Members of the Red Army Faction Members of the Red Army Faction The Red Army Faction (RAF) existed in West Germany from 1970 to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the "German Autumn". The RAF was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Horst Mahler, and others. The first generation of the organization was commonly referred to by the press and the government as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang", a name the group did not use to refer to itself. The RAF was responsible for 34 deaths, including many secondary targets
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