Read The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History Online
Authors: J Smith
Shortly thereafter, the soft counterinsurgency strategy would be dusted off and put to work again; not surprisingly, by that time the Greens would be well placed to play their small role in this final assault on the RAF.
But that was years away, and much would happen before things got to that point, which will be addressed in our next volume.
Jurists have established the myriad pitfalls that come with assigning collective responsibility to all members of an organization for deeds that they may have approved of, but which they nevertheless had no part in committing. Nonetheless, on a moral and political level, many members of the guerilla have shown little interest in eschewing responsibility for the RAF's activities.
Take, for instance, the case of Knut Folkerts, who in 1980 was found guilty of two counts of murder for his purported role in the assassination of Siegfried Buback, receiving a sentence of life in prison. He would be released after eighteen years, in 1995. In 2007, a media frenzy ensued when it became known that the
Verfassungsschutz
had been aware since 1981 that Folkerts had not in fact been at the scene of the crime.
1
Nevertheless, Folkerts expressed no interest in having his trial or sentence reviewed, declaring that the courts were not an appropriate place to evaluate the RAF's history. Explaining that he is a former RAF member, not a victim, his position remains that he and everyone else who was a member of the RAF at the time share responsibility for the Buback assassination.
2
Discussing his own responsibility, Karl-Heinz Dellwo has been equally forthright:
I have always defended the collective guilt thesis. I also consider all the adult German citizens of the period responsible for the crimes of Nazism. I likewise have the collective responsibility for everything that occurred in my milieu, that is to say, the “RAF Collective” milieu. With regards to Stockholm, I'm equally responsible for the deaths of both of the embassy staff members. Every member of the commando shares equal guilt.
3
Many former RAF members might reject the concept of “guilt” applied to their actions, as formulated by Dellwo, for all its connotations of “wrongdoing.” Nevertheless, there is broad unanimity as to the fact that all members of the RAF bear responsibility for actions carried out while they were in the guerilla. As Irmgard Möller pointed out in 1992, “We collectively decided upon and carried out the actions.”
4
This continuing solidarity and accountability for the actions carried out when they were active in the guerilla is the norm, not an exception. It constitutes a significant retort to the state's insistence that former RAF members provide the names and details of those who participated in each attackâframed in terms of being “necessary for the victims to heal,” this is nothing but a transparent ploy to have former comrades served up for prosecution, and to allow the state to finally map out the armed resistance of generations past.
As explained by some former RAF members in 2010:
Through all these years, despite “screensearch” technologies, the highly armed state security apparatus hasn't been able to obtain a reasonably comprehensive picture of our movements. Even those who, under the pressure of isolation, smear campaigns and blackmail, broke down and were used as “crown witnesses”, could not contribute to completing the picture. The bits and pieces put together by state security agencies haven't been very useful for general counterin-surgency purposes. They have no clue of the approach, the organization, the traces, the dialectics of an urban guerilla in the metropolis. And there is no reason to help them out on this. The RAF's actions have been discussed and decided collectively when we agreed. All of us, who in a particular period have been part of the group and shared these decisions, obviously have the responsibility for these as well.
5
_____________
2
Knut Folkerts, interviewed by Michael Sontheimer, “Logik des Krieges,”
Spiegel,
May 14, 2007.
3
Karl-Heinz Dellwo, interviewed by
Tagesspiegel-Sonntag
“Ich bin kein Pazifist,” March 26, 2007.
4
Irmgard Möller, interviewed by Manfred Ertel and Bruno Schrep.
5
RAF, some former members.
_____________
1
. Peter Zinke, “Die Kriminalisierung der RAF,” in Haufen, 61.
2
. Ibid., 66.
3
.
Die Zeit,
“Mitgefangen, mitgehangen,” March 30, 1984.
4
. Zinke, 62.
5
.
Spiegel,
“Starke Beklemmung,” October 5, 1981.
6
. Clemens Kaupa, “The Multi-causal and Asynchronous Development of Terrorism Laws in Germany from the 1970's to the Present,” (MA Thesis, Vienna, December 2009), 16-18. The claim that would-be RAF defectors were executed centered on the disappearance of Ingeborg Barz, but her alleged execution was never corroborated in any way. Numerous examples of RAF members who did leave over the years, often with assistance from the guerilla, make the claim highly dubious. See Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 352.
7
. As German law developed in the context of the Prussian monarchy, various legal terms talk of the “crown” when referring to the state. As such, a “crown witness” is a witness for the state, i.e., for the prosecution.
8
. Kaupa, 17.
9
. Erwin Brunner, Karl-Heinz JanÃen, Joachim Riedl, and Michael Sontheimer “Wunderwaffe Kronzeuge,”
Die Zeit,
November 21, 1986.
10
. Heinz Jürgen Schneider, “Der Terror-Paragraph.”
11
.
Spiegel,
“Gemalt Weihnachten.”
12
. Josef GräÃle-Münscher, “Der Straftatbestand des §129a StGB,” in Haufen, 42-43. While the state relied heavily on §129a, not all jurists were comfortable with the way in which even spraypainting or postering could be construed as “support for a terrorist organization.” Such misgivings led Judge Helmut Plambeck, the Chairman of the Hamburg OLG State Security Senate, who had himself presided over some minor RAF trials, to call for the law to be abolished.
(Spiegel,
“Besteht die RAF denn überhaupt noch?” July 13, 1981.)
13
. Lewis and Klein,
Baader Meinhof: In Love with Terror.
14
. Beatrice De Graaf, “Counter-Narratives and the Unintentional Messages Counterterrorism Policies Unwittingly Produce: The Case of West-Germany,” in
Countering Violent Extremist Narratives
(Netherlands: National Coordinator for Counterterrorism [NCTb], July 2010), 13.
15
. Ibid., 15.
16
. Milton Mankoff and Monica Jakobs, “The Return of the Suppressed: McCarthyism in West Germany,”
Contemporary Crises,
1 (1977): 353.
17
. Kaupa, 13.
18
. Ibid., 14; see also Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 525.
19
. United Press International, “Crusade Against Terrorism Urged,”
Newport Daily News,
October 25, 1977.
20
. De Graaf (2010), 16.
21
.
Spiegel,
“Der umstrittenste Mann der Regierung,” September 8, 1980. Maihofer had in fact been forced to resign in 1978 when
Spiegel
revealed that he had sanctioned illegal wiretaps, not only of activists, but also the manager of West Germany's nuclear power industry, Klaus Traube, simply because he had known some people in the radical scene back in his university days.
22
. Jörg Requate and Philipp Zessin, “Comment sortir du âterrorisme'? La violence politique et les conditions de sa disparition en France et en République Fédérale d'Allemagne en comparaison 1970-années 1990,”
European Review of History/ Revue europeenne d'histoire
14, no. 3 (2007): 432.
23
. Axel Jeschke and Wolfgang Malanowski (eds.),
Der Minister und der Terrorist: Gespräche zwischen Gerhart Baum und Horst Mahler
(Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Spiegel-Buch, 1980), 53.
24
. United Press International, “Squatters in German City Try to Burn 90-Foot Cross,”
European Stars and Stripes,
April 2, 1981.
25
.
Spiegel,
“Der umstrittenste Mann der Regierung.”
26
. Joachim Wagner, “Schafft Gesetze auf Zeit: Befristete Normen brauchen nicht immer Ausnahmegesetze zu sein,”
Die Zeit,
February 1, 1980.
27
.
Spiegel,
“Der umstrittenste Mann der Regierung.”
28
. Kaupa, 40.
29
. Wischnewski was well-suited to this task: in the 1950s he had acted as an interlocutor with the Algerians during the National Liberation Front's war for independence from France, and had been a public critic of the CDU government's pro-French policy in that conflict. He later negotiated the release and free transit of Germans arrested during the Pinochet coup in Chile, as well as free transit out of the country for Chileans who had taken refuge in foreign embassies. As such, he had a good reputation with many of the new national governments in the Third World.
30
.
Time,
“West Germany: Talking Quietly,” May 7, 1979.
31
. Reinhard Müller, “Weshalb Gaddafi die RAF für geisteskrank hielt,”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
April 14, 2008.
32
. Matthias Dahlke, “Das Wischnewski-Protokoll: Zur Zusammenarbeit zwischen westeuropäischen Regierungen und transnationalen Terroristen 1977,”
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte
2/2009, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München-Berlin, 211.
33
. Ibid., 210-211.
34
. On this trip, see Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 56-57, 59.
35
. Axel Frohn, “Hilfe vom Roten Prinzen,”
Spiegel
, October 8, 2001. See also Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 188-193.
36
. Frohn, “Hilfe vom Roten Prinzen.”
37
. Dahlke, 210.
38
. Ibid., 214.
39
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 12.
40
. Wisniewski, 4. Wisniewski was also critical of the demand for association, explaining that, “Association for us in groups of fifteen based on the Geneva Convention, which is not immediately applicable to us and is impractical for the guerilla struggle in the metropole, is the wrong road to go down. In the long run, it separates us from all other social revolutionary undertakings in the FRG, at a point when they certainly constitute the seeds of a social movement. Association in groups of fifteenâeven if it was achievableâis not thinkable without some form of high-security unit. That, however, means accepting the incremental steps of the reform-fascist corrections system.” (Stefan Wisniewski, Untitled document, March 23, 1981.)
41
. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 254-257, 288-291.
42
. 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).
43
. Hans Kundnani,
Utopia or Auschwitz: Germany's 1968 Generation and the Holocaust
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 161.
44
.
Der Minister und der Terrorist: Gespräche zwischen Gerhart Baum und Horst Mahler,
or, “The Minister and the Terrorist: Talks between Gerhart Baum and Horst Mahler.” See Jeschke and Malanowski.
45
. Not all guerilla supporters remained sanguine in the face of thisâwhen Mahler tried to speak at a Stuttgart memorial for Rudi Dutschke, he was shouted down by anti-imps who accused him of attempting “to channel the resistance against the extermination of the prisoners into a rehabilitation program.” See “Bericht über die Störung der Staatsschutzveranstaltung in Stuttgart: Horst Mahler, eine Staatsschutzfigur,” in Marat, 41.
46
. Gerhart Baum and Virginio Rognoni, interviewed by
Spiegel,
“Gespräch: Der Staat darf nicht unversöhnlich sein,”
Spiegel,
October 19, 1981.
47
. Ibid.
48
. Ibid.
49
. Ibid.
50
.
Die Zeit,
“Mitgefangen, mitgehangen.”
51
. Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, “Gnade statt Rache: Einsicht in den Irrsinn des Terrors ist die beste Garantie gegen Wiederholung,”
Die Zeit,
June 24, 1988.
52
. Hans Wolfgang Sternsdorff, “Im Schützengraben für die falsche Sache.”
53
. Gerhard Mauz, “Was wir verstrickten Menschen schulden⦔
Spiegel,
June 6, 1983.
54
. Kaupa, 20.
55
.
Spiegel
, “Falsche Signale an den Untergrund,” August 21, 1981.
56
. Ibid.
57
. Hans-Joachim Klein,
The German Guerilla: Terror, Reaction, Resistance
(Sanday, UK: Cienfuegos Press, 1981).
58
. Hans-Joachim Klein, “Sind wir denn nicht auch Mensch?”
Spiegel,
Dec. 7, 1981.
59
. Associated Press, “German Terrorist Convicted of Murder,”
European Stars and Stripes
May 8, 1984.
60
.
Die Zeit,
“Ein Abgrund von Informationslücken,” March 2, 1984.
61
. Marion Gräfin Doenhoff, “Gnade statt Rache: Einsicht in den Irrsinn des Terrors ist die beste Garantie gegen Wiederholung,”
Die Zeit,
June 24, 1988.
62
.
Die Zeit,
“Mitgefangen, mitgehangen.”
63
.
Spiegel,
“Falsche Signale an den Untergrund.”