A Police democratises itself

Diskussionskommando Berlin

Cold War and War in Vietnam

The Berlin situation was shaped by the wall and the Cold War. West- Berliners felt deeply connected to the western allies both by emotion and friendship. Most of them accepted the Vietnam war as a "right thing to do". After all, they argued, those communists had to be stopped from enlarging their sphere of influence.  That was the older people's general approach, based on the experience during the Soviets' Berlin Blockade, with the immediate and unprece- dented  allied action, the Airlift to supply West-Berlin with all things needed,  and eventually the construction of the wall in 1961.  The younger people though, especially the students claiming to be the extraparliamentary opposition (APO), were living in the "political here and now", and they wanted to change the world here and now.  So they discovered their solidarity with the suppressed peoples in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Latin America. Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh were their heroes. The APO had a lot of supporters among artists and intellectuals, but the newly proposed class struggles inspired schoolkids and apprentices likewise. Spontaneous sit-ins and demos against university politics, the Vietnam war and the newspaper tsar Springer (BILD-Zeitung etc), declared arch-enemy of the left, eventually became part and parcel of West-Berlin's public life. Unfortunately however, those activities ever so often turned into excessive violence. Smashed-in shop-windows, explo- sives ("Molotov cocktails") and organized aggression against cops soon characterized the demonstrations' "usual course". Large numbers of the protesters appeared helmetted and armed with long wooden bats or steel bullets, the bats often spiked with long nails.
Copyright  D e t l e f   W u l f f  2008-2016 / English:  P i e k e  B i e r m a n n, Berlin Germany

68th Revolt

extraparliamentary opposition
A Police democratises itself
Unfortunately however, those activities ever so often turned into excessive violence. Smashed-in shop- windows, explosives ("Molotov cocktails") and or- ganized aggression against cops soon characterized the demonstrations' "usual course". Large numbers of the protesters appeared helmetted and armed with long wooden bats or steel bullets, the bats often spiked with long nails. Hence, many demos were rather tough urban riots and an organized breach of the public peace than an expression of political opinions. The city's inner security was in massive danger and sometimes actually out of order. The so-called battle on Tegeler Weg – in front of the courthouse where APO lawyer Horst Mahler was trialed – and the anti Vietnam war demo in front of the "Amerikahaus" were presumably the most violent conflicts between demonstrators and police. The APO however failed to produce an inclusive general political scheme, so the anticipated working- class solidarity never came around. The lack of a common ideology paved the way for a lot of separatist groups. As the APO's failure to gain social influence got clearer, it sank into political insignificance; some people chose to walk the "way through the institutions", in an attempt to achieve social change by legal action within established positions. Famous example: Joseph "Joschka" Fischer, who made it from APO-Sponti to Foreign Minister of The Federal Republic of Germany!