Free Radicals offers both a comprehensive panorama of the oppositional politics of the "Generation of 1968" in Germany and a trenchant interpretation of the ideas and politics of the movement, placing them in a larger historiographical framework. The book argues that the activists of the 1960s fundamentally misconstrued the nature of the young German republic, conflating it with earlier problematic German polities, particularly the doomed Weimar Republic, and offered a hazy world-shattering future based on artificial comparisons to past revolutionary models. This book situates the German student movement within the spectrum of major social changes that occurred in postwar West Germany, arguing that the student radicals at first were swept along by the liberalizing forces of the young democracy, but then made a decisive turn against reform and gradual political evolution in favor of an aggressive rejection of the existing order. The student radicals borrowed many of the ideas and the cultural styles for the anticipated revolution from global trends, particularly from those emanating from the United States, but since the collective trauma of National Socialism was still fresh the majority of the student radicals grew up in the direct aftermath of World War II the contours of the German student movement were formed by uniquely German dilemmas and a deep generational clash. This book tells the story of the struggles of the first free republic on German soil and the generation that came of age adamantly refusing to accept its legitimacy.
