The Baader-meinhoff Gang

Man the barricades!

Germany in the 1960s was still booming from its economic miracle in the previous decade, rising confidently from the ashes of the Second World War. The country was a manufacturing titan and had one of the world’s strongest economies. The future was looking bright and prosperous but it could not escape the massive social upheavals that were affecting almost all of the major industrialised nations.

Student protests were erupting all over Western Europe and North America at the end of the 1960s and college campuses became the front-line in the battle for social change. Fuelled by dissatisfaction with capitalist society barricades were erected in the name of civil rights, anti-imperialism and feminism. The anti-war agenda dominated the protests however with America’s presence in Vietnam leading to increasingly violent confrontations between protestors and the authorities. National liberation movements provided inspiration as they took the fight to the old colonial powers and pictures of Che Guevara were appearing on students bedrooms everywhere.

In West Germany the historical legacy of fascism was also driving a wedge between the generations. The countries de-nazification programme was a cause of great anger and frustration among the young as numerous ex-Nazis were still in government posts years after the end of the war. In 1966 Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former Nazi party member, was elected as head of the government.

A fear of losing their political freedoms also affected Germany’s youth as they saw increasing signs of a return to an authoritarian state. In 1956 the Communist Party of Germany was outlawed and at the start of the 1960s the country was dominated by a grand coalition of the two main political parties. With the coalition controlling 95% of the Bundestag many took to political activity and protest outside of mainstream politics.

The fuse was lit on 2 June 1967 when the Shah of Iran visited West Berlin. Protesters gathered outside the Shah’s hotel to demonstrate against the Western backed dictatorship which frequently tortured and suppressed its own citizens. Anger at their government’s cosy relationship with the Shah was further inflamed when the Shah’s security men, with apparent impunity from the German police, beat the students with wooden staves. That evening the Shah attended the Berlin Opera and another demonstration quickly formed. This time student Benno Ohnesorg, who was attending his first demonstration, was shot in the head by a police officer and died on the spot. The policeman was later acquitted.