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Translation of transcript

Speaker: While American bombs are falling on Vietnam, the International Vietnam Congress begins in West Berlin on February 17, 1968. It lasts two days, during which the Socialist German Student League (SDS) sends a message of protest against the U.S. military presence in Vietnam. The gathering gives rise to additional demonstrations and student initiatives, which increasingly assume the form of a revolt. For the ‘68 generation, solidarity with the Vietnamese people against the supposed aggressor, the United States, prompts a larger search for meaning—a protest against a way of life that, as the philosopher Ernst Bloch notes, is devoid of content, a revolt against the apparatuses of political parties, unions, corporations, and governments whose power mechanisms cannot be influenced and are no longer even transparent. According to (student movement leader) Rudi Dutschke, the student-demonstrators want to oppose bureaucratic rule and replace it with a world without war, hunger, and exploitative labor practices. Thus, their Vietnam protest eventually turns into a far-reaching debate about the modernization of society as a whole.