The west german government had its hands tied, and it was effectively reduced to a government that was there primarily to act an some kind of buffer state against the soviet union. It was never really going to be able, in many ways, structurally, after 19 forty six, to do anything very quickly about something like the red army faction. But i think if they had been allowed to operate on their own, he had not been constantly accused of indulging in knotsy behaviour by attempting to do anything substantive,. you know, the r a f would never have existed.
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Growing up in the generation following the second world war, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Ulrike Meinhof lead the West German militant Red Army Faction in a series of bombings, kidnappings and assassinations during the 1970s that led to the death of 35 people. Identifying with various leftist and communist causes including anti-imperialism, Maoism, and opposition to the Vietnam War, the group sought a break in their society from what they felt was a continuation of their parents’ generation of fascist government now under the control of what they saw as the American-led capitalist war machine. The group and their leaders in particular gained notoriety in the press and significant popularity amongst the youth of Germany, underscoring the generational divide that seemed to be growing in the shadow Nazi Germany’s defeat and subsequent de-Nazification process.
