by J. Smith
Given the gravity of what has happened here, the intentional destruction of the last place where the accused prisoner might still place some trust—the trust a defendant places in his lawyer—this can be qualified as an openly fascist act of violence.
This is a state where the extermination of revolutionaries is part of the program, with legislation and the justice system mobilized towards this end, a state that tortures political prisoners by subjecting them to systematic isolation for extended periods and to brainwashing in special units created for this purpose within the prisons. This is a state where functionaries have executed Holger Meins and Siegfried Hausner. This is a state that slanders its lawyers using the entire arsenal of psychological warfare—using the media to conduct its malicious campaign—that excludes them, treats them like criminals, and finally imprisons them. In a state like this, I will not allow my freedom to be threatened any longer, nor will I be exercising my profession as a lawyer any more.
It is time for those of us who are struggling against imperialism to move on to more important tasks.
Siegfried Haag
May 11, 1975
9
Shadow Boxing: Countering Psychological Warfare
WHILE THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF Germans never approved of the RAF or their declared strategy, there was a small but not insignificant base of support and sympathy for the guerilla amongst young people and the radical left.
Apart from the undeniable pleasure many felt at seeing certain targets physically attacked, there was widespread outrage at the brutal and seemingly excessive repression the state indulged in. Despite capture, the prisoners from the guerilla were managing to beat the odds and turn this repression to their advantage in a way that was consistent with their strategy of bringing out the violence inherent in the system.
“The position of citizens in a powerful state—Don’t forget, Berlin has a Social Democratic tradition.” (Police action in West Berlin on the night of March 4/5, 1975)
Even before this strategy had won the new recruits who carried out the Stockholm action, countering this rise in sympathy had been designated a top priority for all sections of the political establishment. In the words of Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher of the FDP, “The sympathizers are the water in which the guerilla swims: we must prevent them from finding that water.”1
Or as the CDU opposition leader Helmut Kohl put it, “We need to drain the swamp … in which the flowers of Baader-Meinhof have grown.”2
To this end, a variety of propaganda maneuvers, described by the prisoners as psychological warfare, combined with renewed efforts to isolate and neutralize those who were considered to be sympathizers and supporters, often through use of the Berufsverbot, §129, and specially crafted legislation. Such repression took on new dimensions under Siegfried Buback, who succeeded Ludwig Martin as Attorney General on May 31, 1974, just weeks after the SPD’s Helmut Schmidt replaced Willy Brandt as Chancellor. (Brandt had been forced to step down following a spy scandal known as the Guillaume Affair.)
The guerilla’s lawyers were among the first to be targeted.
On October 16, 1974, the Federal Supreme Court filed to seize defense correspondence between attorney Kurt Groenewold and the RAF prisoners, alleging that he and other lawyers were at the core of the prisoners’ communication network, known as Info. This move came in the midst of the third hunger strike, and constituted the first foray in the state’s newest offensive against the prisoners’ supporters.
Info was a system of prison communication devised with the help of lawyers from the Committees Against Torture, whereby messages would be passed between the prisoners. It represented a covert means of breaking through the isolation conditions, of maintaining group identity, sharing political opinions, and coordinating hunger strike activities. As we shall see, because it was so vital to the prisoners’ survival, it was severely repressed.
An explosion of rage and rebellion swept across West Germany following the death of Holger Meins in November 1974. On November 26, the state responded with Operation Winter Trip, which according to Attorney General Buback was specifically aimed at “the sympathizers’ scene,”3 both through direct repression and by preparing public opinion to accept new restrictions on civil liberties.
On December 13, the Attorney General filed to seize legal correspondence between the prisoners and defense attorneys Klaus Croissant and Hans-Christian Ströbele. Buback accused Croissant of belonging to a “criminal association” with his clients, a claim he based on Croissant’s use of the “terminology of left extremism, such as isolation torture, extermination conditions, brainwashing units, and the like.”4 Buback also pointed to Croissant’s public statements in support of the prisoners’ hunger strike and regarding the death of Holger Meins.
On December 30, Second Senate Judge Theodor Prinzing ruled that Croissant was indeed acting as “supporter” and “mouthpiece” for the prisoners and, as such, for a “criminal association.” Ströbele was also alleged to be a member of a criminal association for referring to himself as a “socialist and a political lawyer,” and for expressing “solidarity with the thinking of the prisoners,” whom he referred to as “comrades.”5
(Ströbele’s wife, Juliana Ströbele-Gregor, was for a time banned from her job as a schoolteacher, subject to the Berufsverbot due to her husband’s work on the prisoners’ behalf. Although she succeeded in forcing the Administrative Court in Berlin to withdraw the ban, she remained stigmatized as the wife of a “terrorist lawyer.”)6
On January 1, 1975, all of this was given added legal significance as legislation known as the Lex Baader-Meinhof, or “Baader-Meinhof Laws,” became constitutional amendments to the Basic Law. This solidified the attacks on the defense, §§138a-d allowing for the exclusion of any lawyers deemed to be “forming a criminal association with the defendant.” §231a and §231b allowed for trials to continue in the absence of a defendant if the reason for this absence was found to be of the defendant’s own doing—a stipulation directly aimed at the prisoners’ effective use of hunger strikes.7 Under §146, joint defenses were now prohibited, even though the Stammheim prisoners were facing a joint trial. This paragraph was used to forbid Otto Schily from speaking to those of the accused whom he was not defending, even when he saw them every day in court. Surveillance of defense correspondence was sanctioned by §148 and §148a, while the previously held right of the accused and defense lawyers to issue statements under §275a was withdrawn.1
On March 17, 1975, Prinzing approved Buback’s motion and Croissant was barred from representing Baader. The court listed three reasons for this decision. First, in November 1974, Croissant had refused to share information that the lawyers were circulating amongst the prisoners with his client Bernhard Braun because of Braun’s decision to break off his hunger strike. Second, Croissant had spoken at a solidarity event for the hunger strikers on November 8, 1974, the day before the death of Holger Meins. Third, Croissant had represented the prisoners in their negotiations with Spiegel regarding an interview conducted in January 1975.2
All three acts were deemed to constitute punishable offenses under §129.
On May 5, 1975, Groenewold was barred from representing Baader on the basis of allegations that his office served as an “information central” to allow prisoners to communicate between themselves. What this likely meant was that he had passed letters from one prisoner to another, and may have photocopied letters meant to be shared with several prisoners, all as part of the Info system.
The next day, on May 6, Ströbele was similarly excluded, again on the basis of accusations that he was key to an “information central.”
It is clear that this series of exclusions, as well as those that followed, were meant to serve several functions.
The most apparent objective was to prevent the prisoners from adequately defending themselves in the Stammheim trial which was about to begin on May 21.
Croissant argued that by facilitating the prisoners’
interview with Spiegel, and making public statements on their behalf, he was merely doing what any good lawyer was supposed to do: presenting his clients’ version of events and their motivations to the public. Yet, it would seem the prisoners were not supposed to have lawyers who did their job properly, for as Croissant observed, “By this court decision, just a few weeks before his trial, Andreas Baader is being denied a lawyer who has spent several years preparing his defense …”3
Indeed, as the pretrial hearing began, Baader no longer had a single attorney of his choosing.
These exclusions also served a second, and in some ways more insidious function. The prisoners had come to depend on their attorneys, and the role they played in facilitating communication. The lawyers’ visits and the Info communication system provided a form of human contact, a source of information regarding developments outside of the prison, and a modicum of political discussion.
As RAF prisoner Brigitte Mohnhaupt explained:
Info … was the only possibility—that is how we conceived of and understood it—the only possibility, in general, of social interaction between isolated prisoners. Even if it was only a surrogate for communication, only letters and paper, it was, nonetheless, the only option for discussion, for political discussion, for political information and, obviously, for orientation.
Such communication, besides constituting a basic human need, was also a form of resistance. Again, according to Mohnhaupt:
The sense of Info, its entire purpose, as we understood it, was as a means to resist isolation. We have said that every sentence that a prisoner writes in Info is like an act, every sentence is an action—that’s how it was for the prisoners.4
The state would allege that Info was used as a form of discipline between prisoners, by which the “ringleaders” coerced the others into participating in hunger strikes. There were also allegations that the prisoners used the system to communicate with active commandos on the outside, a claim which has never been substantiated. As Mohnhaupt explained, what seems far more likely is that Info was threatening precisely because it opened a hole in the brutal isolation conditions the government was attempting to perfect. By clamping down on the lawyers and putting an end to this contact, the courts were able to further isolate the prisoners.5
Finally, the vendetta against the lawyers can be seen as part of the state’s broader repressive approach intended to intimidate those who might stand with the guerilla. Groenewold was subjected to the Berufsverbot on June 121 and later that month, RAF lawyers found their offices and homes targeted as police carried out simultaneous raids in Hamburg, Heidelberg, Stuttgart, and West Berlin.
Over the next several years, the lawyers were repeatedly arrested and in some cases sentenced to considerable prison terms. They were openly followed by police; in some cases, agents were stationed outside their offices, taking photos of everyone, political or not, who entered.
On June 18, 1976, in a period of incredible tension in the movement, the office of Klaus Jürgen Langner, Margrit Schiller’s attorney, was firebombed; seven people on the premises were injured.2 Not long afterwards, Axel Azzola resigned his mandate, explaining that “In this trial, one cannot speak without fear, and without freedom of speech there can be no defense … I am terribly afraid.”3
These attacks on the lawyers came at the same time as a new volley of legislation, aimed at the entire radical left, was being passed through the legislature.
In the summer of 1976, §129a became law, a more intimidating subsection of §129 specifically related to “support for a terrorist organization”: the maximum penalty for “ringleaders” and “chief instigators” was increased to ten years.4 At the same time, civil rights protections were loosened so that mere suspicion that an individual was supporting a criminal organization, even where no criminal act had been committed, became sufficient grounds to issue search and arrest warrants.5
This came after §88a had been passed in January 1976, providing for a maximum three-year jail sentence for those who “produce, distribute, publicly display, and advertise materials that recommend unlawful acts—such as disturbing the peace in special (e.g. armed) cases, murder, manslaughter, robbery, extortion, arson, and the use of explosives.”6
It was not long before §88a was being used to prosecute not only radical newspapers which reprinted the guerilla’s communiqués, but also the bookstores which carried such publications. On August 18, the police carried out predawn raids on the homes of booksellers in seven cities, as well as ten bookstores and a book distribution center, confiscating many volumes that they deemed subversive.7
Beyond the legal chill, a variety of dirty tricks and lies were also used to try to undercut public sympathy for the guerilla.
False flag attacks like the ones threatened in Stuttgart in 1972 were now actually carried out, taking aim at random bystanders. A bomb placed in the Bremen Central Station in December 1974 injured five people. Then, in 1975, there was a spate of such attacks: on September 13, four people were hurt when a bomb went off in the Hamburg train station,8 claimed by a phantom “RAF Ralf Reinders Commando.”9 (The next day, a fake bomb threat was called in to the Munich Central Station: an anonymous caller directed police to a locker, where they found a communiqué from the RAF, the 2nd of June Movement, and the Revolutionary Cells denouncing the previous day’s attack.) In October, a bomb was discovered and defused in the Nuremberg train station, claimed by a phantom “Southern Fighting Group of the RAF.” Finally, in November 1975, a similar bomb went off in the Cologne train station.
As with the Hamburg attack, the RAF denounced all these as false flag actions, and released its own communiqués disavowing them, insisting that “the urban guerilla cannot resort to terrorism as a weapon.”10 Instead, it suggested that they were the work of either a CIA unit or else a neofascist group controlled by state security: this is not as farfetched a theory as it may seem, such scenarios having played themselves out elsewhere in Europe in the 1970s.11
Nor was the media neglected as a weapon to be wielded against the guerilla.
In May 1975, within a month of the Stockholm action and the start of the Stammheim pretrial hearings, the government announced that the RAF had “possibly” managed to steal mustard gas from an army depot.1 One German newspaper warned the public that:
Terrorists are planning a poison attack. The Federal Criminal Investigation Bureau informed the speaker of the German Bundestag on Thursday that members of the Baader-Meinhof gang are planning a poison attack on the German parliament. According to the Bureau’s reports, substantial quantities of poison gas which disappeared a few weeks ago from an army depot have fallen into the hands of members of the Baader-Meinhof gang … Health departments and hospitals have been prepared for the possibility of a terrorist attack with the chemical weapon.”2
It was later revealed, though less widely reported, that only two litres were missing, and that they might in fact have simply been misplaced. A few months later, it was admitted that this was in fact the case, and that they had since been found.
Nor was the phantom mustard gas scare an isolated case.3
An almost humorous example occurred in Munich when a judge taking the subway home from a party thought he recognized one of the RAF fugitives riding along with him: Rolf Pohle, who had been freed during the exchange for Lorenz earlier that year. Spiegel got wind of this and another ominous fact: a plan of the subway system had been reported missing from a telephone cabinet, clearly a newsworthy item in fastidious Bavaria. The magazine declared that all this pointed towards a possible impending RAF attack, and a full-scale manhunt was launched throughout the Land.
Nothing came of this, and government officials were later forced to admit that the judge in question had been “no longer quite sober” on the night in question.4
On top of such scaremongering news stories, an additional component of the state’s psychological warfare strategy was the trial of Ensslin, Baader, Raspe, and Meinhof—the Stammheim show trial.
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The accused had never denied that they bore responsibility for the attacks in May 1972, establishing what would become the standard practice of all RAF members accepting responsibility for all RAF actions. Yet, this trial was no formality; rather, it was used as a forum for the state to “expose” the captured combatants as monsters and the RAF as something monstrous.
Although the defendants had been apprehended in 1972, the trial was not scheduled to begin until 1974; it was then postponed for an additional year to avoid any unpleasant publicity during the World Cup held in Stuttgart that summer.5 Next, its very location was turned into a propaganda statement about the danger posed by the accused: having the trial in the regular Stuttgart court house was deemed out of the question, and instead a special “terrorist-proof” facility was ordered built especially for the RAF’s alleged ringleaders.
As a journalist from the Sunday Times wrote in 1975:
That remarkable building is now almost complete in a sugar beet field near Stammheim prison. A concrete and steel fortress that will cost about £3 million, it includes among the features not normally found in courthouses, anti-aircraft defense against helicopter attack, listening devices sown in the ground around the building, scores of closed-circuit TV cameras, and an underground tunnel linked to Stammheim so that the defendants can be smuggled in and out of court without showing their noses in the open. The five judges (no jury), the accused and all witnesses will sit behind bullet-proof glass security screens.
Photographing the new court-house is strictly forbidden. The site workmen were, literally, sworn to secrecy. Plain-clothes police patrol it constantly, and local farmers, to their disgust, must carry passes to get to their fields.6
In this already Orwellian setting, the prisoners were confronted with the testimony of those few of their former comrades who had agreed to cooperate in return for leniency, new identities, or simply as a result of being psychologically broken by isolation.
