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Domestic Terrorism in Germany in the 1970S

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Domestic Terrorism in Germany in the 1970S 1 Domestic Terrorism in Germany in the 1970s ‘1968’ and the student movement In the mid-1960s a spectre was haunting the West, the spectre of revolu- tion. Almost all of the countries in Western Europe and North America experienced a previously unknown wave of civil protests – mostly by students – that attacked conventional societal norms and strove for reform. 1 Within a few years, domestic tensions caused by the global phenomenon of civic rebellion intensified in many countries of the world: By 1968 rebellion produced revolution. Young men and women took to the streets, smashing symbols of government legitimacy. In Berkeley, Washington, D.C., and other American cities mobs blocked buildings, burned streets, and fought with the state’s armed police and military forces. In West Berlin and Paris, students built barricades and engaged in street battles with police. In Prague, men and women demonstrated for freedom and independence from Soviet interven- tion. In Wuhan young Red Guards seized weapons from the army and used them against their elders. This was a truly ‘global disruption’ that threatened leaders everywhere. 2 What started as a movement to enhance civil rights for African Americans in the United States (US) quickly transformed into a protest against the Vietnam War and soon spilled over to Western Europe. 3 In the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), the protest against the German government’s support for the – allegedly – imperialist policy of the US in Vietnam was one of the points of contention. 4 The US Department of State instructed the US embassy and consulates in West 14 B. Blumenau, The United Nations and Terrorism © Bernhard Blumenau 2014 Domestic Terrorism in Germany in the 1970s 15 Germany to set up special programmes in order to counter the spreading anti-Americanism. These projects were aimed at the hearts and minds of German students and the broader German public. However, all of these efforts did not prevent increasing anti-Americanism among West German students. 5 But the protests in the FRG had a genuinely German dimension as well. First of all, they expressed opposition against the federal govern- ment, which was a Grand Coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats that had been in power since 1966. As a consequence of this coalition, the opposition in parliament was marginalised and only consisted of the Liberal Party. To compensate for this lack of parliamen- tary opposition, an extra-parliamentary opposition was formed that took to the streets, the Außerparlamentarische Opposition . 6 The protesters claimed that parliament was no longer a forum for political exchange as it was dominated by the governing coalition. Moreover, the passing of the so-called Notstandsgesetze 7 (Emergency Laws) by the Grand Coalition in the absence of any serious opposition in parliament further solidified the impression among protestors that the political democratic process was in great distress. This resulted in an increased rift between the estab- lished political parties and institutions on one side and groups of students on the other. 8 The Grand Coalition led to a crisis regarding the legitimacy of the political system that found its expression in the student protests. The protestors’ perceptions of a new authoritarianism or even totalitari- anism in Germany made some factions of the student movement resort to violence in 1967 and 1968. This ‘abolition of the distinction between legality and illegality was misused as an argument for violence, [and] offered a first taste of the terrorist excesses [of 1970], and their ideo- logical justification’. 9 Another genuinely German reason for the protests was the country’s Nazi past and the alleged lack of a thorough examina- tion of this period. The generation of people that came of age during the 1960s wanted to know what their parents and grandparents had done – or had failed to do – during the Third Reich. Even 20 years after the end of the Second World War many people still kept silent about the Third Reich in general and the Holocaust in particular. It was certainly true that in many families, the issue of personal involvement in the Third Reich was still a taboo subject. Thus, Vergangenheitsbewältigung , while underway at the macro-societal level – with the Auschwitz Trials starting in 1963 – had not yet reached the micro-societal level: the family. 10 This lack of recognition of personal and individual guilt on the part of their parents upset many young people. A third factor for the protests was the conditions at Germany’s universities. A common slogan at the 16 The United Nations and Terrorism time was: ‘Underneath the professors’ robes is the dust of one thousand years’. 11 The universities were in urgent need of reform as they were still applying the rules and customs of the 19th century in a Germany that had significantly changed. 12 The majority of students peacefully involved in the protests had this change as their major objective. This mixture of domestic and international factors led to the student protests of the late 1960s. The nonviolent demonstrations started off in West Berlin and quickly spilled over to West Germany. It is therefore interesting to briefly assess the special situation of West Berlin in order to understand its impor- tant role not only as the starting point of the student protests but also as the cradle of West German terrorism later on. Its special status also mattered in the 1970s when Bonn was negotiating antiterrorism trea- ties at the United Nations (UN). As a result of the Potsdam Agreement of 1945, West Berlin was divided into three sectors administered by the three Western Occupying Powers. While it was closely associated with the FRG, it was not an integral part of West Germany. 13 West Berlin was hence a special case, a Sonderfall . This resulted in several special regu- lations. For instance, the FRG had an interest in making West Berlin a ‘show window’ of the Free World, and hence it heavily subsidised public life there. 14 Moreover, due to its special status as not being part of the West German state, there was no military conscription in West Berlin, which motivated many left-wing young men to move to the city. 15 Consequently, the majority of students in the city were more left- wing than in most other university towns in Germany. This provided a good breeding ground for the protests of the mid-1960s. 16 For the same reason, in the 1970s, the German terrorist groups found many sympa- thisers in West Berlin. The protests of the mid-1960s, while a nuisance to politicians, were still predominantly peaceful. However, they radicalised in the course of 1967 and especially in 1968. During a demonstration against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran and his wife in Berlin on 2 June 1967, the situation escalated when the police decided to forcefully end the demonstrations. A policeman – who was also an agent of the East German Staatssicherheitsdienst (State Security), as was revealed in 2009 – shot Benno Ohnesorg, a student. 17 This date, 2 June, is seen as a catalyst that led to the radicalisation of the protest movement. 18 The attempted assassination in 1968 of Rudi Dutschke, the spokesman of the move- ment, further added to the violent momentum. This led to the so-called Easter Rising in 1968, which saw the first violent attacks against symbols of conservatism and alleged reactionary forces, such as the Springer Domestic Terrorism in Germany in the 1970s 17 media group. 19 Springer, especially through its most widely read news- paper, BILD , had a right-wing leaning and led a campaign against the student movements and thus became one of the preferred targets of the protests. 20 With the election of Willy Brandt as federal chancellor in 1969 and his promise to ‘risk more democracy’, the student movement and its protests lost momentum.21 Brandt symbolised a new style: he was an enemy of the Nazis, the mayor of West Berlin, and a soon-to-be Nobel Peace Prize laureate whose famous visit to the Warsaw ghetto in 1970 became a signal not only to West Germany’s neighbours but also to the Germans themselves that a new chapter in dealing with the Nazi past had begun. 22 Consequently, the protests ebbed, and many of the people involved in them decided that the best way to change German society was from within, so they started ‘their long march through the insti- tutions’. 23 However, a small group of protestors decided to go under- ground and carry the struggle to the next level in order to achieve not only reform of the political system but outright revolution: these were the groups from which the terrorists of the 1970s evolved. The legacy of ‘1968’ in Germany has several aspects. First, it led to liberal reforms of societal norms, traditions, and the understanding of authority as well as to a liberalisation of universities and academia in general.24 It profoundly changed Germany in the long run. Second, the scepticism of the 1960s regarding US policy and motives, espe- cially among the younger generation, produced a latent tendency of anti-Americanism. The German-American irritations surrounding the Iraq War of 2002–2003 can, to some extent, be attributed to the impact that ‘1968’ had on the German political leadership of the early 2000s. 25 The German politicians involved in these decisions, such as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, and Minister of the Interior Otto Schily were, after all, the children of the revolution. The problems that Germany had in dealing with the student protests of the 1960s – and in a way also with terrorism in the 1970s – can also be understood as a clash of generations.
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