Baader-Meinhof Group

The Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, RAF), commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group after its founding figures, was a West German far-left terrorist organization that operated from 1970 to 1998. Founded by Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof along with Gudrun Ensslin and others, the RAF drew its ideology from Marxist-Leninist and anti-imperialist frameworks, targeting what it characterized as the fascist continuities of West German capitalism and the American military occupation of German territory.¹

Foundation and First Generation

The RAF's origins lay in the student protest movements of the late 1960s and the radicalization of a faction that concluded electoral and protest politics were insufficient. Baader, Meinhof, and Ensslin carried out their first arson attacks against Frankfurt department stores in 1968. After Baader's arrest and escape from custody in 1970 - an escape in which Meinhof, then a prominent left-wing journalist, participated - the group formally constituted itself. Meinhof authored the RAF's founding manifesto.¹

The group trained in Jordan with Palestinian fedayeen organizations in 1970 before returning to West Germany to begin operations. Its first major campaign in May 1972 involved coordinated bombings against U.S. Army headquarters in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, the Hamburg police headquarters, and the Springer newspaper building in Hamburg, resulting in several deaths and dozens of injuries.¹

The 1977 German Autumn

The most significant RAF operations occurred in the autumn of 1977, in what German media called the "German Autumn" (Deutscher Herbst). On September 5, 1977, RAF members kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations and a former SS officer, killing his four bodyguards and driver in the ambush. On October 13, a Palestinian commando - coordinating with the RAF - hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 from Mallorca, eventually diverting it to Mogadishu, Somalia.

The West German government under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to release imprisoned RAF members in response to both the Schleyer kidnapping and the hijacking. The Grenzschutzgruppe 9 (GSG 9), the federal counterterrorism unit created following the 1972 Munich Olympics failure, stormed the hijacked aircraft at Mogadishu on October 18, 1977, killing three of four hijackers and freeing all hostages. Hours after the rescue, Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in their Stammheim Prison cells - officially ruled suicides, though the precise circumstances remained contested. Schleyer was subsequently murdered by his RAF captors.¹

Second and Third Generation

Following the deaths of its founding leadership in 1977, the RAF reorganized with new recruits. The second and third generation RAF conducted further operations through the 1980s and into the early 1990s, including the 1977-era aftermath, the 1985 bombing of Rhein-Main Air Base, and the April 5, 1986 La Belle discotheque bombing in West Berlin (attributed to Libya, not RAF). The RAF's most significant later operation was the November 30, 1989, assassination of Deutsche Bank chief executive Alfred Herrhausen, killed by an anti-tank mine triggered by a tripwire as his car passed.¹

Entebbe Connection

On June 27, 1976, two members of the RAF - Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann - participated in the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris, diverting it ultimately to Entebbe Airport in Uganda under Idi Amin's government. The operation was jointly conducted with members of the PFLP-GC and organized by Wadie Haddad's PFLP-EO. On July 4, 1976, Israeli special forces conducted Operation Entebbe, killing the hijackers, including Böse and Kuhlmann, and rescuing 102 of the 106 hostages.²

Dissolution

The RAF officially announced the end of its armed struggle in a statement released in April 1998, citing the changed political circumstances following the end of the Cold War and German reunification. By this point the organization had been effectively inactive for several years. The total death toll from RAF operations over its existence was approximately thirty-four people.