Rote Armee Fraktion

The Rote Armee Fraktion or Red Army Faction was created by students whom fought against perceived Nazism in the German government and economy. The spark of the movement was when the Shah of Iran hired thugs to attack those whom opposed him and the police didn't do enough to stop it. Then later at another rally a German protester and student was shot in the head by a police officer. Besides Nazism and imperialists, the RAF also fought against the war in Vietnam and social classes.

The first generation was a group of protestors whom grouped together, also known as the Baader Meinhoff group. Later after the group left Germany for a while they came back and formed the RAF with new found resources and following. The third generation was following the fall of the leaders of the Baader Meinhoff group.

the RAF started as a group whom protested and had used bombs as a way to get the medias attention. However fairly quickly they found themselves bombing places with less and less care about those inside seeing that they got more attention when people were involved. 

The biggest blow to the RAF would be the dissolution of the Soviet Union. With the fall of the large the communist group, it was much harder to find support for such ideals. They finally sent  a eight page paper to the Reuters news agency on April 20th 1998 stating that the group had been dissolved.

Similarities to today terrorist attacks would be that both use violence to get attention. however i would say that they differ because allot of terrorist attacks go out of their way to inflict damage to civilians, where the RAF were more or less indifferent. They did not necessarily want civilians to die, they wanted attention.