On 2 June 1967, the Shah of Iran visits West Berlin and attends a performance at the Deutsche Oper. Angered at his policies in governing Iran, members of the West German student movement protest his appearance. The West Berlin police and the Shah’s security team attack the protesters, and unarmed protester Benno Ohnesorg is fatally shot by Officer Karl-Heinz Kurras.
Ohnesorg’s death outrages West Germany, including left wing journalist Ulrike Meinhof, who claims in a televised debate that the democratically elected government of West Germany is a Fascist police state. Inspired by Meinhof’s rhetoric, charismatic radicals Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader mastermind the Frankfurt department store firebombing [de] of 1968. While covering their trial, Ulrike Meinhof finds herself deeply moved by their commitment to armed struggle against what they see as a Neo-Nazi Government. She secures a jailhouse interview with Ensslin and the two strike up a close friendship. Soon after, Meinhof leaves her husband for journalist Peter Homann, an associate of the radicals.
Meanwhile, Ensslin and Baader have been released pending an appeal and attract various young people, including Astrid Proll and Peter-Jurgen Boock. After spending some time abroad, Baader, Ensslin and Proll return to West Germany and begin living with Meinhof. Increasingly bored with her middle class life, Meinhof longs to take more violent action. Even though Ensslin tells her that sacrifices must be made for the revolution, Meinhof does not wish to leave her children.
But then, Baader is arrested. Using her connections, Meinhof is able to arrange for him to be interviewed off prison grounds, where Ensslin and the others rescue him. While the plan called for Meinhof to look like an innocent journalist caught in a prison break, she flees with Baader and Ensslin, thereby incriminating herself in the attempted murders of an unarmed civilian and two policemen.