Der RAF

In the 1960's, World War II had been over for only 20 years. Some of the important leader figures in the government, police force, and the schools were people who had been leaders during the Nazi regime. The chancellor himself had been a part of the Nazi party. The baby boomers were just starting to mature and were the first people who began to question why this was possible. They were under the belief that their country was continuing to be a fascist state, even after the Third Reich had ended. Because of this belief, the new generation felt the need to bring it upon themselves to stop the fascist state from continuing.
The first generation of the RAF was founded by four main people- Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, and Horst Mahler. They were originally referred to as the Baader-Meinhof Group. Using training they gained from working with guerrilla's in Palestine, they sabotaged and terrorized Germany, pulling bank robberies to gain money and bombing police stations, buildings which belonged to the Axel Springer press, and US military forces. They criticized their country for helping America in the Vietnam war, and drew inspiration from people like Che Guevara, Lenin, and Marx.

The second generation of the RAF arose when the first generation was in prison. The second generation consisted of people who sympathized with the original four, but were not actually connected to them. They kidnapped Peter Lorenz, who was the CDU candidate for mayor of Berlin, in an attempt to pressure the state to release several inmates. Their demands were met, and so Lorenz was released. Several months later, members stormed a West German embassy in Stockholm and took hostages. Two of the hostages were killed when their demands were not met. Two members of the RAF died due to a explosives they planted detonated. More attacks continued to take place through out the trials of the first generation, including the shooting of a federal prosecutor and his body guard while they were sitting at a red light.

1980 was the time the third generation of the RAF was formed. They continued their attacks, bombing places like the US Air Force Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, and targeting government officials and important businessmen. In 1990, after the reunification of East and West Germany, the RAF was receiving both financial and logistical support from a security and intelligence organization in East Germany. Their last action was bombing a newly built prison in Weiterstadt.

April 20th, 1998 marked the end of the RAF. An eight-page letter was written up and sent to a news agency, declaring that "the urban guerrilla in the shape of the RAF is now history."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction, Dec. 10

Today's current forms of terrorist attacks resemble the RAF in their reliance on using bombs. Of course, all terrorist groups are forms of extremists, ready to go to any extent in order to force change in their government. While I am not the most well informed on today's terrorism, it appears to me that most of the attacks made today are on civilians, where as the RAF originally made it very clear that they did not want to hurt civilians.