Baader, Andreas (1943–1977)

Andreas Baader was one of the leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, also known as the Red Army Faction, a West German Marxist group active during the 1970s.

Baader, whose father was killed on the Russian front in World War II, was born in Munich on May 3, 1943; he was raised by his mother and grandmother. He was an unruly child who, though intelligent, did poorly in school. As a teenager, he became obsessed with cars and was arrested several times for driving without a license.

Baader spent most of his time hanging out in West Berlin's student bars and cafés. Handsome and charismatic, Baader was popular with women, though he often treated them contemptuously, using derogatory terms in conversation. In 1967, he met and became the lover of Gudrun Ensslin. Though always rebellious and prone to violence, Baader was no intellectual and seems to have had no coherent political ideology before meeting Ensslin. Several years older than Baader, Ensslin had long been a committed leftist and an activist. Baader's relationship with her would prove enduring, and he came to share in her political beliefs.

As elsewhere in the late 1960s, student protest was increasing in Germany. Students were highly critical of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, as well as their own nation's reluctance to address its Nazi history. Ensslin, Baader, and two friends decided to strike back at what they called the fascism of the West German state; they began with firebombing two Frankfurt department stores in April 1968. Arrested almost immediately, they were convicted in October 1968.

Released pending appeal in June 1969, Baader and two of his coconspirators jumped bail in November after their appeal was rejected and fled to Switzerland. Within a few months, however, they were back in Berlin, and in April 1970, Baader was recaptured and imprisoned. On May 15, his comrades, executing a daring escape plan, freed Baader at gunpoint. The jail-break became international news because of the involvement of Ulrike Meinhof, a well-known leftist journalist, and the group came to be referred to as the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Once Baader was freed, the gang traveled to a Palestinian training camp in Lebanon for instruction in bomb making and other guerrilla techniques. Returning to Germany in August 1970, they began a series of bank robberies. Over the course of the next two years, the gang robbed dozens of banks; bombed two U.S. Army bases and several German targets, killing eight people; and engaged in a number of confrontations with police in which several gang members were arrested and two police officers were killed. On June 1, 1972, the authorities discovered one of the gang's bomb-making facilities. During a two-hour standoff, the police arrested Baader, who resisted and was shot in the leg, and his two companions. Other top gang leaders, including Meinhof and Ensslin, were arrested in the following weeks.

Their trial was put off for more than three years so that the German government could construct a special terror-proof prison and courthouse in which to conduct it. The remnants of the gang made several attempts to free their leaders, while the prisoners went [Page 66]on hunger strikes and wrote pamphlets protesting prison conditions. After Holgar Meins died while on a hunger strike, the gang became a cause célèbre for leftists; philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre visited Baader in prison.

Baader was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment on April 28, 1977. On October 18, 1977, after it had become clear that the latest attempt to free them had failed, Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Rasp committed suicide in prison.

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