Ethical Review: THE BAADER-MEINHOF COMPLEX

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The Baader-Meinhof Complex takes us inside a popular terrorist group that emerged in the 1960s and 70s in Germany. The children of the Nazi era had come of age, and their anger over the war in Vietnam, the police brutality against peaceful protesters, and corporate media distortion led them to extreme violence.

The Red Army Faction, led by Andreas Baader, journalist Ulrike Meinhof, and Gudrun Enslinn pulled off daring prison breaks, robbed over 30 banks, killed public officials, bombed embassies and U.S. Army facilities in Berlin. The group's expansion led to trouble, and their message became less and less clear as the 10 years of their reign went on. The second and third generation of the RAF became sloppier, engaging in police shootouts in unfamiliar cities, and a botched hijack of a Lufthansa 747 to exchange hostages for their imprisoned leaders.

Andreas Baader was the impulsive petty criminal who took command of the operation. Gudrun Enslinn was the sexy, ferocious First Lady, the diplomatic translator, who loved Baader and helped him channel his rage into organized action. Gudrun's relationship with Ulrike Meinhof began during her first prison term for arson. Meinhof was their sympathetic press contact, a radical who picked up a gun when the pen finally lost all its power. Meinhof was the above-ground support for the group, until a critical moment made her throw it all away. She gave up a husband and twin daughters to bring about structural change in German government.

Meinhof gradually gave up journalism. Journalism had lost its impact. Her documentary of a brutal reform school for girls ceased to bring about positive change in the girls' lives. Art and journalism do not serve radical causes. They only distort the message.

Her turning point comes during Baader's violent escape from prison. She could have laid low and walked out the front door. Her identity was still that of a journalist, and regular citizen. Instead, she jumped out the window with the gang and began the life underground. One could call this her Patty Hearst Moment, when she went from follower and supporter to becoming visibly complicit in terrorist action.

On the periphery is Horst Mahler, an attorney who begins working on setting up terrorist operations while Baader and Enslinn are in exile in Rome. He brings them back to Germany, then to Jordan to train. Baader kids Mahler when he changes his look, going from a three-piece suit to fatigues and a long beard, a la Fidel Castro. The role of the attorney in radical action is always curious.

In the case of Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago 10's famous trial, the attorney got the stiffest sentence of all. William Kunstler served more time than Hoffman himself in that famous case. Radical attorneys choose to represent their own causes in court, and join the defendants politically. Pro-bono representation of radicals becomes a crime in itself. Journalists and attorneys share the same fate here, when their public work is too closely tied to a radical cause. Attorneys and journalists lose a lot of credibility in the eyes of the public when they become iconoclasts. When one loses one's anonymity in either profession, there is danger. When journalists become the news story themselves, they become mouthpieces for a cause, and go beyond reportage into editorial territory. Likewise, an attorney using his or her own politics, while appearing in public courts of law, loses a fair amount of objectivity, in the eyes of the court.

Baader puts Mahler to a test, in a Roman cafe. We'll go with you back to Berlin, Baader says, if you steal that woman's purse. Mahler agrees, and empties the woman's handbag while leaning in to speak with her about a trivial matter. By taking on Baader's criminal ethics, Mahler gains the support of the terrorists. He is down for the cause.

Then there is free love, a huge component of popular radical actions of the time. Nudity, and sex as a revolutionary act. Though Baader and Enslinn appear to remain monogamous, very much in love, they spread the message that "Fucking and shooting are the same." Here, again, is where a movement's message can become distorted. The sexual liberation of the time led to fairly equal gender opportunity for the terrorists. Like Patty Hearst, Ulrike Meinhof found herself embedded with mostly women. Women were attracted to the cause, and that is worth examining all on its own. Attractive women gained access to public buildings, and escaped suspicion altogether, leaving them free to roam the halls, drop their timebombs, and leave undetected. Gudrun Enslinn's beauty and charm is what attracts many young men to the group. Young men who wanted to be Andreas Baader, and wanted to be with Gudrun Enslinn. Women are used and exploited in radical gangs, given some leadership and responsibilities, but often they are under the thumb of shaky male leadership.

The government is surprisingly creative and sympathetic. Using modern electronic databasing of the times, they tried a mathematical approach to finding the RAF, narrowing down the suspects, eliminating citizens who did not fit the profiling. They tried to get inside the terrorists' heads, even examining their own tactics, to try and change the things within government that might lead to terrorism. Refreshing.

Terror was considered an act of war, and one government official tries to passively change things to alleviate pressure that young people feel to strike out against the institution. The military-industrial complex, the oppressive atmosphere, the slaughters in Vietnam and Israel, all of this was bringing youth rage to a boil.

Baader, Meinhof, and the RAF were named in the Munich Olympics terrorists' list of political prisoners they wanted released. Terrorists worldwide wanted them free. One in four Germans polled said they supported the RAF. The public may not have wanted violence on such a scale, but they wanted change, and revolution means some level of bloodshed. The public was comfortable with some level of warfare on their own soil.

But change is slow. Attorneys general are killed, kidnapped, bombed, burned. In the late 70s, Baader, Enslinn, and Meinhof sit in the 7th floor of their prison, co-ed, and able to roam freely from room to room. Their comrades on the outside lose their grip. Brigitte, a charismatic and beautiful new leader, travels to Baghdad to arrange the hijack of a Lufthansa 747, to exchange hostages for the RAF prisoners. The German government shows its stance. The government frequently chooses to put ordinary citizens at risk rather than be seen as being soft on terror. The government would rather haggle, maybe negotiate a bit. The hostages are rescued, and the RAF is left with few choices.

In 1977, President of the Employer's Association Shleyer is captured by RAF, tortured, and finally killed. The original RAF kill themselves in their prison cells. The weapons that were carefully smuggled into the prison were used to take their own lives. Ulrike Meinhof, in her testimony before the court, asks them How can a prisoner be expected to change when they are held in solitary confinement? How can they be seen as a rehabilitated human being, how can they be properly evaluated, when they are in isolation?

They can only choose betrayal, or death. They can confess their crimes (or most often, blame them on their dead comrades), or die by their own hands. The government does not want prisoners killing themselves. Prison suicides are seen as murders, the public's view. The RAF spread the message that their comrades were being killed inside the prisons. Which was only partly untrue. When RAF member Holger Meins lays dying in his hunger strike, he is refused medical treatment. It is the weekend, and the doctor is off duty. When comrade Hausner is shot by authorities during the taking of the German Embassy, he is transported to the prison to be with the RAF, rather than a proper hospital. He dies that night.

What is the proper response to a government at war? A government that allows police brutality? A government that seems to have no real mechanism for dealing with terror? The RAF's violence sent a message that as long as the Vietnam war continued, the U.S. presence in Germany was at risk of bombings and other terror. The government weighs its choices, and keeps its stance, despite a growing, violent revolution.

This is all recent history. Terror continues, and the reason this story gains traction in the mainstream is that these are not born extremists. These are young people who go to college. Like the Symbionese Liberation Army who took Patty Hearst, these are educated people with middle-class backgrounds. The question is not Why does this happen. The question is Why doesn't it happen more often.

Our thought experiment is underway. How can we better understand terrorists? Can their message be focused towards some kind of change? How can the government work with them? If someone is willing to die or kill for their cause, are they worth listening to? How extreme are these extremists, really? And how extreme are we? Where do we fall in all of this?

The Baader-Meinhof Complex is rated R for violence, nudity, and profanity. Now playing at the Michigan Theatre in Ann Arbor, in German with English subtitles.

Baader-Meinhof is Stefan Aust's personal account of the events. The book is widely available, in its new edition.