Blackwell Reference Online

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Through three decades and 53 major terrorist acts against the West German state, the left-extremist Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction) (RAF) became one of the most violent and persistent terrorist groups in Western Europe. The RAF grew out of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition (Extraparliamentary Opposition) (APO) and the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (Socialist German Student Union) (SDS), two of the main groups of the New Left in West Germany protesting against the Vietnam War , proposed curtailment of citizen rights during national crises, and the conspicuous silence on Germany's Nazi past. Tensions escalated between student groups and police in the aftermath of the shooting of 26-year-old student Benno Ohnesorg by a policeman in West Berlin on June 2, 1967, during a demonstration. Gudrun Ensslin, future founder of the RAF, exclaimed, “This fascist state means to kill us all. … Violence is the only way to answer violence. This is the Auschwitz generation” ( Aust 1985 : 55). The attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke , SDS leader, in 1968, led to more violence against the “fascist” West German state. On April 2, 1968 a group of four people, including Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, future leaders of the RAF, fire-bombed two department stores in Frankfurt to protest the Vietnam War and West German capitalism ( Becker 1989 : 67). Arrested shortly thereafter ... log in or subscribe to read full text