RED ARMY FACTIONCharacterization of a

German terrorist group

active in 1970 - 1998

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Ideology & Term

• Red army faction(germ.: Rote Armee Fraktion)• Marxist-Leninist in ideology• Stimulus to a worldwide revolution against capitalism• Well educated members, often replaced due to imprisonment or death• “hard core” consists of 20-30 members in the underground

• Internationally linked with Palestine revolutionists, Action Directe (France), IRA (Ireland), Red Brigade (Italy); in the third generation (1980+) supported by East Germany

Historical context

Historical context

Historical context

Historical context

• Increasing dissatisfaction with German & international politics• Decreasing solidarity with western superpower US:

Vietnam War & oppression of colonial and Third World’s movements• Grand Coalition, opposition was represented with only 10%• German Emergency Acts, imminent increase of governmental power

(cf.: comparable emergency laws in the “Weimar republic” led to Hitler’s overtake 1933)• Parental repression of the Nazi crimes

• Socialistic ideology grew from students’ utopias:• “organized refusal revolution”• Students were expected to fight against oppression and exploitation

in place of the widely controlled international working class

Historical context

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Shah of Persia

Historical context

Benno Ohnesorg

shot by a German police officer in 1967

Historical context

• Increasing level of violence after killing police shot at student (1967)• Arson attacks, street battles• killed police officers, RAF members & innocents

• Crumbling basis of the students movement from 1968 on• Division into different ways of behaviour, mainly:• integration and improvement of the existing political system• urban guerilla tactics and terrorism

• terrorism as “the answer to an oppressing, hostile environment we can not control any longer; an environment that breaks our necks.” (Horst Mahler)

• vision of worldwide solidarity against injustice and imperialistic oppression:“We won’t be able to preserve the world from the imperialism’s yoke without revitalizing the revolution in the western world.”

TERRORISM as “the answer to an oppressing, hostile environment we can not control any longer;

an environment that breaks our necks.”

TERRORISM as “the answer to an oppressing, hostile environment we can not control any longer;

an environment that breaks our necks.”

Chronology of RAF activities

2 April ‘68 - Baader and Ensslin placed bombs in a department store

Chronology of RAF activities

11 April ‘68Demo after attempted

assassination of Rudi Dutschke

earlier that day

Chronology of RAF activities

22 October 1971

Hamburg police officer Norbert

Schmid is shot and killed attempting to

stop and question Baader-Meinhof Gang

members

Chronology of RAF activities

19 May 1972, Hamburg

Ulrike Meinhof leads a commando raid into the Hamburg printing offices of the hated Springer Press. These three bombs fail to explode, but three others are successful,

and 17 people are injured.

Chronology of RAF activities

12 May 1972, Munich

A car bomb exploded in the parking lot of the

Munich Criminal Investigation Office, destroying 60 cars.

Chronology of RAF activities

1 June 1972, Frankfurt am Main

Andreas Baader, with a police bullet in his leg, is captured.

Chronology of RAF activities

Holger Meins, 1974

Dead after hunger strike in prison.

“This man blackmailed the German government.”

Chronology of RAF activities - GERMAN AUTUMN ‘77

5. September 1977

Hanns-Martin Schleyer,

president of the employers’ Union,

is kidnapped

Chronology of RAF activities - GERMAN AUTUMN ‘77

The demands:The German government should release eleven terrorists,

between others Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin.

Chronology of RAF activities - GERMAN AUTUMN ‘77

The “Landshut” is hijacked.Because the German government had played for time,

Palestine terrorists hijack a plane on 13 October 1977 - to support the RAF and to demonstrate Palestine’s political situationThe demand now: 11 terrorists should be released to save 91 hostages.

Chronology of RAF activities - GERMAN AUTUMN ‘77

The German police takes over the plane in Mogadisu.After an odyssey through Arab, the “Landshut” is freed by a German special

force. All terrorists are killed - within 7 minutes.

The liberation of the “Landshut” had a second effect:

Hanns-Martin Schleyer is executed.

Third generation and breakup

• 1980s and 1990s were dominated by violent attacks; there are doubts, if all of them were really driven by RAF members

• In April of 1998, the few authentic remaining RAF members issued a communiqué officially disbanding the RAF:

“Almost 28 years ago, on 14 May 1970, the RAF arose in a campaign of liberation.

Today we end this project. The urban guerrilla in the shape of the RAF is now history.”

Thanks for your attention!