The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (36 page)

While articles in the
NATO Review
are not policy documents, and the comments on political status were part of a long laundry list of advice from Johnson, the piece did reflect a definite consensus that had taken shape throughout Western Europe and North America. While he had previously served as editor of the
New Statesman,
at the time that he wrote this article, Johnson was in fact a close advisor and speech-writer for Margaret Thatcher, recently elected prime minister of Great Britain, and as such the woman who would preside over the Irish prisoners' deaths in the months to come. RAF supporters would often refer to this passage as a “NATO directive” against the prisoners—an exaggeration, perhaps, but one that nonetheless matched the overall reality of the situation.
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This understanding of NATO's role as a key instrument of imperialism was shared by revolutionaries throughout Europe; for instance, following the May 1980 busts in Paris, supporters had written in to
Libération
outlining the way in which,

This Europe of cops is not just the dream come true of Herold's gang, it is one part of the military and political project of the U.S.A.; the NATOization of all of Europe, meaning as a bloc totally integrated within the U.S.A.'s war strategy, obviously directed against the people of the Third World, but also against those here who refuse to submit…. Putting into place sophisticated and large-scale means to oppose the armed movements, especially the RAF, is a manifestation of this “struggle.” This is particularly the case so far as the RAF is concerned, as it has
been struggling precisely and directly against this Europe under Germano-American hegemony: and concretely so in ‘79 against the instigator of this plan, General Haig, at the time the head of NATO, who they attempted to assassinate with the Andreas Baader Commando.
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One result of this perspective was that the struggle for the prisoners could be framed as one part of the struggle against NATO—and struggling against NATO as a means to support the prisoners. Indeed, NATO was beginning to appear as the very embodiment of imperialism in Western Europe, in a way that built upon and highlighted the Alliance's very real involvement in counterinsurgency operations around the world. As RAF prisoners held in Stammheim would explain in a 1984 statement:

The revolutionary struggle in Western Europe faces a unified system centralized by NATO. The revolution in Portugal is threatened with NATO intervention. Spain has been integrated into the EC and NATO against the wishes of the population, institutionalizing the fascist generals. The NATO putsch in Turkey. Ireland and Italy experience NATO counterinsurgency. The formation of this unstable unified system makes destroying NATO the orientation for the revolutionary strategy in Western Europe.
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At the same time, choosing to focus on NATO only made good tactical sense; Birgit Hogefeld, an anti-imp who would later join the RAF, was quoted in
Spiegel
explaining how the RAF's ideas suited the mood that was sweeping the country.
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The question of new missiles being stationed in the FRG was provoking widespread opposition, and antipathy toward NATO was combining with a latent anti-Americanism and concerns about Ronald Reagan, who was beating the war drum from the other side of the Atlantic. This all seemed to offer a chance for the anti-imps to reach out to the radical left, just as some on the radical left saw it as an opportunity to reach out to “ordinary Germans.”

Finally, attacking NATO, and elevating the East-West conflict to the same level as that between North and South, was in step with an ideological turn taking place throughout the West German left. The GDR and the other real existing socialist states suddenly appeared in a more sympathetic light. As Helmut Pohl has explained,

…political conditions were intense, with the stationing of missiles and the Reagan policies. You saw the relationship to the socialist states differently if you were afraid that a war was coming. For example, we know that radical left groups in the movement that existed at that time went to the FDJ
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summer gatherings—Autonomen, as well as women's groups and professional associations. This was not a RAF thing, but rather it must be seen as an expression of the overall situation.
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Indeed, the RAF was not the only armed group to adopt an anti-NATO focus: the Revolutionary Cells had been bombing U.S. military bases for years, and in 1981 they attacked their first targets related to the Startbahn West. Attacks against the military-industrial complex would soon be a priority for the RZ as well.

The guerilla was taking its lead from the streets, where the
Autonomen
were joined by unprecedented numbers in opposing the brinksmanship of the Reagan administration and its European allies. For the RZ to embark on this trajectory was only natural, given its movementist orientation. For the RAF, though, this represented a gamble, for there was the real risk that its politics might be obscured without any consequent gain.

If the
Autonomen
had captured the antimilitarist initiative with the Bremen riots, they remained just one part of a broader “peace” movement which was rooted in the Citizens Initiatives, and attracted people of all political persuasions from across the FRG.

This new movement's largest protests up to this point were planned for September 13, 1981, the day that Alexander Haig—Reagan's new secretary of state—was scheduled to visit West Berlin. It was clear to everyone that this had the potential to be the opening chapter in a major wave of anti-American and anti-military activity.

Just a few months after the prisoners' hunger strike, and in the middle of the Tuwat gathering, the RAF went into action, carrying out two attacks in rapid succession, each of which targeted the U.S. forces stationed in the FRG.

On August 31, the Sigurd Debus Commando detonated a car bomb at Ramstein USAREUR, a U.S. military airbase and the headquarters
for NATO air forces in central Europe. The explosion took place at 7 am, just outside the Air Force headquarters building,
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shattering windows up to 100 meters away and setting cars aflame across the parking lot. Twenty people were injured—eighteen Americans, including a general, and two Germans—and damage to surrounding homes and automobiles was estimated at 7.2 million
DM.
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Police would eventually find that the engine of the RAF's vehicle had been blown so high it had landed on the roof of a nearby five-story building.
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The bomb went off just before most people at the base arrived for work—as one witness noted, “It's a miracle that no one was killed. A half-hour later, and there would have been a massacre.”
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In no time at all, military police in full battle dress and brandishing M-16 rifles ringed the parking lot, as roadblocks went up in the surrounding area—a clear case of closing the stable doors after the horse had bolted, for the guerillas were long gone.

Ramstein airbase, 1981, after a visit from the Sigurd Debus Commando.

The BKA had known that Ramstein was a possible RAF target, as plans for the base had been found in a safehouse the year before.
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Nevertheless, it came as a shock—while 1981 had been marked by numerous actions and protests against the American military presence, this was a potentially deadly attack, the likes of which had not been seen since the 1972 May Offensive. Furthermore, this was the first RAF attack inside the FRG since the German Autumn. People took notice.

The Ramstein bombing set off a familiar dynamic. Just as the prisoners' hunger strikes elicited solidarity actions on the outside, actual RAF attacks would inspire the movement to act. The way this normally played out was that high-level guerilla actions would be followed by anti-imps carrying out less spectacular low- and medium-level attacks, often against similar targets. For instance, two days after the bombing, persons unknown set fire to the SPD's Frankfurt offices, leaving behind graffiti referring to Ramstein and calling for “Death to U.S. Imperialism.”
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This was followed by the torching of several cars belonging to U.S. troops in Wiesbaden. Later that week, the same day that tens of thousands gathered to protest against Haig's visit to West Berlin, firebombs were thrown at the residence of the U.S. consul general in Frankfurt.

Indeed, Haig's visit itself proved to be a major embarrassment for the state. One week before, the
Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund
(Confederation of German Trade Unions) had held a pro-American “peace” rally in West Berlin to mark the forty-second anniversary of the beginning of World War II, one of several events organized by the DGB to counter the growing antimissile movement. Coming one day after the Ramstein attack, this backfired, as hundreds of masked
Autonomen
joined the march and began smashing the windows of banks and businesses on the Kürfurstendamm. There were seventeen arrests and forty-two police were injured, with fighting lasting well into the night
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—just a taste of what was to come.

Haig's arrival the following Tuesday was greeted by fifty thousand demonstrators, including anti-imps who had printed up fliers with the secretary of state's picture and the caption “2.7 seconds too late”—a reference to the RAF's failed attempt on his life two years earlier.
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Seven thousand police were deployed; undaunted, as the demo was
drawing to a close some three thousand militants broke off and headed toward the Berlin-Schöneberg city hall.
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Initially taken by surprise, the police rallied and then attacked with water cannons, tear gas, and baton charges. People built makeshift barricades by setting cars and dumpsters alight, but eventually the streets were cleared, in part by police driving through the crowds at high speed.
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There were 105 arrests and 151 police were injured.
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The Haig demonstration was another political victory for the
Autonomen,
with the next day's headlines reading “Haig in Berlin—Flames, Blood, and Looting.” (Of course, the vast majority of protesters did not engage in—and likely disapproved of—the violence, but the conservative wing of the peace movement had yet to figure out how to deal with the more radical street scene.)

The RAF launched its next attack just two days later, on September 15, attempting to assassinate General Frederick Kroesen, supreme commander of the U.S. Army and of NATO's Central Europe Section.

The guerillas had camped out overnight on a wooded slope near a bridge crossing the Neckar River, a route the general regularly took from his suburban home to the U.S. Army headquarters in Heidelberg. On the morning in question, he was traveling with his wife in his chauffeured car, followed by a military police escort. The guerillas took aim with an RPG-7 grenade launcher and fired. One grenade blew up the car's trunk, while another exploded on its fender, as the vehicle was strafed with bullets.

General Kroesen's car, slightly the worse for wear…

Such an attack would normally have been deadly: in an ordinary car the gas tank should have caught fire and exploded. However, one of the general's bodyguards had apparently noticed they were being tailed by individuals on a motorcycle earlier that year, and upon running its plates had connected it to the anti-imp scene.
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Heightened security measures had been taken, and a new car with armor plating ordered. As such, although the vehicle was hit by two grenades and numerous bullets, its passengers escaped with their lives, though both suffered serious damage to their hearing.
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Kroesen spoke to reporters from the hospital where he and his wife were treated for minor cuts from broken glass. “I don't know who was responsible, but I know there was a group that declared war on us,” he said, referring to the RAF, “and I'm beginning to believe them.”
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