Street Fighting Years: The Year 1968

For class on Thursday, we had to read the primary source titled “Street Fighting Years” The Year 1968″, which is an autobiography that recounts the events that occurred in 1968, specifically events that occurred in each month of that year. The month that I want to focus on for discussion was the month of February. In the month of February we were presented to the West Berlin SDS, a student movement that began in Germany. As noted in the source, the emergence of the SDS marked a turbulent time in Germany’s history. There was a sudden radical change in politics in Germany, given that students began to become more aware of the rise of fascism, which was something that the previous generation refused to acknowledge and combat. The source also discusses the issue of an active minority vs a passive minority, which is what I wanted to talk about for class today. To what extent can students actually be “active minorities? And is the SDS a fully politicized movement in Germany as it was in France?