by J. Smith
This book about the Red Army Faction of American-occupied Germany is one that should be read by any serious student of anti-imperialist politics. “Volume 1: Projectiles for the People” provides a history of the RAF’s development through the words of its letters and communiqués. What makes the book especially important and relevant, however, is the careful research and documentation done by its editors. From this book you will learn the mistakes of a group that was both large and strong, but which (like our own home-grown attempts in this regard) was unable to successfully communicate with the working class of a “democratic” country on a level that met their needs. While the armed struggle can be the seed of something much larger, it is also another means of reaching out and communicating with the people. Students interested in this historic era would do well to study this book and to internalize both the successes and failures of one of the largest organized armed anti-imperialist organizations operating in Western Europe since World War II.
—Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade
Clear-headed and meticulously researched, this book deftly avoids many of the problems that plagued earlier attempts to tell the brief but enduring history of the RAF. It offers a remarkable wealth of source material in the form of statements and letters from the combatants, yet the authors manage to present it in a way that is both coherent and engaging. Evidence of brutal—and ultimately ineffective—attempts by the state to silence the voices of political prisoners serve as a timely and powerful reminder of the continued need for anti-imperialist prisoners as leaders in our movements today. At once informative and inspirational, this is a much-needed contribution to the analysis of armed struggle and the cycles of repression and resistance in Europe and around the world.
—Sara Falconer, Toronto Anarchist Black Cross Federation
This first volume about the RAF is about a part of WWII that did not end when the so called allies defeated the nazis. The RAF warriors come from a strong socialist history and knew they were fighting for the very life of their country. Many victories and many errors were scored which provide this important look into REAL her/history lessons. A must read for all serious alternative history students who then in turn can use it as a teaching tool towards a better future.
—b (r.d. brown), former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade
Starting in the Sixties, a new revolutionary strategy began to plague the capitalist metropolis—the urban guerilla. Warfare once waged by peasant armies in the countryside of a Cuba, a China, or a Guinea-Bissau, was suddenly transferred to small cells of ex-students in the imperialist centers of Berlin, Rome, and New York. No urban guerrillas became more famed or more demonized than West Germany’s Red Army Faction (RAF). We knew their signature bold actions in the headlines: from the damaging bombing of the u.s. army V Corps headquarters in Frankfurt in 1972, in response to Washington’s mining of Hanoi’s harbor in an escalation of the Vietnam War, to the kidnapping and later execution of the head of the West German industrialists’ association, in an effort to negotiate for the release of revolutionary prisoners. But we never heard their political voices. Since the RAF’s political statements, debates, and communiqués were untranslated and unavailable in English even within the left.
Now, at last, a significant documentary history of the RAF has come into the spotlight, complete with a readable account of the postwar German New Left from which it emerged. Even better, this work was done by editors/translators who reject the obedient capitalist media’s trivializing of the RAF as “pathological” death-wishing celebrities. In their hands, the words of the RAF are revealed as serious responses to the failure of parliamentary reformism, trade-unionism, and pacifism, to stop the solidification of Germany’s own form of a neofascist capitalism (lightly cosmeticized with a layer of that numbing “consumer democracy”). The young RAF fighters hoped for liberation in their dangerous experiment but were willing to accept tragic consequences, and their story is emotionally difficult to read with eyes open. Controversial as the RAF was, their systematic torture in special “anti-terrorist” facilities stirred worldwide unease and even protest. In fact, those special prisons were the eagerly studied forerunners for the u.s. empire’s own latest human rights abuses, from Guantanamo to the domestic “maxi-maxi” prisons. We all and the RAF are much closer than the capitalist public wants to believe. It is all here, in this first volume of the Red Army Faction documentary histories, and we should thank all those who worked on this book.
—J. Sakai, author of Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat
THE RED ARMY FACTION:
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
VOLUME I
PROJECTILES for the PEOPLE
THE RED ARMY FACTION:
A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY
VOLUME I
PROJECTILES for the PEOPLE
forewords by Bill Dunne and Russell “Maroon” Shoats
introductory texts and translations by
André Moncourt and J. Smith
the red army faction: a documentary history
volume 1: projectiles for the people
introductory texts and translations by André Moncourt and J. Smith
The opening epigram on page v is from Karl-Heinz Dellwo “Kein Ankommen,
kein Zurück” in Nach dem bewaffneten Kampf, Angelika Holderberg ed. (Gießen:
Psychsozial-Verlag, 2007).
ISBN: 978-1-60486-029-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008929110
Copyright 2009 Kersplebedeb
This edition copyright 2009 PM Press and Kersplebedeb
Many of the translated texts in this book
are available online at www.germanguerilla.com
Kersplebedeb Publishing and Distribution
CP 63560
CCCP Van Horne
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3W 3H8
www.kersplebedeb.com
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Layout and Index by Kersplebedeb
Cover Design: Josh MacPhee/Justseeds.org
The photo used on the front cover is of the funeral of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe in 1977.
Printed in the United States on recycled paper
dedicated to the memory of Jim Campbell
“We are a projectile,” Andreas Baader wrote to the group,
thereby articulating an ethical point of view in which the
subject and his objective became a single thing. It also meant
that if no further separation existed between the “subject” and
“object” it was obvious how it would end: in death.
Karl-Heinz Dellwo
CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY BILL DUNNE
A WORD FROM RUSSELL “MAROON” SHOATS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TRANSLATORS’ NOTE
PREFACE
ACRONYM KEY
GERMAN TERMS
1 “DEMOCRACY” COMES TO DEUTSCHLAND:
POSTFASCIST GERMANY AND THE
CONTINUING APPEAL OF IMPERIALISM
not wanted in the model: the kpd
2 THE RE-EMERGENCE OF
REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS IN WEST GERMANY
the old left and the new reality
3 TAKING UP THE GUN
Faced With This Justice System, We Can’t Be Bothered Defending Ourselves
(Thorwald Proll, October 1968)
Build the Red Army! (June 5, 1970)
The Urban Guerilla Concept (April 1971)
4 BUILDING A BA
SE AND “SERVING THE PEOPLE”
the socialist patients’ collective
Andreas Baader: Letter to the Press (January 24, 1972)
Serve the People: The Urban Guerilla and Class Struggle (April 1972)
on the treatment of traitors
This is Edelgard Graefer… (March 27, 1972)
5 THE MAY OFFENSIVE:
BRINGING THE WAR HOME
For the Victory of the People of Vietnam (May 14, 1972)
Attacks in Augsburg and Munich (May 16, 1972)
Attack on Judge Buddenberg (May 20, 1972)
Attack on the Springer Building (May 20, 1972)
Attack on the Heidelberg Headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe (May 25, 1972)
To the News Editors of the West German Press (May 28, 1972)
Regarding the Fascist Bomb Threats Against Stuttgart (May 29, 1972)
Statement to the Red Aid Teach-In (May 31, 1972)
6 BLACK SEPTEMBER:
A STATEMENT FROM BEHIND BARS
the appeal of the fedayeen: to all the free people of the world
The Black September Action in Munich: Regarding the Strategy for Anti-Imperialist Struggle (November 1972)
7 STAYING ALIVE: SENSORY DEPRIVATION,
TORTURE, AND THE STRUGGLE BEHIND BARS
the lawyers
horst mahler after the raf
Ulrike Meinhof on the Dead Wing (1972–3, 1973–4)
Second Hunger Strike (May 8, 1973)
Provisional Program of Struggle for the Political Rights of Imprisoned Workers (September 1974)
Third Hunger Strike (September 13, 1974)
The Expulsion of Horst Mahler (Monika Berberich, September 27, 1974)
Holger Meins’ Report on Force-Feeding (October 11, 1974)
Holger Meins’ Last Letter (November 1, 1974)
Interview with Spiegel Magazine (January 1975)
Andreas Baader Regarding Torture (June 18, 1975)
8 A DESPERATE BID TO FREE THE PRISONERS:
THE STOCKHOLM ACTION
Letter from the RAF to the RAF Prisoners (February 2, 1975)
Occupation of the West German Embassy in Stockholm (April 24, 1975)
Defense Attorney Siegfried Haag Goes Underground (May 11, 1975)
9 SHADOW BOXING:
COUNTERING PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
“We know why he’s saying it” (Brigitte Mohnhaupt, July 22, 1976)
On the Liberation of Andreas Baader (Ulrike Meinhof, September 13, 1974)
The Bombing of the Bremen Train Station (December 9, 1974)
The Nature of the Stammheim Trial: The Prisoners Testify (August 19, 1975)
No Bomb in Munich Central Station (September 14, 1975)
The Bombing of the Hamburg Train Station (September 23, 1975)
The Bombing of the Cologne Train Station (November 1975)
10 THE MURDER OF ULRIKE MEINHOF
ulrike’s brain
meinhof: the suicide-murder debate
Jan-Carl Raspe: On the Murder of Ulrike Meinhof (May 11, 1976)
Fragment Regarding Structure (Ulrike Meinhof, 1976)
Two Letters to Hanna Krabbe (Ulrike Meinhof, March 19 & 23, 1976)
Letter to the Hamburg Prisoners (Ulrike Meinhof, April 13, 1976)
Interview with Le Monde Diplomatique (June 10, 1976)
11 MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE ON THE LEFT…
(AN INTERMISSION OF SORTS)
12 & BACK TO THE RAF…
RZ Letter to the RAF Comrades (December 1976)
Monika Berberich Responds to the Alleged RZ Letter (January 10, 1977)
Andreas Baader: On the Geneva Convention (June 2, 1977)
13 DARING TO STRUGGLE, FAILING TO WIN
Fourth Hunger Strike (March 29, 1977)
The Assassination of Attorney General Siegfried Buback (April 7, 1977)
Statement Calling Off the Fourth Hunger Strike (April 30, 1977)
The Assassination of Jürgen Ponto (August 14, 1977)
Statement Breaking Off the Fifth Hunger Strike (September 2, 1977)
The Attack on the BAW (September 3, 1977)
The Schleyer Communiqués (September–October, 1977)
Operation Kofr Kaddum (SAWIO, October 13, 1977)
SAWIO Ultimatum (October 13, 1977)
Final Schleyer Communiqué (October 19, 1977)
77: living with the fallout
14 THE STAMMHEIM DEATHS
15 ON THE DEFENSIVE
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I: EXCERPTS FROM THE
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
APPENDIX II: THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION
OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RAF PRISONERS
APPENDIX III: THE FRG AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL
APPENDIX IV: THE GENEVA CONVENTION: EXCERPTS
APPENDIX V: STRANGE STORIES:
PETER HOMANN AND STEFAN AUST
APPENDIX VI: THE GERMAN GUERILLA’S
PALESTINIAN ALLIES: WADDI HADDAD’S PFLP (EO)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
ARMED STRUGGLE IN W. GERMANY: A CHRONOLOGY
NOTE ON SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
FOREWORD BY BILL DUNNE
Projectiles for the People, Volume One of The Red Army Faction: A Documentary History, is an important exposition of what it means to wage armed struggle as an urban guerilla in the post WWII western imperial-capitalist paradigm. Via the fast-turning pages of Projectiles, Smith and Moncourt usher us through the RAF’s emergence in Germany from a moribund and constrained left opposition misdirected and suppressed by U.S. imperialism and a quisling bourgeoisie. The RAF’s “projectiles for the people” documented their political, practical, intellectual, and emotional trajectory into taking up and using the gun in service of revolutionary communist class war. Projectiles brings us their voices and links their context to ours.
Projectiles shows us how the RAF engaged in people’s warfare without descending into adventurism. It reveals how the guerilla was able to work with apparently unlikely allies and eschew involvement with ostensibly likely ones based on sophisticated analysis of the demands of conditions, time, and place. It illustrates how the comrades were able to internalize the trauma of frequently fatal mistakes and defeats as well as the euphoria of correct practice and victories. It explains how the organization recognized and responded to the enemy’s slanderous campaign of vilification aimed at creating a false opposition to the underground. Projectiles, in this exploration of these and many other elements of RAF praxis, thus illustrates that and how the RAF developed arguably the highest expression of armed struggle in the late capitalist first world.
Projectiles for the People is more than a dry historical treatise, however; it is a highly accessible rendition of a story of struggle that puts us into both the thought and the action. That placement conveys more than a sense or understanding of the RAF’s praxis. It transmits a connection in a visceral way. Not since reading Ten Days that Shook the World have I been so drawn into a political narrative. Reading like a historical thriller notwithstanding, Projectiles lets us see a rare confluence of theory and practice of which anyone who aspires to make revolution should be aware. The RAF may no longer be with us, but it has prepared the ground for and can yet aid the current movement for the most equitable social reality in which all people will have the greatest possible freedom to develop their full human potential. Nowhere else has the RAF’s life, times, and legacy been so clearly laid out.
A WORD FROM RUSSELL “MAROON” SHOATS
In today’s world ANYONE who dares to raise their voice against ANYTHING being heaped on them by those in power needs to read this book. The repressive methods that the West German state brought to bear against the RAF—detailed by the authors—have been adopted, universalized, and refined, and can be found in use in a prison, jail, detention center or other “holding facility” not far from you.
In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, w
orld-wide capital—led by U.S. imperialism—is possibly in the endgame struggle, not of Marx’s “Socialism or Barbarism,” but of what is beginning to be understood by a majority of our planet’s humans: 21st century capitalism/imperialism… equals EXTERMINISM!
The prison isolation and torture methods detailed in this volume are one of the repressive forces’ last ditch efforts to arrest the global material forces that signal their demise.
After being subjected to similar methods of isolation and torture for decades, I can only offer one piece of advice: either stand up and struggle against this monster—and face the horrors detailed in this book—or lay down and accept the idea (and reality) that 21st century capital/imperialism—unchecked—will destroy EVERYTHING it comes into contact with.
Bill Dunne was captured on October 14, 1979. He had been shot three times by police, and according to the state had been involved in an attempt to break a comrade out of the Seattle jail, as part of an unnamed anarchist collective. In 1980, he received a ninety-five-year sentence, and in 1983 had a consecutive fifteen years with five concurrent added due to an attempted escape. As he has stated, “The aggregate 105 years is a ‘parole when they feel like it’ sort of sentence.”
In 1970, Russell “Maroon” Shoats was accused of an attack on a Philadelphia police station in which an officer was killed. He went underground, functioning for eighteen months as a soldier in the Black Liberation Army. In 1972, he was captured and sentenced to multiple life sentences. He escaped twice—in 1977 and 1980—but both times was recaptured. Most of his time in prison, including at present, has been spent in isolation conditions, locked down 22 to 24 hours a day.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many, many people were very helpful to us as we worked on this book.
Many, many more had already laid the basis for our study through years of hard work providing a voice for the underground. In the days before the internet, a number of movement publications took responsibility for translating and distributing texts by illegal groups like the Red Army Faction. In this regard, we would like to thank those who worked on Resistance (based in Vancouver, Canada in the 1980s), Arm the Spirit (based in Toronto, Canada in the 1990s), and l’Internationale (based in France, 1983-1984). While it did not specifically focus on the guerilla, the Toronto-based newspaper Prison News Service, which appeared in the 1980s and early 1990s, is worth also mentioning in this regard.
