The Civil Rights Struggle, African-American GIs, and Germany

forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan in Fall 2010

by Maria Höhn and Martin Klimke

This moving and beautifully illustrated book, developed from an award-winning research project, examines the experience of African American GIs in Germany since 1945 and the unique insights they provide into the civil rights struggle at home and abroad. Because of the American military occupation after World War II, America’s unresolved civil rights agenda was exposed to world-wide scrutiny as never before. America’s ambitious efforts to democratize German society after the defeat of Nazism also meant that West Germany was exposed to American ideas of freedom and democracy to a much larger degree than many other countries.

The politicization and radicalization of African American GIs over civil rights took on a particular significance in light of Germany’s central role in US strategic thinking and its symbolic importance as the battleground between two competing superpowers. While the effects of the African American Civil Rights Movement reverberated across the globe, Germany represents a special case that illuminates a remarkable period in American and world history.

$24.00 / 256 pages / 50 black and white photographs

For further information, please see here.

To be notified when copies are available for sale, please send an e-mail to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or log on to www.aacvr-germany.org/book and subscribe to our newsletter

Table of Contents

Preface by Ron E. Armstead, Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust

Introduction

CHAPTER 1:   Closing Ranks: World War I and the Rise of Hitler

CHAPTER 2:   Fighting on Two Fronts: World War II and Civil Rights

CHAPTER 3:   We Will Never Go Back to the Old Way Again:
                     African American GIs and the Occupation of Germany

CHAPTER 4:   Setting the Stage for Brown: Desegregating the Army in Germany

CHAPTER 5:   Bringing Civil Rights to East and West:
                     Dr. Martin Luther King in Cold War Berlin

CHAPTER 6:   Revolutionary Alliances: The Rise of Black Power

CHAPTER 7:   Heroes of the Other America:
                     East German Solidarity with the African American Freedom Struggle

CHAPTER 8:   A Call for Justice: The Racial Crisis in the Military and the GI Movement

Epilogue

The Authors

Maria Höhn teaches German history at Vassar College, and is an established scholar of the American military presence in Germany Her book, GIs and Fräuleins, published in 2002 by the University of North Carolina Press was the first book ever to address the experiences of black soldiers in Germany. A German translation of her book was published under the title Amis, Cadillacs, und “Negerliebchen”: GIs und deutsche Frauen in den fünfziger Jahren with Verlag Berlin Brandenburg in 2008. Together with Seungsook Moon, she  has co-authored and co-edited Over There. Living with the U.S. Military Empire (Duke University Press,  forthcoming 2010), which explores the impact of U.S. military deployments on gender and race relations in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

Martin Klimke is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC and the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His 2005 dissertation “The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties,” was awarded the prestigious Ruprecht-Karls Prize for best doctoral thesis at Heidelberg University in 2006, and was published by Princeton University Press in January 2010. Klimke's research focuses on the intersection of political and cultural history, with a particular emphasis on diplomatic and transnational history.

He is co-editor of 1968 in Europe (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), Changing the World, Changing the Self: Political Protest and Collective Identities in 1960/70s West German and United States (Berghahn Books, 2010), and the publication series Protest, Culture and Society (Berghahn Books, New York/Oxford). He is also the coordinator of the international research network European Protest Movements Since 1945 supported by the European Union and co-director of the research project and digital archive The Nuclear Crisis: Transatlantic Peace Politics, Rearmament, and the Second Cold War. Klimke is currently writing a biography of peace activists Petra Kelly and Randall Forsberg.

Both Höhn and Klimke are the recipients of the NAACP Julius E. Williams Distinguished Community Service Award 2009 for their work on the connection of the military service of African-American GIs abroad and the advancement civil rights in the U.S.