Volker Schlöndorff which cast her as both a terrorist and a prostitute. The newspaper is based upon the real right-wing German tabloid "Bild-Zeitung", whose publisher Axel Springer was the inspiration for the character Werner Tötges. In Schlöndorff's view, West Germany had fallen into political hysteria over the activities of the terrorist group the Red Army Faction. The police and journalistic activities in both Böll's novel and Schlöndorff's film portrayed the Red Army Faction era as reminiscent of McCarthyism in 1950s USA, including illegal police raids, phone tapping and tabloid smears. Alhough Böll was heavily attacked after the publication of the novel, both
Red Army Faction events further catalyzed the situation. Protests turned into riots on 2 June 1967, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, visited West Berlin. There were protesters but also hundreds of supporters of the Shah, as well as a group of fake supporters armed with wooden staves, there to disturb the normal course of the visit. These extremists beat the protesters. After a day of angry protests by exiled Iranian radical Marxists, a group widely supported by German students, the Shah visited the Berlin Opera, where a crowd of German student protesters gathered. During the opera house demonstrations, German student