Red Army Faction

The Red Army Faction (in German: Rote Armee Fraktion; RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang, which was one of the core groups within the RAF, was postwar Western Germany's most active left-wing terrorist organization. The RAF referred to its members as "urban guerrillas". It operated from the 1970s to 1998, causing great unrest (especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis) and killing dozens of high-profile Germans in its more than 20 years of existence.

Events timeline

May 24, 1967 - Members of Kommune I, a Berlin-based radical commune, pass out leaflets at Berlin's Free University which jokingly imply that one way to bring a Marxist Revolution to fruition in West Germany is by deliberately burning down department stores and other business buildings in West Germany.

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June 2, 1967- During a visit to West Germany by the Shah of Iran, students gather to protest the brutal nature of the Shah's regime. This is only one of a continually growing number of protests in Berlin. Students have protested everything from the war in Vietnam to university policy each week and there is no sign that the marches will stop. Ulrike Meinhof, a noted journalist and editor of the leftist magazine Konkret, is a regular attendee of the protests but is unable to attend the June 2 protest, she is busy shopping for furniture for her new Hamburg home. Andreas Baader, at thist time nothing more then a small-time troublemaker, is also unable to attend the protest. He is spending time in a Traunstein jail for stealing a motorcycle. During the course of the protest police attack the protesting crowd and pandemonium ensues. During the chaos young Benno Ohnesorg is grabbed by police and a gun is pointed at his head. The gun goes off, perhaps accidentally. Ohnesborg, who was attending his first protest, is killed. He would later become a martyr for the leftist movement in West Germany.

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