Red Army Faction Seiters took responsibility and resigned from his post. On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the machine-gun red star, declaring the group dissolved: "Almost 28 years ago, on 14 May 1970, the RAF arose in a campaign of liberation. Today we end this project. The urban guerrilla in the shape of the RAF is now history." () In response to this statement, former BKA President Horst Herold said, "With this statement the Red Army Faction has erected its own tombstone." Horst Mahler, a founding RAF member, is
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