Baader-Meinhof Gang

The Communist group known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang (aka Red Army Faction), which was named for Andreas Baader and the leftist journalist Ulrike Meinhof, terrorized West Germany in the 1970s. The gang, which called itself the Red Army Faction (RAF), engaged in bombing campaigns and assassinations, including attacks against U.S. Army bases.

The Baader-Meinhof Gang emerged from the German student protest movement of the late 1960s. Originally focused on university reform, the student movement soon took on distinct leftist characteristics as it agitated against the Vietnam War and U.S. imperialism. Students were also highly critical of German society's reluctance to confront its Nazi past, with those on the radical fringe contending that the West German government was merely a continuation of that fascist state. It was this radical fringe that supplied most of the Baader-Meinhof Gang's members, most prominently Gudrun Ensslin, a former graduate student and longtime activist.

In April 1968, Ensslin, her lover Baader, and two accomplices, Horst Söhnlein and Thorwald Proll, moved from protest to active violence, fire-bombing two Frankfurt department stores. Although property was damaged, no one was hurt. Quickly arrested and convicted in October 1968, the four were released pending appeal. When the appeal was denied in November, Baader, Ensslin, and Proll jumped bail and fled to Switzerland.

Within a few months, they returned to Germany, and Baader was recaptured in April and imprisoned. On May 15, 1970, six members of the group, with the help of Meinhof, freed Baader in a daring jailbreak. After Baader's escape the group became known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang (or Group). However, they called themselves the Red Army Faction in imitation of a Japanese terrorist group, the Japanese Red Army.

Once Baader was freed, the group commenced terrorist activities in earnest, traveling to a Palestinian training camp in Lebanon for instruction in bomb making and other guerrilla skills. They returned to Germany in August 1970 and, in need of funds, began a series of bank robberies and attracted new recruits. By then the group had become the target of a massive manhunt. Three police officers were killed in a series of shootouts during 1971, and several gang members were arrested. In May 1972, they began a bombing campaign against German and American targets, [Page 85]setting off six bombs that killed four people and injured more than 40.

At the end of May, German police discovered the gang's bomb-making facility and staked it out. On June 1, Baader and two other men entered the building and, after a siege lasting several hours, were arrested. Over the next two weeks, lucky breaks led to the arrest of Ensslin, Meinhof, and another top gang leader. With their leadership gone, the gang was seriously incapacitated and the character of the organization was greatly altered. Several attempts, all unsuccessful, were made to free Meinhof, Baader, and the others.

The West German government, determined to both deflect criticism and prevent further terrorist attacks during the trials, built a special prison for the Baader-Meinhof prisoners, with an attached courtroom to be used solely for their trials. The trials were in fact delayed for three years during the prison's construction. During this period, members of the group went on hunger strikes to protest their solitary confinement, leading to the death of one group member. The gang also became something of a leftist cause célèbre. On May 9, 1976, just before the trial, Meinhof hung herself in her cell. On October 18, 1977, after a last-ditch attempt at getting the prisoners released had failed, the four remaining Baader-Meinhof leaders attempted suicide in their cells, with three of them succeeding in the effort. The one member who survived was released in 1994. Rumors that the prisoners had not committed suicide but been killed persisted after their deaths.

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