Transnational identities in national politics: The SPD and the German peace movements, 1921--1966

This dissertation problematizes the relationship between the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and pacifists on the non-Communist Left between 1921 and 1966. It breaks from traditional master narratives by using gender, transnational, and biographical analysis to reveal under-studied continuities and shifting political spaces in German politics. Part I demonstrates the usefulness of a core/penumbra model for understanding gendered political spaces on the Left and the merits of using biographical analysis to reveal important continuities over the constructed historical divides of 1933 and 1945. Furthermore, this part explores the foundations of "masculine" characterizations of party politics and the tensions created by common perceptions that ethical pacifism, originally promoted by Bertha von Suttner's powerful influence, was "feminine." Part II highlights case studies of individual activists, what I term cooperative activists, who drove the relationship between the SPD and pacifist initiatives by participating in both party and peace activities throughout this timeframe. In particular, these case studies illustrate three main types of transnational interaction in Germany between 1921 and 1966: awareness, intermittent contact, and direct, interpersonal, reciprocal contact. This focus reveals that although the SPD maintained its reputation as a "peace party" during this period of investigation and beyond, party leaders' conception of peace changed over time. By 1961, during Willy Brandt's Chancellor candidacy, party rhetoric shifted to a more "masculine" understanding of peace, marking an alternative turning point to party programmatic reforms in 1959. For pacifists, SPD sponsorship of antinuclear activities in the 1950s helped open new political space for extra-parliamentary movements like the Easter Marches during the 1960s. These connections also set the stage for the development of the Green Party in the 1980s which capitalized on the blurred boundaries between extra-parliamentary and party politics.