Krefeld appeal

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Petra Kelly, representative of the Krefeld Initiative, at Artists for Peace , Bochum

The Krefeld appeal was a call by the West German peace movement to the Federal Government at the time to withdraw its approval for the stationing of new medium-range nuclear missiles in Europe ( NATO double decision ) and to press for an end to the nuclear arms race within NATO . It was presented to the public on November 16, 1980 in Krefeld and signed by over four million German citizens by 1983. It was initiated jointly by members of the German Peace Union (DFU) and the Greens and represented a “minimal consensus” in the peace movement, the immediate goal of preventing “retrofitting” in order to enable all nuclear missiles to be dismantled in Europe.

Initiators

The appeal was the result of the two-day “Krefeld Forum” that took place on November 15 and 16, 1980 in the Seidenweberhaus . Some representatives of the Kampf dem Atomtod movement of 1957/58 - Martin Niemöller , Helmut Ridder , Karl Bechert and Gösta von Uexküll - together with representatives of the "new" peace movement - u. a. Petra Kelly , Gert Bastian , Christoph Strässer . To the surprise of the initiators, around 1500 representatives of extra-parliamentary initiatives as well as the Young Socialists and Young Democrats took part in the meeting, who then jointly decided on the text of the appeal. The design came from Josef Weber , a member of the DFU board of directors, and the former Bundeswehr general Gert Bastian. In addition to the initiators, the writer Luise Rinser was among the first to sign the appeal .

Content

The publicly presented and then nationwide distributed text was under the heading: Nuclear death threatens us all - no new nuclear missiles in Europe! In many print versions, there was not only talk of new, but general of "nuclear missiles". The appeal therefore not only demanded the rejection of new western but also all European nuclear missiles. He consciously took up the slogan of the 1950s “Fight against atomic death!”, Which had also opposed the atomic armament of both blocs and initially wanted to stop the atomic armament of the Bundeswehr and NATO.

The appeal called on the federal government,

  • withdraw consent to the deployment of Pershing II missiles and cruise missiles in Central Europe;
  • to adopt a position in the alliance that no longer suspects our country of wanting to pave the way for a new nuclear arms race that is particularly endangering the Europeans.

In addition, the West German population was asked to

... to support this appeal in order to enforce a security policy through constant and growing pressure from public opinion that
  • does not allow Central Europe to be upgraded to become a US nuclear weapons platform
  • Believes disarmament more important than deterrence
  • the development of the Bundeswehr is based on this objective.

This was justified by the fact that a timely disarmament agreement between the Soviet Union and the USA was no longer to be expected, as the new US President Ronald Reagan had postponed the planned Geneva disarmament negotiations for an indefinite period and suspended the ratification of the SALT II treaties:

More and more obviously, NATO's retrofitting decision of December 12, 1979 is proving to be a fatally wrong decision. The expectation that agreements between the USA and the Soviet Union to limit the Euro-strategic weapon systems could be reached before a new generation of American medium-range nuclear missiles are deployed in Western Europe does not seem to be fulfilled.

Instead, a new "suicidal arms race" is likely, which can then no longer be stopped:

... its increasing acceleration and apparently more concrete ideas of the apparent limitation of a nuclear war should primarily expose the European peoples to an intolerable risk.

The rejection of missile stationing by the federal government and the population should take into account the ongoing discussion about "possibilities of an alternative security policy":

Such considerations are of great importance for the democratic process of decision-making and can help ensure that our people are not suddenly confronted with facts that have happened suddenly.

The Soviet SS-20 missiles were not explicitly mentioned, as the appeal was not addressed to foreign leaders, but to the federal government and primarily wanted to prevent the imminent deployment decision, which it would decide on.

effect

After just six months, around 800,000 people had signed the appeal, and by 1983 even more than four million. Even after the stationing decision of the Bundestag majority in 1983 tens of thousands of citizens signed the appeal.

However, soon after its appearance, this met with rejection from the parties represented in the Bundestag and the DGB . They often characterized the signatories as "useful idiots" of the SED and its West German offshoots such as the DKP . Since the GDR government also supported the DKP and its affiliated organizations financially, some opponents of the peace movement also claimed that the SED had direct influence on the Krefeld appeal. The Federal Defense Ministry under Hans Apel had brochures distributed according to which even all initiators of the appeal were financially dependent on the Soviet Union (not the SED).

Also Erhard Eppler , who shared the substantive requirements of the appeal, did not sign him because of the co-author Joseph Weber had "never said to the other side of no." This criticism was shared by parts of the SPD and the trade unions. That is why they appeared on December 9, 1980 with the almost word-for-word Bielefeld appeal to the public, which, however, found little support outside the SPD and whose signatories often also signed the Krefeld appeal.

This was not initiated by the DKP and not only by DFU members. Contrary to what his authors had expected, it found approval far beyond the traditional Easter march groups and extra-parliamentary citizens' initiatives , as it expressed what many people feared at the time, regardless of ideological and political differences. At times it formed a platform for a broad alliance in the diverse peace movement by formulating a common short-term goal, but also serving as a basis for discussion for an alternative peace policy under the stipulation “Disarmament is more important than deterrence”.

After NATO began deploying the missiles, the Krefeld appeal had its basis removed, so that from then on it could no longer act as a bundle. Many groups in the peace movement had foreseen this and criticized the appeal for various reasons. Further demands, e.g. B. after the demilitarization of all of Europe, an exit from NATO or a complete abandonment of military defense, however, were not able to reach a consensus.

The approval of the demands of the Krefeld appeal is also seen as a factor that has encouraged East German peace groups to demand corresponding disarmament and demilitarization steps from the GDR government and to also carry this out - for example with the patch swords to plowshares . Because the Krefeld Initiative did not protest against the arrest of pacifists in the GDR and did not want to combine the demand for nuclear disarmament with the demand for human rights in the Eastern Bloc, Gert Bastian and Petra Kelly resigned as spokesmen for the Greens. They advocated a "non-aligned peace movement" across Europe and openly supported the East German peace initiatives independent of the state at a meeting with GDR head of state Erich Honecker . That is why there is also the view that attempts by groups close to the DKP to instrumentalize the peace movement for Soviet interests have failed.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christoph Strässer: The Krefeld appeal. In: Hans A. Pestalozzi, Ralf Schlegel, Adolf Bachmann (eds.): Peace in Germany. The peace movement as it became, what it is, what it can become. 1982, pp. 87-92.
  2. ↑ for example Michael Ploetz, Heinz-Peter Müller: Ferngelenkte Friedensbewegung? GDR and USSR in the fight against NATO's double decision. 2004.
  3. ↑ Lutz Plümer (Ed.): Positions of the Peace Movement. The dispute over the US medium-range missile resolution. Documents, appeals, contributions. Sendler, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-88048-053-2 , pp. 33-35.
  4. ↑ Udo Baron : Cold War and Hot Peace. The influence of the SED and its West German allies on the party "The Greens" (= dictatorship and resistance. Vol. 3). Lit, Münster et al. 2003, ISBN 3-8258-6108-2 , S. X , (At the same time: Chemnitz, Technical University, dissertation, 2002).