Organic farmers, German vintners, and the atomic monster of Seabrook: A trans-Atlantic history of social activism and nuclear power from New England to West German

This study focuses on citizen intervention, direct action, and antinuclear activism from West Germany to New England in the twentieth century. Samuel Lovejoy's war against the nuke in Montague, the politicization of German vintners in Breisach, the site occupation in Wyhl, and the rise of the Clamshell Alliance in Seabrook provide the framework for a trans-Atlantic narrative on the development of the antinuclear movement in the Atlantic World during the 1970s. Using both oral histories and archival research on antinuclear protest in New England and the Rhine Valley in West Germany, what this paper ultimately demonstrates is that the model of direct action used by the nuclear opposition at Wyhl provided the inspiration behind the organization of the Clamshell Alliance in the fight against the atomic monster in Seabrook, New Hampshire.;Along the way, the story explores how shared concerns over thermal pollution, low-level radiation, and the authoritative nuclear state politicized everyday people. Seemingly ordinary farmers, vintners, and fishermen rallied against nuclear power and joined what were essentially grassroots social movements in order to challenge the authority of the state. This project is significant because it questions traditional American and European historiography on environmental and social movements first by studying the relationship between nuclear technologies, political boundaries, and the traditional social order, and second by situating the antinuclear movement within a trans-Atlantic context.;This study places two heretofore separate social and environmental histories into a single transnational narrative, and in the process, a new interpretation of the Cold War is presented based on nuclear power and social activism in the Atlantic World. Ultimately, the smaller story of the antinuclear movement from New England to West Germany is told on order to reframe and expand the larger story that becomes the Cold War.