Voldemort's (first) Reign of Terror - what about the Muggles?

[Amatia]

No: HPFGUIDX 43185


I've been pondering this quite a bit lately - we know the entire WW 
feared Voldemort so much during the period when he killed the Potters 
that they can't speak his name ten, twelve years later, but what 
about the Muggle world?  Did they know he existed (like with Sirius 
Black being announced on Muggle television as a dangerous criminal) 
or did the MoM & Prime Minister work a cover story?

A friend of mine put forth the following idea on a cover story: 
Voldemort's first RoT took place during a time (late 1970's) when 
there were several attacks by the IRA in in England and Northern 
Ireland.  Not saying that the IRA got blamed for everything Voldemort 
did during this perioud, but rather that the most "visible" Death 
Eater attacks could have been explained by the British Government as 
IRA attacks.  Easier to explain mass murder to non-magic folk as 
(muggle) terrorism than as the work of a crazy Wizard and his 
followers, right? 

One of my issues with the books (not that I don't love them to death) 
is that there's very little info about the first time Voldemort was 
active.  We get the death of the Potters and Pettigrew vs. Black 
explained, but not much else.  We don't hear about the Durselys being 
afraid of this "insane criminal" who's on the loose, and they 
certainly make enough noise about Sirius to make you think that if 
they'd ever known about Voldemort something would have been said.  
Certainly the news program about the odd number of owls would have 
been preempted by "blah blah criminal, killer caught/killed". 

I know there's been quite a bit of discussion here recently about 
Voldemort and his "greatness" and what that "greatness" might have 
been - but aside from the pureblood superiority propaganda he put 
forth and the alliances resulting from that (the Death Eaters [which 
yields my #1 HP Universe Question: What did the DE's _do_ besides 
kill/torture?]) - what else were his goals? Plain old power, a 
dictatorship? Over the WW or over everyone? 

I really wish we knew more about Voldemort's politics and views 
_before_ he got vaporized and turned all hell-bent on terrorising 
Harry. (Seeing as I can't say "killing Harry" because he's had a 
bunch of chances and hasn't managed to do it yet.) 

Sorry if this has been discussed before, I wasn't able to really find 
much regarding Muggle knowledge of Voldemort in the archive. 

- Molly,
always nervous that there's been prior discussion but that I just 
can't find it!