The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (27 page)

To millions of people, nuclear war suddenly seemed a much more real possibility. Given that the INF missiles had a short range (in some cases less than 100 km) it was clear that if hostilities did break out, this war would be a European—and most especially, a German—affair. The very elements that Carter presented as making such a nuclear war more “humane”—shorter-range weapons, packing less punch, aimed at military not civilian targets—in fact simply made it more likely. “The shorter the missile range, the deader the Germans,” became a commonplace observation in the Federal Republic.
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All the while, this more user-friendly nuclear strategy was accompanied by the same old imperialist arrogance. In his 1980 State of the Union address, the U.S. president expounded what would become known as the Carter Doctrine, a Middle East corollary to the already infamous Monroe Doctrine. As Carter put it, “Any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”
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Détente was over, and the stage was set for a new round of imperial brinksmanship, the consequences of which we are still living with today.

The 1979 Double-Track Decision became the focal point of West Germans' anxieties about what NATO's war plans would mean for them. Antimilitarism and “peace” suddenly came to the fore, attracting forces from the left, the women's movement, and beyond.

The first crest in this new wave of discontent occurred on May 6, 1980: the day of a public swearing-in ceremony for some 1,200 new army recruits in the liberal city of Bremen. The ceremony was the first of several planned by the Schmidt government with the goal of drumming up public support for its rearmament policies. It was opposed by a broad left-wing coalition which called for a demonstration against the spectacle—according to a subsequent military investigation, between ten and fifteen thousand people participated.
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A younger generation of radicals, many of whom had first cut their teeth in the recent antinuclear battles, managed to take the lead at Bremen, successfully transforming the protest into a major riot.
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As
one participant would later explain, “The explicit goal was to prevent the ceremony. Cars were burned because they were the cars people used to get to the ceremony… The large demonstrations, like Brokdorf, were always dealt with militarily—we decided we would not be stopped militarily again.”
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Hours of fighting left roughly three hundred and fifty police officers injured, five requiring hospitalization. Cars were set alight and eight army vehicles were destroyed, as was military equipment left vulnerable in front of the soccer stadium where the ceremony was to have taken place. The total damage amounted to over 100,000
DM
.
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As one cop recalled years later, “It was war. The demonstrators were using rocks and molotov cocktails… We weren't trained for a demo of this size… All we could do was try and hold our ground.”
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The Bremen riot was a coming out party for the
Autonomen,
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as the new militant youth movement was known. While one can trace their lineage back to the
Spontis,
the alternative movement, the women's movement, and Italy's autonomous Marxists,
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the
Autonomen
's most important lessons had been learned in the militant wing of the antinuclear movement.
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Reflecting both continuity and a rupture with the politics of the APO generation, the
Autonomen
represented a breakthrough for radical politics in the FRG, one born of Model Germany's contradictions and given initial form by all the myriad experiences, both positive and negative, of the previous ten years.

At Bremen, the
Autonomen
established the important part they would play in the antimilitarist resistance, making it clear that if opposition to war were to become an important focus of activism in the years to come, it would no longer be the exclusive purview of the Church- and pacifist-dominated peace movement. The young
Autonomen
had clearly overcome the fear of violence that had followed the German Autumn. Spurred on by their example, there would be further disruptions at
swearing-in ceremonies elsewhere, as the methods and ideas of this new youth movement became the default pole of attraction for a fresh wave of rebels.
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It was a significant turning point, and was recognized as such at the time.

Between 1977 and 1981, seven RAF members who had been arrested on February 4, 1974—dubbed the “2.4 group” by police—completed their sentences and were released from prison.
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While most of these never returned to the underground, there were some for whom the RAF continued to represent the best course of resistance to the system that had tried and failed to break them in its isolation wings.

As we have seen, Wolfgang Beer had been released in 1978, and had subsequently participated in the dpa occupation. Upon completing his one-year sentence for this, he returned to the RAF.

Another of those arrested in 1974, Helmut Pohl completed his sentence in September 1979. While often treated as a marginal figure in the RAF's history, Pohl was in fact one of the earliest guerillas, and was also one of the most steadfast; it is no surprise that upon his release, he lost little time in joining up once again with his comrades in the underground.
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As Pohl would later recall, the RAF he found in 1979 was paralyzed by doubt to such an extent that people who wanted to join were being told it would be better if they devoted their energies to local, above-ground activism. The priority within the group was to work on its internal dynamics and political orientation.
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Indeed, for two years, the RAF had been stymied as to how, or even whether, to continue. Although the Haig attack represented a step out of this morass, it had failed, and the subsequent Swiss tragedy had revived these questions. What was the point of integrating new members when so much remained uncertain?

This was compounded by the killings of von Dyck and Stoll, and the near-fatal shooting of Heißler, all of which served as a reminder of
how dangerous the guerilla struggle could be, and seemed to indicate that West German police had adopted an unofficial policy of taking no prisoners.

This was the context, after Haig, in which the RAF regrouped in Paris, a location that offered one important advantage, namely its proximity to the FRG. Yet before good use could be made of this, the group's internal problems finally had to be addressed.

In the time around the ‘77 offensive, several members of the anti-imperialist left had joined the guerilla under intense, and less than ideal, circumstances. Susanne Albrecht, Sigrid Sternebeck, and Silke Maier-Witt had all been close friends, moving together from the Hamburg squats to the prisoner support scene. Albrecht was recruited in order to help in the ill-fated attempted kidnapping of her sister's godfather, Jürgen Ponto. Given that it seemed increasingly likely aboveground supporters might be rounded up at any time, Sternebeck and Maier-Witt had followed her underground soon after. Ralf Friedrich, who had worked in Klaus Croissant's law office, joined the RAF in November 1977 out of fear that he would soon be targeted by the same kind of repression as the lawyers—he would later insist that he spent his entire time underground in France.
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Monika Helbing had also joined in ‘77 as a result of a police raid following the Buback assassination,
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and was followed in 1978 by her partner Ekkehard von Seckendorff-Gudent.
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Werner Lotze and Christine Dümlein had joined in the summer of 1978.
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(It does not appear that von Seckendorff-Gudent or Dümlein ever participated in any RAF actions.)
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These were people who had been faced with difficult choices. Like everyone else, the defeats of ‘77 weighed heavily on them, as did the continued setbacks of 1978 and ‘79. While some had participated in the attack on Haig, there was widespread dissatisfaction with how the guerilla struggle was panning out. Some of these individuals had decided they wanted to leave the RAF. In other cases, the rest of the guerilla decided they were not suited to the group, and they were told they would have to go.
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Safehouses, paid for out of the RAF's war chest, were being maintained to house these dropouts, but this was obviously not a permanent solution. Those who were staying with the RAF now began searching for a long-term retirement plan of sorts for their former comrades, all fugitives who figured prominently on police “most wanted” lists.
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Added to this was the case of Peter-Jürgen Boock, whose elaborate lies and serious drug addiction had been exposed in 1978. At first the other guerillas had taken the understandable position that they could not continue working with him, and efforts had been made to find a place where he would be safe from capture, but would not be able to cause them any further grief. He would have none of it, adamantly rejecting exile. Shockingly, he managed to win over his comrades, and it was agreed to reintegrate him: he was brought back to Europe after the Haig attack and is one of those who participated in the bloody Zurich robbery gone bad. After that, like the other guerillas, he remained in hiding in Paris.

It was not long, however, before there were signs that Boock had started using again, and the decision was made to send him into exile, willing or not. The need for a retirement plan became all the more pressing. As we shall see, the solution would come from an unexpected quarter.

The RAF had been joined in the French capital by the 2JM's anti-imperialist faction—the only 2JM members still on the street. Years later, writing from prison, Inge Viett would remember this as a depressing period, for even more than the RAF, the 2JM was struggling with doubts and indecision. As the oldest and most experienced member on the outside, Viett felt responsible for the group's survival, but also saw little point in carrying out any further military actions.
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Before this crisis could be addressed, the state intervened, and in so doing settled matters for Viett and her comrades.

In the spring of 1980, with the help of Chalid Dschihad, a BND mole in the PFLP (Special Command) (a successor-group to the PFLP (EO)), a safehouse was uncovered on Flatters Street in Paris's Latin Quarter.
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West German agents placed it under surveillance, hoping to apprehend as many guerillas as possible. French police moved in on May 5, capturing five women: 2JM members Ingrid Barabaß and Regina Nicolai, RAF member Sieglinde Hofmann, and two other Germans, Karin Kamp-Münnichow and Karola Magg. Hofmann was being sought in
connection with the Ponto killing, Nicolai was a suspect in the Palmers kidnapping and Till Meyer breakout, and Barabaß in the Palmers kidnapping. Kamp-Münnichow and Magg had no charges pending against them and were in fact unknown to police, yet were arrested and held along with the others.
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Once the women were in custody,
Zielfahndung
agents dressed like movers entered the flat, stripping it clean and carting everything—kitchen utensils, railway timetables, empty bottles, cigarette butts, etc.—back to Wiesbaden, to be catalogued and fed into the BKA's computers.
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The five women were held for two months in strict isolation at the High-Security Wing at Fleury-Mérogis prison—
Libération
described it as “the German prison model that is bit by bit becoming the European model, spreading to Italy and France”
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—with no visits, reading material, mail, or contact with one another or other prisoners. Having been subjected to physical violence during their initial interrogations,
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they were now subjected to strip searches by male guards. At first, the women were handcuffed with their arms behind their backs during their court appearances, and even when provided with legal documents to review—in the words of the cop in charge, “One can read perfectly well with handcuffs on.”
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At the same time, whenever they were brought before a judge they were surrounded by a battalion of police from the GIGN unit (specialized in hostage situations), and observers and supporters alike had to pass through metal detectors and submit to searches before they could enter the court.
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The women's lawyers concentrated their efforts on challenging these conditions, as well as trying to ascertain who exactly had ordered them, as the French attorney general denied having made any such request.
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To little avail, although they did manage to have the women's handcuffs removed in the courtroom.
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As for the prison administration, its
response was laconic: “We don't see why they protest their conditions so much, it's not like they're going to be here for very long.”
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Indeed, such was the case: on July 10 the court ruled that the six could be extradited to the FRG, as the RAF and 2JM were apparently “not political organizations.” When the ruling was read out the courtroom exploded into violence between supporters and police, who beat people with billy clubs and bicycle chains, as well as setting off a smoke grenade.
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The next morning, the women were on a plane to Munich; in the case of Hofmann, her extradition was done with the assurance that she would not be charged with the Ponto killing—a stipulation that would be ignored as soon as she was in West German custody.

The morning of the women's extradition, the Paris offices of the
Bundesbahn,
the West German railway company, were rocked by an explosion. (This was in fact the third time the company's Paris offices had been targeted over the years in solidarity with the RAF.)
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Just afterwards, police noticed a suspicious-looking car parked by a red light, and took off in pursuit when they saw three men jump in and depart at high speed. They had soon captured Jean Paul Gérard, Michel Lapeyre, and Frédéric Oriach, three revolutionaries from the French guerilla group the
Noyaux armés pour l'autonomie populaire
(Armed Nuclei For Popular Autonomy) who had themselves only recently been released from prison; the three would acknowledge their responsibility for the attack, carried out in solidarity with the West German guerillas.
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