The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (118 page)

1
Associated Press, “W. Germans fear possible gas attack by terrorists,”
Reno Evening Gazette,
May 16, 1975.

2
Cobler, 46.

3
Ibid.

4
Ibid., 47.

5
Jacobson, 21.

6
Ibid.

1
Aust, 164.

2
Ibid., 360.

3
Christiane Ensslin and Klaus Jünschke, “Stimmen aus Stammheim: Isolationshaft ist kein Mythos,”
Neue Rheinische Zeitung
[online], August 8, 2007.

4
Becker, 273.

5
Aust, 362-363.

6
Associated Press, “Baader-Meinhof Armourer Testifies,”
European Stars and Stripes,
January 28, 1976; “Handelsgeschäfte mit der ‘Wahrheit’ Kronzeugen als Sonder- Beweismittel der Anklage,”
http://www.freilassung.de/div/texte/kronzeuge/goe1.htm
.

7
Aust, 384-386.

1
The preceding points appeared in the German as one long paragraph; they have been reformatted here for added readability.

1
Klaus Croissant indicated that Meinhof misspoke, intending to refer to the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a guerilla group active in the California between 1973 and 1975.

1
With minor omissions, this is a quote from Lenin’s
Imperialism and the Split in Socialism
written in October, 1916 and available at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm
.

2
Le Duan became the first Secretary of the Communist Party in North Vietnam in 1960. After the death of party founder and leader Ho Chi Minh in 1969, Le took over the leadership of the government. He remained General Secretary of the CP and head of the government until his death in 1986 at the age of seventy-nine.

3
This quote is from Le Duan’s
Principles and Methods of Revolutionary Action,
written on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of the establishment of the Indochinese Communist Party (1970). A slightly different translation appears in
This Nation and Socialism Are One: Selected Writings of Le Duan First Secretary, Central Committee Vietnam Workers Party
available at
http://leninist.biz/en/1976/NSO261/05-Principles.and.Methods.of.Revolutionary.Action#forw1page17
.

1
Amir Parviz Puyan was a prominent member of the Organization of the People’s Fedayeen Guerillas, a Marxist-Leninist guerilla group established in 1971. By the time of the 1979 revolution, the OPFG was the most significant guerilla group operating in Iran.

2
Probably quoted from memory, this is a mangled paraphrasing of an argument from Marx’s “The Class Struggles in France.” The full passage as it appears in Marx and Engels,
Selected Works II,
ed. V. Adoretsky (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1942), 192: “revolutionary advance made headway not by its immediate tragi-comic achievements, but on the contrary by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an opponent, by fighting which the party of revolt first ripened into a real revolutionary party.”

1
This signaled the third of the RAF prisoners’ hunger strikes; see page 253.

2
These are actions the police and media claimed the RAF was planning.

1
§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.

2
Following the 1848 working class uprising in Germany in which prominent communists including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels played an important role, a series of trials in Cologne was used in a partially successful attempt to destroy the Communist League, also known as the First International.

1
On November 21, 1974, bombs in two pubs in Birmingham, England claimed twenty-one lives. These bombings were denounced by the left as a counterinsurgency action meant to discredit the Irish nationalist movement, but the IRA acknowledged its responsibility some years later.

2
On December 12, 1969, a bomb exploded in a public square in Milan killing a large number of people. Initially blamed on anarchists, the action was subsequently proven to be the work of fascists supported by the Italian security services and NATO.

3
Many of the actions listed here were carried out by the Revolutionary Cells. For more on this guerilla organization, see pages 436-41.

4
This was the most complete version of this document available to us.

1
Probably quoted from memory, this is a very mangled version of a phrase from Marx’s “Class Struggles in France.” See page 367, fn 2.

1
This was the most complete version of this document available to us.

2
Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 9.

1
Ibid., 10.

2
United Press International, “German rebel hangs herself,”
Pharos Tribune,
May 10, 1976.

3
The commissioners were: Michelle Beauvillard (a lawyer from Paris), Claude Bourdet (a journalist from Paris), Georges Casalis (a theologian from Paris), Robert Davezies (a journalist from Paris), Joachim Israel (a sociology professor from Copenhagen), Panayotis Kanelakis (a lawyer from Athens), Henrik Kaufholz (a journalist from Denmark), John McGuffin (a writer from Belfast), Hans-Joachim Meyer (a neuropsychiatrist from the FRG), and Jean-Pierre Vigier (a doctor from Paris).

4
Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 25. It should be noted that Stefan Aust, the most intelligent defender of the state’s version of events, objects that “the ‘sperm test’ was a phosphatase test customarily carried out to establish the presence of certain yeasts. There are many of these, found not only in sperm but in all proteins, also occurring as a result of bacterial contamination. Thus, such a test will be positive in the majority of cases. Only if it gives a negative result are further specialized tests unnecessary. In Ulrike Meinhof’s case, further microchemical and microscopic tests were carried out, and clearly showed that the protein traces were not spermatic filaments.” (Aust, 346-7) The editors of this volume are highly skeptical of the state’s story, and yet feel readers are best situated to make up their own minds on the matter.

5
Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 28.

6
Ibid., 32-34.

7
Ibid., 45-46.

8
Ibid., 46.

1
Ibid., 42-43.

2
Ibid., 46.

3
Ibid., 47-49.

4
Ibid., 47-48.

1
Roger Boyles, “Daughter Defies State Over Ulrike Meinhof’s Brain,”
The Times
[online], November 9, 2002.

2
BBC News
[online], “Meinhof Brain Study Yields Clues,” November 12, 2002.

3
Spiegel
[online], “Gehirne der toten RAF-Terroristen verschwunden,” November 16, 2002.

1
Ibid., 62-64.

2
This theory regarding Hausner’s death disappeared from RAF statements before the end of the decade. For a synopsis, see sidebar, page 334.

3
Ditfurth, 440.

4
Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 64-65.

5
Ibid., 50.

6
Ibid., 81.

7
Ibid., 81. For instance, immediately after Meinhof’s death, one UPI article was claiming that “Acquaintances said Mrs. Meinhof may have killed herself because she despaired of achieving her goal of overthrowing what she called the ‘repressive capitalist bourgeois system.’” (United Press International, “German Rebel Hangs Herself”).
Bild
was, of course, more crude, implying Meinhof was jealous of Ensslin’s relationship with Baader: after stating that the guerilla leader had “made herself look beautiful one more time,” it claimed that she killed herself because she “could see how it was not only their shared convictions that united Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin but also recollections of their shared pleasures in the bedroom.” (Quoted in Clare Bielby, “‘Bonnie und Kleid’: Female Terrorists and the Hysterical Feminine.”)

8
Komitees gegen Folter, 28, 30.

9
Commission internationale d’enquête sur la mort d’Ulrike Meinhof, 74-75.

10
Ibid., 80-81.

1
Interview with Le Monde Diplomatique, see page 408.

2
Deutsche Welle
[online], “Journalists Unearth Rare Terrorism Trial Tapes from 1970s,” July 31, 2007.

3
United Press International,“Urban Guerilla Leader Hangs Herself in Cell,”
Hayward Daily Review,
May 10, 1976.

4
NEA/London Economist News Service, “Friends Mourn Meinhof’s Tragic Death,”
Pharos Tribune,
May 23, 1976.

5
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
May 17, 1976, quoted in Kramer, 195.

6
United Press International, “German Terrorist Dies Violent Death in Prison,”
Coshocton Tribune,
May 10, 1976.

7
NEA/London Economic News Service, “Tragic Death is Mourned,”
Uniontown Morning Herald,
May 27, 1976.

8
Corpus Christi Times,
“Bombing seen as protest,” May 14, 1976.

9
Winnipeg Free Press,
“Uneven contest,” May 19, 1976.

10
Roger Cohen, “Germany’s Foreign Minister is Pursued by his Firebrand Self,”
New York Times
[online], January 15, 2001.

11
Lincoln Star,
“Anarchist’s Death Causes Bombings,” May 11, 1976.

12
Varon, 234.

1
Associated Press, “Anarchist Buried,”
Waterloo Courier,
May 16, 1976.

2
United Press International, “Funeral to demonstration,”
Playground Daily News,
May 16, 1976.

3
Associated Press, “Bombs damage building in Paris,”
Oxnard Press Courier,
May 19, 1976.

4
United Press International, “Army Headquarters Hit by Terrorist Bombs,”
Valley Morning Star,
June 2, 1976.

1
The state would claim that Meinhof had organized this bombing, which the others disagreed with because of the risk posed to innocent bystanders. This version of events was flatly contradicted by Brigitte Mohnhaupt’s testimony in Stammheim (see pages 357-58). Not to mention that since the Springer bombing, Meinhof and the others had continued to struggle together through isolation and three brutal hunger strikes.

2
Ditfurth, 444.

1
Hockenos, 119.

1
Ho Chi Minh was a founder and the leading figure in the Vietnamese Communist Party from 1941 until his death in 1969 at the age of seventy-nine.

2
l’HumanitÕ
is the newspaper of the French Communist Party.

3
Georg Bücker was, at this time, the warden at Ossendorf penitentiary.

4
Lodt was, at this time, the Inspector for Security at Ossendorf penitentiary.

1
Herman-Josef Müller was the chief judge in the trial of the Holger Meins Commando.

2
Bernd Rössner, another member of the Holger Meins Commando.

1
Nicos Poulantzas was a Greek Marxist philosopher who was very influential in New Left intellectual circles in the sixties and the seventies.

2
George Jackson was a young Black social prisoner politicized in prison in the U.S. in the late 60s. He was the author of
Blood in My Eye,
a strategic manual for Black revolution, and
Soledad Brother,
a collection of writings consisting primarily of letters. He joined the Black Panther Party while in the prison. He was killed by guards during an alleged escape attempt on August 21, 1971.

3
Apparently an abbreviated pseudonym; translated as Ilse in the French version published by Maspero in 1977.

1
Astrid Proll, a founding member of the RAF.

2
According to the MedicineNet.com, scintigraphy is “A diagnostic test in which a two-dimensional picture of a body radiation source is obtained through the use of radioisotopes.”

3
According to the
American Medical Heritage Dictionary,
stereotactical pertains to stereotaxis, which is “A surgical technique that uses medical imaging to precisely locate in three dimensions an anatomical site to which a surgical instrument or a beam of radiation is directed.”

1
In early 1972, the BKA lost all trace of Meinhof (according to Stefan Aust, she was in Italy at the time). Rumours began to be spread,
Bild
publishing an article under the headline, “Has Ulrike Meinhof Committed Suicide?” and the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
quoting unnamed government sources to the effect that she had been dead for months, either from a tumour or from suicide. See: Aust, 200.

1
Ludwig Rosenberg was, at this time, the Chairman of the
Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbund
(DGB—German Union Association).

1
Letter from the RAF to the RAF prisoners, cf 338

2
According to §§231-231b, passed in June 1975, trials could proceed in the absence of defendants if this was due to self-inflicted health concerns.

1
A founding member of the Black Panther Party, Seale was tied to a chair and gagged during the Chicago 8 trial, at which he and seven white codefendants (none of whom were tied or gagged in spite of disruptive behaviour) were charged in connection with violent protests during the Chicago 1968 Democratic Convention.

2
Literally, “Courts of Honor,” or
Ehrengericht
in German.

3
Roughly $6.25 million at the time.

1
For more on this defense motion, see pages 455-56.

2
Alexander Kluge of
Gruppe 47
was a lawyer, filmmaker, television producer, screenplay writer, and author, best known for pioneering the New German Film style of the sixties and seventies.