Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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power. The campaign was most intense in Berlin where Springer controlled
seventy percent of the daily press. 39
Between late 1966 and mid-1968 the other major item of discussion
was the issue of the West and the Third World as represented in Vietnam.
There had been one anti-Vietnam demonstration of 2000 persons in
February 1966 in West Berlin, and a Vietnam congress in February 1968
with German, French and Italian participation brought out 12,000
demonstrators for a march. 40
These demonstrations unnerved the public and local government, who
mostly concurred wi th government support for American involvement in
Vietnam. The public saw Vietcong and red flags, Rosa Luxernborg and Che
Guevara photos as the same red flags of the enemy they were trying to
keep out of West Berlin. The fact that the march went near the American
forces living quarters was also considered provocative. 41
The general public of the previous generation had matured in the
fifties and early sixties when there was a democratic deficit in the
attitudes of many of the younger generation of the time. As a result of
the lack of a democratic tradition, because of its interruption by the
Third Reich, this democratic deficit could be recognized by the
depoliticisation of much of West German life, which resulted in their
lower expectations of what democracy could offer. All of this was
tempered with a strong anti-communist ideology, which was believed to be
( a) the first line of defence for the new democracy, (b) a sign of
positive political perspective, and (c) a convincing justification of
the new democracy. It became instead a sort of 'substitute ideology' .42
Therefore the counter-demonstration to show West Berlin's true
orientation in support of the USA, involving right of centre student
groups, trade unions and the political parties, brought out 68,000-
80,000 participants. The demonstrators carried banners proclaiming:
'better dead than red', 'no money for long-haired apes', 'Dutschke- -
public enemy No.1'. The forty attacks on long-haired, rimless glassed
persons showed the demonstrations' 'pogrom atmosphere' which raised
public emotions. 43
39 Otto, 162-163; Heinz Schaefer, "Die BILD-Zeitung eine
Ordnungsrnacht im Spaetkapi talismus , " in: Heinz Grossmann, Oskar Negt
(eds. ), Die Auferstehung der Gewalt: Springerblockade und politische
Reaktion in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt a.M.: Europaeische
Verlagsanstalt, 1968), 19-29, 19.
40 Schlicht, 68-69.
41 ibid.
42 Langguth, 19-20.
43 Schlicht, 69.