Red Army Faction

--- created: 2026-05-15 updated: 2026-05-15 title: Red Army Faction aliases:

• RAF
• Baader-Meinhof Gang
• Baader-Meinhof Group tags:
• Organization
• Terrorism
• Germany
• ColdWar
• 1970s
• 1980s category: "Paramilitary Organization" summary: "The Red Army Faction was a West German urban guerrilla organization that conducted bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, and bank robberies from 1970 until officially dissolving in 1998, with its founding generation of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, and Gudrun Ensslin dying in Stammheim Prison in 1976-1977 under circumstances that the group and supporters disputed." start: 1970-06-02 end: 1998-04-20 location: "West Germany / Germany"

The Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion, RAF) was a West German urban guerrilla organization that conducted bombings, bank robberies, kidnappings, and assassinations from 1970 until its formal dissolution in April 1998. Known in its early period as the Baader-Meinhof Gang or Baader-Meinhof Group after founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the RAF was the most significant left-wing terrorist organization in postwar German history. Its actions, and the state response to them, defined West German political culture in the 1970s.¹

Founding

The RAF emerged from the West German student movement of the late 1960s, radicalized by opposition to the Vietnam War, the shooting of student Benno Ohnesorg by police at a 1967 demonstration, and the assassination attempt on student leader Rudi Dutschke in 1968. Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin began bombing department stores in Frankfurt in 1968 as political protest.

The group's formal founding date is conventionally given as June 2, 1970 - the day a group including Baader, Ensslin, and journalist Ulrike Meinhof broke Baader out of police custody in Berlin during a supervised library visit. Meinhof's participation transformed her from a respected journalist into a wanted terrorist. The group trained with the Palestine Liberation Organization in Jordan before returning to West Germany to begin operations.¹

Major Operations

The RAF's first phase (1970-1972) included a series of bombings in 1972 targeting American military installations, the German police headquarters in Augsburg, and the federal judge's offices in Karlsruhe. Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin, and other core members were arrested in 1972.

During the long trial (1975-1977) the imprisoned leaders continued to direct operations through lawyers who, the prosecution alleged, were part of the RAF network. The second generation of the RAF - operating to free the imprisoned founders - kidnapped industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer in September 1977 and simultaneously coordinated with Palestinian hijackers who seized Lufthansa Flight 181 to Mogadishu, Somalia.

West Germany's GSG 9 commando unit stormed Flight 181 in Mogadishu on October 18, 1977, freeing all hostages. Hours later, Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were found dead in Stammheim Prison - officially suicides by firearms smuggled into the maximum-security facility. Schleyer was murdered the following day. The RAF and its sympathizers disputed the suicide findings, arguing that the prisoners had been killed by state action. No evidence of state killing was found in subsequent investigations.¹

Later Phases

The RAF continued operations into the 1980s and early 1990s, including assassination of Deutsche Bank chief Alfred Herrhausen in 1989 and the attempted assassination of Klaus Kinkel in 1991. The organization announced a ceasefire in 1992 and officially dissolved on April 20, 1998, with a statement acknowledging that the "urban guerrilla" strategy had failed.²

East German Connection

Declassified documents from the East German Stasi revealed after German reunification in 1990 that the RAF had used East Germany as a sanctuary, with Stasi assistance. A number of RAF members had been given false identities and had lived in East Germany during periods when they were officially fugitives. The extent to which this represented active Stasi support for RAF operations or merely passive tolerance of fugitives from West German justice has been the subject of ongoing historical debate.