Red Army Faction Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (RAF; German: '), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang (), was a West German far-left militant organization founded in 1970. Key early figures included Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler and Ulrike Meinhof, among others. Ulrike Meinhof was involved in Baader's escape from jail in 1970. The West German government as well as most Western media and literature considered the Red Army Faction to be a terrorist organization. The Red Army Faction engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies and shoot-outs with police over the course of
Red Army previously dismissed officers to duty. However, the effect of the purges would soon manifest itself in the Winter War of 1940, where Red Army forces generally performed poorly against the much smaller Finnish Army, and later during the German invasion of 1941, in which the Germans were able to rout the Soviet defenders partially due to inexperience amongst the Soviet officers. The Soviet Union expanded its indigenous arms industry as part of Stalin's industrialisation program in the 1920s and 1930s. Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (, "Raboče-krestjjanskaja Krasnaja armija (RKKA)"), frequently shortened to Red Army (, "Krasnaja