Arms Control, Reagan, and the Mothers of Filderstadt.

• Author: Tuch, Hans
• Position: Ronald Reagan's address to women who expressed their fears about nuclear weapons in Germany

The decision by the Trump administration to suspend one of the last major nuclear arms control treaties, the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, known as INF, recalls the emotional grip of the nuclear weapons issue on the German citizenry in the 1970s and '80s.

Concern over the prospect of U.S. and Soviet missiles being placed within range of European capitals was epitomized in early 1982 by the grassroots activities of a tiny group of politically committed women in Filderstadt, a bedroom community near Stuttgart. The "Mothers of Filderstadt," as they called themselves, addressed appeals to President Reagan and Chairman Brezhnev expressing their fears about nuclear weapons on German soil and the attendant dangers.

Deftly exploiting Moscow's quick and sympathetic reply, the Soviet ambassador invited the women to Bonn to receive Moscow's response in front of television cameras. When the women complained that they had received no response from Washington, the American embassy's public affairs section realized we had missed an opportunity to explain U.S. policy to a grassroots group of German voters and launched a friendly and sometimes intense dialogue with the group, including visits back and forth in Bonn and Filderstadt.

On the occasion of President Reagan's first visit to the Federal Republic on June 9, 1982, U.S. Embassy Bonn suggested that he include in his speech before the German Bundestag a reference to the concerns of the Filderstadt mothers and thereby accomplish two objectives at once: to make up for the previous lapse in communication and to give, as President Reagan so often did, a humanizing spin to U.S. policy. Our suggestion was initially ignored by the President's speech writers. In a last-minute appeal to White House communications director David Gergen, however, Ambassador Arthur Burns effectively conveyed his sense of the value of "let Reagan be Reagan" vis-a-vis the German public, and the Filderstadt reference was included.

It turned out to be the right touch: The American president had considered a group of German women from a littleknown hamlet important enough to address them personally in a major speech before the federal parliament on an...