The Climax and The Decline
The revolt against the government reached its climax in May 1968. Students, schoolchildren and members of workers' unions formed a group of 80,000 people who demonstrated in the capital Bonn against the emergency legislature. Even though the students mobilized as many people as possible to support their actions they could not stop the Bundestag from passing the new law.
This failure marks the beginning of the end for the student movement. The former union of many small student groups representing different theories on the same topics was falling apart because they were blaming other groups' theories and thinking for the failure of the whole movement. This meant that the students were not working together anymore but against each other. By the end of the year even the SDS, the strongest of all student organizations, was falling into pieces.
Read more about this topic: German Student Movement
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