In 1968, Baader and his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin were convicted of the arson bombing of a department store in Frankfurt am Main. After being sentenced, Baader fled in November 1969, but was caught in April 1970. A few weeks later, in May 1970, he was allowed to study at the library of a research institute outside the prison, without handcuffs. Journalist Ulrike Meinhof and two other women were allowed to join him, and aided in his escape by opening a door to admit a masked man who fired shots that wounded a 64-year-old librarian, hitting his liver. Baader, the three women and the masked man fled through a window, and the group soon became known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. They were one of postwar West Germany's most violent and prominent communist terrorist group.
The Red Army Faction, AKA Baader-Meinhof Gang, operated from the late 1960s to 1998, committing numerous operations, such as robbing banks and bombing buildings, which led to a national crisis in 1977 that became known as "German Autumn".