Violence as a Political and Artistic Weapon in Chosen Writings from Ulrike Meinhof and Heinrich Böll.
Christopher Ryan

Abstract
The revolutionary year of 1968 was a global phenomenon. The counter-culture movement in America was underway and people everywhere united against what were seen as war crimes carried out by American soldiers in Vietnam. In Germany, however, 1968 was a culmination of protest against the Vietnam War and the rebellion of the sons and daughters of the Nazi Generation and their struggle against what they viewed as an authoritarian West German State, which was not too different from Nazi Germany. The Baader-Meinhof group emerged as a protest group and quickly became a deadly terrorist organization. This essay discusses the historical background of the German situation and also looks at how this group attempted to rationalize violence as a legitimate tool in the fight against the state.

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