West German youth protests in 1968: Causes and effects
Overview of student demonstrations in West Germany in 1968.
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News •
37 years after fall of Berlin Wall: How divided are Germans today?
• Nov. 9, 2026, 9:02 AM ET (Deutsche Welle)
Transcript
NARRATOR: Generations in collision - in 1968, the year of world-wide youth protests, students also take to the streets in Germany, led by their spokesman, Rudi Dutschke. For many who hear him, the provocateur embodies the enemy image. In April 1968 he is shot by an assassin. Dutschke fights for his life. The grief looks for an outlet.
PETER SCHNEIDER: "It was like a hole you fall into. Suddenly people like me were ready and willing to think that they might have to react with violence after all."
NARRATOR: During Easter 1968, a long-simmering rage boils over. The demonstrators believe that the tabloid press published by the Springer Verlag had incited the assassin with hate articles. In the evening the newspaper delivery trucks are set on fire. A symbolic message against a hated society. One year before, gunshots had provided the spark for the protest.
SCHNEIDER: "All the hypocrisy of the young Federal Republic had condensed in one deed of infamy."
NARRATOR: The death of a peaceful demonstrator fired on by police transforms well behaved students into defiant rebels. The lifestyle of the younger generation parted paths with the moral concepts of their parents. For all to see in their living rooms, America’s Vietnam war provoked violent criticism. Radical students proclaim a Red World Revolution, and see themselves as its avant-garde. They turn against the generation that made Hitler possible, sensing a return to the past in the planned emergency laws.
HELMUT SCHMIDT: "'68 was a movement that came from America as a reaction to the Vietnam war. In Germany protesters imagined they were involved with a post fascist state and an almost fascist or half fascist society. It was pure nonsense."
NARRATOR: The protest movement does not create a revolutionary overthrow – but it changes the country forever.
DANIEL COHN-BENDIT: "On the one hand the movement at the end of the 60s democratized the German society, and on the other hand it showed the participants that there were fatal revolutionary illusions. And I think that made us all become a credible force in modern society."
NARRATOR: What had begun with radical slogans led, in the end, to the democratization of society.
PETER SCHNEIDER: "It was like a hole you fall into. Suddenly people like me were ready and willing to think that they might have to react with violence after all."
NARRATOR: During Easter 1968, a long-simmering rage boils over. The demonstrators believe that the tabloid press published by the Springer Verlag had incited the assassin with hate articles. In the evening the newspaper delivery trucks are set on fire. A symbolic message against a hated society. One year before, gunshots had provided the spark for the protest.
SCHNEIDER: "All the hypocrisy of the young Federal Republic had condensed in one deed of infamy."
NARRATOR: The death of a peaceful demonstrator fired on by police transforms well behaved students into defiant rebels. The lifestyle of the younger generation parted paths with the moral concepts of their parents. For all to see in their living rooms, America’s Vietnam war provoked violent criticism. Radical students proclaim a Red World Revolution, and see themselves as its avant-garde. They turn against the generation that made Hitler possible, sensing a return to the past in the planned emergency laws.
HELMUT SCHMIDT: "'68 was a movement that came from America as a reaction to the Vietnam war. In Germany protesters imagined they were involved with a post fascist state and an almost fascist or half fascist society. It was pure nonsense."
NARRATOR: The protest movement does not create a revolutionary overthrow – but it changes the country forever.
DANIEL COHN-BENDIT: "On the one hand the movement at the end of the 60s democratized the German society, and on the other hand it showed the participants that there were fatal revolutionary illusions. And I think that made us all become a credible force in modern society."
NARRATOR: What had begun with radical slogans led, in the end, to the democratization of society.
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