It was early on the morning of May 14, 1970 in Berlin, West Germany and two prison guards, Sergeant Günter Wetter and Sergeant Karl-Heinz Wegener, were in a police van escorting an inmate to a library outside the correctional facility. That library was located in the German Central Institute for Social Issues. The prisoner was a swaggering, dark-haired, swarthy-complexioned 27-year-old man named Andreas Baader. He was serving four years for the crime of "arson endangering human life." A petty criminal turned left-wing revolutionary, Baader had received prison permission to do research into a planned book about "organizing young people on the fringes of society."
The prisoner would enjoy the privilege of going to the library in civilian clothes but would be accompanied by uniformed and armed guards. One of the guards reminded the convict of the way he must behave on this trip. Bubble-cheeked Andreas smilingly assured his captors that they had nothing to worry about. "I'm not planning to make a break for it," he said. "After all I've got a contract with a publisher to write a book. That'll make me quite a pile, and I can certainly do with it."
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