Red Army Faction

During the second half of the twentieth century, Germany was ideologically divided: east and west, communism and capitalism. What happened when left-wing extremists lived in the capitalist west? The Red Army Faction was a militant group that took matters into its own hands. But who were they, and what were they so angry about?

Red Army Faction Germany

The Red Army Faction (RAF) was an extremist left-wing organisation with around 20 core members that set about disrupting the Federal Republic of Germany (usually known simply as West Germany) through terrorism.

Their ultimate aim was for an ungoverned, classless society of equals. The West German police were not prepared for it, so the Federal Border Guard was given the thankless task of stopping them.

Let's examine the RAF ideology and see how it gained prominence in the 1970s.

Red Army Faction Ideology

Despite the relative prosperity of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), there were pockets of anger about the young nation's direction since its inception after World War II. The mass media of the 1960s raised awareness of world events in an unprecedented manner. The United States' involvement in Vietnam caused particular fury as shocking images of the brutalities of war were more accessible than ever before.

West Germany was experiencing high levels of economic growth and educational opportunities. This allowed students to think critically, and some believed that the FRG was simply an extension of US capitalism and had inherited the Nazi thirst for imperialism. Their beliefs were so ardent that they mobilised violently to disrupt the state through bombing, kidnapping, and murder.

Baader Meinhof

The Red Army Faction (RAF) was also referred to as the 'Baader-Meinhof' gang as a tribute to some of the prominent first-generation leaders: Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. It is widely accepted that the catalyst for the birth of the RAF was the release of Andreas Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin from prison in May 1970 by Ulrike Meinhof and other terrorists. But why did they need to be released?

Let's look at some significant events for the first generation of RAF and their members.

Date	Event
April 1968	Andres Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and other accomplices bombed a department store in Frankfurt, West Germany, to protest Western capitalism in the face of an unjust war in Vietnam.
October 1968	They were caught and sentenced to three years in prison. After their appeal was rejected, they escaped to France and Italy before ending up in Jordan, where Fatah (a Palestinian guerilla organisation) trained them with terrorist tactics.Fig. 1 - Logo of Palestinian terrorist organisation Fatah, who worked with the RAF in 1968
February 1970	Baader and his gang returned to Berlin with the knowledge and intent to create their terrorist organisation.
April 1970	Baader, Ensslin, and other members were arrested again. While in jail, they began a correspondence with left-wing journalist Ulrike Meinhof on the pretence that they were collaborating to write a book.
May 1970	During day release, Meinhof and her accomplices helped free Baader, Ensslin, and other RAF members. A month later, she published the 'urban guerrilla' strategy of the organisation in a left-wing magazine.
1970 - 1972	Bank robberies and shootouts with the police caused civilian casualties.
May 1972	During the May Offensive, US forces in West Germany, FRG police headquarters, and media targets were bombed.
June 1972	The leaders and important members of the Red Army Faction were once more caught and arrested after a lengthy shootout in Frankfurt. They were put in the maximum-security Stammheim Prison in Stuttgart.
1973 - 1975	Imprisoned, members of the RAF went on hunger strikes to oppose their torture and solitary confinement. In 1974, Holger Meins died as a result of this.
May 1976	Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide in her cell in Stuttgart.Fig. 2 - Stuttgart, the city where the founders of the RAF lost their lives
April 1977	Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were sentenced to life imprisonment after a lengthy trial. They all committed suicide in October 1977.

These suicides ended the first iteration of the Red Army Faction, but the movement was not over, and the anger was still there.

Red Army Faction Members

We will now dig deeper into the personalities that made large contributions to the organisation.

Red Army Faction Andreas Baader

A loose cannon, Andreas Baader was born in Munich in 1943. He was a perpetual underachiever at school, and his pursuit of criminal thrills led him to drop out. Baader never studied at university and thus broke the mould of the archetypal left-wing anarchist from the 1960s.

For Baader, involvement in terrorism was more about carrying out his violent urges than having a political belief. He found a justification to do this in the form of his new girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, in 1967.

Baader's girlfriend was, in many ways, the brains behind the operation. Born in Baden in 1940, Gudrun Ensslin was a high-flyer who had excellent grades and studied in Berlin. In 1967, she became involved in the large-scale student protests in West Germany against the visit of the Shah of Iran due to their oppressive regime.

Fig. 3 - Gravestone of Baader, Meinhof and Raspe

Until she met Andreas Baader, she was an activist claiming West Germany was a fascist state. Their union led her evolution from activist to terrorist in the department store bombing of Frankfurt in 1968.

Red Army Faction Holger Meins

Another vital member of the Red Army Faction was Holger Meins. Meins was a filmmaker who claimed he did not want to work for TV, only for cinema. He was with Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe in the May 1972 attacks against the state of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Upon his arrest, Meins was the member who had the most grievance at the treatment of the RAF members in prison. Such was his disdain for the authorities that he went on hunger strike and starved to death. Despite being over 6 feet, he died weighing 45kg without access to prison doctors.

Red Army Faction Ulrike Meinhof

Ulrike Meinhof, born in 1934, began to gain recognition in left-wing circles for her contribution as editor of the magazine 'Konkret' in 1960. It was radically inclined and propped up by East German funding and gained popularity among students in West Germany. She had a great breadth of awareness and expertise after studying Philosophy, Sociology, Pedagogy, and German studies.

Becoming more radicalised, she got in touch with Andreas Baader. In 1970, while Baader and Ensslin were on day release, she aided their escape, thus becoming integral in the formation of the Red Army Faction. This was the moment when Meinhof herself became a terrorist. She became fully embroiled in a war against the state with Baader and his accomplices. One quotation sums up the anger and alienation Meinhof felt in the FRG and her transition from the pen to action:

Second Generation

The second generation of the Red Army Faction sprung out of the fury at the imprisonment and maltreatment of the first, particularly the hunger strike and resulting death of Holger Meins. The Socialist Patients' Collective, a team of psychiatrists, was a hotbed for new members as their philosophy centred around curing the ills of a capitalist society. In 1974, they kidnapped politician Peter Lorenz in exchange for the release of some members. The life imprisonment of other RAF members in 1977 led to the bloodiest period of the organisation's history, known as the German Autumn.

The first casualty was Siegfried Buback and his entourage, but this was just the beginning. The RAF demanded the release of its founding members Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe in exchange for their hostage, Lorenz. The German Autumn reached its climax when the founding members committed suicide in prison. The following day, the RAF murdered the abducted former Nazi Hanns Martin Schleyer in response.

Dissolution

Between 1978 and 1982, there were assassination attempts and bank robberies from the RAF, including an unsuccessful one on the chief of NATO. However, as time progressed, some of the members began to go into hiding in left-wing East Germany. The Red Army Faction were responsible for ten murders between 1985 and 1993, including that of the manager of Siemens, Karl Heinz Beckurts in 1986. In total, they killed 34 people.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany, it became clear that the RAF had accepted help from the notorious Stasi (East German secret police). Now that the Stasi was no more, RAF activities dwindled, and the organisation disbanded in 1998.