The Red Terror that Continues to Haunt Germany

Few things capture the public imagination like a nationwide hunt for high-profile criminals. For weeks, many Germans have been hooked on the detailed reports in the media about the capture of Daniela Klette. The 65-year-old woman was arrested in late February 2024 and now stands accused of crimes ranging from bombings and armed robbery to attempted murder. She is suspected of having belonged to the terrorist organisation Red Army Faction (RAF) in the 1980s and 90s.

The RAF, also known as the Baader–Meinhof Gang after early leaders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, spread far-left terror from its foundation in 1970 until its final demise in 1998. It sprang from the ideological residue that remained after the student movements of 1968/69 had dissipated. Following Marxist doctrine, members believed that only violence and disruption would be able to achieve the overthrow of West Germany’s democratic order, which they saw as ‘fascist’. 

Logo of the 1970's terrorist organization Red Army Faction (RAF) - a red star and a submachine gun

Like their more moderate peers in the student movement, RAF members came largely from middle-class backgrounds, accusing their parent generation of being ‘the Auschwitz generation. You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz,’ as Gudrun Ensslin, another early leader, put it. She said these words in the wake of the killing of the student Benno Ohnesorg, who had been shot dead by police in West Berlin at a protest against the visit of the Shah of Iran. Such incidents, along with the reintegration of former Nazis into the West German state and economy, made many young intellectuals angry. But the RAF took things a lot further than their Give-Peace-a-Chance-singing comrades. Over the years, they would bomb, murder, abduct and rob in the name of their ideology. 

Aftermath of the 1981 Red Army Faction bombing of U.S. Air Forces Europe headquarters at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Img: U.S. Air Force

Klette is alleged to have belonged to the so-called third generation of the RAF, active in the 1980s and 90s after earlier waves had been arrested or were dead. Like their predecessors, they targeted individuals whom they deemed to be representatives of the ‘capitalist-imperialist’ regime they so hated. 

On 1 February 1985, at around 7am, the doorbell rang at the house of Ernst Zimmermann, boss of a company that builds aircraft engines. His wife opened the door and was told by a woman in postie uniform that there was a letter for her husband which required his signature. Her husband came to the door. Suddenly a man with a machine gun approached. Together with his uniformed accomplice, they tied the frightened couple up. Then Ernst was led into their bedroom and repeatedly shot in the head from behind. The police are still looking for his murderer. 

In all, 34 murders are commonly ascribed to the RAF. Not all were outright targets. Some were merely in the firing line. The terrorist group coldly accepted such cases as sacrifices that had to be made for the greater good. Drivers, bodyguards and bystanders were all fair game. Daniela Klette's alleged association with the RAF also falls into a time of one such callous killing of a man who was simply a means to an end – a young American soldier stationed in West Germany for whom the group set a murderous honeytrap.