall Ky / General Nguyen Van Thieu / is President Lübke / The Americans / are also there the Americans.”36 For its less radical critics, the Vietnam War called into question West Germany’s identity. Seeing the United States engage in mass violence against a poor country struggling for self-determination—as leftists commonly saw the conflict—potentially undermined Germans’ already fragile sense of their own society’s legitimacy, which was derived in part from its effort to emulate the Americans. The United States, one commentator concluded, “forfeited its status as a role model as the result of the Vietnam war.”37
West German anger at the Vietnam War was also stoked by the Nazi past. With deliberate provocativeness, young activists denounced the war as an act of “genocide” (Völkermord), which they, as Germans, had a special duty to oppose. The German-born Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who became a leader of the French student movement, explained: “Our parents’
generation had supported the Nazis, whether actively or passively. We did not want to be complicit in the genocide in Indochina.”38 By extension, German leftists regarded the support for the war by the government and much of the public as evidence of how little German values had changed since the Nazi era. The Vietnam War, then, was subject to the double-coding that defined young Germans’ perceptions. The violence in Vietnam was repellent to them both in its own right and insofar as it recalled Nazi violence; the apparent indifference of Germans to the suffering in Vietnam was infuriating in its own right and as it recalled the public’s tacit support for the Nazis’ terror. Opposition to the war, in short, did not depend upon the drawing of historic parallels. Consciousness of the German past, however, made the war all the more disturbing.
“Agents of Necessity”
35
New Left references to fascism entailed a thicket of often contradictory judgments and associations. At times, leftists drew comparisons between the past and present with blunt and even reckless force. In 1966, banners were secretly placed on the memorial site entrance at the Dachau concentration camp proclaiming, “Vietnam is the Auschwitz of America” and “American leathernecks are inhuman murderers like the SS.”39
By virtue of this elision, to oppose the war was to implicitly denounce the horrors of the German past, if not also to diminish German guilt by relativizing its crimes. Whatever the implications of these comparisons, German leftists’ relationship to
“Agents of Necessity”
the same only two summers later).34 At a May 1966 antiwar conference in Frankfurt—fully a year before American activists expressed such views in great numbers—more than 2,000 participants ratified a statement describing the armed “national and social liberation struggle of the South Vietnamese people” as an act of “political necessity,” as well as a model for other anticapitalist movements in the Third World.35
Some activists even claimed a direct affinity with the South Vietnamese rebels (the Viet Cong) based on what they saw as the close parallels between West Germany and South Vietnam: both countries had occupying U.S. armies and “puppet” governments whose true purpose—behind the rhetoric of defending democracy against foreign communists—was to contain indigenous revolts. The poet Erich Fried starkly asserted this connection: “Vietnam is Germany / its fate is our fate / The bombs for its freedom / are bombs for our freedom / Our Chancellor Erhard / is Mar-shall Ky / General Nguyen Van Thieu / is President Lübke / The Americans / are also there the Americans.”36 For its less radical critics, the Vietnam War called into question West Germany’s identity. Seeing the United States engage in mass violence against a poor country struggling for self-determination—as leftists commonly saw the conflict—potentially undermined Germans’ already fragile sense of their own society’s legitimacy, which was derived in part from its effort to emulate the Americans. The United States, one commentator concluded, “forfeited its status as a role model as the result of the Vietnam war.”37
West German anger at the Vietnam War was also stoked by the Nazi past. With deliberate provocativeness, young activists denounced the war as an act of “genocide” (Völkermord), which they, as Germans, had a special duty to oppose. The German-born Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who became a leader of the French student movement, explained: “Our parents’
generation had supported the Nazis, whether actively or passively. We did not want to be complicit in the genocide in Indochina.”38 By extension, German leftists regarded the support for the war by the government and much of the public as evidence of how little German values had changed since the Nazi era. The Vietnam War, then, was subject to the double-coding that defined young Germans’ perceptions. The violence in Vietnam was repellent to them both in its own right and insofar as it recalled Nazi violence; the apparent indifference of Germans to the suffering in Vietnam was infuriating in its own right and as it recalled the public’s tacit support for the Nazis’ terror. Opposition to the war, in short, did not depend upon the drawing of historic parallels. Consciousness of the German past, however, made the war all the more disturbing.
“Agents of Necessity”
35
New Left references to fascism entailed a thicket of often contradictory judgments and associations. At times, leftists drew comparisons between the past and present with blunt and even reckless force. In 1966, banners were secretly placed on the memorial site entrance at the Dachau concentration camp proclaiming, “Vietnam is the Auschwitz of America” and “American leathernecks are inhuman murderers like the SS.”39
By virtue of this elision, to oppose the war was to implicitly denounce the horrors of the German past, if not also to diminish German guilt by relativizing its crimes. Whatever the implications of these comparisons, German leftists’ relationship to
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