about this site

Baader-Meinhof.com is the sole work of me, Richard Huffman. It’s entirely written and designed by me, save for translated content, selected photos, and clips of videos; I have tried to credit the original authors of those works when possible.

I first became interested in the subject when I learned that my father was targeted by left-wing German terrorists in the early 1970s (I was a young child and simply had no idea of this part of our family history). Initially my work was part of my university senior thesis project. While researching the project around 1996 and 1997, I was struck by by how little information was available on the internet; and how biased that information was. I decided to created an unbiased source of information about the group and era. The web site went online in the summer of 1997.

I have several goals with this site. I want it to be the type of site where a person could get completely subsumed through exploring. I want it to be incredibly rich, and seemingly endlessly detailed, but I also want it to be easy to navigate. I want it to be incredibly comprehensive; so that a student of the era literally will not have to go anywhere but this site because of it’s detail and rich source of source documents. I want the site to be interesting for the lay reader, but extremely useful for a student of the era.

Since 1997, this web site has become one of the most popular destinations for information about the roots of terrorism. As of late 2011, more than 3 million visitors have explored the web site.

I have been featured in History Channel documentaries about the Baader-Meinhof Group, and have been interviewed by Macleans, CNN, Radio Austria, Deutsche Welle, National Public Radio, the Times of London, the BBC and many other outlets. USA Today called my site “one of the most complete accounts of postwar Germany’s own radical agents of terror.”

I am currently (and perpetually) at work on The Gun Speaks; The Baader-Meinhof Gang at the Dawn of Terror. I sincerely have no idea how long it will take to finish it.

In addition to working on this site, I have served as the director of Advocacy and Outreach for the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, the Outreach Manager for Seattle Audubon, and the Executive Director of Purrfect Pals, the world’s largest cat-only adoption organization and sanctuary. Right now I earn my living through graphic design, web development, and stuff like that. If you would like to learn more about me, feel free to visit my personal website. Checkout the video sections; my Europe videos are fun.

A note on the URL of this website (“baader-meinhof.com”); to a certain extent the URL for this website implies that it is somehow the “official” site of the Baader-Meinhof group. Of course this isn’t true and I take a very non-partisan approach to the group. I think the biggest value that my site offers is a reasonable, balanced approach to this very sensitive historical era. I simply purchased the domain name in the early era of the internet without fully realizing it implied some kind of official connection to the group. Besides, they disbanded long ago anyway!

Please feel free to contact me.