In the 1960s-1970s, violence increasingly became an important factor in the student liberation movement in West Germany. Different levels of oppression were applied to various countries around the world, including Vietnam, which was oppressed by US student activists who followed the different movements and slowly incorporated the various methods into their own movement in West Germany. Indeed, student activists fought for their liberation through a combination of international methods, however, the fuel for their violent actions came primarily from the Black Power movement in the United States, motivated by Frantz Fanon's ideas on decolonization. During the 1960s and 1970s, West German activists began to consider that the upper-class exploitation of young people who went against social norms in West Germany was very similar to the discrimination against America's black population in due to skin color. Because of the newfound similarities, the two groups decided to exchange ideas on how to achieve liberation. Student activists and African Americans involved in the movement engaged in personal exchanges by traveling to each other's countries and observing corruption for themselves, while studying counterattack tactics. In fact, Rudi Deutschke, the very face of SDS, took a trip to America and visited the slums of New York and Chicago to witness first-hand accounts of oppression. Through their observation of the Black Power Movement in America, as well as their interactions with members of the movement, many West German (SDS) activists increasingly supported the idea that a violent approach was the only way to seek liberation. The Black Power movement also motivated left-wing terrorists, such as Bommi Baum...... middle of paper ......they also followed Frantz Fanon's ideals of decolonization, and in doing so sought liberation themselves. BibliographyKlimke, Martin. “Black and Red Panthers”. In The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the World of the 1960s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Baumann, Michael, Helene Ellenbogen, and Wayne Parker. How it all began: The personal account of a West German urban guerrilla. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000. Slobodian, Quinn. Foreign Front: Third World Politics in 1960s West Germany, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Meinhof, Ulrike Marie, and Karin Bauer. Everyone talks about time, we don't: the writings of Ulrike Meinhof. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008.Christiansen, Samantha, and Zachary A. Scarlett. The Third World in the world of the sixties. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.