The Baader Meinhof Complex - Plot

Plot

In 1967, the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, visits West Berlin to attend a performance at the Deutsche Oper. Angered at the Shah's repressive policies in governing Iran, a number of young Germans show up to protest his appearance. The German police and the Shah's forces attack the German protesters and one of them, Benno Ohnesorg, is shot and killed without provocation by Karl-Heinz Kurras.

The Ohnesorg murder outrages many Germans, including left wing journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who had earlier written articles critical of the Shah. Inspired by Meinhof's outspoken criticism of the government, Gudrun Ensslin leaves her common law husband and child. Together with her new lover, Andreas Baader, and two others she carries out a fire bombing of a department store in Frankfurt am Main. The group is caught and put on trial where they are represented by attorney Horst Mahler, who shares their political beliefs. Ulrike Meinhof covers the trial and is impressed by the group's dedication to revolutionary principles as well as the change which they have brought about within their own lives. Meinhof secures an interview with Ensslin in prison, where the two strike up a friendship.

Meinhof discovers her husband having an affair and leaves with her two children to live with her friend Peter Homann. Meanwhile, Ensslin and Baader have been released pending an appeal and continue to live a bohemian lifestyle while attracting the loyalty of various young people including Astrid Proll, and Peter-Jurgen Boock. After spending some time abroad, Baader, Ensslin and Proll return to Germany at the urging of Horst Mahler. They begin to live with Ulrike Meinhof, who has also taken in a young runaway, Peggy Schoenau. Meinhof has become increasingly disillusioned by her inability to achieve change through her journalism and is looking to take more direct action. Her chance comes when Baader is arrested at a traffic stop. Using her journalism connections, Meinhof is able to arrange for Baader to be interviewed off prison grounds, where Ensslin and the others manage to rescue him. Wanted by the law, the group flees Germany.

After leaving Meinhof's children with sympathizers in Sicily, the group travels to Jordan where they are to receive training in a Fatah training camp, but the rebellious nature of the Germans soon annoys their Palestinian hosts. Homann leaves the group after a falling out and learns that they intend to send Meinhof's children to a Palestinian camp from which they will never return. Instead he informs Meinhof's associate Stefan Aust who returns the children to their father.

Returning to Germany, the group, now styling itself the Red Army Faction, engages in a series of bank robberies and draws increasing attention from the police. One of their number, Petra Schelm, runs a police roadblock and is killed in a shoot-out with the police. This action only angers the RAF and leads to a campaign of bomb attacks directed at German authorities as well as American military personnel based in West Germany. As their notoriety grows and police attention intensifies, more and more members of the group are captured. Baader and Holger Meins are captured after a shoot-out with police. Ensslin becomes increasingly paranoid and is captured trying to change her clothes in a store after a clerk notices her gun. Meinhof is soon captured as well, meaning that virtually all of the "first generation" of RAF members are now in prison.

Initially put in solitary confinement in separate prisons, the RAF members engage in a hunger strike which ultimately results in Holger Meins' death. The RAF consider this to be murder since the prison authorities withheld medical treatment from the critically ill Meins. The authorities then move Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and Jan-Carl Raspe to the same quarters in Stammheim Prison. There, they work on their case as their physical and mental states deteriorate.

In 1975, a group of "second generation" RAF members seizes control of the West German embassy in Sweden. The siege ends with a series of explosions, which kill several of the RAF members and injure the hostages. RAF member Siegfried Hausner survives the blast but is critically wounded. Against medical advice he is flown back to Germany to be treated in a prison hospital, where he dies. The imprisoned RAF members are appalled by the poor execution of the Sweden operation and this contributes to their internal dissension. In particular, Ulrike Meinhof has fallen out with the other members over both her increasing depression and recriminations about the group's tactics, in particular the 1972 bombing of the Axel Springer AG publishing company, which injured mostly workers and, Ensslin feels, alienated them from common Germans. Eventually, her increasing depression leads Meinhof to commit suicide by hanging herself in her cell. The RAF refuse to believe that this was actually a suicide and assert that it was an extrajudicial execution. After Meinhof's death, Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe are able to get other members of their group transferred into their wing. Of particular concern to the authorities is Brigitte Mohnhaupt, whose prison term will be ending shortly and who the authorities suspect will be used to carry orders to free RAF members.

Upon her release, Mohnhaupt hooks up with a group run by Peter-Jurgen Boock. Mohnhaupt informs Boock that the leadership has forbidden any more attacks on civilians and also enlists Boock's help to smuggle weapons into Stammheim, implying that the imprisoned members may choose to commit suicide, a fact that she wants kept hidden from the other RAF members. In retaliation for what they regard as the murders of Meins, Hausner, and Meinhof, they assassinate federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback. Mohnhaupt, along with Christian Klar and Susanne Albrecht, also attempt to kidnap Jurgen Ponto, the president of Dresdner Bank and a family friend of Albrecht's, at his home, but when Ponto fights back he is shot and killed. Albrecht is horrified by the murder but is forced to sign a statement justifying Ponto's death. In response to the murders of Buback and Ponto, the authorities force the imprisoned RAF members back into solitary confinement.

The imprisoned members send a message to their free comrades that they fear they may be murdered by their jailers. Boock and Mohnhaupt's group then kidnaps industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, killing four members of his security detail in the process. They demand the release of the imprisoned RAF members in exchange for Schleyer. When the German authorities are slow in meeting their demands they enlist the PLO to hijack Lufthansa Flight 181. The hijacking ends with the hostages rescued and the hijackers captured. Despairing of ever being released, Baader and Raspe shoot themselves with guns which have been smuggled into the prison, Ensslin hangs herself in her cell, and Irmgard Moller tries to take her own life by stabbing herself four times in the chest. Horrified by the suicides, the free RAF members execute Schleyer.