The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1

by J. Smith

  2 On May 4, 1970, the National Guard opened fire on students demonstrating at Kent State University in Ohio against the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Four students were killed and nine others were wounded. Of the wounded, one was permanently paralyzed, and several were seriously maimed.

  1 In the correct version of this quote (Capital Volume I, chapter 15, volume 5), this year is 1830. An error was made either as this document was being written by the RAF or when it was transcribed by supporters, and the year became 1880.

  2 Roughly between $364,000 and $728,000.

  1 Mohammed Mossadegh was elected Prime Minister of Iran in 1951. He quickly began to nationalize Iranian assets including oil. In 1953, he was removed from power by the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, in a CIA-backed coup. He died in prison in 1967.

  1 Turkey’s East is home to the oppressed Kurdish minority, and also bordered on the Soviet Union.

  1 During negotiations with the Palestinian commando, Minister of the Interior Hans-Dietrich Genscher is reported to have offered himself as a hostage in exchange for the Israeli athletes. The commando is said to have refused this offer. Given Horst Mahler’s comments at his October 1972 trial (see page 188), it seems likely that the RAF was attempting an oblique criticism of this decision.

  2 Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, chapter 15, volume 5. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S5.

  1 Gustav Noske, the SPD Minister responsible for the military during bloody suppression of the November Revolution of 1918, during which communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were killed.

  2 Eduard Bernstein, a leader of the German Social Democratic Party, who helped instigate that party’s rejection of revolutionary Marxism in the late 19th century.

  3 The Hauptwache is a popular pedestrian mall in Frankfurt.

  4 Bertold Beitz, Krupp manager and a member of the National and International Olympic Committee.

  5 Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten in Bethel is a large Bielefeld-based charity.

  1 Heinz Runau, SPD Senator for Internal Affairs in Hamburg at the time.

  1 Berliner Gegenunivesitaät, literally Berlin Counter-University, refers to presentations organized by students independent of formal lectures.

  2 This quote is from Rosa Luxemburg’s 1900 text, Reform or Revolution, Chapter X: Opportunism and Theory in Practice, available from http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch10.htm.

  1 Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was an enormous pogrom against German Jews on the part of the Nazis and their supporters on the night of November 9/10, 1938.

  2 Josef Neckermann was a successful Frankfurt-based businessman and horse trainer and founder of the Stiftung Deutsche Sporthilfe (German Benevolent Sports Association).

  3 All are major corporations that participated in and profited from National Socialism’s reign in Germany. All of them continue to flourish.

  1 This is a retort to Negt, who at the Angela Davis Congress in Frankfurt had referred to Kurras as a lone gun-nut, and to the June 2, 1967, shooting as an isolated tragedy that did not represent state policy.

  2 Refers to areas in the far North of the former Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) that became important staging points for communist guerillas from the North during the Vietnam War.

  3 Wolfgang Harich, an academic from the GDR, who for a time in the late 70s lived in Austria and the FRG, where he worked with the Green Party before returning to the GDR.

  4 An early twentieth century anti-Soviet, anarchist guerilla army active in Ukraine.

  1 AO is an acronym for AusBildung Organisation, roughly translating as “formation organization,” and was used by Marxist-Leninist organizations in Germany that did not yet consider themselves to be parties, but held the goal of eventually forming a party. In North America, such groups were called pre-party formations.

  2 Franz Josef Strauß was head of the right-wing CSU in Bavaria, where the Munich events took place. Helmut Schmidt, who would become Chancellor in 1974, was at this point the SPD Minister of Defense.

  3 Alfred Dregger was a CDU politician from the conservative and nationalist section of the party. At the time, Genscher was the Minister of the Interior from the small liberal FDP.

  4 The Verfassungsschutzgesetz was a law passed by the SPD-FDP coalition in 1972; it extended the purview of the Verfassungsschutz, the police organization central to the struggle against the guerilla.

  5 The Presidential Decree here referred to here is the statute that established the Berufsverbot.

  6 A sarcastic reference to the SPD, which was the leading government in parliament when each of the events listed occurred.

  7 In 1971, police opened fire on bank robbers holding hostages at a bank on Prinzegerntenstraße in Munich. Two hostages were killed. Strauß was personally present when this occurred.

  1 All the companies mentioned in this paragraph are major German corporations.

  2 Major German corporations that supported the Nazi rise to power.

  3 Leading politicians and police representatives who participated in the decisions that led to the massacre at the Fürstenfeldbruck airport.

  4 Genscher in consultation with police chief Schreiber had considered sending in tear gas through the Olympic Village air conditioning, and also storming the Israeli dorms with regular police officers. Both plans were rejected as unlikely to succeed.

  5 A reference to the fact that the paratroopers Dayan had led in May at Lod airport had been disguised as maintenance workers, whereas the assault team which had been ordered to take out the commando at Fürstenfeldbruck (see page 234, fn 1) were to be disguised as flight attendants.

  1 George Habash, Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) at the time.

  2 A farcically hysterical “study” of the RAF produced in 1972 by the BKA, the Bonn Security Group, and the Baader-Meinhof Special Commission. The Allgemeinen Zeitung Mainz, a German regional newspaper based in Mainz, serialized it in its pages.

  3 Hans Jürgen Wischnewski was a long-time SPD politician, known for his good relations with many Arab leaders, one result of his having firmly supported the Algerian National Liberation Front at a time when Adenauer had firmly supported the French.

  4 Rudolph Augstein, founder and editor of Spiegel magazine.

  5 Henri Nannen, editor of the German newsweekly Stern.

  6 Immediately following the Fürstenfeldbruck showdown, the government announced that all of the Israeli athletes had been rescued unharmed. This news was then broadcast around the world. The rationale for this escapes our comprehension.

  7 Sidki had been contacted to see if the Egyptian government would agree to receive the hostages and the Palestinian commando, the FRG’s goal being to get them out of the country. Sadat’s government later explained that to do so would have done nothing to resolve the crisis, and would have meant simply making it Egypt’s problem.

  8 Erhard Eppler, SPD member and left-leaning Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation from 1968 until 1974.

  1 Twenty minutes before the Palestinian commando arrived at Fürstenfeldbruck, police abandoned their posts inside the Boeing plane, claiming that the mission they had been given was suicidal.

  1 Baader Meinhof: In Love With Terror.

  1 Statement to Bundestag, June 7, 1972, quoted in Texte des prisonniers de la “fraction armée rouge” et dernières lettres d’Ulrike Meinhof, Draft Version, Cahiers Libres 337 (Paris: François Maspero).

  2 For instance, Andreas Baader was in Schwalmstadt (Düsseldorf), Gudrun Ensslin in Essen, Holger Meins in Wittlich (Cologne), Irmgard Möller in Rastatt (Baden), Gerhard Müller in Hamburg, Jan-Carl Raspe in Cologne, and Horst Mahler in Moabit (West Berlin). (Aust, 231.)

  3 RAF members’ desire to attend church services was not due to any religiosity, although in their youth Meinhof, Ensslin, and Meins had all been quite devout. Rather, these services provided one of the only places where they could meet with a
nd be amongst other prisoners.

  4 The formulation used in Germany is to put the city name first, and then the name of the prison. So Cologne-Ossendorf refers to Ossendorf prison in the city of Cologne.

  5 Sjef Teuns, “La Torture par Privation Sensorielle,” in à propos du procès Baader-Meinhof, Fraction Armée Rouge: de la torture dans les prisons de la RFA, Klaus Croissant (ed.) (Paris: Christian Bourgeois Éditeur, 1975), 65-66.

  6 Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, “The People’s Tribunal to Expose the Crimes of the Control Units”; Dr. Mutulu Shakur et al., “Genocide Waged Against the Black Nation Through Behavior Modification/Orchestrated by Counterinsurgency and Low-Intensity Warfare in the U.S. Penal System.” Both reprinted in Matt Meyer, ed. Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners (Montreal/Oakland: Kersplebedebpm Press, 2008.) Also: Russell Maroon Shoatz, Death by Regulation: Pennsylvania Control Unit Abuses (Montreal: Kersplebedeb 2008).

  7 Proll, 11.

  1 Ibid., 12.

  2 Friends of Astrid Proll, Astrid Proll: The Case Against Her Extradition (London: 1978), 8. It is worth remembering that she was being charged with attempted murder for shooting at police, an incident that the state already knew had not happened, thanks to the surveillance reports of its own intelligence agents. Cf 60.

  3 Aust, 246.

  4 Formerly associated with the Nazi regime, Witter had publicly opposed the payment of reparations to victims of the Holocaust.

  5 Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof. La Mort d’Ulrike Meinhof: Rapport de la Commission international d’enquête (Paris: Librairie François Maspero, 1979), 78-79.

  6 In this volume see the interview with Le Monde Diplomatique, pages 410-412.

  7 “Political Internment in the FRG,” in War on the War Makers, 27.

  8 Komitees gegen Folter, 131, 133.

  1 “24-Punkt-Haftstatut.” http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/PolitischeStroemungen/Stadtguerilla+RAF/RAF/brd+raf/053.html.

  2 Bewegung 2. Juni (2nd of June Movement), Der Blues: Gesammelte Texte der Bewgung 2. Juni, Vol. 2, self-published illegally in the FRG, n.d. (1982?), 680.

  3 Helmut Pohl’s Testimony at the Stammheim trial, July 29, 1976.

  4 Bakker Schut (ed.), Das Info: brief von gefangen aus der RAF aus der discussion 1973-1977 (Neue Malik Verlag, Plambeck & Neuss, 1987), 218.

  5 Bewegung 2. Juni (2nd of June Movement), Der Blues: Gesammelte Texte der Bewgung 2. Juni, Vol. 1, self-published illegally in the FRG, n.d. (1982?), 341.

  6 Ibid., 320.

  7 Ibid., 321.

  1 European Commission of Human Rights, Decisions and Reports 14, Strasbourg, June 1979, 96-97.

  2 Rote Armee Fraktion, 181.

  3 Vague, 50.

  4 Dellwo, 95.

  5 Ibid., 93-94.

  6 Komitees gegen Folter, 97.

  7 Dellwo, 94.

  8 Komitees gegen Folter, 97-98.

  1 Aust, 66.

  2 Aust, 207; Becker, 306.

  3 Hockenos, 119.

  4 Ibid., 290.

  5 “Kurt Groenewold,” http://www.literaturhaus.at/autoren/F/fried/gesellschaft/mitglieder/groenewold/.

  1 In 1975, for instance, two activists received respective sentences of six and nine months in prison under §129, simply for handing out pamphlets with information about isolation conditions. The Supreme Court’s decision made clear the object of such prosecutions: “The accused did not limit themselves to speaking to individuals in private, but by means of the leaflets sought to make contact with large numbers of people, and principally with young people, who are easily influenced in this way... Nor should the possibility of imitation by potential criminals be ignored. Whether the sentence on the accused will remain largely unknown is not important; what is important is the effect it will inevitably have on people who do know of it.” (Cobler, 114-115)

  2 Komitees gegen Folter, 86-87.

  3 Varon, 218.

  4 Aust, 242.

  5 Andreas Baader Regarding Torture, reprinted in this volume on pages 319-323.

  1 Klaus Croissant, “La justice et la torture par l’isolement,” in Croissant, 120-121.

  2 Ibid., 120.

  3 Rote Armee Fraktion, 181.

  4 Hausner had been arrested in 1972 for building bombs and sentenced to three years in a youth facility; he was released from prison in 1974, at which point he made contact with other former SPK members and returned to the underground with the RAF.

  5 “Des medecins portent plainte,” in Croissant, 104-107.

  1 Soligruppe Christian S., “Der Spiegel, 1975, BAADER/MEINHOF Müdes Auge,” http://www36.websamba.com/Soligruppe/data/spiegel1975.htm; “Les democraties face à la violence” la Lanterne Noire 5 (December 1975).

  2 Viktor Kleinkrieg, “Les combattantes anti-impérialistes face à la torture,” in Croissant, 47.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Peters Butz, RAF Terrorismus in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1991), 454, quoted in “Katharina Hammerschmidt,” http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharina_Hammerschmidt.

  5 Apart from the declaration included in this section on pages 274-78, Ulrike Meinhof used the occasion of her testimony in court to announce the strike. See Ulrike Meinhof Regarding the Liberation of Andreas Baader, page 370.

  6 For instance: Susanne Albrecht, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Lutz Taufer, Günter Sonnenberg, Christian Klar, and Knut Folkerts. (Becker, 340-341)

  1 Throughout the 1970s, Frankfurt was the bastion of the spontis, who would have been critical of such a separation from social prisoners.

  2 Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Das Projektil sind wir (Hamburg: Nautilus, 2007), 98-99.

  3 Bewegung 2. Juni (2nd of June Movement), Der Blues: Gesammelte Texte der Bewgung 2. Juni, Vol. 2, 684.

  4 Otto Billig, “The Lawyer Terrorist and his Comrades,” Political Psychology 6, no. 1 (March 1985): 35.

  5 Rote Hilfe e.v. “Zwischen RAF-Solidarität und “linker Caritas” - Teil 1 / 1 / 2007 / Die Rote Hilfe Zeitung / Publikationen / Rote Hilfe e.V. - Rote Hilfe e.V.,” http://www.rote-hilfe.de/publikationen/die_rote_hilfe_zeitung/2007/1/zwischen_raf_solidaritaet_und_linker_caritas_teil_1.

  6 Ibid.

  7 European Stars and Stripes, “Meinhof: Female German Guerrilla Leader gets 8-year term for role in murder plot,” November 30, 1974.

  1 German Law Journal, “Federal Constitutional Court Issues Temporary Injunction in the NPD Party Ban Case,” German Law Journal [online] 2, no. 13, (August 1, 2001).

  2 United Press International, “Parting shots,” European Stars and Stripes, October 4, 1980.

  3 As will be detailed in our second volume, The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume II: Dancing with Imperialism: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

  1 The Expulsion of Horst Mahler, see pages 288-91.

  2 Peter Jochen Winters, “Unklarheit über die Rolle der verhafteten Pfarrersfrau,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 23, 1974.

  3 Peter Jochen Winters, “Die Verquickung in Machenschaften der Meinhof-Bande began mit einer Kirschenbetzung,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nov. 25, 1974.

  1 Winters “Unklarheit über die Rolle der verhafteten Pfarrersfrau.”

  2 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Verdacht der Unterstützung von Terroristen beunruhigt die Berliner evangelische Kirche,” November 12, 1974. The letter in question, likely about prison conditions, was in fact never delivered—losing her nerve, Zühlke destroyed it rather than pass it on to Burghardt. This did nothing to help her following the Drenkmann action, when police accused her of acting as a courier of a letter which allegedly had to do with his killing, and she was unable to produce said letter to prove that it was about nothing of the sort.

  3 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Erklärung der Kirche gegen Terorismus,” November 29, 1974.

  4 Komitees gegen Folter, 28, 30.

  5 He was sentenced to six years, and received another six months “coercive detention” for refu
sing to testify in the Stammheim trial. He was finally released and extradited back to Holland in 1980.

  6 It is possible that this reticence to use water deprivation was at least partly due to the RAF prisoners’ threat to escalate to a thirst strike if such measures were adopted. See Ulrike Meinhof Regarding the Liberation of Andreas Baader, cf 370.

  7 Holger Meins’ Report on Force-Feeding, see pages 392-95.

  8 Von der Zwangernährung zur “Koma-Losung,” West Germany, Sept. 1985, 25.

  9 Baader Meinhof: In Love With Terror.

  1 Cobler, 52. Many aspects of isolation were “suggested” to prison administrators by the Bonn Security Group. See, for instance, Aust, 245-246.

  2 Pieter Bakker Schut, Stammheim (Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag, 1986), 119.

  3 Aust, 265.

  4 Ibid., 264.

  5 Varon, 231.

  6 Aust, 265.

  1 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Beshuldigungen nach dem Tod von Holger Meins,” November 10, 1974.

  2 Stefan Wisniewski, We were so terribly consistent... A Conversation About the History of the Red Army Faction (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2008), 7-8.

  3 in bewegung bleiben “Wer Gewalt sät,” http://www.bewegung.in/mate_saehen.html.

  4 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Verstärkte Sicherheitsmaßnahmen im gesamtem Bundesgebeit,” November 12, 1974.

  5 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Berliner CDU ruft zu einer Demonstration,” November 16, 1974.

  6 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Empörung nach den tödlichen Schüsssen von Berlin,” November 12, 1974.

  7 Jürgen Busch, “Die letzte Waffe des Anarchisten,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 11, 1974.

  8 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Die Vollzuganstalt Wittlich,” Nov. 10, 1974.

  9 Deutsche Presse Agentur, “Wieder Anschlag auf einen Richter,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 21, 1974.

  10 Time Magazine [online], “Guerrillas on Trial,” December 9, 1974.

  11 United Press International, “Gunmen kill German judge,” Hagerstown Morning Herald, November 11, 1974. The article in question refers simply to the “Communist Party.” However, it was almost certainly not the conservative DKP, but the KPD/ML, which had earned itself the distinction of being the only K-group to organize support of the hunger strike.