Richard is currently at work on The Gun Speaks; The Baader-Meinhof Gang at the Dawn of Terror.
http://www.baader-meinhof.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
http://www.richardhuffman.com/
What events or conditions in 1960′s Germany lead to the formation of the Red Army Faction?
There were a number of factor that directly and indirectly led to the RAF. An important factor was the massive upheaval going on in the German university system; in the space of just a few short years, you had a very rigid system where students quietly listened to their professor’s lecture to them in a god-like manner, to an environment where students in many university’s were voting on their professors, their grades etc. Basically students were becoming empowered as never before. Coupled with this was an extremely strong Marxist ideology that permeated the university system. Marx’s theories on Capitalism were accepted as fact, and the notion of a Revolution among the western societies was accepted as well. It wasn’t a matter of IF there was to a revolution, but WHEN there was going to be a revolution and who would lead it.
Events in Germany politics also pushed many young leftists away from the mainstream. In 1966 there was no clear majority party winners in the federal elections, so the two main parties chose to form a super-majority government comprising about 95% of the elected officials. This “grand coalition” convinced many young left-wing Germans that the supposed left-wing party (the SPD), did not have their best interests in mind.
When some student demonstrations of 1967 and 1968 turned violent and deadly, it further convinced many of the young students that there German state is still fascist in nature, essentially unchanged since the Nazi era.
To some extent I feel that the appearance of the RAF, or another group like them, was inevitable. Basically the left-wing culture of the time was highly predisposed towards the notion that there would be a vanguard group that would kickstart the coming revolution; if it hadn’t been the RAF, one of the other groups, like the June 2 Movement, would probably have become more prominent.
Who were the group’s founders? Could you tell us something about their backgrounds?
There were three founders of the group; Andreas Baader, his girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin, and Horst Mahler. Baader was charismatic kind of a faux rebel who did not graduate high school, and had bounced around Germany getting into low-level trouble. Gudrun Ensslin was an intense daughter of a pastor who was extremely intelligent and well-versed in radical thought. The idea of specific group of urban guerrilla revolutionaries was mostly Horst Mahler’s; he was a relatively prominently lawyer who took on left-wing causes. Mahler was shunted aside within the group almost immediately, and he was captured not too long after the formation of the group. There is also an incorrect assumption that Ulrike Meinhof was one of the leaders of the group; she was certainly part of the inner circle, but the group was run by Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ennslin…
Was it the murder of a radical student in 1968 by police the event that spurred Andreas Bader to begin the wave of terror? Could you tell us about this event?
The facts are a little bit different than you describe, but the effect was the same. It was actually 1967… June 2nd to be exact. The Shah of Iran was visiting Berlin and the government and press was treating the visit rapturously. But many leftists saw the Shah essentially for what he truly was; a puppet dictator installed by the CIA who treats his people horribly. Several demonstrations were planned during his Berlin visit. An evening demonstration took place across the street from the Opera House where the Shah was attending a performance. The police allowed Persian in the crowd to attack the protestors, and then the police began to attack and beat the protestors. In the confusion a young pacifist theology student named Benno
Ohnesorg was captured by the police and then accidentally shot and killed… he was attending his first demonstration.
Also attending the demo was Gudrun Ensslin. The death of Ohnesorg had a profound impact on her; it convinced her that her parent’s generation was still fascist in nature and the only way to answer them was with violence. This was definitely among the most critical events that led to Ensslin radicalizing. Early the next year she met Baader, and though he was no radical at the time, he quickly caught up with her…
The incident also gave a name to another radical group: The June 2nd Movement. Though not as prominent as the Baader-Meinhof Group (they were mostly based in Berlin), they were active throughout the 1970s. They even tried to kill my father in his capacity as the US Army’s Berlin Brigade Bomb Disposal unit…
Who were some of those murdered by The Bader Meinhof Gang?
The Baader-Meinhof Gang / RAF was responsible for the deaths of about 25 people during the time frame that I studied them (1970-1977 or so). They believed themselves to be at war with the United States and the US’s proxies like the German government. Therefore US soldiers and German police were considered legitimate targets. Later, they decided that politicians and others actively opposed to them were legitimate targets, and later still they targeted prominent capitalist businessmen.
Their first victims were several police officer killed in shootouts in 1971, but their first overt victim of a terrorist act was lt. Col. Paul Bloomquist, who was killed by a bomb at the US Military’s V Corp headquarters at Frankfurt’s IG Farben building in May of 1972. A week or so later another bomb at the US Army’s Heidelberg Campbell Baracks killed three more US soldiers.
After the capture of the entire leadership of the RAF in late May-June 1972, the group tended to attack politicians and others in a bid to get their leadership released from prison. Certain the most famous and prominent victim was Hanns-Martin Schleyer, who was the head of the German Federation of Employers. He was kidnapped in the fall of 1977 and was held hostage for 44 days before eventually being murdered. The group regularly released videotapes of him reading their demands and his kidnapping paralyzed all of Germany…
What events lead to the capture and arrest of the members of the group? One of them committed suicide before their arrest, am I right on this? (Einsellen)
To my knowledge there wasn’t any particular member that committed suicide prior to arrest, though most of the founding leadership ultimately committed suicide in prison.
The Baader-Meinhof Gang/RAF was essentially founded in May of 1970 when Ulrike Meinhof assisted in the freeing of Andreas Baader from police custody. Aside from so early arrests, the group spent the next two years on the run. Part of the reason it took two years to capture the leadership of the group was due to the fact that they didn’t commit any particular acts of over terrorism until May of 1972. Prior to that they spent much of their time robbing banks, stealing cars, and planning their revolution, but the massive effort to capture them in May and June of 1972 was partially in response to the escalation of the Baader-Meinhof Gang in their war on the state.
In May of 1972 the group in short order bombed the US Base in Frankfurt, Police stations in Augsburg, Karlsruhe and Munich, the US base in Heidelberg, and a Springer Press building in Hamburg. Many people were killed and injured, including US soldiers. The BKA (essentially the German version of the FBI) tracked down Andreas Baader, Holger Meins, and Jan-Carl Raspe in Frankfurt from a tip. After an intense shootout, they were all captured. The following week Gudrun Ensslin was captured when a store clerk spotted her gun as she was shopping in Hannover. And a week later Ulrike Meinhof is captured after the police are tipped off to her safehouse in Hannover. So in the space of two short weeks, the entire leadership of the Baader-Meinof Gang was imprisoned.
Recently one of the members was pardoned. Could you tell us about this?
Of course there were successive generations of the RAF that followed in the footsteps of the original leadership. One member, Christian Klar, was one of the so-called “second generation” that tried to secure the release of the original leadership through kidnapping and murder. He was captured in 1982 and served 26 years in prison for the murders of several businessmen. He was release shortly before Christmas last year and is the second from last Red Army Faction member in prison (Birgit Hogefeld is the last member, having served 24 years).
Americans are often surprised by the release of these murderers and terrorists because the United States is literally chock full of prisons with people serving life sentences for extremely mundane crimes. But sentences in Germany are traditionally much shorter, even for murder, and former terrorists had been released even earlier if the expressed remorse for their crimes.
