The Red Army Faction (, ; RAF ),See the section "Name" also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang ( ), 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."18 August 1976: West Germany enacted § 129a of the Criminal Code, which created the offence of "forming, joining, or supporting a terrorist organisation." This law became a central basis for prosecuting RAF members; for example, Christine Dümlein, who joined the RAF in 1980, was convicted solely of "membership in a terrorist organisation."; "Dümlein Christine,... Joined the RAF in 1980,... the only crime she was guilty of was membership in a terrorist organization" 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 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.IM.NRW.de , Innenministerium Nordrhein-Westfalen: Revolutionäre Zellen und Rote Zora. 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.Verfassungsschutzbericht Nordrhein-Westfalen 2001: "Rote Armee Fraktion", 2001, pp. 42 ff. ()
Name
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,In Leninist terminology a "fraction" is a subset of a larger communist movement. For example, the 12 July 1921 "Theses on the Structure of Communist Parties , submitted to the Third Congress of the Comintern" states that "to carry out daily party work every member should as a rule belong to a small working group, a committee, a commission, a fraction, or a cell." Cited in Louis Proyect, "The Comintern and the German Communist Party;" or the description of the "Bolshevik-Leninist Fraction" in the article Communist League (UK, 1932). i.e., a fraction of a whole.
The group always called itself the , 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.
Background
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,Mary Lean, "One Family's Berlin", Initiatives of Change, 1 August 1988. The Sovietization of East German, Czech, and Polish Higher Education, 1945–1956. (Denazification varied greatly across occupied/post-occupied Europe.) 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.Center for History, "Allianz in the Years 1933–1945 – Limits of denazification", ; Paddy Ashdown, "Winning the Peace", BBC World Service, 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 biasedat 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.Harold Marcuse, "The Revival of Holocaust Awareness in West Germany, Israel and the United States", . In 1972 a law was passedthe that banned radicals or those with a "questionable" political persuasion from public sector jobs.Arthur B. Gunlicks, "Civil Liberties in the German Public Service", The Review of Politics, Vol. 53 No. 2, Spring 1991 (extract). .
Student activists, who associated older generations of Germans with Nazism, argued against peaceful reconciliation:
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 particularIrving Wohlfarth, "Walter Benjamin and the Red Army Faction", Radical Philosophy 152) and associated Marxist philosophers.Peter-Erwin Jansen, "Student Movements in Germany, 1968–1984", Negations (E-journal), No. 3, Fall 1998. .
RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof had a long history in the Communist Party. Holger Meins had studied film and was a veteran of the Berlin revolt; his short feature How To Produce A Molotov Cocktail was seen by huge audiences. Jan Carl Raspe lived at the Kommune 2; Horst Mahler was an established lawyer but also at the center of the anti-Springer revolt from the beginning. From their personal experiences and assessments of the socio-economic situation, they soon became more specifically influenced by Leninism and Maoism, calling themselves "Marxist–Leninist" though they effectively added to or updated this ideological tradition. RAF frequently cited Mao Zedong in its public statements, especially in its early years. One of the Maoist doctrines emphasized by the group was the importance of organizing political resistance to bourgeois society, and that armed struggle from the fringes of society will bring the revolution into mainstream society as well, with the bourgeois state revealing its oppressive apparatus by overreacting to fringe groups and their activities. A contemporaneous critique of the Red Army Faction's view of the state, published in a pirate edition of , ascribed to it "state-fetishism"an ideologically obsessive misreading of bourgeois dynamics and the nature and role of the state in post-WWII societies, including West Germany.
It is claimed that property destruction during the Watts riots in the United States in 1965 influenced the practical and ideological approach of the RAF founders, as well as some of those in Situationist circles.Scribner, Charity. "Buildings on Fire: The Situationist International and the Red Army Faction". Grey Room, Winter 2007, pp. 30–55. According to one former RAF member, in meetings with KGB in Dresden the group was also met by Vladimir Putin, then KGB resident in East Germany. In these meetings RAF members would discuss weapons that were needed for their activities, and pass a "shopping list" to the KGB.
The writings of Antonio Gramsci"Interview with Action Direct member Joelle Aubron". Retrieved 31 August 2007. . The interview covers early influences on European guerrilla groups. and Herbert MarcuseRed Army Faction, "The Urban Guerilla Concept" (see also attached notes) retrieved 31 August 2007. . Many of the documents of this period are ascribed to Ulrike Meinhof. were drawn upon. Gramsci wrote on power, cultural, and ideological conflicts in society and institutionsreal-time class struggles playing out in rapidly developing industrial nation states through interlinked areas of political behavior. Marcuse wrote on coercion and hegemony in that cultural indoctrination and ideological manipulation through the means of communication ("repressive tolerance") dispensed with the need for complete brute force in modern 'liberal democracies'. His One-Dimensional Man was addressed to the restive students of the sixties. Marcuse argued that only marginal groups of students and poor alienated workers could effectively resist the system. Both Gramsci and Marcuse came to the conclusion that analyzing the ideological underpinnings and the 'superstructure' of society was vitally important to understanding class control (and acquiescence). This Gramscian and Marcusian contribution could perhaps be seen as an extension of Marx's work, as he did not cover this area in detail. , his mainly economic work, was meant to be one of a series of books which would have included one on society and one on the state,Michael A. Lebowitz, Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class, Palgrave 2003, p. 27. . but his death prevented fulfillment of this.