Europe in the Age of The Cold War,1945–75635ground for thirty years, formed an important back-
ground for the violence of 1968–75. Fighting in Viet-
nam reduced the global prestige of the United States to
its lowest level since World War II. Student and left-
wing demonstrations in the great cities of Europe
protested American militarism. Simultaneously, Ameri-
can military prestige suffered in 1968 when the Viet
Cong’s Tet (the lunar new year) Offensive overran
American positions and took the fighting into the cities
of South Vietnam. American moral leadership suffered
when the U.S. army began a war crimes trial of Ameri-
can officers for killing 567 civilians in the village of My
Lai in 1969, and the evidence led to the conviction of
Lt. William Calley. Such events produced great turbu-
lence in American society, and the late 1960s and early
1970s witnessed vehement student protests on univer-
sity campuses, race riots in American cities, a police riot
in Chicago, an antiwar march on Washington, D.C.,
the assassination of two American political leaders (the
Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator
Robert F. Kennedy), and the use of armed troops
against protesters, resulting in the killing of four stu-
dents at Kent State University.
One consequence of these events for Europe was
that the United States lost much of its authority to op-
pose the Soviet Union when a crisis occurred in
Czechoslovakia. In January 1968 the Czech Commu-
nist Party selected a liberal reformer, Alexander
Dubcˇek, for the leadership post of first secretary of the
party. Dubcˇek proposed political and economic liber-
ties to humanize communist society. The enthusiastic
Czech response to Dubcˇek’s brand of socialism led to
an optimistic period known as the Prague Spring, but
the reforms and the optimism were both short-lived.
Brezhnev ordered an invasion of Czechoslovakia in Au-
gust 1968. An occupying force of 200,000 Soviet and
Warsaw Pact troops encountered Czech protests, and
650,000 soldiers were ultimately needed to end the
demonstrations, oust Dubcˇek, and install a pro-Moscow
government (see illustration 31.5).
Militant student protests in European universities,
the rise of European terrorist movements, and the re-
birth of violent nationalist movements also character-
ized the era. The largest European student protest
occurred in Paris in the spring of 1968. Demonstrations
at the University of Paris (which had an enrollment of
160,000) were part of an international youth rebellion
of the late 1960s that had produced major outbreaks
from the University of California to the University in
Berlin a few weeks earlier. Many issues angered stu-
dents, but in most protests they denounced American
imperialism in Asia and the autocratic administration of
their campus. The demonstrations at Paris became a
global symbol of a near revolution sparked by students,
as many of the revolutions of 1848 had been. They be-
gan with disputes on the suburban campus at Nanterre,
then closed the Sorbonne, and grew into riots in central
Paris. Once again, barricades closed streets in Paris. On
one night, an estimated twenty-five thousand students
fought the police. The events of May 1968 assumed
greater importance when industrial workers called a
general strike to support the students and paralyzed
much of France. The strikes and riots soon ended, but
they led to the resignation of President de Gaulle a few
months later.
Student protests were not the most violent legacy
of the late 1960s and early 1970s. More fearsome was
the rebirth of terrorism in European politics. Some ter-
rorist movements had roots in the extreme left-wing
politics of the era, including the Baader-Meinhof gang
in West Germany (whose actions included setting fire
to a Berlin department store) and the Red Brigades in
Italy (who assassinated prominent individuals, such as
the president of Fiat motors, and terrorized more by
shooting people in the kneecap). International politics,
particularly the Middle Eastern question, was an even
greater source of terrorism. In 1972 alone, international
terrorists high-jacked a German jetliner, attacked Jew-
ish athletes at the Munich Olympic games, and sent
letter bombs to businessmen in several countries.
A continuing part of the new violence in European
politics was the escalation of nationalist terrorism.
Basque nationalists sought independence from Spain by
assassinations such as the bombing death of Spanish
premier Luis Carrero Blanco in 1973. Corsican nation-
alists fought for independence from France by bombing
public buildings. The most uncompromising terrorist
movement in Europe was Irish. Sectarian violence be-
tween Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland
killed eight people in Belfast in August 1969, and the
British government responded with troops to maintain
order. This revived the Irish Republican Army (IRA),
which hoped to drive the British out of Ulster and re-
unite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland.
The British government, however, was intransigent. In
1971 the British proclaimed emergency powers of de-
tention and arrest and curtailed civil rights; in early
1972 Britain suspended the government of Northern
Ireland and established direct rule by London. Later in
1972 British troops fired upon Catholic rioters in Lon-
donderry, killing thirteen people in the “Bloody Sunday
Massacre.” By early 1973 the IRA had opened the