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May 2, 2024 · Red Army Faction, West German radical leftist group formed in 1968 and popularly named after two of its early leaders, Andreas Baader (1943–77) and Ulrike Meinhof (1934–76). The group undertook a violent terrorist campaign in the hopes of sparking a broader revolutionary movement.
- John Philip Jenkins
The Red Army Faction (RAF, German: [ɛʁʔaːˈʔɛf] ⓘ; German: Rote Armee Fraktion, pronounced [ˌʁoː.tə aʁˈmeː fʁakˌt͡si̯oːn] ⓘ), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (German: Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe, Baader-Meinhof-Bande, German: [ˈbaːdɐ ˈmaɪ̯nˌhɔf ˈɡʁʊpə] ⓘ), was a West German far ...
- 14 May 1970 – 20 April 1998, (27 years, 11 months and 6 days)
- Introduction
- Assessing The Enemy's Strengths and Vulnerabilities – Historical Background
- Government Countermeasures
- Lessons For The U.S. Campaigns Against Al Qaeda and Isis
- Author
- References
- Endnotes
For three decades prior to 9/11, West Germany fought its own war on terror. For 28 years, it faced off against the Red Army Faction (RAF), a small yet highly adaptable terrorist organization that constantly evolved to meet the countermeasures deployed against it. The RAF repeatedly reformed its ideology, operational objectives, and modus operandi w...
The First Generation: Sparking the Global Marxist Revolution, 1970-19773
The Red Army Faction was born out of the student protest movement of the 1960s. The children of the Nazi generation worried that their parents were once again letting Germany become an authoritarian state.4This came to a head on June 2nd, 1967, when unarmed student protestor Benno Ohnesorg was shot at a rally during the Shah's visit to Berlin by a plainclothes police officer, leading to a series of further protests. The student movement also took up the cause of the North Vietnamese. Led by t...
The Second Generation: Fighting for the Prisoners, then Against American Imperialism, 1972-1982
The second generation had two distinct phases. From 1972 to 1977, the second generation existed solely to secure the release of the original leaders. During those years, the RAF was led by lawyer Siegfried Haag, who planned the unsuccessful 1975 attack on the West German embassy in Stockholm, where the RAF took hostages and demanded the release of the Stammheim prisoners.13 Haag was arrested in November of 1976, but upon her release in February 1977, Brigitte Mohnhaupt took command of the RAF...
The Third Generation: Rebelling Against the European System, 1984-1998 Organization of the RAF
In 1984, West German authorities identified a new pair of leaders, Wolfgang Grams and Birgit Hogefeld, who would bring about another change in the RAF.17 The third generation carried on the tradition of "anti-imperialist" rhetoric but picked a new target for their aggression – the continent of Europe itself. Claiming that Germany was at the forefront of a push for European global economic supremacy, the third generation picked targets involved in banking, diplomacy, and industry. The RAF also...
Police and Intelligence Measures: Overview
There was one major hurdle for almost all FRG counterterrorist action – the design of the republic itself. In post-war Germany, the states (Lander) were purposefully strong to prevent another ideologue from taking power.46 West Germany was thus a federation where the central government (Bund) shared equal power with the states.47 However, failures to effectively combat terrorism at the state level led the ministers of each Lander in 1972 to give the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskrimi...
Paramilitary Measures: Overview
Similar to the case of police and intelligence reform, the structure of the FRG was an initial obstacle to the creation of an effective counterterrorist paramilitary unit. Until 1972, the central government had no special unit for combating terrorism. Instead, that responsibility was left to the individual states. The Black September attack during the Munich Olympics laid bare that flaw in the system. When Palestinian terrorists stormed the Israeli team's quarters in the Olympic Village, took...
Legal Measures: Overview
The FRG also made several changes to federal legislation in order to combat the RAF. In 1971, laws were passed to specify what activities constituted terrorist acts under German criminal law.82 These included carrying out aircraft hijacking and hostage taking, as well as planning or preparing for such acts.83 In April 1976, criminal law was expanded further. Amendment 129a to the Basic Law (the German constitution) criminalized membership in a terrorist organization, even if one had not parti...
What lessons can be extracted for the current U.S. campaigns against al Qaeda and ISIS? At a base level, the West German campaign against the RAF was primarily a domestic affair and countermeasures were always oriented towards an internal threat.143For example, the RAF completely failed to develop a united European terrorist front, but al Qaeda and...
Ari Weil is a junior at Pomona College majoring in International Relations. He is currently studying abroad at King's College London. Ari's research focuses on terrorism, strategic theory, and civil-military relations.
Arostegui, Martin C. Twilight Warriors: Inside the World's Special Forces.New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997. Aust, Stefan. Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.Translated by Anthea Bell. London: The Bodley Head, 2008. Colvin, Sarah. Ulrike Meinhof and West German Terrorism: Language, Violence, and Identity.Rochester: Camden House, 2009. C...
Ari Weil is a junior at Pomona College majoring in International Relations. He is currently studying abroad at King's College London. Ari's research focuses on terrorism, strategic theory, and civi...Jeremy Varon, Bringing the War: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies,(Berkley: University of California Press, 2004), 234.While all of the first generation's leaders were arrested in 1972, they would remain active in a command and control role until their suicides in 1977. The leaders were prevented by their imprisonm...Konrad Kellen, "Ideology and rebellion: Terrorism in West Germany," in Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind,ed. Walter Reich (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Ce...- Ari Weil
- 2017
Learn about the terror unleashed by the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany and their final dissolution. In the 1970s the Red Army Faction conducted a terrorist campaign against corporate, political, and military targets in West Germany and elsewhere.
- 3 min
DOI: 10.1080/17419166.2011.549053. Baader-Meinhof Complexities: Ideology and the “Root Causes” of Terrorism. Robert P. Hager, Jr. Department of Political Science, University of California at Santa Barbara, CA. J. Smith and Andre Moncourt (Eds.): The Red Army Faction: A Documentary History.
Main goal of the Red Army Faction: “Big Raushole“ = Freeing of the imprisoned terrorists 27 Feb – 04 Mar 1975: 2 June Movement abducts the politician Peter Lorenz & achieves the release of 5 terrorists from prison
Sep 5, 2017 · Whether it was the murder of business executive and industry representative Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the early RAF court trials or the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane, the far-left militant group...
