terminology Urban Guerrilla

“Urban Guerrilla” was the term that the left wing terrorists of German called themselves. The term “Urban Guerrilla” was coined to contrast with the firmly established concept of rural guerrillas whose style of warfare had been utilized for centuries by groups as diverse as the American forces in the Revolutionary War and Chairman Mao’s forces in the 1930s. The difference was that urban guerrillas were to take their wars out of the jungles and mountains, and bring it directly to the population centers.

Carlos Marighella, a South American revolutionary, wrote the definitive field manual for Urban Guerrillas, his Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla. The Baader-Meinhof Gang used Marighella’s book as their bible, though it is clear in retrospect that the book was fatally flawed.