Yahapd: Was there ever, like, rational for why they went after these specific people? Or was it an attempt to just bring down the government and create chaos. Yahapd: There wasn't really any arbitrary violence, and they really did try to minimize casualties to non regime alined people. The cops actually, throughout all this, the the cops themselves killed two people who were wrongly suspected of being involved.
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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.
