The European Peace Marches (EPM) arose from a Europe-wide network of initiatives within the

Peace Movement A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals, such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world peac ...

. The Marches took place from 1978 to 1992, mobilizing large numbers of citizens especially in the early 1980s.Robert Surbrug
''Beyond Vietnam: The Politics of Protest in Massachusetts, 1974-1990''
p. 138. Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2009. Their aim was to protest the arms race and the growth of military spending. The campaign had many ties to the peace groups in the former

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

and to the British

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is an organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nucle ...

. It evolved out of the '' Ostermärsche'' (Easter Marches) organized by the German peace movement. German author

Heinrich Böll Heinrich Theodor Böll (; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll is a recipient of the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). ...

, German

Bundestag The Bundestag (, "Federal Diet") is the German federal parliament. It is the only federal representative body that is directly elected by the German people. It is comparable to the United States House of Representatives or the House of Commons ...

member

Petra Kelly Petra Karin Kelly (29 November 1947 – 1 October 1992) was a German Green politician and ecofeminist activist. She was a founding member of the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence both nationally in Germany and wor ...

and former Army colonel

Gert Bastian Gert Bastian (26 March 1923 – presumably 1 October 1992) was a German military officer and politician with the German Green Party. Biography Born in Munich, Bastian volunteered for the Wehrmacht in 1941, at the age of nineteen. In World War I ...

were prominent members of the EPM. So are Volker Nick, Volker Scheub and Christoph. Then who wrote a book about blockade of the US Army base of

Mutlangen Mutlangen is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg in the Ostalbkreis district and belongs to the Stuttgart Metropolitan Region. As of 31 December 2015, it has 6,588 inhabitants. Geography Mutlangen is located between the Welzheim Fores ...

. In November 1984, EPM organized a five-day "debriefing" workshop on the

Hartmannswillerkopf Hartmannswillerkopf, also known as the Vieil Armand (French) or Hartmannsweiler Kopf (German; English: Hartmansweiler Head) is a pyramidal rocky spur in the Vosges mountains of the Grand Est region, France. The peak stands at overlooking the Rhine ...

Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...

, France, following the struggle against the installation of

Pershing II The Pershing II Weapon System was a solid-fuel rocket, solid-fueled multistage rocket, two-stage medium-range ballistic missile designed and built by Martin Marietta to replace the Pershing 1a Field Artillery Missile System as the United States ...

and

SS-20 The RSD-10 ''Pioneer'' (russian: ракета средней дальности (РСД) «Пионер» tr.: ''raketa sredney dalnosti (RSD) "Pioner"''; en, Medium-Range Missile "Pioneer") was an intermediate-range ballistic missile with a ...

nuclear missiles in Germany (Mutlangen). About 200 representatives from many European peace movements came together to discuss the reasons of their failure to prevent this escalation in the arms race. The 1984 Network Liberty Alliance arose from this gathering. Arindi Seevah, disciple of

Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

and founder of the Women's March Against Violence Project, recalled, in an interview broadcast on ITN and Zee TV:

References

External links

* Volker Nick, Volker Scheub, Christoph Then (1993)
''Mutlangen 1983-1987: Die Stationierung der Pershing II und die Kampagne Ziviler Ungehorsam bis zur Abrüstung''
. Peace marches Cold War {{ColdWar-stub