RAF

                                 
The Red Army Faction was one of Germany’s most violent left wing groups after World War 2. The group described themselves as a “communists and anti-imperialist urban guerilla group engaged in armed resistance” against the state which they deemed as fascist at the time. The RAF was founded by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Enisslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof in 1970.

The RAF existed from 1970-1998 and committed numerous operations throughout that period. In 1977 an operation they committed lead to a national crisis known a “German Autumn”. RAF was held responsible for thirty-four deaths including many secondary targets and many injuries in its almost thirty years of activity.    

On 30 July 1977, Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former officer of the SS and NSDAP, was abducted in a violent kidnapping, soon after a letter was delivered to the Federal Government, demanding the release of eleven detainees from Stammheim. A crisis committee was formed and employed delay tactics to allow police time to discover Schleyer’s location. The crisis dragged on for more than a month, but on October 18, 1977 Hanns-Martin Schleyer was shot to death by his captors and the next day his kidnappers announced that he had been executed and revealed his locations his body was discovered later that day and the French newspaper his body was discovered later that day and the French newspaper Liberation received a letter stating “After 43 days we have ended Hanns-Martin Schleyer's pitiful and corrupt existence... His death is meaningless to our pain and our rage... The struggle has only begun. Freedom through armed, anti-imperialist struggle”. The events that happened on the autumn of 1977 are reffered to as Der Deutsche Herbst ("German Autumn").

Sources:

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Red_Army_Faction.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction#German_Autumn