The Red Army Faction (German: Rote Armee Fraktion, pronounced [ˌʁoːtə ʔaʁˈmeː fʁakˌtsi̯oːn] ; RAF [ˌɛʁʔaːˈʔɛf] ), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (German: Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe / Baader-Meinhof-Bande [ˈbaːdɐ ˈmaɪnhɔf ˈɡʁʊpə] ), was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970, active until 1998, and formally designated a terrorist organisation by the West German government. The RAF described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group. It was engaged in armed resistance against what it considered a fascist state. Members of the RAF generally used the Marxist–Leninist term "faction" when they wrote in English. Early leadership included Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Horst Mahler.
The RAF engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shootouts with police over the course of three decades, which was known as the RAF terrorism. Its activities peaked in late 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the "German Autumn". The RAF has been held responsible for 34 deaths, including industrialist and former Nazi SS officer Hanns Martin Schleyer, Dresdner Bank head Jürgen Ponto, federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback, police officers, American servicemen stationed in Germany, as well as many cases of collateral damage, such as chauffeurs and bodyguards, with many others injured throughout its almost thirty years of activity; 26 RAF members or supporters were killed. Although better-known, the RAF conducted fewer attacks than the Revolutionary Cells, which is held responsible for 296 bomb attacks, arson and other attacks between 1973 and 1995. The group was motivated by leftist political concerns and the perceived failure of their parents' generation to confront Germany's Nazi past, and in later years some ex-members received support from Stasi and other Eastern Bloc security services.
Sometimes, the group is talked about in terms of generations:
the "first generation", which consisted of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof and others;
the "second generation", after the majority of the first generation was arrested in 1972.
the "third generation", which existed in the 1980s and 1990s up to 1998, after the first generation died in Stammheim maximum security prison in 1977
On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the submachine-gun red star, declaring that the group had dissolved. In 1999, after a robbery in Duisburg, evidence pointing to Ernst-Volker Staub and Daniela Klette was found, causing an official investigation into a re-founding.
The usual translation into English is the "Red Army Faction"; however, the founders wanted it to reflect not a splinter group but rather an embryonic militant unit that was embedded, in or part of, a wider communist workers' movement, i.e., a fraction of a whole.
The group always called itself the Rote Armee Fraktion, never the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang. The name refers to all incarnations of the organization: the "first generation" RAF, which consisted of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and others; the "second generation" RAF; and the "third generation" RAF, which existed in the 1980s and 90s. The terms "Baader–Meinhof Gang" and "Baader–Meinhof Group" were first used by the media and the government. The group never used these names to refer to itself, because it viewed itself as a co-founded group consisting of numerous members and not a group with two figureheads.
The origins of the group can be traced back to the 1968 student protest movement in West Germany. Industrialised nations in the late 1960s experienced social upheavals related to the maturing of the "baby boomers", the Cold War, and the end of colonialism. Newly-found youth identity and issues such as racism, women's liberation, and anti-imperialism were at the forefront of left-wing politics. Many young people were alienated from their parents and the institutions of the state. The historical legacy of Nazism drove a wedge between the generations and increased suspicion of authoritarian structures in society (some analysts saw the same occurring in post-fascism Italy, giving rise to Brigatte Rosse).
In West Germany there was anger among leftist youth at the post-war denazification in West Germany and East Germany, a process which these leftists perceived as a failure or as ineffective, as former (actual and supposed) Nazis held positions in government and the economy. The Communist Party of Germany had been outlawed since 1956. Elected and appointed government positions down to the local level were often occupied by ex-Nazis. Konrad Adenauer, the first Federal Republic chancellor (in office 1949–1963), had even appointed former Nazi jurist Hans Globke as Director of the Federal Chancellery of West Germany (in office 1953–1963).
The radicals regarded the conservative media as biased – at the time conservatives such as Axel Springer, who was implacably opposed to student radicalism, owned and controlled the conservative media including all of the most influential mass-circulation tabloid newspapers. The emergence of the Grand Coalition between the two main parties, the SPD and CDU, with former Nazi Party member Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor, occurred in 1966. This horrified many on the left and was viewed as a monolithic, political marriage of convenience with pro-NATO, pro-capitalist collusion on the part of the social democratic SPD. With about 90% of the Bundestag controlled by the coalition, an Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) was formed with the intent of generating protest and political activity outside of government. In 1972 a law was passed – the Radikalenerlass – that banned radicals or those with a "questionable" political persuasion from public sector jobs.
Student activists, who associated older generations of Germans with Nazism, argued against peaceful reconciliation:
They'll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we're up against. This is the Auschwitz generation. You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we haven't. We must arm ourselves!
The radicalized were, like many in the New Left, influenced by:
Sociological developments, together with the background of counter-cultural movements.
Post-war writings on class society and empire as well as contemporary Marxist critiques from many revolutionaries such as Frantz Fanon, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara, as well as early Autonomism.
Philosophers associated with the Frankfurt school (Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Marcuse, and Oskar Negt in particular) and associated Marxist philosophers.