Chapter 11 Affective Solidarities and East German Reconstruction of Postwar Vietnam Christina Schwenkel he year 2010 saw a large number of commemorative activities in Vietnam, including the millennial anniversary of the founding of the capital city of Hanoi. It also marked the Year of Germany in Vietnam, celebrating thirty-five years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Advertisements and promotional materials announced more than fifty events over twelve months in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City focusing on the arts, the environment, and urban living. Both German President Horst Köhler and Vietnamese Presi- dent Nguyễn Minh Triết enthusiastically supported the collaborative project and its broader vision of productive exchanges in culture, technology, and education with the aim to foster closer economic cooperation through ex- panded trade and foreign investment. he observance of the thirty-five-year milestone received broad cover- age in the Vietnamese press, with entire periodicals, such as the Vietnam Business Forum, devoted to exploring the “broad and warm ties” that bound the two countries since 23 September 1975. he date, however, made for an awkward political dilemma given that it expunged a lengthier history of diplomacy between Vietnam and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) dating back to 1950. Privileging the Bundesrepublik as the starting point of bilateral relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam served to sideline the morally questionable role that West Germany had played in the U.S. “war of aggression,” as it was called in Hanoi, with its political and financial support of the United States and the Republic of (South) Vietnam. More important for this chapter is the erasure of forty years of East German diplo- matic history and, in turn, the affects and sensibilities that formed through diverse forms of “solidarity assistance” during and after the war with the United States that laid the foundation for the “warmth” experienced between the two countries today. Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World. Quinn Slobodian, ed. NY: Berghahn Press, 2015. Pp. 267-292