By John LaForge

Solitary nonviolent witness appears painfully ineffective in the age of state terrorism and vigilante shooting sprees. Yet Susan Crane of Redwood City, California, who was released from prison in

Koblenz, Germany, on January 17, after spending 7.5 months incarcerated over protest trespass convictions (and refusing to pay fines), has perhaps influenced thousands of people in Europe and the States with her example. Crane’s prison time stemmed from a string of bold protests against the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Force Base southeast of Cologne, a provocative and destabilizing deployment that is barely even mentionable in mainstream press.

On June 4, 2024, Crane began serving a 230-day sentence at the Wöllstein-Rohrbach prison, the longest term yet imposed in the decades-long campaign of protests demanding the ouster from Germany of the free-fall, U.S. gravity bombs known as B61s stationed at the base. Dutch peace activist Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam served 115 days together with Crane for similar convictions. The two spent most of their sentences at an “open prison” which permits daytime work release. The “free time” permitted by the “open” institution allowed Crane to speak to visitors and groups and even present a lecture at the local university.

Crane, 81, is a life-long peace activist who has endured lengthy prison sentences in the United States for “Plowshares” disarmament actions at state-side nuclear weapons sites, and is the first U.S. woman to be imprisoned in Germany in the “Büchel is Everywhere” campaign. She was convicted of several trespass charges after joining six “go-in” actions at Büchel. Once on the base, Crane and others warned military personnel that both the stationing and support of the U.S. hydrogen bombs there, and the ongoing threat to use them, are unlawful. Tornado fighter jet pilots of the German Air Force’s 33rd Tactical Air Wing at Büchel routinely train to drop the U.S. H-bombs on targets in Russia, most recently in operation “Steadfast Defender 24” — provocatively staged in the midst of the NATO-armed war in Ukraine, and a public nuclear attack threat just as terrifying as any issued from Moscow.

In a few go-in actions, Susan carried a banner charging, “Büchel Air Base is a Crime Scene.” According to legal scholars like the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, the U.S. transfer of nuclear weapons to Germany violates the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) which forbids any “transfer to any recipient whatsoever [of] nuclear weapons.” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says the U.S. H-bombs at Büchel are the 170-kiloton B61-3, and the 50-kiloton B61-4. The U.S. atomic bomb that incinerated Hiroshima in 1945 was a 15-kiloton device.

Crane wrote in a statement before entering prison last June, “I thought the German courts would listen to the reasons we went onto the base, and understand that our peaceful actions were justified as acts of crime prevention. But international law was not respected or enforced.”

Crane, who has two adult children and four grandchildren, has devoted her life in California to serving the poor and homeless as a member of the Redwood City Catholic Worker community. In a statement last March, Crane wrote, “I see people living in camps, living in cars, and I see working people who don’t have enough income for basic needs like rent, food, or medical care. Then, I think of the money wasted on war-making by the U.S. and NATO nations, and that 3% of the U.S. military budget alone could end starvation around the world.”

Susan’s personalism of individually — and against all odds — addressing overwhelming poverty on one hand, and confronting nuclear madness on the other, confounds the shock-immune public that perks up mostly at news of the latest catastrophe.

If instead of today’s atrocity, Susan’s example of both helping and warning, of “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” could go “viral,” our future would be brighter.

A fourth U.S. peace activist has been incarcerated in Germany over protests at the Büchel Air Base, after John LaForge, Dennis DuVall, and Susan Crane. Brian Terrell, a long-time Catholic Worker and human rights activist from Maloy, Iowa who works with the Nevada Desert Experience, served 15 days in the Wittlich Prison south of Cologne, from February 26 to March 12. Welcome back Brian!