The Red Brigades: a 'fascinating insight' into the 'most feared' extremist group of 1970s Italy

"Throughout the 1970s, Italy was convulsed by a series of bomb attacks, political kidnappings and assassinations" carried out by left-wing terrorists, said Ian Thomson in the FT. Of the groups that operated during the anni di piombi ("years of lead"), the "most feared" was the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades), which "combined a Marxist-Leninist utopianism with a murderous disregard for human life".

During its "18-year reign of terror", the group killed around 75 people and maimed hundreds. Its highest-profile victim was former prime minister Aldo Moro, who was kidnapped in March 1978 and whose bullet-riddled body was found 55 days later in the boot of a Renault 4.

Now John Foot, a professor of history at Bristol University, has written a "grimly absorbing" history of the brigatisti and their attempts to overthrow the Italian state. As his "superbly researched" book shows, the group subjected Italy to "some of the bloodiest acts of terrorism yet seen in an industrialised society" – all for nothing, as they never came close to realising their goals. Their story, Foot observes, amounted to a "national tragedy".

The Red Brigades was founded in 1970 by Renato Curcio, a student in Trento, his girlfriend (later wife) Margherita Cagol, and Alberto Franceschini, a communist from Reggio Emilia. "Its roots, however, lay much deeper," said Simon Gaul in Literary Review – in disquiet at America's influence over Italy, growing industrial unrest in the country's northern heartlands, and a belief that neo-fascists were plotting a military coup.

At first, the Red Brigades was backed financially by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the "increasingly activist publisher of 'The Leopard' and 'Doctor Zhivago'", said James Owen in The Times. But that source dried up in 1972, when Feltrinelli blew himself up while trying to detonate an electricity pylon outside Milan. Italy in the early 1970s had an "epidemic of kidnaps by organised crime groups", and the brigatisti jumped on this bandwagon, said Simon Heffer in The Daily Telegraph. They first targeted industrialists or minor officials, but widened their net to include prominent politicians. And they upped the violence, adding kneecappings and executions to their repertoire ("Strike One to Educate 100" became their mantra).

Eventually, it became clear the group were "killing just because they could" – and as public support seeped away, they turned on each other, and finally disbanded in 1988. Based on exemplary scholarship, Foot's book provides a "fascinating insight" into these "moronic" fanatics.