From 1978 to 1992, this European-wide network of initiatives within the Peace Movement

Peace movement

A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...

 had mobilized millions of citizens, protesting the arms race, the growth of military spending and joining in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...

. It had many ties to the peace groups in the former German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

. It evolved out of the :de:Ostermarsch "Ostermärsche" (Easter Marches) organized by the German peace movement.

German author Heinrich Böll

Heinrich Böll

Heinrich Theodor Böll was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.- Biography :...

, German Bundestag

Bundestag

The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

 member Petra Kelly

Petra Kelly

Petra Karin Kelly was a German politician and activist. She was instrumental in founding the German Green Party, the first Green party to rise to prominence worldwide.- Early life :...

 and former Army colonel Gert Bastian

Gert Bastian

Gert Bastian was a German military officer and politician with the German Green Party.Born in Munich, Bastian volunteered the Wehrmacht at the age of nineteen. In World War II he served on the Eastern Front being wounded by a bullet in the right arm and in the head by a grenade fragment. He was...

 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.

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

Hartmannswillerkopf

Hartmannswillerkopf, also known as the Vieil Armand or Hartmannsweilerkopf is a pyramidal rocky spur in the Vosges mountains of Alsace. The peak stands at overlooking the Rhine valley. At Hartmannswillerkopf stands a national monument of World War I for the fighting which took place in the...

 in Alsace

Alsace

Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

, France, following the struggle against the installation of Pershing II and SS-20 nuclear missiles in Germany (Mutlangen

Mutlangen

Mutlangen is a town in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, in Ostalbkreis district. As of 1 August 2007, Mutlangen has 6,548 inhabitants....

). 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.

Arindi Seevah, disciple of Gandhi and founder of the Women's March Against Violence Project, recalled, in a ITN/Zee TV interview, this international meeting in the Alsace Vosges, among the marvelous trees, overlooking the plains of Alsace, on a battlefield where tens of thousands had died in a 'war to end all wars', surrounded by bunkers, trenches, barbed wire and rusted old killing machinery, is one of the great memories I have of my trip to Europe. The place was literally vibrating with energy, one only had to close its eyes to hear the screams of the millions of dead, feel their desperation. We slept in the freezing cold of the old bunkers, cooked soup in an old machine gun nest, had heated discussions in the natural amphitheatre of a bomb crater. Everyone who came here returned with a new certainty : war is madness, we know why we need to stop it. Thousands of initiatives emerged from these three days in the snow and the mud on the 'Vieil Armand'. That energy is still with me, and I pledge daily to the millions of dead I encountered there that I will fight to my last breath : 'we will study War no more' (mentioned in her memoirs, "Trampled Flowers")