Lessons from Germany's Defeat of the Red Army Faction

Look at how Germany defeated the Red Army Faction. The lessons about how to fight terrorism are all there | Jason Burke

As Daniela Klette is jailed after three decades in hiding, it’s clear that good strategy, and principally democracy, beat the terror, bombs and guns In 1972, the great German novelist Heinrich Böll described the campaign of violence launched by the Red Army Faction (RAF) since its foundation two years earlier as a war of “six against 60 million”. The writer was vilified for the phrase, accused of sympathy for bombers and murderers. But Böll had highlighted the most important factor in the eve...

By Jason Burke