Baader-Meinhof Gang/RAF 1970-1992

On May 14, 1970, 27-year-old Andreas Baader escaped from Geman custody with the assistance of Ulrike Meinhof and three others. Almost three weeks later, on June 2, 1970, the anniversary of the death of a young man at a leftist demonstration, the German Press Agency received a brief note explaining the action. Thus, the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion -- RAF) was born. However, the RAF would usually be known to the outside world as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

The left-wing Red Army Faction became internationally known through its bloody exploits in West Germany and through its contacts with terrorist groups in other countries. The RAF held up banks, bombed police stations, and attacked United States army bases in the 1970s. By 1975 some ninety members of the gang were in custody. In the middle of her trial in 1976, Ulrike Meinhof, one of the RAF ringleaders, committed suicide in prison. Andreas Baader, the original leader of the terrorists, was sentenced to life imprisonment, but in 1977 he too took his own life in prison.

By the early 1980s, the original leaders of the RAF had been succeeded by a new and equally violent group that was Marxist-Leninist in orientation and saw itself as part of an international movement to topple the power structures of the capitalist world. A core group of twenty to thirty terrorists carried out the most deadly operations of the RAF. Periodic attacks were mounted against United States and NATO military leaders and bases and against prominent German officials and businesspeople. Demonstrations were held throughout the country to support a hunger strike by RAF prisoners and to protest the introduction of intermediate-range ballistic missiles. In November 1989, the chief executive of the Deutsche Bank, Alfred Herrhausen, was assassinated. RAF violence had declined somewhat by 1990, although the RAF carried out attacks against United States government and business targets. In August 1992, the RAF published a lengthy statement admitting past errors and announcing a decision to suspend the strategy of violence in carrying on its struggle.

References

Germany - A Country Study; Baader Meinhof Gang.

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