Andreas Baader (1943-1977) and Ulrike Meinhof (1934-1976) were the best known founders and leading members of the West German "Red Army Faction" (RAF). Acting as Communist urban guerrillas, their names were joined by the media to make the popular designation of the "Baader-Meinhof Group," which West German police classified as a terrorist organization of violent anarchists.

Bernd Andreas Baader was born in Munich, Bavaria, on May 6, 1943. He attended several secondary schools but finally ended his formal education without graduating. In 1963 he moved to Berlin. In 1967 his girlfriend, Gudrun Ensslin, an active member of the leading organization of the extraparliamentary movement, the German Socialist Student Organization (SDS), brought him to the Berlin student protest scene, and Baader began to participate in its political activities.

On the night of April 2, 1968, Baader, together with Ensslin and two other persons, set two Frankfurt department stores on fire with fire bombs "to light...