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Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. Stefan Aust; translated by Anthea Bell New York: Oxford University Press, 2008; 480 pages. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-537275-5 (hardcover)
Translated into eight languages and recently made into a $20-million film, this revised reissue by a leading journalist has now, more than any other work, determined the public memory of the Red Army Faction (RAF), the left-wing terrorist organization that convulsed Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. A popular account, it starts offwith the personalities: Andreas Baader, the hotheaded ringleader who fleeced drunks in bathroom bars as a young man and later goaded his coconspirators to be more violent; Gudrun Enslin, the cool daughter of a minister, former U.S. high school exchange student, and Baader's lover; and Ulrike Meinhof, the nervous, chain-smoking journalist who wrote the gang's muddled manifestos. The book then traces the sensationalist narrative: the arson of the department stores, the subsequent arrests, and the flippant antics in the dock while on trial.
In May 1970, Meinhof and Enslin rescued Baader from prison, and the group hightailed to Jordan for training in urban guerilla warfare by Palestinian terrorists. After returning to Germany via East Berlin, life as fugitives involved disguises,...