Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF

"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 wh

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 deciphe

When the Baader-Meinhof group declared war on the West German state in the 1970s--setting fire to department stores, robbing banks, setting off bombs, assassinating politicians, killing police officers, taking hostages, and kidnapping and murdering industrialist Hans-Martin Schleyer--German writer Heinrich Böll said they were six terrorists against sixty million West Germans. But they were more than six. At their height, according to the authorities, the Red Army Faction (what the group called itself) consisted of 1200 "dangerous people" and a "wider circle" of 6000 sympathizers. Stefan Aust's thriller-like history of RAF terrorism and West Germany's response to it (in a translation by Anthea Bell so smooth you forget the book wasn't written in English) tells of lawyers who smuggled electronic equipment and weapons into their clients' prison cells, and of people who felt honor-bound to help members of the RAF when they were on the run. But Aust's book also documents the other side. After Hans-Martin Schleyer had been kidnapped by the RAF with the demand that Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ennslin, and Ulrike Meinhof be released from Stammheim prison, Chief Federal Prosecutor Kurt Rebmann suggested (at a meeting convened by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) "shooting the Stammheim prisoners one by one until Schleyer's kidnappers freed him." A witness to the meeting (not further identified) says Schmidt was "quick to call the next speaker." Aust quotes another participant (also not identified): "If we'd done that we'd have been lowering ourselves to the level of the RAF." This brings up the only problem I see with the book--the sourcing. Aust was a journalist at the time, and says his files on the RAF take up sixty meters of shelf-space. He obviously has done much more research but there are no footnotes. It is clear in many cases who the source logically would have to be, but not always. For instance, when he discusses Andreas Baader's childhood rebellion and fighting in school, I would like to know if it was Baader's own recollections or those of others who were describing him. I was surprised to learn that Gudrun Ennslin, along with her lover Andreas Baader, were the core of the Red Army Faction. Ulrike Meinhof was a little older than the rest of the group and already an established journalist. Meinhof was drawn to Baader and Ennslin and her name was apparently linked to Baader's because she was well-known. There was a split (possibly personal as much as political), and Aust shows how Gudrun Ennslin may have encouraged Ulrike Meinhof to commit suicide in prison. The story about the RAF members' lives in prison is one of the most interesting aspects of the book. (Here there is plenty of available evidence--visitor logs, memos between the RAF members and government officials, personal letters by the group.) It seems unlikely that the RAF members were killed by police or prison officials in retaliation for the murder of kidnap victim Hans-Martin Schley

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.

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