ABSTRACT
The vote of the Social Democratic party in the Bundestag in November 1983 against the NATO dual-track decision was the most dramatic manifestation of the erosion of the security consensus in West Germany. The new nationalists complained that West Germany has been victimized by cultural Americanization as much as by direct political interference with the sovereignty of the Federal Republic. The role of the West German press as a filter of US policy to its public was one of the residual effects of the radica-lization of the intellectuals in the 1960s and played a crucial role in the growth of the peace movement. For Communist groups such as the German Communist party the peace movement was a classic example of a popular front. Neutralism has a constituency in West German intellectual and political life. The contrast between the German Social Democrats and the French Socialists in their view of the Soviet Union and European security is striking in every regard.
