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D.3.b. Comparative and General Studies

Evangelista, Matthew, Unarmed Forces: The Transnational Movement to End the Cold War, Ithaca NY, Columbia University Press, 1999, pp. 406

Well-documented examination of the role of transnational civil movements in contributing to arms control and the ending of the Cold War. Includes assessment of the Pugwash Conference which brought together scientists from East and West, and also the wider anti-war movement.
Grant, Matthew ; Ziemann, Benjamin, Understanding the imaginary war. Culture, thought and nuclear conflict, 1945–90, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2017, pp. 316

The authors reinterpret the Cold War as an ‘imaginary war’, a conflict that had visions of nuclear devastation as one of its main battlegrounds, and provide and cultural representations of nuclear war. There are chapters and case studies on Western Europe, the USSR, Japan and the USA. Drawing on various strands of intellectual debate and from different media, such as documentary film and debates among physicians, the contributors demonstrate the difficulties in making the unthinkable and unimaginable - nuclear apocalypse - imaginable. The aim is to make nuclear culture relevant to an understanding of the period from 1945 to 1990.
Kaltefleiter, Werner ; Pfaltzgraff, Robert L., Peace Movements in Europe and the United States, London, Croom Helm, 1985, pp. 211

Essays arising out of May 1984 conference at the Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel, on peace movements in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, West Germany, France, Italy, Britain and the US. Focus is on the anti-nuclear movements of the 1980s, though some contributors sketch the earlier history of movements in their countries.
Laqueur, Walter ; Hunter, Robert Edwards, European Peace Movements and the Future of the Western Alliance, New Brunswick, Transaction Books in association with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC, 1985, pp. 450

Generally critical contributions on the peace movements of the 1980s in various European countries and their impact on the Western alliance. Includes chapter on the US peace movement of the 1980s.
Nehring, Holger, Politics of Security: British and West German Protest Movements in the Early Cold War 1945-1970, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 368

Discusses cultural and social bases of protest against nuclear weapons, role of nationalism in the movements, and importance of British types of activism for German protest in light of experience in World War Two and the cold war. See also: Nehring, Holger , Demonstrating for “Peace” in the Cold War: The British and West German Easter Marches 1958-64 In Reiss, Matthias , The Street as Stage: Protest Marches and Public Rallies since the Nineteenth Century Oxford, Oxford University Press, , 2007 , chap. 15; Nehring, Holger , National Internationalists: British and West German Protests Against Nuclear Weapons, the Politics of Transnational Communication and the Social Hisotry of the Cold War 1957-1964 Contemporary European History, 2005, pp. 559-582 .
Robinson, Paul, The American Antinuclear Movement, In Oxford Research Encyclopedia, American History, pp. 1-28

This brief history of opposition to nuclear weapons has a global focus, though from a US perspective, and covers the evolution of the movement up to 1991. It starts in 1944 with the opposition of nuclear scientists. The author argues that the movement included an array of tactics, from radical dissent to public protest to opposition within the government, and succeeded in constraining the arms race and helping to make the use of nuclear weapons politically unacceptable.
Rochon, Thomas R., Mobilizing for Peace, Princetown NJ, Princetown University Press, 1988, pp. 232

Wide-ranging analysis of West European anti-missile/nuclear disarmament campaigns 1979-1986, incorporating discussion of social movement theory and the wider political context. Focuses particularly on Britain, the Netherlands, West Germany and France. It includes great deal of information on organizations, campaigns and types of action, as well as many useful sources and references.
Tiel, Max, The Black Man and the Bomb: The interconnection between racism and anti-nuclear protests in South Africa and the United States, Political Culture and National Identities, Vol. Master Degree, Leiden, The Netherlands, Leiden University, 2017

The thesis starts from the political context of the late 1970s when, despite detente, the US was developing its nuclear weapons arsenal, and apartheid South Africa emerged as a nuclear weapons state. Black campaigners against nuclear weapons emerged in both countries, and both suffered from racial discrimination, but the very different political contexts made organized opposition to nuclear policies very much harder in South Africa.  However, in both cases nuclear weapon developments were closely linked to an international context, and both movements also relied heavily on international allies.
Wittner, Lawrence S., The Struggle Against the Bomb, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement Through 1953, Vol. 1, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1993, pp. 456

Covers responses to the Bomb from 1945-1953, including by scientists and churches, but with emphasis on the Soviet-initiated protests under the World Peace Council.
Wittner, Lawrence S., Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1954-1970, Vol. 2, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1997, pp. 641

Extensive and thoroughly researched history of campaigns and governments responses, which includes quite a lot of material on nonviolent direct action.
Wittner, Lawrence S., Towards Nuclear Abolition: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1971 to the Present, Vol. 3, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2003, pp. 657

Traces the development of the movement in the 1970s, the rise of a new activism in the 1980s, the ‘breakthrough’ of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Agreement of 1987, and the end of the Cold War. While noting later more worrying trends, Wittner concludes that ‘This study – like its predecessors – indicates that the nuclear arms control and disarmament measures of the modern era have resulted primarily from the efforts of a worldwide citizens’ campaign, the biggest mass movement in modern history’.
Wittner, Lawrence S., Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 2009, pp. 272

A greatly condensed version of his three volume history (listed individually).