posted on 07 Oct 2016

Hitler’s Children by Jillian Becker

“A common denominator of terrorist groups throughout history has been extreme romanticisation of the self.”  – Michael Burleigh

I have long been fascinated by the wave of left-wing terror which swept the world in the 1970s, especially in Germany with the Red Army Faction (RAF), and Italy, with the Red Brigades. The Red Army Faction is generally held responsible for at least 34 murders; the Revolutionary Cells, another West German grouping, for almost 300 bombings. Italy’s Red Brigades, of course, were responsible for the 1978 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, former Italian Prime Minister and leader of the Christian Democrats. It is a period which gives a completely new perspective to the term ‘radicalisation’ – now almost entirely regarded as referring to young Muslims and radical Islam.

The Red Army Faction was probably the most notorious European group and brought Germany to its knees during the 1970s. The peak of its violence was 1977, a period known as the German Autumn, which also saw the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Amongst other things, the PFLP was demanding the release of imprisoned Baader-Meinhof militants.

 The founders of the RAF – Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin – were in fact captured relatively quickly and from June 1972 were imprisoned in the newly-built Stammheim high security prison. Baader, Meinhof and another member of the group, Jan Carle Raspe, committed suicide during what has become known as Stammheim Death Night in 1977.

Although I remember this extraordinarily bloody period of far-left terrorism I was a teenager and certainly didn’t understand its roots, causes or consequences. Whether it has anything to teach us about the current period of Islamic terrorism – or whether the current period helps illuminate the events of the 1970s – I’m not sure. That is one of the reasons I wanted to read something about the RAF.

When I first started searching for a book on the subject the only one I was aware of was Jillian Becker’s Hitler’s Children. I remember it being published in paperback by Panther in the late-70s and I always regretted that I hadn’t bought a copy at the time. When I tracked down this hardback (it’s the UK edition from 1977) the paperback version was long out-of-print.

I wish I had saved my money – or looked harder – because in fact it is the worst book on the subject. Jillian Becker is a South African journalist and specialist in terrorism. She was one of the founders of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism, which although no longer active at one time advised governments and consulted for major companies and international corporations.

You would think that these credentials would make for a thorough and fascinating book. But her attitude is a problem. She so despises the RAF and everyone and everything associated with the group (and, one suspects, with the ‘permissiveness’ of the period) that she cannot write without a constant barrage of clumsy and heavy-handed satirical jibes. And while I believe she is well within her rights to consider the RAF the spoilt, indulged sons and daughters of Germany’s high bourgeoisie – she is right: many were – her derision and loathing stand in the way of any genuinely insightful analysis. What should be a riveting – and admonitory – history is tedious and unreadable. (I now see that Stephen Spender, reviewing the book at the time, called it “turgidly written”; Kirkus Reviews said it was flawed by the author’s “sarcastic revulsion”.) It seems a gratuitously squandered opportunity.

I definitely will read more on this subject. I want to better understand events which I lived through but largely in ignorance. What better reason is there for reading? I may try what now seems generally regarded as the best book in English on the subject, Stefan Aust’s The Baader-Meinhof Complex (a revised edition of his slightly earlier book, Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F).

 

Alun Severn

October 2016