Leftist Youth Violence

The Baader-Meinhof Gang

On September 5, 1977, a woman with a stroller stepped out in front of a car on a street in Cologne. The driver, who was chauffeuring one of West Germany's most powerful industrialists, was forced to brake. The woman pulled out two machine guns, and her accomplices, following behind, bundled Hanns Martin Schleyer out of the car. His bodyguards were killed at the scene and one month later, his body was found in the boot of a car. Schleyer is one name on a list of more than 30 people killed by the Baader-Meinhof gang - or Red Army Faction as it later became known - during a campaign against members of the German elite and US military personnel which started in the late 1960s. Born from the radical student movement of that period, the RAF comprised mainly middle-class youngsters who saw themselves as fighting a West German capitalist establishment which they apparently believed was little more than a reincarnation of the Third Reich. Many condemned their tactics but understood their disgust with the new order, particularly one where former Nazis enjoyed prominent roles. Their critics meanwhile denounced them as murderous nihilists - desperate for a cause but with no real political goals.

It was the 1967 killing by police of a young activist during a demonstration in Berlin against a visit by the Shah of Iran that apparently persuaded Andreas Baader that the post-war authorities were little better than that which they had replaced. Baader began his campaign with the bombing of a Frankfurt store. Vowing to mount a violent campaign, he started off in 1968 by detonating home-made bombs in two Frankfurt department stores. Arrested and imprisoned, he escaped in 1970 during a library visit with the help of a left-wing campaigning journalist - Ulrike Meinhof - and the Baader-Meinhof gang was firmly established in the public mind. Horst Mahler - a socialist lawyer who is now a key figure within the German neo-Nazi movement - was by this stage also heavily involved with the fledgling organization.

 In 1970, the group headed off to Jordan where they were taught how to use a Kalashnikov at a camp run by the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They spent the next two years robbing banks and bombing buildings back in Germany. Baader was then captured with accomplices Jan-Carl Raspe and Holger Meins in a Frankfurt shootout on 1 June, 1972. Baader's girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin was arrested a week later, and Meinhof was caught in mid-June.

A second generation of militants then took up the fight, carrying out some of the bloodiest and most high-profile attacks in order to secure the release of their heroes, whose trial - the longest and most expensive in West German history - opened in 1975. That same year the German Embassy in Sweden was seized; two of the hostages, both attachés, were shot dead during the 11-hour siege after Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to give in to demands that all the suspects be released. In the course of the trial, Meinhof was found hanging from a rope made of towels in her cell - her death sparking a stream of conspiracy theories from her followers. The trial concluded a year later, with the three remaining defendants sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and attempted murder. A new series of assassinations had already begun. On 7 April 1977, chief public prosecutor Siegfried Buback was killed in Karlsruhe by a motorcycle hit squad. Three months later, the chief executive of Dresdner Bank, Juergen Ponto, was killed at his home in Frankfurt. But it was the September abduction of Schleyer, head of the German Association of Employers and a former member of the Nazi party, which kicked off a series of events known as the German Autumn. Schleyer's captors offered his release in exchange for Baader, Ensslin and nine others. Baader and Ensslin committed suicide in 1977. But even as the negotiations were being carried out, Arab sympathizers were finalizing a plan to hijack a plane full of German tourists bound to Frankfurt from Majorca to increase the pressure on the authorities. The aircraft, seized on 13 October, went first to Italy, then Cyprus, Bahrain and Dubai, before finally landing in Mogadishu, where the captain was shot dead by the hijackers. Shortly afterwards, German elite commandos stormed the plane, killing three of the hijackers and freeing the hostages. The success of the mission provided a ray of hope for a country where many felt under siege. But it was the final blow for the group's leaders in prison. As news broke, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe committed suicide. The next day, Schleyer's kidnappers announced he had been killed.

Some analysts believe the RAF had hoped to push the state to breaking point, goading it into introducing a series of illiberal measures that would whip up anger within the left and spark some form of civil war. While the RAF enjoyed sympathy from the left, the RAF found itself increasingly isolated as the years went by, although it did find assistance from the Soviet Union, where a number of their members were given refuge. Attacks continued throughout the 1980s, but the group never achieved the kind of prominence it had enjoyed in the 1970s. Arms industry executive Ernst Zimmermann was killed in 1985, the same year a bombing at a US airbase killed two people, and in 1986, Siemens executive Karl-Heinz Beckurts was killed. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 weakened the group permanently. It eventually dissolved in 1998 after a long period of silence

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Timelines:

June 5, 1970: A Berlin publication calls for the establishment of the Red Army Faction with the words "Let the armed resistance begin."

May 11, 1972: Bomb attack on US barracks in Frankfurt leaves one person dead and 13 injured.

May 12, 1972: Bomb attack on police station in Augsburg injures five police officers.

May 15, 1972: Bomb attack on the car of Federal Judge Wolfgang Buddenberg. His wife, who was driving the car, is injured.

May 19, 1972: Bomb attack on Axel Springer Publishing in Hamburg. Seventeen are wounded.

May 24, 1972: One bomb attack outside an officer’s club in Heidelberg followed moments later by a second blast in front of the Army Security Agency, US Army in Europe at Campbell Barracks. Three people are killed, five injured.

April 24, 1975: Occupation of the West German embassy in Stockholm. Four people are killed, two of them RAF members.

January 4, 1977: Attack against US 42nd Field Artillery Brigade at Giessen. Several RAF members are killed.

April 7, 1977: Assassination of Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback. The driver and another passenger are also killed.

July 30, 1977: The director of Dresdner Bank, Jürgen Ponto, is shot in his home during an attempted kidnapping.

September 5, 1977: Chairman of the German Employers' Federation, Hanns Martin Schleyer, is kidnapped. Three police officers and the driver are killed during the kidnapping.

October 13, 1977: A Lufthansa aircraft is hijacked and 87 people taken hostage. The hijacking is ended by German commandos on October 18. 86 hostages are freed alive. The captain of the aircraft had already been killed. Three hijackers are killed.

October 18, 1977: Three RAF leaders, Baader, Ensslin and Raspe commit suicide in prison. Hanns Martin Schleyer is shot in response to the news of the suicides.

June 25, 1979: NATO's commander, Alexander Haig, escapes an assassination attempt in Mons, Belgium.

August 31, 1981: Large car bomb explodes in the parking lot of Ramstein air base in Germany.

September 15, 1981: Unsuccessful rocket attack against the car carrying US Army's West German Commander, Frederick Kroesen.

December 18, 1984: Unsuccessful attempt to bomb a school for NATO officers.

August 8, 1985: Car bomb in the parking lot across from the base commander's building at the Rhein-Main air base near Frankfurt. Two people are killed in the blast.