Man the barricades!

Germany in the 1960s was still booming from its economic miracle in the previous decade, rising confidently from the ashes of the Second World War. The country was a manufacturing titan and had one of the world’s strongest economies. The future was looking bright and prosperous but it could not escape the massive social upheavals that were affecting almost all of the major industrialised nations.

Student protests were erupting all over Western Europe and North America at the end of the 1960s and college campuses became the front-line in the battle for social change. Fuelled by dissatisfaction with capitalist society barricades were erected in the name of civil rights, anti-imperialism and feminism. The anti-war agenda dominated the protests however with America’s presence in Vietnam leading to increasingly violent confrontations between protestors and the authorities. National liberation movements provided inspiration as they took the fight to the old colonial powers and pictures of Che Guevara were appearing on students bedrooms everywhere.

In West Germany the historical legacy of fascism was also driving a wedge between the generations. The countries de-nazification programme was a cause of great anger and frustration among the young as numerous ex-Nazis were still in government posts years after the end of the war. In 1966 Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former Nazi party member, was elected as head of the government.

A fear of losing their political freedoms also affected Germany’s youth as they saw increasing signs of a return to an authoritarian state. In 1956 the Communist Party of Germany was outlawed and at the start of the 1960s the country was dominated by a grand coalition of the two main political parties. With the coalition controlling 95% of the Bundestag many took to political activity and protest outside of mainstream politics.

The fuse was lit on 2 June 1967 when the Shah of Iran visited West Berlin. Protesters gathered outside the Shah’s hotel to demonstrate against the Western backed dictatorship which frequently tortured and suppressed its own citizens. Anger at their government’s cosy relationship with the Shah was further inflamed when the Shah’s security men, with apparent impunity from the German police, beat the students with wooden staves. That evening the Shah attended the Berlin Opera and another demonstration quickly formed. This time student Benno Ohnesorg, who was attending his first demonstration, was shot in the head by a police officer and died on the spot. The policeman was later acquitted.

The death of Ohnesorg radicalised many young Germans and became a focus for the leftist movement. Larger and more violent protests occurred leading to tension between students and the German state rapidly escalating. Soon after 10,000 West Berlin students staged a sit-in against America’s involvement in Vietnam. In another demonstration students in over 108 Universities across Germany protested for recognition of East Germany, student rights and the removal of ex-Nazis from government posts. In February 1968, professors at the University of Bonn demonstrated, demanding the removal of the Universities president because of his involvement in building concentration camps. In Easter 1968, a right-wing extremist attempted to assassinate one of the most prominent spokespeople for the student movement, Rudi Dutschke. In response outraged students blamed newspaper magnate Axel Spring for inciting the assassination as well as publishing negative articles about them. Attempts were made to block the distribution of his newspaper Bild-Zeitung leading to the death of two students and injuries to 400 more.

Calling comrade Baader

On the evening of April 2 1968 a wall of flame roared through two department stores in Frankfurt. An anonymous call to a German Press Agency informed them that the arson was committed as a protest against the Vietnam War. Two days later Andreas Baader, his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin and fellow radicals Thorwald Proll and Horst Sohnlein were arrested. Baader, the ringleader, already had a lengthy criminal record and a history of being a tearaway and womaniser. A non-student, the initially apolitical Baader adopted radical left-wing politics after meeting the radical student activist Ensslin.

 

The four defendants at their trial

All four were eventually sentenced to three years in prison. Their sentence did not last long as the  following year they were released under an amnesty for ‘political prisoners’; which was then revoked a few months later and they were ordered back to prison. Only Sohnlein complied, the others escaped underground to France and eventually made their way to Italy. Whilst laying low in their foreign hideaway the fugitives were visited by the radical left-wing lawyer Horst Mahler who encouraged them to return to Germany with him and form an underground guerrilla group. In 1970 The Red Army Faction was born.

The Red Army Faction (R.A.F.) adopted a Marxist-Leninist ideology and committed itself to an armed anti-imperialistic struggle. Styling themselves on South American urban resistance movements the group took on a cell-like structure. Many members only had a single contact and knew their fellow guerrillas by codenames. Their active units, which were known as ‘commandos’ and were usually named after fallen comrades, operated together for just one operation and then were split up. The group briefly trained with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Jordan before falling out with them and being asked to leave.

The group soon began recruiting fellow radicals to their cause such as film student Holger Meins, prominent journalist Ulrike Meinhoff, nineteen-year-old hairdresser Petra Schelm and her boyfriend Manfred Grashof and Astrid Proll, younger sister of Thorwald. Bank robberies were soon arranged to raise money for the group and they set about trying to secure weapons. On one such trip to pick up a stash of guns Baader was stopped by the police and taken back into custody.

On the morning of the 14^th May a prison van pulled up outside the Institute for Social Research in Berlin. Baader was taken out by two policemen and escorted into the buildings library to work on the book he was writing in collaboration with Ulrike Meinhoff who is waiting for him inside. As the two settled down to work on their book about “organising young people on the fringes of society” the building’s front doorbell rang.

Georg Linke, a 64-year-old employee of the Institute, opened the door to two pretty young ladies Irene Goergens and Ingrid Schubert who wanted to use the library. They were told they could not go in there for a while and were escorted to some chairs in the hallway. A few minutes later the doorbell rings again and the two women rushed to open it and let in a masked man carrying a loaded Beretta pistol.

Linke spotting the masked man shouted to two secretaries to jump out of the window, despite being shot in the liver he was able to dive out after them. With all three now armed they burst into the library and started firing wildly at the two policemen. In the commotion Baader escaped through a window opened by Meinhoff and were then followed quickly by the others. The following day the papers are full of accounts of the daring of the “Baader-Meinhof gang”.

And so it begins…

On the 11 May, explosions ripped through the officers’ mess of the Fifth US Army Corps in Heidelberg spraying glass and debris everywhere. A shard of glass lodged itself in the throat of 39-year old Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bloomquist causing the father of two to bleed to death and 13 others are seriously injured. The “Petra Schelm Commando” claimed responsibility in protest at the US mining of North Korean harbours. The R.A.F. terrorist Petra Schelm was killed the year before in a shoot out with police.

The following day five policemen are injured when two pipe bombs, planted by the “Tommy Wiessbecker Commando”, explode in Augsburg police station. Weissbecker had been killed by police in a shoot out a few months earlier. Two hours later another bomb explodes in the car park of the Bavarian State Criminal Investigations Agency in Munich, destroying 60 cars.

On May 15 Gerta Buddenberg jumped into her car to do a bit of shopping and afterwards pick up her husband from work. Her husband was Judge Wolfgang Buddenberg who had signed many of the arrest warrants of Baader-Meinhof gang members. She turned on the ignition of the bright red Volkswagen, which instantly exploded in a burning ball of flame. Frau Buddenberg survived but was permanently disabled by injuries to her legs. The “Manfred Grashof Commando”, who had received a life sentence for his R.A.F. activities, claimed responsibility.

The conservative newspapers of the Springer Press had long been considered enemies of the left-wing movement. On the 19 May the receptionist in the Springer Press’ Hamburg building answered the phone to a man telling her, “A bomb will go of in the building in five minutes time!” Thinking the call was a prank the receptionist ignored it. A few minutes’ later bombs erupted through the building injuring 17 people. Letters claiming responsibility were signed “the 2 June Commando”.

Coolly driving two stolen cars Irmgard Moller and Angela Luther entered the US Army’s Campbell barracks in Heidelberg. The cars were carrying American license plates and were quickly waved through by guards. A little while later two 50 pound bombs explode in the car park ripping in half Captain Clyde Bonner and instantly killing his friend Ronald Woodward. A wall collapses on the nearby soldier’s clubhouse crushing to death soldier Charles Peck; and five others are wounded. The “15 July Commando” (the day Petra Schelm was killed) claims responsibility.

West German police soon engage in an intense manhunt for member of the Baader-Meinhof gang which would soon reap rewards.

Round ups

After the lavender Porsche had pulled up by the side of the road and the two passengers had got out and entered the garage in Frankfurt the police leapt into action. The Porsche’s driver had got out of the car and lit a cigarette before noticing the swarm of police. Loosening off one shot at the onrushing officers the driver tried to run away but was quickly tackled to the ground. To force out the two men surrounded in the garage tear gas was fired in the windows but the men simply tossed it back out. A potential stand-off was ended quickly when a shot was fired by the police into the thigh of one of the men. Leading Red-Army Faction members Holger Meins and Jan-Carl Raspe were now in custody along with the biggest prize of them all, a wounded Andreas Baader.

A week later an obviously distraught Ensslin was browsing in a Frankfurt department store when a sales clerk noticed a gun protruding from her coat. The police were called and she was nabbed without a fight. Ulrike Meinhoff was picked up soon afterwards and other members of the gang such as Irmgard Moller and Gerhard Muller were eventually rounded up.

The nucleus of the R.A.F. was now held in solitary confinement at the newly built high security Stammheim Prison. The unrepentant prisoners stubbornly continued their political struggle from within the prison walls. A series of co-ordinated hunger strikes took place in protest against their treatment by the authorities; only ending after they were force-fed. However Holger Meins died of self-induced starvation in November 1974. The six feet four inch film student weighed less then 100 pounds when he died.

Germany could now breathe a sigh of relief that the Baader-Meinhoff gang had been smashed and the perpetrators of the most brutal terrorist campaign on German soil were about to face justice. The most tense and controversial criminal trial in German history started on the 21 May 1975 with Baader, Ensslin, Meinhoff and Raspe jointly charged with four murders and 54 attempted murders.

The next generation

One month before the start of the trial Swedish police swarmed onto the ground floor of the West German embassy in Stockholm after hearing that 11 people had been taken hostage. The furious terrorists threatened to kill a hostage unless the police withdrew immediately. The police stayed put, and soon after the military attaché’s hands were tied behind his back, led to the top of the stairs and shot in the back of the head. The police left taking the body with them. The group demanded the release of all Baader-Meinhoff prisoners and would shoot one hostage every hour until this demand was met. The ordeal only ended when the explosives the group had planted in the basement exploded accidentally killing one more hostage and two of the terrorists. One of  the terrorists turned out to be Ulrich Wessel, the son of a millionaire.

It appeared the Red Army Faction was back in business. Inspired by the exploits of the original group a second generation of the R.A.F. emerged independently of the imprisoned originals. A new wave of violence was unleashed with the aim of freeing their comrades.

On 7 April 1977 Federal Prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, his driver and bodyguard were all killed when they were stopped at a red traffic light and shot by two R.A.F. members.

A couple of months later in a bungled kidnapping attempt the head of the Dresdner Bank, Jurgen Ponto, was killed in front of his house by a R.A.F. commando that included the sister of his goddaughter.

Hanns Martin Schleyer, a former SS officer and the current most powerful industrialist in West Germany, was being driven home from work on the 5 September 1977 when the car was forced to screech to a halt as a pram was pushed in front of it. His police escort could not avoid crashing into the back of his car and all three were immediately shot and killed along with his chauffeur by masked assailants.

A letter was soon sent to the Government demanded the release of the Baader-Meinhof prisoners or Schleyer would be killed. The situation escalated soon afterwards when Lufthansa Flight 181 from Spain to Frankfurt was hijacked. When the plane landed in Rome for refuelling the hijackers also demanded the release of the Baader-Meinhoff prisoners as well as two Palestinians and a $15 million ransom. The plane flew on to Dubai and then Aden where the pilot, who was deemed to not be cooperating enough, was executed. The co-pilot flew them onto Mogadishu in Somalia.

The German Government determined not to give in to the terrorists dispatched an elite unit of the German police to Mogadishu airport. They stormed the plane in a seven minute operation, three of the hijackers were killed and all of the hostages were freed unharmed.

Death Night

Later that same night after news of the daring rescue had been broadcast on the radio Baader was found dead in his cell with a bullet wound to the back of the head. Ensslin was found hanged in her cell and Raspe was taken to hospital also with a bullet wound in the head where he later died. Meinhoff had committed suicide the year before after apparently being ostracised by the rest of the group.

Conspiracy theories were rife that the prisoners were the victims of an extra-judicial killing determined to finally end the R.A.F.’s reign of terror. However a government inquiry concluded that it was a collective suicide using weapons smuggled in by their lawyers.

The following day Schleyer’s kidnappers announced that he had been executed. His body was discovered later that day in the trunk of a green Audi in France.

The funeral of Baader, Ensslin and Raspe

Legacy

The Baader-Meinhoff gang’s campaign tore at the very fabric of German society; attacking its law, economy and industry. Not only was left-wing ideology pitted against right-wing but also young against old. It was reported in the early days of their campaign that one in four of German’s under the age of 30 sympathised with the group and would shelter one of the gang if they were on the run.

Long after the deaths of the original members attacks were still committed under the name of the Red Army Faction by a so-called “third generation”. These attacks by the few remaining members never acquired the same ferocity or threatened the German state to the depth of Baader and his cohorts. The collapse of communism was a serious blow to the R.A.F. as well as other left-wing groups. So too was the discovery that the group had received financial and logistical help from the Stasi, the intelligence and security organisation of East Germany.

In 1992 the German Government announced that if the R.A.F. was to refrain from attacks then some of its members in prison would be released. Soon after a R.A.F. communiqué announced its decision to de-escalate the anti-imperialist struggle and not engage in significant actions.

On 20 April, 1998 the Reuters press agency received a letter signed the “RAF” and bearing their machine gun and red star insignia, which declared: “Almost 28 years ago, on 14 May 1970, the RAF arose in a campaign of liberation. Today we end this project. The urban guerrilla in the shape of the RAF is now history.”