During the first half of the 1980s, the nuclear freeze movement engaged in a number of local, national, and international efforts to induce the United States and the Soviet Union to halt the production, development, and deployment of nuclear weapons. The movement emerged at a time when many Americans and Europeans were increasingly concerned about the real possibility of nuclear war between the two superpowers. The new president, Ronald Reagan, and his senior defense and foreign policy advisors talked openly about nuclear war while stating their dissatisfaction with the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaties, which had substantially slowed the nuclear arms race.

Europeans were even more concerned about the prospects for nuclear war, given the 1979 decision between the United States and its NATO allies to deploy nearly six hundred nuclear missiles across Western Europe. Because of the heavy concentration of NATO forces in West Germany...