unit that was embedded, in or part of, a wider communist workers' movement, i.e., a fraction of a whole.

The group always called itself the Rote Armee Fraktion, never the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang. The name refers to all incarnations of the organization: the "first generation" RAF, which consisted of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and others; the "second generation" RAF; and the "third generation" RAF, which existed in the 1980s and 90s. The terms "Baader-Meinhof Gang" and "Baader-Meinhof Group" were first used by