Bernie Reeves, editor and publisher of Metro Magazine and founder of the Raleigh Spy Conference, brought this NYT article to my attention. Some of you may remember the 1967 student protests in Berlin over the visit of the Shah of Iran.
A protester was shot and killed by a West German policeman. Now the archives of the East German secret police, Stasi, show that that policeman was actually an agent of the Stasi.
It is as if the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University
by the Ohio National Guard had been committed by an undercover K.G.B.
officer, though the reverberations in Germany seemed to have run
deeper.?It makes a hell of a difference whether John F. Kennedy
was killed by just a loose cannon running around or a Secret Service
agent working for the East,? said Stefan Aust, the former editor in
chief of the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel. ?I would never, never,
ever have thought that this could be true.?
Some are now speculating that this incident was a turning point in West
German history. Afterward the county changed direction and became
the “progressive” state it is today.
The killing in 1967 of an unarmed demonstrator by a police officer in
West Berlin set off a left-wing protest movement and put conservative
West Germany on course to evolve into the progressive country it has
become today.
In typical NYT fashion, the Times obtained this view from Marek Dutshke the son of radical German SDS leader Rudi Dutschke.
According to Marek Dutschke, the son of the student-movement leader Rudi Dutschke,
Mr. Ohnesorg?s death ignited the modernization of West Germany, leading
to greater democracy, gender equality and sexual freedom.?Germany would not have become this liberal place, not in the same way, if this event hadn?t happened,? Mr. Dutschke said.
