How did the Red Army Faction get guns?

This is bugging me. How easy was it to acquire firearms in 1970s west Germany? I'd imagine it was pretty difficult, wasn't it?

What's more interesting is that they used native German H&K guns like the mp5, prominently featured in their insignia, and apparently they also used an HK43 rifle on occasion. That rules out Soviet support. There's also the fact that they didn't really like the USSR anyway.

But as far as I know H&K never sold to civilians in Germany, or am I wrong? Did the RAF steal from shipments? Was gun control in Germany more lenient back then? Or elsewhere in Europe? What am I missing?

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probably in France, in the 70s Paris was an open city with terrorists and intelligency agencies from every faction in the world

>implying gun control works

they needed cool guns to go with their looks

It might not prevent people from using unregulated leftover WW2 firearms in Germany, but wouldn't gun laws prevent the sale of then-modern H&K weapons to civilians?

Probably resold to them by countries that had previously received support from Western governments.

There's a reason you can find Taliban and Al Qaeda with G3 rifles in Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia gave thousands to them during the war with the Soviets, who in turn had received them from Germany.

>when you're a poor illiterate farmer using a weapon that would pay your annual salary for a decade if sold in the United States

Best answer so far, but how did they ship them back to Germany? Was international mail really that lax back then or something? Smuggling groups?

God if i could send a nuke through a time machine to any time in history it would be the 60's or 70's

Boat into Italy, drive them across the border. Italy has a large coastline, and at the time the place was awash with guns at it was.

God i wish that were me

> When you´re a commie and Chavez gives you a ww1 Moisin Nagant from cuban stockpiles that collectors would kill for

What's the dude on the far left holding, pun not intended?

looks like a thompson

Israel

Were the RAF legitimate far lefties or were they just edgy?

both

Depends on the year taken innit
if this is from the 70s or whatever I mean you'd just walk into a gun store and ask for spare change

Both, pretty much.
they were well versed on the lingo and the theory and seemed more or less of conviction. Then again, considering the way they chose to act out conviction, that's edge.

Wessis are so naive

Smuggling would be my guess because there was already a large amount of coke running and other organized crime in West Germany (because its the 70's/80's) so an arms trade would not surprise me.

Grüße aus meinem Stasi-Bunker, Genosse!

iirc they raided police stations and/or army barracks. but obviously they had a few guns to start with.

>their looks

more likely an AKM, the bolt handle is curved and as is the magazine. the pistol grip has a protrusion on the bottom common to AK rifles and the sling hangs off the left side of the rifle whereas the Thompson's sling swivel is under.

soviets supplied them the weapons, just like they did with every communist terrorist organisation in europe... And the soviets supplied every socialist party in europe with money, making them all traitors and colaborators

>Lucy in the sky with diamonds
cringe

>That rules out Soviet support.

Lmfao this dumb faggot

It's an AK

I'd nuke the 60s, too.

Because the Red Army Faction was created and supported by the KGB and Stasi. A spy agency as powerful as the KGB or Stasi had no trouble at all smuggling in arms and explosives to West German Marxist terrorist organizations.

Pakistan also license produces H&K and Rheinmetall firearms. Guess which country is right south of Afghanistan, and whose intelligence service created the Taliban?

But the RAF vocally criticized the USSR and communist governments at the time for being too conservative. Why would the eastern bloc want to give precious money and resources to people who don't support them? And why would the RAF accept help from them?

I have no knowledge on the subject, but generally speaking countries supporting insurgencies in other countries, and wanting plausible deniability, won't give those insurgents weapons that can be easily and obviously traced back to the giver.

The East Germans would have given the RAF western weapons they'd managed to acquire through whatever means.

Because they're both Communists at the end of the day. It also allowed for the East Germans to act as the good cop to the RAF's bad cop.

because while the group itself did not support the actions of the DDR or the USSR they were still useful as a group which caused internal strife in a hostile government. As such they were important pawns to the Soviets.

I'm still very skeptical of this. Would the Soviets, during the 1970s when NATO-USSR relations were arguably at their best, really want to support an insurgency right on the edge of the iron curtain? Would this not upset the balance of power in Europe?

I know for a fact that we (Czechoslovakia) supplied Libya with explosives and Libya was distributing them to groups like RAF and PLO.

Mitrokhin Archives proved that the KGB was supporting far left terror groups like the RAF, IRA, and PLO. The whole reason was to destabilize NATO countries through indirect proxy actors.

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