The rise and fall of the Baader-Meinhof group constitutes one of the most remarkable phenomena of postwar Europe. A group of young people, most of whom came from respected, middle-class backgrounds, took the law into their own hands and, through arson, bombings, kidnappings, and murders, attempted to change the direction of national and international politics. Rooted in the student protest movement of the late 1960s, the group's story begins in May 1970 with the liberation of Andreas Baader, who had been imprisoned for placing incendiary devices in protest against the Vietnam War, by Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and others. They spent the following years occupying apartments from leftist supporters, stealing cars, and robbing banks in order to prepare for attacks on American military bases. After an intense manhunt, the group's leaders, now calling themselves the Red Army Faction (RAF), were finally captured in 1972. Their prolonged trial began in 1975 and lasted almost 2 years, during which Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide in her cell. The other members of the group were convicted and received life sentences. The 'war of six against sixty million' (Heinrich Böll) reached its peak in the fall of 1977 when supporters attempted to secure their release by kidnapping the president of the German Employers' Association, Hanns Martin Schleyer, and later with the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight, which was ultimately overtaken by German special forces at the Mogadishu airport. On the morning the rescue was announced, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were all found dead in their cells. The 'German Autumn' marked the violent culmination of a journey that began with peaceful protests against the American war in Vietnam: moral indignation had turned into provocative immorality. Stefan Aust's absolutely engrossing chronicle of these events reads like a first-class thriller. 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' is the definitive chronological account of seven years that changed Germany.