When I arrived in Germany in January 1978...the RAF had been active for about 10 years. There the first week....the Air Force 'briefing' was about 10 minutes long and simply said....you needed to pay attention to things.
For me....coming out of a rural Alabama surroundings....I had trouble imagining terrorism. From the description from 'Willi' (the German in my shop)....they were simply young 'gangsters'....on the far-left side of the political spectrum.
A week passed, and I was in the Frankfurt train station...observing the 'wanted' poster of the dozen-odd folks the police were seeking. Again, my mind went to 'gangsters'...like the 'Bonnie-and-Clyde' legend stuff.
Two years passed, and I left Germany, but returning in 1984....where the RAF were noted as a bigger-and-more-worrisome 'gangster' unit.
All of this continued until the Wall went down (1990). As the event occurred....oddly....it was like you'd poked a hole in the balloon, and the RAF significance dried up. The general gut feeling? RAF survived as a tool of the East German Stassi (secret police). You can bring this up today, and folks argue about it....some agree....some disagree.
How many RAF members are still out there? Two guys...in their late 60s and mid-70s. I noticed a updated poster today. Cops agree....they've mostly stayed around Germany all these years....hiding, and using fake IDs....avoiding arrest.
Was there true fear in the 1970s/1980s? I suspect if you asked in that era....on a index of 1-to-10....most folks would have said less than a '4'. The curious thing....each time that they robbed a bank or had a shoot-out....it made front pages for week.
Constantly getting help? Most believe that hidden cells around Germany provided shelter, and the police weren't equipped to really handle this type problem.
Bigger threat at the time....than today's Islamic nut-case knife-guys? I'd argue they were about equal in terms of public attention.
Total number killed? Thirty-four over a three decade period.
Why all this hype currently (March 2025)? Well....this last female caught (a 1980s RAF member) was caught, and her court case is upon us. If she was convicted of all charges? Probably 15-to-20 years of prison. Does the public care? I'd say more than 90-percent are not paying attention and don't care.
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