In many ways, this was the last gasp of marxus leninis political violence. The public in west germany would have been tooaral ed by idological confusion to really know what to do about it. It's hard to even tell which of it is political. A lot of slaught r of, like just women and children. Despite a lot of ideological confusion, there was a lot more clarity of purpose. And this kind of coldwar episode, i mean, it was easy, easy enough to understand.
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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.
