Terror and Democracy in West Germany

Karrin Hanshew examines West German responses to 1970s terrorism to explain why the experience had lasting significance for German politics and society.

Karrin Hanshew (Author)

9781107429451, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 August 2014

294 pages, 10 b/w illus.
23.4 x 15.6 x 1.7 cm, 0.45 kg

'Karrin Hanshew offers an intricate and intriguing look at the role of terrorism in delineating acceptable violence in a democracy … Hanshew's monograph makes an excellent case for the transformative effects of terrorism and fear and the importance of debates over security and violence to West German political culture. Her work is an interesting addition to a growing body of literature on West German civil society and political culture, as well as literature on the 1970s. Furthermore, her work is relevant to scholars of terrorism and counterterrorism … Hanshew's explanation for the transformation of West German conservatism wrought by its experience with terrorism is an important addition to the understanding the causes of the conservative turn in the early 1980s.' H-Net Reviews

In 1970, the Red Army Faction declared war on West Germany. The militants failed to bring down the state, but this book argues that the decade-long debate they inspired helped shape a new era. After 1945, West Germans answered long-standing doubts about democracy's viability and fears of authoritarian state power with a 'militant democracy' empowered against its enemies and a popular commitment to anti-fascist resistance. In the 1970s, these postwar solutions brought Germans into open conflict, fighting to protect democracy from both terrorism and state overreaction. Drawing on diverse sources, Karrin Hanshew shows how Germans, faced with a state of emergency and haunted by their own history, managed to learn from the past and defuse this adversarial dynamic. This negotiation of terror helped them to accept the Federal Republic of Germany as a stable, reformable polity and to reconceive of democracy's defence as part of everyday politics.

1. Democracy made militant: the Federal Republic of Germany
2. Disobedient Germans: resistance and the extraparliamentary left
3. 'Mister Computer' and the search for internal security
4. The security state, new social movements, and the duty to resist
5. The German autumn, 1977
6. Civility, German identity, and the end of the postwar.

Subject Areas: Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], European history [HBJD], History [HB]