The Baader-Meinhoff Complex

Personal Response to Baader-Meinhoff Complex (250-300 words)

This movie was actually very difficult to watch. In one of the first scenes, where the police watched as the student protestors were being beaten and eventually joined in beating them when they attempted to defend themselves was particularly contemptible. It still sickens me that any first-world country would do that to their own citizens. The trials near the end of the movie were nothing more than show put on for the public’s amusement – they wouldn’t listen to what any of the members had to say and denied them rights in prison and during trial.

What most surprised me was the fact that there were separate and distinct “generations” of the group. Instead of a member forming another group around themselves after the previous leaders had been captured or killed, an entirely new section started up with members who only knew of the ideals of the last group, and not the individual members.

I do believe, from what I saw in the movie, that action against the state was necessary, but the RAF went about it in the wrong way. Instead of forming a cohesive plan of action to change the world they lived in, they simply struck out randomly and expected things to be different because of it. Killing innocent people and terrorizing a nation is wrong, of course, but they said somewhere in the movie that a good majority of the nation’s youth actually supported the group. This proved to me that there were a lot more people in West Germany who wanted things to change from the way they were then there were people actually doing anything about it.