Founded in the late 1960s, the Baader-Meinhof Group was a violent leftist organization responsible for several decades of urban terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany. The group attacked symbols of capitalist authority, including American targets, public buildings in West Germany, and notable German industrialists, charging that West Germany's post-war government was as repressive as Hilter's Nazi regime. Members embraced a blend of anti-capitalist and anarchist beliefs, protesting the Vietnam War and the occupation of Palestine and supporting other prominent leftist causes at the time.<br /><p><br />The group referred to themselves as the <i>Rote Armee Fraktion</i>, or Red Army Faction (RAF), after the <a href= ?id=59> Japanese Red Army (JRA)</a>. The media, wishing not to legitimize the organization, used the name "Baader-Meinhoff Group" to refer to the RAF.<br /><p><br />The Baader-Meinhof Group's founder, Andreas Baader, his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, and two others were the sole members of the group at its inception, bombing a pair of Frankfurt department stores in 1968. The four were imprisoned but released on an appeal which was later overturned, forcing them to go into hiding. Baader was re-arrested in April 1970, though he was able to escape in May with the help of Ensslin and a sympathetic left-wing journalist, Ulrike Meinhof.<br /><p><br />Following the escape, Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and others trained in terrorist camps in Jordan operated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). They returned to Germany, where Baader, Ensslin, and a loyal following were responsible for several bombings, which would be sensationalized in the leftist press by Meinhof. The trio was captured in the summer of 1972, leading to the ascension of the RAF's "second generation", zealots dedicated solely to securing the release of the group's former figureheads.<br /><p><br />The rise of the second generation marked not only a change in motivation but a change in tactics as well. For the next five years, the RAF went on an assassination and kidnapping spree, successfully targeting prominent executives and public officials. In 1976, Meinhof appeared to have hung herself in her prison cell, prompting a series of rumors regarding her possible extrajudicial execution.<br /><p><br />The second generation's campaign culminated in the <i>Deutscher Herbst</i> (German Autumn) of 1977, when the group hijacked a Lufthansa plane with the help of the PFLP as a desperate attempt to free their leaders. Several days after the GSG-9, Germany's elite counter-terrorism unit, successfully stormed the plane, Baader and Ensslin were found dead in their maximum security prison cells. Official sources reported that they had committed suicide when it became apparent that the RAF's plot to free them had failed, though their deaths remain shrouded in controversy.<br />