Overview 1968
17/18 February: In South Vietnam, the Tet Offensive of the Viet Cong has begun at the end of January. The Socialist German Student Union (SDS) holds a Vietnam congress supporting the fight against the USA in the "Auditorium Maximum" of the Technische Universität Berlin (Berlin Institute of Technology).
There are violent attacks on American facilities on the sidelines of a demonstration during which participants carry pictures of their idols Che Guevara, Ernst Thälmann, Mao and Ho Chi Minh along the Kurfürstendamm boulevard in West Berlin.
11 March: West German Chancellor Kiesinger delivers the first "State of the Nation Address" to the Bundestag.
2 April: The start of open terrorism in West Germany: Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Horst Söhnlein are arrested on suspicion of having carried out arson attacks on two Frankfurt department stores. The arsonists have taken as their model the attack on a department store in Brussels on 22 May 1967, in which 322 people died. These attacks are designed to bring home to Europeans the napalm deaths in Vietnam.
8 April: In the GDR, a new constitution comes into force in which the GDR is described as a "socialist state of the German nation". It has been previously approved by referendum.
11 April: In West Berlin, the president of the SDS, Rudi Dutschke, is shot and badly injured in the street. There are demonstrations by the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition against the assassination attempt in many cities around Germany ("Osterunruhen") ["Easter riots"]. In Berlin, delivery vehicles from the Springer publishing house, whose campaign against the student movement is considered by some to have motivated the would-be killer, are set on fire and an anti-Springer tribunal is held.
28 April: At elections in Baden-Württemberg, the radical right-wing NPD enters the state parliament with 9.8 percent of votes; CDU and FDP maintain their share of the vote, while the SPD suffers severe losses.
30 May: Despite all protests, which reach their climax with an APO rally in Bonn on 11 May, the Bundestag passes the so-called "Notstandsgesetze" ("Emergency Acts").
11 June: The GDR government makes passports and visas obligatory for all travel, including transit traffic, between West Germany and West Berlin, and introduces a tax equalisation levy for transport traffic.
13-15 June: At the 10th Farmers’ Congress in the GDR, the separation of animal and plant husbandry is officially resolved upon.
1 July: In the GDR, a new penal code and a new code of criminal procedure go into force. Paragraph 213 of the penal code deals with "unlawful border crossing".
20/21 August: In the early hours of morning, Radio Prague announces: "Yesterday, on 20 August 1968 at 11 p.m., Warsaw Pact troops crossed the borders of the Czech Socialist Republic. (…)."
The Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia views this act not only as going against the existing relations between the socialist states, but also as a denial of the elementary norms of international law. The "Prague Spring" is put down by troops from the Warsaw Pact.
22 September: In West Germany, the "German Communist Party" (DKP) is legally approved, the first time a communist party has received legitimation since the "Communist Party of Germany" (KPD) was banned in 1956.
The DKP, its subdivisions, cover organisations and companies are closely affiliated with the SED and the GDR and are financed by them.
12-27 October: Olympic Games in Mexico City. For the first time, two German teams take part in the games, but it is the last time they share one flag and anthem.
12 November: At the party conference of the Polish communists, the Soviet party and state leader Leonid Brezhnev declares the right of the USSR to invade another country if socialism is under threat there. The idea of the "limited sovereignty of socialist countries" becomes known as the "Brezhnev Doctrine".
