Red Army

The Red Army is one of 26 Criminal Organizations you may encounter, and appears only in the European Theatre of Operations. Despite its name alluding to the Soviet Red Army, it is more likely referring to the "Red Army Faction", also known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang".
==In the Game==
The Red Army is regarded as a Criminal Organization.
As such, the Red Army may participate or even instigate Criminal Plots, deploying agents around the world and maintaining Hideouts in many Cities.
The Red Army appears only in one Theatre of Operations: Europe. It will have a Hideout in almost every City in this Theatre, though the location of each Hideout may not be known at the start of each Mission.
You may occasionally encounter Red Army agents Participating in Criminal Plots. It is also possible for the Red Army Mastermind to be the head of such a Plot, and if so that Mastermind must be Arrested - as with all 25 other Masterminds - in order to complete the entire game.
There is no fundamental difference between any Criminal Organization, and the Red Army is no exception.
==Historical Background==
:For more reading: Red Army Faction at Wikipedia
The game simply lists this faction as being named the "Red Army". When taken as-is, this is the name of the Soviet Military. However, since the game focuses on espionage and terrorism, it is far more likely (and hence taken for granted) that the name "Red Army" is simply a shortened version of the "Red Army Faction", also known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang".
The Red Army Faction was born out of the turmoils in Europe following the second World War. Left-wing youth became dissilusioned with German government, particularly its relaxed attitude towards Nazism and ex-Nazi officials, many of whom were not removed from government in the decades after the war. Anti-Nazi sentiment quickly developed into radicalism, prompting the creation of extreme left-wing groups dedicated to opposing the government, many of whom supported Communism and vicariously the Soviet Union's side of the Cold War.
The Baader-Meinhof Gang, named so in the West after two of its prominent leaders, took a step further from both radicalism and anti-Nazism. They had determined that the problem of continued German fascism (as they perceived it) was the result of western Imperialist agendas. They blamed NATO and the Capitalist west, and sought out to carry the fight against those institutions - forcibly.
Thus, the Red Army Faction became a terrorist organization - performing bombings and assassinations against any target they perceived as a symbol or proponent of Western Imperialism. The vast majority of their activity was confined to Germany itself, where they were quite successful in causing death and destruction on several occasions.
However, the Faction's true call to fame came when they performed their largest operation abroad - hijacking a Lufthansa flight and forcing it to land in Mogadishu (Somalia). This was also the Faction's greatest failure - as the hijackers were all gunned down in a German commando raid, with virtually no damage to the hostages.
Despite the death of its two namesake founders, the Red Army Faction continued to perform many more terrorist attacks, with their last significant action being the assassination of an influential Capitalist German official, in 1991. The fate of the remaining commandos of the Faction remains unknown, and the group is assumed to have disbanded sometime in the 1990's.
Category:Organizations
Category:Criminal Organizations