What do you think?
Rate this book
The Red Brigades: The Terrorists who Brought Italy to its Knees
*A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR*
'A compelling and sobering read' JOHN DICKIE, author of Mafia Republic
'Taut and gripping' TELEGRAPH, BEST BOOKS OF 2025
'Grimly absorbing' FINANCIAL TIMES
The explosive story of the terrorist group who brought Italy to a standstill in the 1970s.
In March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, murdering his bodyguards. For nearly two months, they held him hostage while a shocked world looked on, before eventually killing him and dumping his body in the middle of Rome.
But who were this terrorist group? What did they want? And how did they continue to operate for almost twenty years, terrifying a nation from 1970 to 1988? In John Foot's remarkable new book, we learn how they became the most formidable left-wing terrorist organisation in post-war Western Europe.
Drawing their support from the student protest movements of the 1960s, activists and workers radicalised by the 'hot autumn' of 1969, the Red Brigades were inspired by terrorist groups from across the world, especially in Latin America. They recognised no rules and authority other than their own, and launched a campaign of murder, kidnap, kneecapping and intimidation that paralysed Italy's justice system and reshaped the political landscape. For a time, they were admired as freedom fighters by the Italian left and commemorated as martyrs.
Through meticulous research, Foot uncovers the true story behind the myths that have grown around the Red Brigades, highlighting the human costs of their actions, as well as their impact on Italian society. He explains how the contradictions inherent in their actions eventually led to their downfall in a series of high-profile mass trials. The Red Brigades sheds new light on the shadowy world of the brigatisti, and highlights their legacy of conspiracy, distrust and bitterness that still lingers in Italy to this day.
'A compelling and sobering read' JOHN DICKIE, author of Mafia Republic
'Taut and gripping' TELEGRAPH, BEST BOOKS OF 2025
'Grimly absorbing' FINANCIAL TIMES
The explosive story of the terrorist group who brought Italy to a standstill in the 1970s.
In March 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, murdering his bodyguards. For nearly two months, they held him hostage while a shocked world looked on, before eventually killing him and dumping his body in the middle of Rome.
But who were this terrorist group? What did they want? And how did they continue to operate for almost twenty years, terrifying a nation from 1970 to 1988? In John Foot's remarkable new book, we learn how they became the most formidable left-wing terrorist organisation in post-war Western Europe.
Drawing their support from the student protest movements of the 1960s, activists and workers radicalised by the 'hot autumn' of 1969, the Red Brigades were inspired by terrorist groups from across the world, especially in Latin America. They recognised no rules and authority other than their own, and launched a campaign of murder, kidnap, kneecapping and intimidation that paralysed Italy's justice system and reshaped the political landscape. For a time, they were admired as freedom fighters by the Italian left and commemorated as martyrs.
Through meticulous research, Foot uncovers the true story behind the myths that have grown around the Red Brigades, highlighting the human costs of their actions, as well as their impact on Italian society. He explains how the contradictions inherent in their actions eventually led to their downfall in a series of high-profile mass trials. The Red Brigades sheds new light on the shadowy world of the brigatisti, and highlights their legacy of conspiracy, distrust and bitterness that still lingers in Italy to this day.
596 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 19, 2025
11 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 3, 2025
I have been watching a lot of Italian police thrillers from the seventies (so called Poliziotteschi) and those led me to be interested in the political violence in Italy during what was called “the years of lead”.
John Foot has written a well-researched and eminently readable account of the history of the most famous of the left-wing terrorist groups active during that era, the red brigades.
Highly recommended if you want to know more about this fascinating period.
John Foot has written a well-researched and eminently readable account of the history of the most famous of the left-wing terrorist groups active during that era, the red brigades.
Highly recommended if you want to know more about this fascinating period.
July 22, 2025
I'm torn.
On one hand 'The Red Brigades' is an impeccably well sourced book of a dark time in Italy's history and a thoroughly entertaining read, you certainly don't want to put the book down by the time you get to its middle chapters.
But on the other hand you are left wanting more information that you feel could have been easily provided. In recounting the first Moro trial that took place in 1982 the author writes "During the long and difficult series of hearings, there were frequent angry arguments and moments of high drama.", but then doesn't really go on to explain what they were, in that sense the observation feels empty.
In his afterword Foot notes that he made a conscious decision not to speak to former Brigatisti because, realistically, nothing new would be added, but then accepts - conceding it may have been a mistake - that a number of former Brigade leaders may still have important contributions to the historic record.
Whilst the above is somewhat of a criticism it is, perhaps, made because the rest of the book is so enthralling.
There is an important question underlying throughout the book, which is how much the state can ever ignore the rules of democracy in combatting those who don't accept its central precepts? Is it ever acceptable for the state to undertake torture? To carry out executions? To arbitrarily change the rule of law? In this respect 'The Red Brigades' makes the reader constantly consider those questions, and rightly, the author does not arrive at a conclusion.
One final point. This is a book that makes us consider the meaning of revolution in the minds of disillusioned young people, and their need for system change. Potentially, something we are witnessing now, fifty years on from the period contained in 'The Red Brigades'?
The author notes the "the vast majority of both the perpetrators and the brigatisti are now forgotten. Only a tiny number have made it into the front row of Italy's 'national memory'."
And isn't that the case with so many angry young men and women throughout history?
Many grow old forgotten, many accept they can't beat the system, even more understand that the culture they wanted to overthrow isn't all that bad, and perhaps most of all just want to get on with their lives? Political revolution is for those with time to think whilst others get on with paying the bills and looking after their families.
Perhaps the saddest aspect that the book recounts is the lives taken away of ordinary Italians doing their jobs and caught in the crossfire of those angry young activists?
On one hand 'The Red Brigades' is an impeccably well sourced book of a dark time in Italy's history and a thoroughly entertaining read, you certainly don't want to put the book down by the time you get to its middle chapters.
But on the other hand you are left wanting more information that you feel could have been easily provided. In recounting the first Moro trial that took place in 1982 the author writes "During the long and difficult series of hearings, there were frequent angry arguments and moments of high drama.", but then doesn't really go on to explain what they were, in that sense the observation feels empty.
In his afterword Foot notes that he made a conscious decision not to speak to former Brigatisti because, realistically, nothing new would be added, but then accepts - conceding it may have been a mistake - that a number of former Brigade leaders may still have important contributions to the historic record.
Whilst the above is somewhat of a criticism it is, perhaps, made because the rest of the book is so enthralling.
There is an important question underlying throughout the book, which is how much the state can ever ignore the rules of democracy in combatting those who don't accept its central precepts? Is it ever acceptable for the state to undertake torture? To carry out executions? To arbitrarily change the rule of law? In this respect 'The Red Brigades' makes the reader constantly consider those questions, and rightly, the author does not arrive at a conclusion.
One final point. This is a book that makes us consider the meaning of revolution in the minds of disillusioned young people, and their need for system change. Potentially, something we are witnessing now, fifty years on from the period contained in 'The Red Brigades'?
The author notes the "the vast majority of both the perpetrators and the brigatisti are now forgotten. Only a tiny number have made it into the front row of Italy's 'national memory'."
And isn't that the case with so many angry young men and women throughout history?
Many grow old forgotten, many accept they can't beat the system, even more understand that the culture they wanted to overthrow isn't all that bad, and perhaps most of all just want to get on with their lives? Political revolution is for those with time to think whilst others get on with paying the bills and looking after their families.
Perhaps the saddest aspect that the book recounts is the lives taken away of ordinary Italians doing their jobs and caught in the crossfire of those angry young activists?
July 31, 2025
This is a good work of history that deals comprehensively with the Red Brigades, its key players, and rightfully tries to re-centre its victims.
Where the book falls short though is in dismissing Italy as the BR saw it. For one thing, the author readily admits that organs of the state collaborated with ‘neo’-fascists to bomb civilians in an attempt to discredit the left, that police and other agents committed state-sanctioned torture, and likely operated a shoot-to-kill policy that involved executions, amongst other things. If the BR calls this a fascist state, how can this be so readily ignored as the wails of fanatics?
And in a longer term context of the CIA literally rigging post WW2 Italian elections (including funnelling Nazi gold to the CD!), the inability to understand why some saw armed struggled as the only viable means is baffling - even if you can obviously easily and justly disagree with those means.
Also less italics next time, if you emphasise so much you really start to lose the emphasis…
Where the book falls short though is in dismissing Italy as the BR saw it. For one thing, the author readily admits that organs of the state collaborated with ‘neo’-fascists to bomb civilians in an attempt to discredit the left, that police and other agents committed state-sanctioned torture, and likely operated a shoot-to-kill policy that involved executions, amongst other things. If the BR calls this a fascist state, how can this be so readily ignored as the wails of fanatics?
And in a longer term context of the CIA literally rigging post WW2 Italian elections (including funnelling Nazi gold to the CD!), the inability to understand why some saw armed struggled as the only viable means is baffling - even if you can obviously easily and justly disagree with those means.
Also less italics next time, if you emphasise so much you really start to lose the emphasis…
September 23, 2025
“The Red Brigades” is an intriguing overview of an often over-looked chapter in contemporary European history - the chaotic ‘Years of Lead’ in 1970s Italy - where terror groups from both the far-left and far-right fascists left the republic teetering on the edge of civil war. John Foot, for whom this represents at least his 9th book on the history of post-war Italian society, focuses here on the most erratically lethal of those forces operating in Italy during the 70s: the Brigate Rosse.
It wouldn’t be too controversial to say that the Brigate Rosse were nasty pieces of work. While initially emerging out of the student tumult of 1968-9, The Red Brigade engaged in a two decades-long campaign of urban guerrilla warfare against almost every facet of the Italian state. What the Brigate Rosse termed ‘armed struggle’ largely amounted to a reign of terror involving the murder of members of the judiciary, the kneecapping of journalists, and - most notoriously - the kidnapping and assassination of the former Italian Premier Minister Aldo Moro. Although they proclaimed themselves to be the vanguard of the revolutionary working classes (despite also carrying out attacks on innocent workers), the Brigate Rosse ultimately proved an utter dead-end for the Italian Left, with the vast majority of their cadre winding up dead or serving life sentences.
While John Foot is writing from a broad Left perspective, he is entirely unsympathetic to the activities of the Brigate Rosse, characterising them as self-indulgent ‘adventurists’ at best, and dismissing their revolutionary credentials as risible. Foot lays a charge of nihilism at the door of
The Red Brigade, accusing them of “horrific emptiness in the name of revolution”, and he commendably pays much-needed attention to the victims of the terror group.
Where “The Red Brigades” does fall down, however, is by not quite proving a definitive history of ‘The Years of Lead’. With John Foot’s monomaniacal focus on the Brigate Rosse, … for my money there is insufficient attention paid to the other two forces during this period of strife - the Italian State Services and the Neo-Fascists - and how they reacted to (and, in some cases, provoked) the violence of The Red Brigades.
It wouldn’t be too controversial to say that the Brigate Rosse were nasty pieces of work. While initially emerging out of the student tumult of 1968-9, The Red Brigade engaged in a two decades-long campaign of urban guerrilla warfare against almost every facet of the Italian state. What the Brigate Rosse termed ‘armed struggle’ largely amounted to a reign of terror involving the murder of members of the judiciary, the kneecapping of journalists, and - most notoriously - the kidnapping and assassination of the former Italian Premier Minister Aldo Moro. Although they proclaimed themselves to be the vanguard of the revolutionary working classes (despite also carrying out attacks on innocent workers), the Brigate Rosse ultimately proved an utter dead-end for the Italian Left, with the vast majority of their cadre winding up dead or serving life sentences.
While John Foot is writing from a broad Left perspective, he is entirely unsympathetic to the activities of the Brigate Rosse, characterising them as self-indulgent ‘adventurists’ at best, and dismissing their revolutionary credentials as risible. Foot lays a charge of nihilism at the door of
The Red Brigade, accusing them of “horrific emptiness in the name of revolution”, and he commendably pays much-needed attention to the victims of the terror group.
Where “The Red Brigades” does fall down, however, is by not quite proving a definitive history of ‘The Years of Lead’. With John Foot’s monomaniacal focus on the Brigate Rosse, … for my money there is insufficient attention paid to the other two forces during this period of strife - the Italian State Services and the Neo-Fascists - and how they reacted to (and, in some cases, provoked) the violence of The Red Brigades.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews