Red Army Faction

The Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang or Baader-Meinhof Group, was an extreme left-wing, anti-imperialist and Marxist-Leninist militant group, led by Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Horst Mahler, and Gudrun Ensslin. The RAF lasted from 1970 to 1998, and a series of terrorist attacks in late 1977 became known as "German Autumn". In 1977, Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe killed themselves in Stammheim Prison in "Death Night" On 20 April 1998, twenty years after most of the leadership killed themselves or were imprisoned, the RAF faxed Reuters, announcing their dissolution. By the dissolution of RAF, a total of over 60 people had been killed in violent incidents involving the terrorist group.

History

Andreas Baader

Ulrike Meinhof

Background

The Red Army Faction was founded in 1970 by West German communists Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, and Jan-Carl Raspe, created after several student protests broke out in the late 1960s in West Germany.

Prior to forming RAF, Ensslin, Baader and other perpetrator set fire to a Kaufhaus shopping centre in Frankfurt am Main on 2 May April 1968 for which they would later be sentenced to three years in prison. They were released from custody after 14 months and when the guility verdict fell, they evaded police until Baader was captured 4 April 1970 during a traffic stop. On 14 May 1970, several conspirators broke Baader out of incarceration using firearms. Two prison guards were wounded where one survived life-threatening injuries.

Formation and weapons training in the Middle East

In June 1970, the group announced their formation as RAF and published a manifest. Subsequently Baader, Ensslin, Mahler, and Meinhof headed to Jordan to train in the West Bank, Lebanon South Yemen and Gaza with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a KGB-supported Marxist-Leninist terrorist group as well as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). There, they learned how to use handguns, hand grenades and explosives. In these training camps they would train alongside militants from the Spanish ETA and Irish Republican Army. Palestinian militants, in the eyes of the RAF, would go on to be particularly valued supporters throughout its existence.

Attacks and assassinations

When they returned to Germany, they gained popular support and robbed banks to raise money, while they also bombed US Army military facilities (they were pro-Soviet Union and saw the West as an antagonistic capitalistic/imperialistic society), German police stations, and Axel Springer press buildings. In 1971 authorities placed 50 members of the RAF on a wanted list and July the same year members Werner Hoppe and Petra Schelm were discovered in Hamburg. In the ensuing pursuit and shootout, member Petra Schelm was shot and killed while Hoppe was apprehended. Schelm was the first RAF member to be killed. In June 1972, Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, Holger Meins, and Jan-Carl Raspe were arrested, but their organization remained potent.

Holger Meins

In October 1972, the Red Army Faction was hired by covert Mossad operative Avner Kaufman to help him track down Wael Zwaiter, a Black September Organization member who was said to have been involved in a plot against an El Al airliner, as well as the Munich Massacre that same month. RAF member Andreas, who was trying to make his way up to the upper echelon of the group, wanted to get easily-accessible cash to further his way into the group. Andreas believed that Kaufman, who spoke fluent German and was not easily recognizable as Jewish or a Mossad agent, was the leader of a small independent terrorist unit. Always needing hard currency for their operations, the RAF agreed to help track Zwaiter down for $300,000. The RAF provided logistical support to Kaufman, and one of their female operatives helped him to find Zwaiter himself. When she found Zwaiter, she left in her car, signaling the assassination team that he was nearby. They succeeded in killing him. Shortly after, Andreas introduced Kaufman to a contact of his, a Frenchman named Louis, who was a member of "Le Group", a French assassination business run by his father "Papa".

In the mid-1970s, the RAF underwent several losses. In 1974, Holger Meins died in a hunger strike. In 1975, Meinhof "killed herself "while in West German custody. In 1977, Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe were assassinated in Stammheim prison's "Death Night"; the deaths of the RAF leadership were attributed to suicide, although it is widely suspected that the West German police had them killed to prevent their release. The group remained active and in 1975 the RAF blew up the West German embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, killing 2 and wounding 10.

In 1977, the communist group launched "German Autumn": a series of kidnappings, murders, and attacks that culminated in first the kidnapping of and eventually the assassination of Hanns Martin Schleyer, a powerful business executive. Concurrent with the kidnapping of Schleyer, four Palestinian PFLP terrorists hijacking Lufthansa airliner "Landshut" which was travelling from Mallorca to Frankfurt am Main. They had smuggled weapons on board and forced the Boeing 737 airliner to fly to Cyprus, but due to fuel considerations was forced to land in Rome, Italy. The Palestinian terrorists demanded the release of first RAF generation leaders Baader, Ensslin, Raspe and Möller as well as 15 million USD. The aircraft was eventually flown to Mogadishu but the surviving pilot where operators from the German GSG-9 antiterrorist unit stormed the plane on 18 October. The special unit killed three PFLP terrorists and captured the fourth who had been wounded. Around the same time, RAF leaders Baader, Raspe and Ensslin were fond dead in their cells in Stammheim prison. RAF members killed Schleyer and his body was left in a car.

Some time after the German Autumn, eight RAF members wanted to leave the group as they had lost motivation and support. Although they still considered armed violence the correct method to achieve their goals, they were no longer willing to risk their own lives. In early 1978 the defectors started negotiations with a Stasi agent responsible for antiterrorism in East Germany (DDR). Stasi reasoned that RAF and Stasi had common enemies, them being West Germany and NATO forces there. The RAF defectors were taken to DDR from Prague and had to undergo a six week training program not only to receive new identities but also to become proper socialist citizens of the DDR, this also included learning the local dialect of Saxony in southern DDR. Consequently Susanne Albrecht who had murdered banker Jürgen Ponto became Ingrid Jäger, a teacher. Werner Lotze became Manfred Jansen who loved sculling. Inge Viett became photographer Eva-Maria Sommer in Dresden.

The RAF carried out sporadic attacks and assasinations during the 1980s. On 20 April 1998, an eight-page letter was faxed to Reuters, in which the Red Army Faction declared that the group had dissolved.

In Febrauary 2024 former RAF member Daniela Klette, the partner of ex RAF member Ernst-Volker Staub, was apprehended in the Kreuzberg area of Berlin after having gone underground in the late 1980s. In Berlin, Klette had lived under alias Claudia Ivone.

Victims of RAF attacks

In total RAF killed 34 people along with a large number of wounded and injured. Historians and media eventually would mainly focus on the actions and lives of the RAF members and leadership, nearly all RAF victims would soon slide into obscurity with only a few famous personalities who had been killed becoming part of books and articles about the group: Hanns-Martin Schleyer, Siegfried Buback and Gerold von Braunmühl. This coincided with stated RAF media policy, which was to never talk about the victims of their violent campaign. In contrast, RAF cells were often named after dead RAF members, to make them appear as martyrs.

• Policeman Herbert Schoner, 22 December 1971: Four RAF members attacked a bank in Kaiserslautern and stole 134 thousand marks. Police superintendent (German: Polizeiobermeister) Herbert Schoner went to investigate a suspicious vehicle in front of the building. The driver shot Schoner in the chest and escaped. Gravely wounded, Schoner crawled into the bank office where he immediately was shot and kiled by RAF members.
• Policeman Hans Eckhardt, 2 March 1972: Policeman Hans Eckhardt and colleagues investigated an apartment in Heimhuder Strasse in Hamburg where they found RAF members Wolfgang Grundmann and Manfred Grashof. While Grundmann immediately surrendered, Grashof opened fire and hit Eckhardt with two dum-bullets in the upper body. Eckhardt died of his wounds twenty days later on 22 March 1972 in the Hamburg University Hospital. Grashof was sentenced to life in prison, while inofficially he was claimed to have expressed "regret", this was deined by the widow of Eckhardt who had never received any such message from Echard according to a 2007 interview in magazine Der Spiegel.
• US Army Lieutenant Colonel Paul A. Bloomquiest, 11 May 1972: An RAF terrorist cell named after Petra Schelm placed a bomb at the headquarters of the US 5th Army in Frankfurt am Main. Bloomquest was killed by metal splinters and a further 13 people were wounded.
• Soldiers Clyde R. Bonner, Ronald A. Woodward and Charles Peck: An RAF group uses two car bombs to attack the headquarter of the US Army in Europe in Heidelberg. The three were killed and a further five were wounded by the bombs.
• Diplomats Andreas von Mirbach and Heinz Hillegaart, April 1975: Six RAF terrorists attack the West German embassy in Stockholm and take 27 hostages. Embassy attachés Mirbach and Hillegaart were shot and killed by the RAF members.
• Policeman Fritz Sippel, 7 May 1976: Police chief Sippel was shot to death by an RAF member at a traffic stop.
• State prosecutor Siegfried Buback, driver Wolfgang Göbel and Georg Wurster, 7 April 1977: Buback and Göbel were killed in Karlsruhe while Wurster succumbed to his wounds from the attack on 13 April 1977.
• Chairman of the board Jürgen Ponto of Dresdner Bank, 20 July 1977: An RAF cell tried to kidnap Ponto in his home, but was shot to death while defending himself from his kidnappers.
• Policemen Reinhold Brändle, Helmut Ulmer, Roland Pieler and driver Heinz Marcisz, 5 September 1977: RAF kidnaps industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer in a brutal attack where policeman Reinhold Brändle was hit by over 60 bullets. His colleagues Helmut Ulmer and Roland Pieler were also killed by gunfire along with Schleyers driver Heinz Marcisz.
• Policeman Arie Kranenburg, 22 September 1977: RAF member Kunut Folkerts was stopped by police in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Folkerts immediately pulls a handgun and opens fire where policeman Arie Kranenburg is killed and his colleague is severely wounded.
• Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, October 1977: After Lufthansa airliner "Landshut" is recaptured by poice and the deaths of first generation RAF leaders in the Stammheim prison, Schleyers body is discovered in the boot of a vehicle in Mühlhausen.
• Policeman Hans-Wilhelm Hansen, 24 September 1978: Two policemen discovered three RAF members, among them Angelika Speitel, during target practice in a forest near Dortmund. The RAF members opened fire and killed policeman Hansen.
• Dutch customs officers Dionysius de Jong and Johannes Goemanns, November 1978: In the vicinity of Kerkrade a gunfight breaks out 1 November1978 between Dutch customs officals and RAF member Rolf Heißler. De Jong died from gunshot wounds on the scene and his colleague Johannes Goemanns was wounded. Heißler tried to enter the Netherlands illegally from West Germany. Goemanns died from his wounds on 14 November.
• Swiss housewife Edith Kletzhändler, 19 November 1979: A gunfight broke out between RAF members and Swiss police in a Zürich shopping gallery. She was killed by a bullet from an RAF weapon.
• Industrialist Ernst Zimmermann, 1 February 1985: RAF members attacked the home of Ernst Zimmerman in Gauting. His wife was tied up and Zimmerman was taken to the bedroom where the RAF terrorists shot and killed him.
• US soldier Edward Pimental and two bomb victims, 7 August 1985: Pimental was shot and killed by RAF members in Wiesbaden. The RAF cell would later use his ID card to access the Rhein-Main Airbase in Frankfurt where they detonated a car bomb which killed a further two people
• US soldier Frank Scarton und civilian employee Becky Bristol:, 8 August 1985: Scarton and Bristol was killed by a car bomb detonated by RAF members. A further 23 people were wounded.
• Industrialist Karl-Heinz Beckurts and driver Eckhard Groppler, 9 Juy 1986: Beckurts and his driver Groppler were killed by a roadside bomb placed by an RAF terrorist cell in Straßlach near Munich.
• State official Gerold von Braunmühl, 10 October 1986: Braunmühl was shot to death by two RAF members in front of his home in Bonn. Forensic investigation deemed it likely that the bullet which killed him came from the same gun that was used to assassinate Hanns-Martin Schleyer.
• Banker Alfred Herrhausen, 30 November 1989: RAF members use a bomb against Herrhausen's car.
• State official Detlev Karsten Rohwedder, 1 April 1991: Rohwedder is shot and killed in his home by an RAF member.
• GSG 9 opeator Michael Newrzella: As police triest to arrest RAF members Wolfgang Grams and Birgit Hogefeld at the train station of Bad Kleinen, shots were fired and GSG 9 officer was killed.