When the time arrived for the Soviet Union to control East Germany, they meaning the Soviets, took a slightly different approach. The Holocaust, like in Hungary, was not a topic for discussion. In These circumstances the Holocaust is labeled as "taboo". Instead, memorials were built to commemorate fallen Soviets, communists, and anti-fascists. These three groups fought against the capitalist West. Soviet authorities also enforced the idea that the bombing of Dresden was unnecessary as well as a war crime committed by the capitalist West on the German people. Soviet authorities hoped that playing off the feelings of betrayal felt by many Germans would rally them to support the communist system. Indeed, the city of Dresden held no military base or arsenal of weapons, and it maintained no threat to the Allies. From many, even Germans in Western Germany, the malicious bombing of Dresden remained the vivid picture of Allied brutality.
Fast forward please into the late 1960s. During this period, West German student protests were at its highest peak. The United States was at war in Vietnam, spreading its' imperialism. Students in West Germany protested the imperial presence of America in West Germany and especially in Vietnam. This generation of children were the offspring of Hitler's Nazi Germany. Fascism, many thought, could be seen all over the West. One of these student leaders was Rudi Dutschke.
The East German government blocked Dutschke's path into the university because of his opposition to the country's militarization as well as his refusal to join the army. So, Dutschke fled East Germany to West Berlin in 1961 just before the creation of the Berlin Wall. Here, he began to study sociology and soon became the leader of the Socialist German Student Organization (SDS; Sosialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund).
Beginning in the early 1960s,
Enrollment at universities increased and fears grew among students that they had become politically powerless in the face of the Cold War. They began protesting rearmament and nuclear testing in the East and West. International crises were targeted as well, particularly those where political oppression might have been at play -- the intervention in Congo by England and France, the segregation policies in South Africa, and the dictatorship of the Iranian Shah, who had powerful backing of the United States. (A Revolutionary Who Shaped a Generation, 2)In 1967, tensions increased breathtakingly. On June 2nd, when the Iranian Shah was on an official visit to West Berlin, a police officer shot and killed Benno Ohnesorg, a student protester. In response to Ohnesorg's killing from the overreaction by a police officer caused the number of demonstrators to escalate at later marches. The tabloid newspaper called Bild, owned by Axel Springer, blamed the death of Ohnesorg on the students. This comment furthered agitated students.
On April 11, 1968, Rudi Duschke, who was already the face of the student movement, was shot in the head and shoulder by Josef Bachmann. Duschke was riding his bike to a pharmacy to purchase cold medicine for his son. As Duschke was rushed to the hospital, his bicycle remained laying on the street. He survived the attachk but later died from complications in late 1979. On the evening of Dutschke's attack, 2,000 activists left the Technical University, through west Berlin, and arrived at the Springer Publishing house. students blamed various Springer publications, including Bild, for the attack on Dutscke. Spiegel Online wrties that little came out of the demonstration other then a few burned cars. But it was at this demonstration that journalist Ulrike Meinhof was present.
Between 1959 and 1969, Ulrike Meinhof wrote for the German magazine "konkret". In one such article, titled Dresden, Meinhof discussed the war crimes committed there by the Allies. Follow the NSNBC source link below to find the translation of the article. The translation is by Christof Lehmann. Meinhof begins her article,
...on the 13th and 14th of February 1945, during the night between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, the greatest air raid of the Allied Bomber Command during World War Two was flown against the German City: The Air Raid on Dresden. The City was bombed three times within 14 hours. (Ulrike Meinhof on the War Crimes committed in Dresden - As Relevant as Ever., 2)There was 630,000 permanent residents in the city and a total of more then 1 million human beings in the city when the city was destroyed. Over 200,000 people lost their lives that night. None of the population could imagine the city being bombed due to the fact dozens of hospitals were located there in which hundreds of thousands of refugees now resided, mostly women and children. If one really needed a military target in Dresden to bomb it it would be a large goods and troop relay railway station. The city of Dresden burned for seven days and eight nights.
Meinhof continues to explain that those English pilots who flew the air raids were not given the truth. The pilots were told Dresden contained important military targets such as a Gestapo Headquarters, a large poison gas factory, and a re-supply hub. There existed a British order that requested only residential be bombed instead of industrial centers.Such bombing continued until the end of the war in spring 1945. The bombing of Dresden was unnecessary for the simple reason the war was already lost for the Germans, which was clear after the defeat at Stalingrad, the western front was already at the Rhein, and Soviet troops were at the Oder and Neisse. Meinhof writes, "In Dresden, the anti-Hitler war degenerated into the very evil which one claimed to deplore and to fight. Into barbarism and in-humanity, for which there does not exist any justification. / Should there be a need to prove that there is no such thing as a just war - Dresden would prove it" (Ulrike Meinhof on the War Crimes committed in Dresden - As Relevant as Ever., 2).
From these events, specifically the shooting of Rudi Dutschke and Ulrike Meinhof taking part in the Springer demonstration, the student movement peaked. After a totalitarian state did not come to pass after the implication of the May 1968 German Emergency Acts, the student movement quickly unraveled "but not before it spawned the radical violence of the Red Army Faction", which Meinhof would play an important part.
Sources:
http://nsnbc.wordpress.com/2012/07/15/ulrike-meinhof-on-the-war-crimes-committed-in-dresden-as-relevant-as-ever-2/
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-attack-on-rudi-dutschke-a-revolutionary-who-shaped-a-generation-a-546913.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-attack-on-rudi-dutschke-a-revolutionary-who-shaped-a-generation-a-546913.html
Images:
Picture 1: Rudi Dutschke's bycycle, laying on the street.
Picture 2: Benno Ohnesorg, at the scene, laying on the ground after being shot by a police officer.
Picture 3: On the way to Ohnesorg funeral. The sign reads: Benno Ohnesorg Political Murder
