The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (119 page)

3
Earlier in 1976, Klaus Traube, one the highest placed men in the nuclear industry, had had his home and office bugged by the BND. See Aust, 387-388.

1
The explanation referred to here is not the communiqué which accompanied the Springer action and which is reprinted in this volume, but rather a court statement Gudrun Ensslin presented during in the Stammheim trial. Those who believe Meinhof committed suicide often point to this court statement as a motivating factor, as they claim Meinhof had been involved in organizing the Springer action and that Ensslin was rebuking her. These claims were vehemently denied by the prisoners themselves; see Brigitte Mohnhaupt’s Testimony at the Stammheim Trial, July 22, 1976, cf 357-8.

2
Reichsschrifttumkammer
(Reich Writers Chamber): a legal body responsible for classifying literature during the Third Reich.

3
Volksgerichthof
(People’s Court): the Nazi puppet court that hounded opponents, usually sentencing them to death on the basis of coerced and falsified testimony.

1
An antifascist military coup heralded an end to the Portuguese Salazar dictatorship in 1974, setting off a popular but limited upheaval during which people occupied factories and seized land, while demanding retribution for the crimes of the fascist regime. The Portuguese Socialist Party (later the Social Democrat Party) was instrumental in reining in this revolt, and within a few years, the PS’s Mario Soares was subjecting Portugal to IMF dictates and entering into a coalition with the ultra-right Democratic and Social Center Party.

2
Olaf Palme was the Social Democratic Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 until his assassination in 1986.

3
The Second International, the international organization of social democratic parties.

1
On June 2, 1976, the Revolutionary Cells bombed the U.S. Army Headquarters and U.S. Officers’ Club in Frankfurt, carrying out the attack under the banner of the “Ulrike Meinhof Commando.” That same day, two fully loaded military trucks at a U.S. airbase were blown up just outside of the city.

1
Hülsberg, 45.

1
For instance, Karl-Heinz Dellwo and Bernd Rössner of the RAF’s Holger Meins Commando had both been active in the Hamburg squatters’ scene, as had Susanne Albrecht, Silke Maier-Witt, and Siegrid Sternebeck who would carry out the illfated attack on Jürgen Ponto.

2
An acronym for “Info Berlin Undogmatic Groups.”

1
As author Paul Hockenos explains, “In German,
auf den Putz
hauen is slang for having a wild, rowdy time. Perhaps ‘to raise hell’ fits the meaning best.” (117).

2
Hans-Joachim Klein quoted in Hockenos, 124.

3
Ibid., 114-115.

4
Cf 264-5.

5
Geronimo,
Feuer und Flamme: Zur Geschichte der Autonomen.
(Berlin: ID-Archiv, 1990). An English translation of this book is due to be published by PM Press in 2009.

6
Associated Press, “W. German ITT Offices Bombed,”
Des Moines Register,
November 19, 1973; Associated Press, “Bomb rips ITT subsidiary office in Berlin,”
European Stars and Stripes,
November 18, 1973.

7
“Aktionen gegen ITT Berlin und Nürnberg (November 73),”
http://www.freilassung.de/div/texte/rz/zorn/Zorn12.htm
.

8
Autonome Forum, “A Herstory Of The Revolutionary Cells And Rote Zora—Armed Resistance in West Germany,”
http://www.etext.org/Politics/Autonome
. Forum/Guerrilla/Europe/Rote.Zora/mini-herstory.1988.

1
“Interview mit der Roten Zora Juni 1984” at
http://www.freilassung.de/div/texte/rz/zorn/Zorn50.htm
. The first Rote Zora action is often dated 1975, which, while understandable, is technically incorrect, as previous bombings were claimed simply by “Women of the Revolutionary Cells.”

2
For more on this see Appendix VI—The German Guerilla’s Palestinian Allies: Waddi Haddad’s PFLP (EO), pages 559-61.

3
Imre Karacs, “After 25 years Carlos the Jackal gets his revenge,”
(London) Independent
[online], October 18, 2000. Klein later recalled that with Meins’ death, “It became clear to me that we must do something more than support people in prison. In an emergency, we had to participate in armed actions ourselves.”

4
Time Magazine
[online], “Kidnaping in Vienna, Murder in Athens,” Jan. 5, 1976.

5
Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, both founding members from the Frankfurt scene.

1
Fran Yeoman, “Diplomats suspected Entebbe hijacking was an Israeli plot to discredit the PLO,”
Times Online,
June 1, 2007.

2
Spiegel,
“Härte bedeutet Massaker,” July 5, 1976, quoted in Annette Vowinckel, “Der kurze Weg nach Entebbe oder die Verlängerung der deutschen Geschichte in den Nahen Osten,”
http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/site/40208212/default.aspx#pgfId-1033195a
.

3
Jeffrey Herf, “The ‘Holocaust’ Reception in West Germany: Right, Center and Left,”
New German Critique
19, special issue, Germans and Jews (Winter, 1980): 44.

4
“Gerd Albartus ist tot,”
http://www.freilassung.de/div/texte/rz/zorn/Zorn04.htm

5
Cohen; see also: Hockenos, 120.

6
“Festnahmen nach Frankfurter Ausschreitungen,”
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
. See also Hockenos, 120, though note that his assertion that the arrests occurred in June seems incorrect.

1
Hockenos, 121-122. Please note that a large excerpt of Fischer’s speech, or else a text closely based on it, is credited “anonymous” and reprinted in
semiotext(e): The German Issue
[Anonymous, “To Have Done with Armed Isolation,” translated by Wynn
semiotext(e)
4, no. 2 (1982): 130-133].

2
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, interviewed by Stefan Aust, Gunther Latsch, Georg Mascolo and Gerhard Spörl, “Ein Segen für dieses Land,”
Spiegel
[online], May 2001.

3
Geronimo.

4
Herzog, 429-430.

5
Hockenos, 167, 169.

6
Ibid., 258, 267-268.

1
Edith Hoshino Altbach, “The New German Women’s Movement,”
Signs
9, no. 3 (Spring, 1984): 462.

2
Hoshino Altbach, “The New German Women’s Movement,” 456, 462; Katsiaficas, 75.

3
K.C. Horton, “Abortion Law Reform in the German Federal Republic,”
International and Comparative Law Quarterly
28, no. 2 (April 1979): 288-289.

4
Ibid., 290.

1
Katsiaficas, 69. It should be noted that this tactic had been inspired by a similar action in France, where 343 women had “confessed” in like manner in the pages of
le nouvel Observateur
in 1971, at a time when Schwarzer was living in Paris. (Hoshino Altbach (ed.), “German Feminism,” 103.)

2
Gunhild Feigenwinter quoted in Hoshino Altbach, “The New German Women’s Movement,” 456.

3
Associated Press, “German TV cancels film showing abortion,”
European Stars and Stripes,
March 13, 1974.

4
Katsiaficas, 72.

5
Horton, 291.

6
In 1976, abortion was decriminalized for women who agreed to undergo counseling beforehand. (Katsiaficas, 72)

7
“Aktion gegen das Bundesverfassungsgericht (März 75),”
http://www.freilassung.de/div/texte/rz/zorn/Zorn12i.htm

1
Michal Y. Bodemann, “The Green Party and the New Nationalism in the Federal Republic of Germany,”
Socialist Register
(1985-86): 142.

2
Katsiaficas, 63.

3
Hockenos, 134.

4
Bodemann, 142.

5
Katsiaficas, 81-82.

6
The Atomic State and the People Who Have to Live In It,
(D-Bochum: Campaign against the Model West Germany, 1979). Reprinted in “German war machine targets anti-nukers,”
Open Road
11 (Summer 1980).

1
Dellwo, 95.

1
The legends that surround Mauss are more fantastic than most spy thrillers. A “plausibly deniable” agent for the German state, newspapers were forbidden to publish his photograph in the 1970s for fear that this would compromise his operations. According to Olivier Schmidt, Mauss was deeply involved in coordinating counterinsurgency operations against the RAF in this period and allegedly arranged for certain leading businessmen to pay the secret services for additional protection. (“Free Agent ‘Werner Mauss’ Gets Caught,”
Intelligence
50, December 16, 1996).

2
Karl-Ludwig Günsche and Hans Werner Loose, “Werner Mauss 40 years of fighting against criminality,”
Die Welt
July 31, 1998.

1
Associated Press, “Terrorist kidnapper jailed for extortion,”
European Stars and Stripes,
March 12, 1978. Pohle was finally released in 1982, at which point he did not rejoin the guerilla, but returned to Greece. He eventually found a job at the Athens daily
Eleftherotypia,
where he worked until his death from cancer in 2004. (Associated Press, “Deaths: Rolf Pohle,”
The Daily Globe,
February 10, 2004).

2
Craig R. Whitney, “Treaty Seen to Block Asylum for Terrorists,”
Salt Lake Tribune,
September 3, 1976.

3
Corpus Christi Times,
“Police building hit by bomb,” December 17, 1976.

1
Andreas Baader on the Geneva Convention, cf 467-8.

1
On July 22, 1976, Brigitte Mohnhaupt used her trial testimony to rebut claims about the RAF’s allegedly hierarchical structure. Short excerpts from this statement are reprinted in this volume on pages 173 and 355-8. A less refined translation of the entire statement is available online at
http://www.germanguerilla.com
/red-armyfaction/documents/76_0708_mohnhaupt_pohl.html.

2
The French playwright and existentialist philosopher had visited Baader in Stammheim during the third hunger strike, decrying the isolation conditions as torture which “provokes deficits in the prisoner; it leads him to stupefaction or to death.” See “The Slow Death of Andreas Baader by Jean-Paul Sartre”
http://www.marxists.org
/reference/archive/sartre/1974/baader.htm.

3
Karl Scharf was at this time the Lutheran Bishop of West Berlin.

4
This paragraph is very much directed at the arguments made in the Letter from the RAF to the RAF prisoners, cf 338.

1
The RZ and Rote Zora regularly distributed forged public transit passes.

2
Klaus Wagenbach is a prominent left-wing publisher with his roots in the APO. He read the eulogy at Ulrike Meinhof’s funeral.

3
Peter Brückner was a left-wing psychologist loosely connected to the Frankfurt School. In 1972, he was suspended from his position at the Technical University in Hannover for allegedly lending the RAF material support (most likely shelter), a charge based on Karl-Heinz Ruhland’s questionable testimony (Varon, 239-240). In 1978, he was once again suspended for taking a public stand against the repressive atmosphere the state was attempting to engender through its suppression of
Buback: In Memoriam
(see pages 534-35). He died in 1982 while still appealing the details of this suspension. (Braunthal, 98)

4
§88a, which criminalized literature which “glorifies violence,” passed into law on January 16, 1976.

1
Berberich is purposefully using the acronym for the Nazi SS to indicate state security, or
Staatsicherheit.

2
Institute for the Study of Conflict, an “antiterrorist” thinktank based in London, England.

1
Reuters, “Envoy Gets Kidnap Threat,”
Winnipeg Free Press,
January 22, 1977.

2
United Press International, “Explosive device defused in Wiesbaden,”
European Stars and Stripes,
January 26, 1977.

1
United Press International, “4 W. German Terrorists Arrested,”
Pacific Stars and Stripes
, May 31, 1978.

2
Aust, 401.

3
Roughly $88,000.

4
Associated Press, “3 Sought In Slaying Of Official,”
Press Courier
, April 8, 1977.

5
Arm the Spirit, “A Brief History of the Red Army Faction.”

6
“Déclaration de Knut Folkerts dans le procèes contre Brigitte Schulz et Christian Klar (5-6-84) à Stuttgart-Stammheim, concernant l’action contre Buback,”
Ligne Rouge
11, (December 1984).

1
Reuters, “Suspects shot in gun battle,”
Winnipeg Free Press
, May 4, 1977.

2
United Press International, “Captured Gun confirmed as Buback Murder Weapon,”
European Stars and Stripes
, May 5, 1977.

3
Letter from Günter Sonnenberg in
Angehörigen Info
87, January 18, 1992.

4
United Press International, “Germans seize brother of Buback case suspect,”
European Stars and Stripes
, May 6, 1977. In late 1978, Uwe Folkerts was found guilty of lending his car to RAF members Adelheid Shultz and Sabine Schmitz, and was sentenced to sixteen months in prison; as he had already served eighteen months by that point, he was immediately released. Thimme eventually received a similar sentence; upon release, he remained active within the guerilla’s semi-clandestine support scene until he blew himself up trying to plant a bomb in 1985. (Associated Press, “New Blast in Germany,”
Syracuse Herald-Journal
, January 21, 1985)

5
Schmitz had been arrested in December 1976 and charged under §129. See: United Press International, “German police hunt Haag helpers,”
European Stars and Stripes
, December 8, 1976.

6
Bakker Schut,
Stammheim
465-473.

7
Ibid., 532.

8
Actualité de la Résistance Anti-Impérialiste
, no. 3, Paris, June 6, 1978: 8, 10.