Baader-Meinhof (Red Army Faction)

“Baader-Meinhof” became the popular name for the West German left-wing guerrilla group the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction), who were active from 1968 against the West German government (which it viewed as a fascist state riddled with former Nazis) and what it perceived as US imperialism.

The three main founding members were convicted arsonists Andreas Baader (1943 – 1977) and Gudrun Ensslin (1940 – 1977) (both pictured below), and prominent left-wing journalist Ulrike Meinhof (1934 – 1976, pictured above).

The group carried out a succession of bank robberies, bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations of high-profile industrial and government figures in West Germany during the 1970s.

Baader was born in Munich and studied under the Palestinian revolutionary group al-Fatah in Jordan, before returning to Germany to join the 1960s student protest movement.

He was imprisoned in 1968 for setting fire to shops in Frankfurt but escaped in 1970.

He was re-arrested during a shootout in Frankfurt in 1972 and sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1977.

He took his own life in October of the same year, following the failure of the Faction’s hostage swap attempt at Mogadishu airport in Somalia.

Ensslin also killed herself in prison.

Meinhof was later found hanging from a rope made of towels in her cell – her death sparking a stream of conspiracy theories from her followers.

The group continued through several “generations” – claiming responsibility in 1990 for the murder of Detlev Rohwedder, the government agent responsible for selling off state-owned companies of the former East German regime – before officially disbanding in 1998.

“The revolution says: I was, I am, I will be again,” the group declared as it signed off.