Die blinden Flecken der RAF

The German Autumn of 1977 marks the darkest period in the post-war history of West Germany. Wolfgang Kraushaar, the foremost expert on this era, raises new questions and provides new answers. Terrorism confronts us today as a phenomenon of the immediate present. However, it has already once held the Federal Republic in its grip. The atrocities committed by the RAF reached their peak in the autumn of 1977 with the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of the "Landshut" airplane. Yet, the violence of the RAF has its roots in the early phase of the seemingly more benign 68 movement. Its protagonists, who styled themselves as anti-bourgeois heroes, are also deeply rooted in the German post-war bourgeoisie. The RAF operated far beyond the enigmatic death night in Stammheim, where the leadership trio of Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe took their own lives.