Fifty years ago, revolts broke out across the world, with not a continent spared. They were most often led by school going youth, sometimes by young workers, and although they were not in any way coordinated or even interconnected, they all developed themes related to the university system as well as to international solidarity, with denunciation of the Vietnam War at the top of their agenda. Red was the dominant colour in all the demonstrations, including those of the Prague Spring, where in the context of a people's democracy, the liberalization of political and intellectual life, was being demanded.

In several countries, this reactivation of revolutionary hope raised the question of taking power by force of arms, or at the very least that of active resistance against the perceived authoritarian drift of ‘bourgeois’ regimes. This led to an efflorescence of small extreme-left-wing groups under an eclectic range of influences mixing Marxism, of course, in all of its forms, with a dominant Maoist current, and/or anarchism and situationism. Most of these groups would quickly wither away or be reduced to verbose groupuscules mainly concerned with analysing the ‘contradictions of the system’ and predicting the forthcoming implosion of capitalism. Some, however, would advocate action from the outset and follow a process of radicalization that would steer them underground and to armed struggle. The Communist Combatant Cells in Belgium, the Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) in Greece, the First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Groups (GRAPO) in Spain, and the Angry Brigade in Great Britain are among the many groups whose names are hardly known, and even less well remembered, outside their respective countries. Yet it is quite a different story for the groups that are the focus of this study: the Red Brigades (Brigate rosse, BR) in Italy; the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany; the Japanese Red Army (JRA), in a different category, known the world over as well as in Japan; in France, Action directe (AD), even though it emerged somewhat later with respect to 1968; and the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) in the United States, which was partly the birthplace of the 1968 revolt and which, contrary to common belief, also experienced revolutionary violence.

For the average person today, these names are only vaguely reminiscent of a far-off period, if not another age.