Random Thinking

Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
by Stefan Aust

I grew up with protests against the Vietnam War and with radical leftist organizations like the Weathermen and the RAF. The RAF were perhaps a little more mysterious because they were in far off and, at the time, divided Germany so I was always interested in them. When I discovered this book by Stefan Aust I was excited about the opportunity to read it. I was soon very disappointed. It’s not that there isn’t a lot of interesting information in the book. The problem is that the author didn’t actually go to the trouble to write a book.

The main problem is that there is no structure to the book. There is no logical flow that makes this history of the RAF coherent. After struggling through the beginning of the book, I felt like there were pieces to the puzzle all over the place but no coherent image of what the puzzle looks like. The book doesn’t flow as a series of events or topics, in fact it doesn’t flow at all. The first 100 pages included more than 40 chapters. Each chapter reads like a brief essay that may or may not have anything to do with the previous chapters. One chapter might take place in 1971 and the next in 1965 and the next in 1967. A chapter might be two pages about a person who gets mentioned once (probably five pages earlier) and then not mentioned again. The biographical essays tell virtually nothing about a person other than straight facts but really give no help in figuring out how they ended up in a radical leftist terrorist group. We read about Andreas Baader’s escape from prison without knowing what he was in prison for because that doesn’t happen until later. The book reads more like a bunch of notes randomly thrown together as if the author didn’t feel like actually editing his notes into a book. As a side note, there are many characters who are mentioned occasionally so a cast of characters such as found on Wikipedia could have been helpful. Also, a map showing the key cities and towns mentioned and their relationship to East and West Germany would also have been helpful. Also, the author mentions Berlin quite often without making it clear if he is talking about East or West Berlin.

This could have been a very interesting, perhaps even a great book. There is plenty of good information scattered around the book. Also, a better translator who could assist the American reader would have been helpful (not everyone will know that the GDR is East Germany – it has been nearly 20 years since Germany was reunified). The great book on the history of the RAF is still waiting to be written. Meanwhile I would avoid this book unless you have a true thirst for knowledge on this topic and are willing to put up with the poor structure and writing.