1972, all the leaders were in custody, and for the next five years the German government systematically developed a case against them for their terrorist activities. Eventually, all of them were brought together in the high-security Stammheim prison outside Stuttgart. While the government was building its case, lawyers for the jailed RAF leaders assisted their clients in communicating with members of the group who were still conducting operations. Surprisingly, as late as 1975 when the trial of Baader and his associates began, a notable portion of the West German population saw some justice in their complaints against the state.

The government’s decision to conduct the trial of the RAF’s leaders outside the public gaze only fostered suspicions that the defendants were being treated unfairly. Records of the proceedings demonstrate, however, that RAF leaders were decidedly uncooperative with the courtand sometimes with their own attorneys. Complicating the proceedings for the government, Meinhof committed suicide while the trial was in progress. After more than a year, Baader and his chief lieutenants were found guilty of a string of crimes and sentenced to long prison terms.

Prompted by the court’s decision, RAF members still at large staged two bold actions intended to force the German government to release the incarcerated leaders. Under Boock and Mohnhaupt’s leadership, in the fall of 1977, RAF members kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, head of the West German Employers’ Association. The RAF also assisted a group of Middle Eastern terrorists in the hijacking of a Lufthansa jetliner en route to Frankfurt from Mallorca. Over the next few days, the aircraft flew to several countries before landing in Mogadishu, Somalia, where German commandos stormed the plane and freed the passengers. When this news reached the jailed leaders, Baader and Raspe took their own lives by putting guns to their heads, and Ensslin managed to hang herself. Müller plunged a knife into her chest but survived. When news of this mass suicide was made public, the RAF executed Schleyer.

How four high-profile prisoners in solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison were able to obtain the weapons they needed to commit suicide is just one of the many mysteries veteran German journalist Stefan Aust solves in Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. Aust has had a lifelong interest in the RAF, and he published his first book about the group in 1985. In fact, the 2009 Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. is a reworking of that 1985 volume, Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex (The Baader-Meinhof Group: The Inside Story of a Phenomenon, 1985), a detailed account of the group’s activities published within a decade of their leaders’ suicides.

Aust began his career at Konkret, a socialist periodical for which Ulrike Meinhof had worked before going underground in 1970. In retelling the story of the RAF in this extensively revised edition, Aust makes use of new documents that came to light after the publication of the first edition, most notably files made available when the East German government fell in 1989. Baader-Meinhof reveals the extensive role played by Stasi, the East German’s secret police organization, in facilitating the mayhem created by the RAF. Aust also details the extensive relationships built between Baader’s group and various Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, particularly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which helped train several of the original members of the RAF and participated with them in the ill-fated airplane hijacking attempt in 1977.

Baader-Meinhof is written as a series of vignettes, loosely organized to follow the chronology of the gang’s activities from 1970 through 1977. Aust concentrates on what people did and said, avoiding extensive speculation about the ideology that motivated hundreds of disaffected young men and women to go underground and follow the caustic yet charismatic Baader. Undeniably, however, Aust’s account of the RAF is a group portrait. Dozens of young radicals are introduced, as Aust offers a brief description of their upbringings and reasons for joining the urban guerilla group before launching into a narrative of their actions. More attention is naturally paid to the group’s leaders. Separate chapters are devoted to discussing their backgrounds and offering some insight into their motives for joining Baader in active struggle against the state.

A careful reading suggests that Aust has formed opinions about several of the RAF’s leaders, although he seldom states these opinions directly. For example, Holger Meins is portrayed as a committed follower whose belief in the cause led him to heroic self-sacrifice: He died during a hunger strike staged by the prisoners at Stammheim (during which Baader had food smuggled to him). Gudrun Ensslin is presented as a thoughtful, sensitive individual whose dedication to Baader served as motivation enough to engage in acts of terrorismbut whose belief in her cause ran on a parallel track with her sensitivity for others’ feelings.

In what might seem a surprising twist, Ulrike Meinhof is treated quite sympathetically, albeit within limits. Aust goes out of his way to separate her from the group intellectually, presenting her as someone whose thoughtful criticisms of the state motivated her to actions that seem at times totally out of character. He even quotes extensively from her letters to her two daughters to suggest that her maternal instincts ran deep, even if her commitment to radicalism ran deeper. Nevertheless, Aust reminds readers that Meinhof was quite adept at carjacking and participated willingly, even enthusiastically, in a number of violent criminal actions. Aust has virtually no sympathy for Baader, whom he portrays as self-aggrandizing, pompous, callous, and egomaniacal, evincing virtually no concern for anyone but himself. In many respects, Baader appears to be a classic sociopath.

As Aust notes in his final chapter, the deaths of Baader and his closest associates in 1977 did not end the group’s terrorist activities. For the next twenty years, remaining RAF members continued to carry out bombings, kidnappings, and even murders. Not until 1998 was there any indication that the group had officially disbanded and that the people of Germany were finally free from the threat posed by this homegrown guerrilla force. By that time, there had been a change in Germany’s government. Ironically, it was not the democratic state in West Germany that fell but instead the totalitarian socialist establishment in East Germany, the same regime that had assisted the RAF to bring terror to the streets of Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, and other German metropolises. Despite Baader’s best efforts, capitalism and democracy won out in the end.