During the Cold War, interstate relationships assumed the form of a bloc confrontation that took primacy over all other fields of international competition and all other levels of social discord, including activities - which transcended these blocs - to prevent a third (nuclear) world war. Peace movements can be traced historically as social phenomena linked in intricate ways with the action-reaction cycles of foreign and security policies that evolved in each decision-making apparatus. Cold War history presents a complexity of such shifts. Within that overall analysis, the Vietnam War both highlighted and catalyzed some major changes in that flow.

There still has been no critical history of the World Peace Council (WPC) (earlier: World Council for Peace), and there are few case studies. Research into the East German peace movement is limited to “opposition movements.” In this chapter, I draw on archival research and characteristic examples to illustrate the main concerns of the WPC, focusing on the WPC's response to the Vietnam War in terms of its own international composition and political objectives; the paradoxical status of the German Peace Council (GPC) of the German Democratic Republic (GDR); and solidarity with Vietnam in the GDR, how it was organized, and why it garnered the support it did.