Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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left.7 This tradition continued into the eighties with concerns over
computerisation of the security services and the resultant transparency
of public life, which are also linked with how the government controls
demonstrations and responds to terrorism. 8
The literature on specifically left-wing terrorism can be broken
into three broad categories: journalistic, academic and terroristic. Two
authors, Aust and Becker, stand out amongst the journalists for their
detailed analysis of the rise and fall of the Rote AImee Fraktion (RAF,
Red Army Faction) under Baader and Meinhof in the seventies. 9 Becker
seeks to explain the events in light of the main characters and their
parents' past, which she perceives as being influenced by the shadow of
the Third Reich whereby the early RAF became 'Hitler's children' as they
sought to provoke fascism in order to encourage dissent. Aust relates
terrorist events in a study of the internal group acti vi ties, and how
these were affected by government counterterrorism policies. However,
both of these studies limit themselves to the seventies, and no
comparable work exists for the eighties, or for the Bewegung 2. Juni
(B2J, Second of June) or Revolutionaerer Zellen (RZ, Revolutionary
Cells) apart from the short, broad overview of leftist terrorism offered
by Kah1. 10
The academic studies of left-wing terrorism are reviewed in the
Backes and Jesse volumes mentioned above, so the following only
discusses the more important works. In 1978 the government commissioned
academic studies into West GenTIan left-wing terrorism in the country.
The results were five volumes in a series entitled Analysen zum
Terrorismus that approached the subject from the different perspectives
of terrorist ideology ,11 individual life histories, 12 group dynamics, 13
7 See Peter Brueckner, Alfred Krovoza, Staatsfeinde: Innerstaatliche
Feinderklaerung in der Blmdesrepublik (West Berlin: Verlag Klaus
Wagenbach, 1972); Sebastian Cobler, Law, Order and Politics in West
Gennany (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1978); Peter Brueckner,
Versuch, uns und anderen die Blmdesrepublik zu erklaeren (West Berlin:
Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1978, Neuausgabe, 1984).
8 See Rolf Goessner, Buerger kontrol1 ieren Polizei ( eds. ) ,
Restrisiko Mensch: Volkserfassung, Staatsterrorgesetze,
Widerstandsbekaernfung (Hamburg: Instituts fuer Sozialforschung, 1987).
9 Jillian Becker, Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof
Gang (London: Granada Publishing Ltd., Second Edition, 1978); Stefan
Aust, The Baader-Meinhof Group: The Inside Story of a Phenomenon
(London: The Bodley Head, 1987).
10 Werner Kahl, Vorsicht Schusswafen! Von kamn.mistischen
Extremismus, Terrorismus, und revolutionaerer Gewalt (Munich: Guenter
Olzog Verlag, 1986).
11 Iring Fetscher, Guenter Rohrmosser (eds.), Ideologien und
Strategien (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981).
12 Gerhard Schmidtchen, Herbert Jaeger, Lieselotte Suellwold (eds.),
Lebenslaufanalysen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1981).