EXTREMISMGermany's RAF Terrorism — Many Unanswered Questions
Even today, talk of the Red Army Faction (RAF) often provokes a heated debate in Germany. More than a quarter of a century has passed since the terrorist organization announced its dissolution. Nonetheless, there are those who are still grieving, victims who are still injured, RAF members who are still on the run — and many unanswered questions.
Even today, talk of the Red Army Faction (RAF) often provokes a heated debate in Germany. The crimes of the RAF, said Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) at the end of February, are “today still unmatched as examples of the dangers of left-wing extremism and left-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany.”
More than a quarter of a century has passed since the terrorist organization announced its dissolution. Nonetheless, there are those who are still grieving, victims who are still injured, RAF members who are still on the run — and many unanswered questions.At the end of February 2024, after many years without success, special police units began once again publicly tracking down the last prominent suspects involved in RAF terrorism.
For those who lived through it, the “German Autumn” (Deutscher Herbst) was in the fall of 1977. That was when the RAF emerged as a far-left terrorist organization.
In 1968, two arson attacks on Frankfurt department stores, using tactics typical of left-wing urban guerrillas, had already occurred. Andreas Baader was convicted and imprisoned for his involvement. His escape from prison in 1970 marked the birth of the RAF. The most prominent members of the first generation of the RAF were Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, and Gudrun Ensslin. In these early years, the group was known as the “Baader-Meinhof Group” after its two most recognizable founders.
Notorious Personalities and Lesser-Known Victims
The group carried out numerous attacks in Germany up into the 1990s. Thirty-five people were killed. Some of the victims were major figures in West Germany.
In 1977 alone, the year of terror, they murdered Siegfried Buback, the country’s chief prosecutor, and shortly afterward, the head of the Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto. Then “second generation” RAF members kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, the head of then-West Germany’s national employer association and a former SS officer — the SS (Schutzstaffel) was a major paramilitary organization in Nazi Germany. The kidnapping was intended to force the release of imprisoned RAF leaders. When this attempt failed, RAF leaders Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe committed suicide in prison on October 17. Hanns Martin Schleyer was murdered 44 days after his abduction.
