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Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.

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This is the absolute best mainstream journalistic narration of events relating to the terrorist activities of the Baader-Meinhof group, the RAF, in the 1970s in (then West) Germany, which culminated in the suicides of the group's leadership and the unsuccessful hijacking of the Landshut. It similarly traces the ways in which West German policing and security measures changed in an attempt to come to terms with the terrorists, including their imprisonment in a special jailblock and the creation of a special tribunal to try them. Aust goes into detail about the backgrounds of the terrorists, the atmosphere they experienced in the universities and cities of the 1970s, and their wild and suspenseful career and the fears of and sympathies for their deeds in German society.

This is a must-read for English-speaking readers interested in the topic, although two reservations should be noticed: the book was written for a German audience that was already familiar with the basic structure of events. English readers will need to follow the dates in the narrative carefully, as Aust's chapters are short and he switches back and forth at times between the beginning and end of the story. The second thing readers should be aware of is that for all intents and purposes, Aust ends this story in 1977 with the "German autumn," so the narrative focuses on the so-called "first generation" of the RAF, with the second generation dealt with only as they intersected with the members of the movement in prison, and the third generation mentioned only very briefly at the end of the book.

Aust was chief editor of Germany's Spiegel magazine, and the narration takes the tone and position of that publication: center-left, highly critical of the terrorists, somewhat critical of the government's attempts to deal with them. Thus the book itself is a document about the reception of terrorism, specifically a document of criticism from the moderate left. It is sympathetic to the victims of terrorism, but not at the level of recent center-right criticism which note that the tendency in Germany has been to mythologize the terrorists and ignore the victims (although Aust hardly ignores the victims--that is just not the focus of the book.) It should be mentioned that Aust had a tangential relationship to the events described in the book: he had worked at konkret magazine with Ulrike Meinhof's ex-husband, knew personally most of the key figures in the terrorist movement from his days in the student Left, and aided in tracking down Ulrike Meinhof's children after Meinhof hid them in Sicily, ostensibly with the plan of sending them to an El Fatah training camp. This book was also the basis of the script for Germany's entry in the 2009 Oscar competition. The book was written in 1985 and updated slightly to include information and disclosures that have been obtained since then. The only unfortunate aspect of this edition is that there are many fewer pictures than in the German editions of the work. There are also a fair number of typos in the German words that remain in the text.

I grew up with protests against the Vietnam War and with radical leftist organizations like the Weathermen and the RAF. The RAF were perhaps a little more mysterious because they were in far off and, at the time, divided Germany so I was always interested in them. When I discovered this book by Stefan Aust I was excited about the opportunity to read it. I was soon very disappointed. It's not that there isn't a lot of interesting information in the book. The problem is that the author didn't actually go to the trouble to write a book.

The main problem is that there is no structure to the book. There is no logical flow that makes this history of the RAF coherent. After struggling through the beginning of the book, I felt like there were pieces to the puzzle all over the place but no coherent image of what the puzzle looks like. The book doesn't flow as a series of events or topics, in fact it doesn't flow at all. The first 100 pages included more than 40 chapters. Each chapter reads like a brief essay that may or may not have anything to do with the previous chapters. One chapter might take place in 1971 and the next in 1965 and the next in 1967. A chapter might be two pages about a person who gets mentioned once (probably five pages earlier) and then not mentioned again. The biographical essays tell virtually nothing about a person other than straight facts but really give no help in figuring out how they ended up in a radical leftist terrorist group. We read about Andreas Baader's escape from prison without knowing what he was in prison for because that doesn't happen until later. The book reads more like a bunch of notes randomly thrown together as if the author didn't feel like actually editing his notes into a book. As a side note, there are many characters who are mentioned occasionally so a cast of characters such as found on Wikipedia could have been helpful. Also, a map showing the key cities and towns mentioned and their relationship to East and West Germany would also have been helpful. Also, the author mentions Berlin quite often without making it clear if he is talking about East or West Berlin.

This could have been a very interesting, perhaps even a great book. There is plenty of good information scattered around the book. Also, a better translator who could assist the American reader would have been helpful (not everyone will know that the GDR is East Germany - it has been nearly 20 years since Germany was reunified). The great book on the history of the RAF is still waiting to be written. Meanwhile I would avoid this book unless you have a true thirst for knowledge on this topic and are willing to put up with the poor structure and writing.

Perhaps a forgotten piece of Cold War history, author Sefan Aust brings the notorious Baader-Meinhof group back into the spotlight with the meticulous exploration of the individuals and fellow travelers associated with the West German-based organization.

Dubbed the "Red Army Faction," the group left a trail of blood and destruction in the 1970s and 1980s; killing at least 47 people and wounding 93, taking 162 hostages and robbing 35 banks. Its peak was in 1977 - the "German Autumn" - when a German businessman was murdered in a botched kidnapping plot, another businessman was kidnapped and later murdered and an airliner was hijacked and flown to Somalia, with the pilot then shot and dumped onto the airport runway.

The RAF - which operated from 1970-1998 - suffered what appeared to be a fatal blow from a mass suicide (murder?) in prison by a trio of top leaders - including founding members Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin - in the aftermath of the "German Autumn," but the organization continued on its brutal trail of bombings and murder into the early-1990s.

Aust - co-writer of the film script for the 2008 German movie, Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film - traces the creation of the group from the student movement of the 1960s, with the foundation being built after the suppression of a protest against the Shah of Iran's 1967 Berlin visit. The organization created by journalist Ulrike Meinhof, street fighter Baader and Ensslin.

A wealth of new information unearthed from formerly classified documents from East German government files of the Stasi (East Germany's Ministry of State Security) and additional testimony over the years from RAF members gives a clearer picture on funding sources, planning of the crimes and rivalries within the group. An interesting section concerns the role of the lawyers in the organization, which includes Otto Schily, who was later Minister of the Interior for Chancellor Gerhard Schroder.

Though the ultimate goals may not have been delineated clearly to each member, the drive to a utopian (actually, dystopian) society is spearheaded through the lure of power in Communist "urban guerrilla" warfare to topple the West German government. By exploring the inner-workings of the RAF from a number of fresh angles, Aust delivers a definitive account of the West German terror machine.

For anyone alive in the 1970s and 80s the phrase "Baader-Meinhof Gang" has a certain ring to it. The particular melody might be terrorism for some, activism for others. At the time I was too young to understand what Baader-Meinhof stood for or purported to stand for and the press, at the time and later, never succeeded in putting their actions in context. Possibly because the press was too busy either demonizing or glamorizing them as the whim struck. Over the years I've read a number of books on the radical groups of the Sixties and Seventies and most aren't much more illuminating.

Stefan Aust's newly update Baader-Meinhof (The Baader-Meinhof Complex), however, is that rare effort that brings the immediacy of journalism and the unbiased examination of academia to the subject. Aust tells the story of the group and its leaders in a step-by-step fashion that focuses on events rather than analysis. Its a tricky technique, especially when a lot of the events involve people hiding out in apartments for weeks on end, but in this case it was the right choice. Aust lets the reader see the events play out in all their claustrophobic inevitability; he also lets the reader judge the events and the actors on their own.

Successful journalist Ulrike Meinhof, minister's daughter Gudrun Ensslin, and all-around-jerk Andreas Baader formed the leadership of the self-christened Red Army Faction . It's noted early in the book that "You either loved or loathed" Andreas Baader. The loathing part I understand but then I've never had a soft spot for misogynist drug-addicted petty thieves. Either Andreas had loads of personal charisma or the rest of the "Gang" had serious masochism issues because it sure wasn't the clarity of Baader's political believes that drew people in. The most one can say for Baader is that he was willing to break the law for his beliefs - that must have seemed impressive to nice middle-class German youths looking for a way to change the world. What Baader wasn't willing to do was do any prison time for breaking the law. Nearly all of the violence and other crimes committed by the RAF revolve around either breaking Baader out of jail, keeping him out of jail, or otherwise getting him out of jail.

And that's the main problem for me. I've long been fascinated by extremist groups - from the ancient to modern times - by what motivates them to step outside of society to achieve their aims. The Baader-Meinhof aims are barely comprehensible. Yes, they wanted to end the war in Vietnam, eliminate poverty and do something for Palestine. I can't tell you much more about their beliefs because a lot of what they said and wrote was very much like this mind-bending sentence:

"It also means, that is, it is the premise of the decisions - that whatever the Government may decide no longer has the same meaning for us as that from which they proceed."

This is what prolonged isolation in a prison will do, it will make you write sentences that no one can decipher. The German prison system was a revelation to me. Apparently prisoners could self-prescribe any legal pharmaceutical of their choice - uppers, downers, cough medicine. Actual medical care, on the other hand, was a bit more ad hoc. And security can only be described as something special.

During their trial Meinhof, Ensslin and Baader all claim that the prison conditions were driving them crazy. Not likely, since these three were seriously crazy all on their own. When Gudrun wasn't coming up with code names for the group from Moby Dick and Ulrike wasn't penning RAF manifestos they were playing mind games with one another. Sometimes Andreas would join in the fun by declaring the two "grotesque madwomen." All the while Gudrun and Ulrike look up to Andreas as somehow the most politically pure of the group even as he declares hunger strikes that he himself will secretly break while costing the life of another group member. The sanest comment made is by a government agent who asks Baader "Don't you think these ideas of yours are out of touch with reality?"

Gudrun seems to have been hell on wheels but Ulrike Meinhof comes across as a sadder story. The most disturbing aspect of her story was her relationship with her twin daughters. After her plan to have them spirited away to an orphanage in Jordan to be trained as Palestinian freedom fighters is thwarted, Meinhof writes them motherly chatty letters from prison. She seems to take real joy in their visits to her until one day she abruptly ceases all communication with them. Her motives aren't explained and I was left with the image of her 10 year old daughters suffering yet another abandonment. Early in the book there's a vignette of Meinof jumping up and screaming "I won't let them do this to me" after seeing news footage of the war in Vietnam. On the one hand I was impressed by Meinhof's strong feelings for the suffering caused by war, on the other hand, "to me"? No one was dropping napalm on Ulrike's house. But Meinhof clearly felt that she was being put in a position of tacitly or passively supporting a war she was against. That feeling of being party to an atrocity not by action but by inaction had a deeper meaning for a German in 1965 than an American in 2009 can probably ever understand.

But that reaction, so out of proportion as to be downright bizarre, is emblematic of the entire group. As one former RAF member puts it, "The lack of proportion is barbarism. for years, everything revolved around the release of the prisoners." Twenty-eight people in one year (1977) lost their lives not to create a more just world or end poverty (and the Vietnam War was already over) but just trying to get Andreas Baader and his gang out of jail. That's one pathetic dialectic.

This is a very readable book that goes a long way to explaining what Aust calls the Baader-Meinhof complex. As Aust says in the preface, this is neither an indictment nor a plea for the defence. It is a record that requires readers to decide for themselves what the lessons are. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the specific subject or the times.

Yeah, I remember the Red Army Faction. As a student at Heidelberg High School from 1976 to 1979, the bomb threats were a real eye-opener. In my 16 years as an Army brat, this was the first time I'd seen ID checks by German police and American MPs, the first time I saw vehicle undercarriage mirrors, and German Polizei with machine guns walking the Frankfurt am Main airport. The wanted posters were everywhere, and AFN carried the news every night. The threat was real, and I lived it.

I have not read Stefan Aust's two previous takes on the RAF. He admits in his introduction that essentially this book is the same as his two previous, just updated with information he has collected in the past ten years. What appears to be new is information from the former East Germany on their extensive knowledge of RAF personnel and operations, and how this played as part of the Cold War strategic struggle.

There is a lot in this book, in a dense 457 pages. The translation is definitely geared for European English readers. There is a fairly comprehensive index.

Aust has got a thing for the RAF. A career journalist and editor, he's followed them his entire professional life, and knew more than a few of them personally; he was even directly involved in the rescue of Ulrike Meinhof's twins in the early 1970s. As such, he brings undeniable credibility and deep insider knowledge to the story (he opens with a discussion of the 60 meters of shelf space his files occupy). But disappointingly, there is not a single footnote, nor is there any bibliography or commentary on his sourcing. Even for statistics and other data, there is no sourcing whatsoever. This makes this book a very poor resource for pursuing serious research.

The RAF's core outrage was Vietnam, US imperialism and the lengths to which the US would go to maintain it. But really, the RAF were bored middle class intellectuals, rebelling against post-war conservatism, regulation, societal control, the socioeconomic status quo, and the pacified, occupied Germany they had grown up in. First it was revolutionary politics, then sexual experimentation, drugs, trendy hippie revolutionary intellectualism, and finally the RAF coalesced in those few who crossed the line to violent direct action.

For all of their "radical Maoist agenda" the RAF were as bourgeois as those they hated so much. They preferred to steal luxury BMWs. In 1970 at a PLO terrorist camp in Jordan, they complained about the Arab food, and one even demanded a Coke machine in their desert training camp. There are many instances in the book of RAF members talking about the "thrill" of the RAF "adventure," about "wild, exciting driving," of escaping the boring everyday life of [West Germany]."

Aust offers a great deal of details, from facts and statistics to extended verbatim quotations. This shows an undeniable command of the facts, but it comes across as indulgent. Editing should have noted and pulled this kind of dull, pointless detail.

Aust's capture of the dynamics between the RAF top three of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof is probably the most interesting part of the book, but he disappointingly offers no direct analysis of this relationship. Meinhof comes across as the true ideological center and mouthpiece, with the education, background and discipline to develop and communicate RAF motivations and aims. Baader comes off as reckless, arrogant, impatient, charismatic, uncompromising, fearless and lacking control, and Ensslin comes across as more intelligent and intellectual, certainly his better, yet impossibly drawn to him. It seems they both saw Meinhof as a threat, and they resented her, yet they needed the political legitimacy and intellect she brought.

Aust works a lot into this book: the state's clumsy yet ballooning response to the threat; the rise of the modern surveillance state; the successful role of computerized analysis; alleged RAF prisoner abuse; the state being aware of and ignoring the RAF suicide indications; the German left's fascination with and enabling of RAF terror; the RAF's manipulation of the legal system to run the RAF from prison; the smuggling of items into and out of the Stammheim prison, East Germany's role, and more.

Aust is caught up in the electronic monitoring of the RAF. The German government admitted authorizing electronic eavesdropping of prisoner-lawyer exchanges, but for only specific periods. But there are lingering questions of when this was done, and if the prisoners' cells and even their own clandestine jailhouse intercom were tapped. Aust implies strongly that they were, and offers circumstantial evidence, but nothing solid. This would of course mean that the government knew of the suicides, but did nothing to stop them. The German government has stonewalled on most of this, which has only fueled suspicion.

The final part of the book moves very quickly, with almost cinematic editing weaving together the 1977 Schleyer kidnapping, the Lufthansa hijacking, and the RAF prisoners' preparations for freedom or death. This is the most enjoyable part of the book, reading quickly, very dynamic and highly engaging. But, with the death of Baader, Ensslin and others, the book ends too abruptly. The book's subtitle, after all, is "the inside story of the RAF," but it ends with the 1977 leaders' deaths. The RAF trudged on for almost another 15 years, yet this book chronicles none of this; one can only judge that Aust doesn't consider any the follow-on RAF to be of any consequence or relevance.

Bottom line: If you know nothing of the RAF and 1970s European terrorism, this book is too dense to serve as an introduction. If you are looking for insight into the motivations of the RAF and the state reactions to it, this is a good resource. Direct comparisons to the RAF's leftist revolutionary terrorism and the fanatical religious threats we face today are not part of this book at all; readers might find a few implied themes and comments.

I was really interested in this topic, knowing nothing about it before picking up this book. The story is very interesting, full of intrigue, action, and revolution.

The presentation of the storyline is very choppy and seems to be more of a chronological laundry list than a narrative. If purely a chronology was the desired effect, a timeline would have helped bring everything together. The breaking up of chapters is haphazard and often occurs in the middle of a thought.

The author has the right credentials, but this prose needs a once-over to make the story more clear for those of us whose first exposure to the R.A.F. story is this book.

The Baader-Meinhof Group, Rote Armee Fraktion, Baader-Meinhof Gang or RAF, depending on your age and political persuasions, was a relatively small but very high profile terrorist group which was primarily active from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, although it did not disband (officially) until the late 1990s (circa 1970-1998 to be more precise). Like its American analogue, the Weather Underground Organization, it exercised influence disproportionate to its size and the scope of its revolutionary program. The source of the enduring interest in these groups is speculative but seems to be largely attributable to the romance associated with their "outlaw" activities and the extreme nature of their armed actions. There is no better, more comprehensive, objecctive or more readable source of information on the RAF than Aust's newly revised history.

Unsurprisingly, as with any political group, terrorist or otherwise, the RAF cannot be understood outside the context of social, political and economic milieu from which it arose. That context, in this case, was the "counterculture" that arose from the intersection of the much reviled Vietnam War, the anti-colonial uprisings in Africa and Algeria, the revolution in Cuba, the civil rights movement, appearance of idealistic, self-sacrificing revolutionaries such as Che Guevara and the generational reaction to the myriad constraints imposed by the "old" order. In other words, it is almost inconceivable that the RAF could arise in present day Germany or the EU, nor could the WUO develop in the current-day U.S.

Clumsy governmental repression of dissident movements coupled with the inherent contradictions and hypocrisy of a state claiming the mantle of a modern, liberal democracy while failing to deal either the legacy of the Third Reich or the presence of ex-Nazis (active in both government and industry) lubricated the birth of the RAF and similar groups (Revolutionary Cells and 2 June Movement, for example). The flash-point for the formation of the RAF seems to have been the brutal police repression of a student demonstration against the visiting Shah of Iran and the murder of a student, Benno Ohnesorg (by an East German-affiliated police agent of the West German State).

To put it bluntly, the political program (such as it was) of the RAF was not especially sophisticated. In response to the Ohnesorg murder, Ensslin observed, "They'll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we're up against. This is the Auschwitz generation. You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we haven't. We must arm ourselves!" A bit overwrought perhaps but essentially accurate. Meinhof, the voice of the RAF, in an unusually taciturn statement of purpose noted, "The Red Army Faction's Urban Guerrilla Concept is not based on an optimistic view of the prevailing circumstances in the Federal Republic and West Berlin". It seems the group's ideology never progressed much past this stage of development. Additionally, while it had a certain cachet with student groups and some intellectuals, their message never resonated with the German public.

Once the foundational members of the group, Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Jan-Karl Raspe, Holger Meins, Horst Mahler and Irmgard Moller were confined to Stammheim Prison, the exclusive focus of the RAF became that of liberating the prisoners. This involved the kidnapping of the "arch-captialist" Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking by a particularly odious "affiliated", Third World (Palestinian) "revolutionary group" of a Lufthansa jet. Parenthetically, Scheleyer, like many of his contemporaries, was an unsympathetic type who was redolent with the stench of a Nazi past, one which was never renounced, formally or otherwise. The German government, having by this time transformed the country from an imagined into a genuine surveillance society replete with a substantial covert police monitoring apparatus, refused to exchange the prisoners for fear of setting a precedent. Baader, Raspe and Ensslin killed themselves (Moller attempted suicide but failed; Mahler had been expelled from the group; Meins died during a prolonged hunger strike; Meinhof fell by her own hand at an earlier date). A German paramilitary unit rescued the Lufthansa hostages. Schleyer, the former Hitler Youth, SS Lieutenant and current representative of "the Establishment" was killed by "second generation" RAF members. The "German Autumn" of 1977 came to a close and, by and large, so does this book.

The major deficiency of Aust's otherwise excellent history is the total lack of references: not a footnote, not a single book, article or any other trace of source material can be found. This is particularly paradoxical in that the publisher is the revered Oxford University Press. Given the recent revelations (by Scott Horton, published in "Harpers", February, 2010) on the probable murders of 3 "war on terror" prisoners held by the U.S. Government at Guantanamo Bay and the subsequent, bungled cover-up, parallels to the RAF "Death Night" at Stammheim Prison are inevitable. Lamentably, for this and other reasons, while there is a concluding section to the book, it makes no effort to integrate the RAF into the general context of terrorist groups or governmental responses to them, past or present. Further, Aust does not provide a post-script on the fate of the surviving members, some of which he obviously interviewed for the book. Regardless, Aust wastes no words, perhaps reflecting his training as a journalist: his presentation makes for tense reading.

Lenin's adage that "Politics equals war minus bloodshed" was ever only applicable to groups operating according to the social contract of bourgeois democracies; it never applied to the radical cadres of the far-Left (or far-Right, for that matter). This was well understood by the RAF, whose murderous policies convincingly demonstrated that for them, "Radical politics is war plus bloodshed". They further proved that the equation of violent provocation of the government equals increased repression of the public is true, but the further equivalence that government repression yields a radicalized public is, at least in Western consumerist societies, false. Indeed, this approach did nothing but further extend the public's mandate for policies that facilitated general surveillance, infringed on civil liberties, suborned extra-judicial measures and made "the masses" even less receptive to change, that being either for better or for worse. Does this sound familiar? It should.

"Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF" is the latest edition of a work that Stefan Aust first published in 1985. He updated that book with new information in 1997 and again in this 2009 (2008 in Germany) edition, which incorporates new material gleaned from Stasi (MfS) files that came to light after the reunification of Germany. Aust played a minor role in the RAF drama himself. As a journalist in the 1970s (he is now editor-in-chief of "Der Spiegel"), he followed the RAF story with interest and, through a friend and former RAF member, played a part in returning Ulrike Meinhof's children to their father before they could be taken to an orphan's training camp in Palestine. Aust's intention is to write a record of the Red Army Faction's (RAF) first and formative generation, not a defense or an indictment.

"Baader-Meinhof" covers the RAF's activities from its official formation in 1970 until the deaths by suicide of its founding members in prison in 1977. It concentrates on the first generation: Andreas Baader, Gundrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Jan-Carl Raspe, and others, discussing the second generation only in terms of its efforts to free the leadership from prison. There is some discussion of the early days of the group, 1968-1970, in explaining its background and, in the final chapter, of the activities of the subsequent generations until the RAF's dissolution in 1998. But the bulk of the book is a blow-by-blow account of the RAF's activities in the 1970s, their reasoning, and the people involved.

It is a detailed account of the operations, rhetoric, and personalities of the RAF during that time, written in the style of reportage, 165 short chapters, each dedicated to a particular incident or subject. Aust seems to make use of every piece of information available, from the springing of Andreas Baader from police custody in 1970, the RAF's life underground, through the arrests, trial, and imprisonment of its core members, to the "German Autumn" of 1977, to which an entire section is dedicated. This was the kidnapping of Employer's Association president Hanns Martin Schleyer and collusion with the PFLP in hijacking Lufthansa flight 181 en route from Mallorca to Frankfurt in attempts to get the first generation of the RAF released from prison.

Aust's account seems balanced. He doesn't hesitate to condemn the actions of the RAF, which I gather he regards as a delusional reaction to occasionally real injustice, or to criticize the actions of the authorities, who were responsible for their share of incompetence, poor decisions, and abuse. The surveillance of the RAF members in Stammheim prison has never been officially acknowledged, but it explains a lot. Aust's attempts to make sense of their treatment and the circumstances surrounding their suicide in light of the surveillance is among the book's most interesting discussions. There are some minor translation problems, where the translator used the wrong word. Fortunately, it's obvious which word she should have used. "Baader-Meinhof" is a terrific in-depth study of the actions and mentality of a Western "urban guerilla" group.

There is a perception in America that terrorism began with 9/11 and to think of the "War on Terror" as a recent development, but the reality is that terrorism is almost as old as history itself. During the Cold War most of the world had to contend with terrorism aimed at overthrowing governments, or failing that, disruption of everyday life to achieve their sociopolitical objectives. Stefan Aust's book examines one of the more notorious groups, Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF), perhaps better known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, which terrorized that country from the 1970s well into the 1980s. While others have plumbed the RAF for insight into what motivates terrorists and terrorism, Aust is one of the few Germans to analyze it in-depth and this presents both potential benefits and drawbacks. As a German, Aust is well qualified to speak to the RAF's motivations and the consequences of their actions but at the same time his national identity could lead to questions about his objectivity. Aust retains his objectivity and in the process delivers a gripping account of perhaps the most violent terrorist group of that era. And while there have been other books on the RAF, this one benefits from utilizing recently declassified and released documents from the former East German Stasi and from former members finally willing to talk. Aust also breaks new ground in disclosing that the West German secret service may have eavesdropped on RAF members and were aware of pending mass suicide but did nothing to prevent it from being carried out.

While Aust's writing is compelling and gripping the organization of the book can prove challenging as it follows a non-chronological organization and frequently jumps forwards and backwards in time. The book also appears to have been targeted to a German audience rather than a worldwide market as it presumes the reader would have familiarity with a variety of events occurring in Germany during this era. Aust is certainly critical of the RAF and its members, but is also critical of the German governments and politicians of that era as well, skewing left of center most of the time. Rather than mythologizing the RAF and its members Aust's sympathies clearly lie with the RAFs victims. Despite the aforementioned tendency to jump around chronologically, the book is a gripping read if you can stay with the story. There's actually much to be learned about contending with terrorism from this story that is essential for our present circumstances, not just in America, but throughout the world.

I was a young man when the Baader-Meinhof terror in Germany was at its peak and it seemed to me from events both here in the States and around the world, that our world was being engulfed by terrorism and headed toward nuclear war. I was intrigued at the time by the proliferation of terror groups and so jumped at the chance to learn more about one of the most important of them when Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. was published.
In this fast-paced book, Stefan Aust brings those very interesting times to life. He gives the reader the backgrounds of the principals then moves swiftly going back and forth between the actions of the R.A.F. and the reaction of the state, culminating in the rescue of hostages in Mogadishu, the suicides of the surviving first-generation R.A.F. terrorists Baader, Raspe, and Ensslin, and the subsequent murder of the kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer. Not only that, he gets into the minds and motivations of all involved.
Most interesting and astounding to me was the endless chain of command in the state security structure and the almost complete lack of initiative on the part of any of its lower functionaries. Much that happened would not have if individual officers had been able to act on instinct. So too astounding was the molly-coddling the prisoners demanded and mostly received from the spineless prison bureaucracy. I was instantly reminded of the coddling of the terrorists locked up at Gitmo.
The reader will be astonished at revelations that the prisoners were able to have almost anything smuggled into them right under the noses of their guards, who if they saw anything, were too burdened by tiresome procedure to do anything effective about it. You will also note the parade of radical lawyers who used theater and bombastic appeals to the peanut gallery to turn the terror trials into an expensive circus.
Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin didn't have a whole country on edge through lack of wits. They were cunning, intelligent, and in the case of Ensslin and Meinhof highly educated but delusional young malcontents skilled at manipulating the media in Germany in a way that's maddeningly familiar to those who lived through the days of the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army here in the States. And because they were also charismatic, they were able to draw into their sphere a core of other intelligent malcontents bent on bringing down the "system".
Former leftist radical Aust presents the Baader-Meinhof story as a gripping and suspenseful history which I found hard to put down. If this sort of story interests you, you will be hard-pressed to find another book about the R.A.F. that is as well written.