The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1

by J. Smith

The September 7 reports from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior—the first reports were less clear than what followed—consisted of nothing but rhetoric and assertions that it is in fact possible to be a pig just like Moshe Dayan, that everything was planned to resemble his underhanded action against the hijackers in Tel Aviv,5 that everything had been done to spring the same kind of brutal trap on the revolutionaries—truly tragic, tragic…

  That Genscher went so far as to guarantee the exchange of hostages on September 6 at 8 in the morning in Cairo is concealed in the West German reports—this was first made public by the leader of the Egyptian Olympic delegation.

  Foreign imperialist countries were horrified by the Germans’ incompetence. Once again they had failed to liquidate the communists without also liquidating the Jews.

  Israel cried crocodile tears. Isreal burned their own athletes just as the Nazis had burned the Jews—kindling for the imperialist policy of extermination. They won’t even bother to use Munich as a pretext if they now bomb Palestinian villages—they will do what the imperialist system always does: they will bomb the liberation movement. They bomb because the Arab people have embraced the Black September action, because the masses understand the action; their enemy is not only Israel, their enemy is imperialism. It is not only Israel that is bloodthirsty, nor is it only the U.S. in the case of Vietnam, but rather it is all of imperialism against all of the liberation movements. They understand that without an anti-imperialist struggle there can be no victory for the people’s war.

  The Establishment Unmasked

  The West German establishment has unmasked itself—the more they assert themselves, the more the system’s inherent contradictions have proven what this means in the context of developing imperialism: phony campaigns, the social substance of which is a lot of blah blah blah.

  The Rundschau demands the immediate dissolution of all Palestinian organizations in the FRG and the expulsion of all members, again making liberal use of old Bild arguments from the days of the student movement—“our taxes.” The formulation from the FAZ references to Habash1—frothing at the mouth—in the style of the Mainzer Baader Meinhof Report2—he is obviously a cynical man suffering from an inferiority complex. Wischnewski3 wants to expel “all Arabs” whose governments support the Palestinians. Augstein4 demands painful “sanctions.” Nannen5 presents Stern readers with the order of the day: immediate expulsion, a Lufthansa boycott of Arab airports, “not a penny” of development aid or trade credit. Scheel speaks for the “civilized section” of humanity. Heinemann demands that Arab governments act as representatives of the World Court.

  In the long run, this overblown outburst in the Springer Press will prove to be as useless as the authorities’ information strategy before and in the first hours following the massacre.6 When Brandt telephoned Sidki, the Egyptian President, he still believed he could screw around with the revolutionaries in the same way he does with the West German left. He didn’t understand what they wanted. He claimed he didn’t need to know, as everyone must surely agree that they were criminals, anarchists, subhumans, sick, or whatever else. They would be disposed of with no questions asked. Sidki hung up.7

  Genscher, Merck, Schreiber did not think they would have to admit the embarrassing truth, that they themselves caused the death of the hostages. They thought they would have time to make up a story and people would quickly lose interest, as was ultimately the case with the self-defense version of the assassinations of Petra Schelm, Georg von Rauch, and Thomas Weissbecker.

  Right from the start, Genscher thought he could shift the blame to the Bavarians, repeating the approach used to shift the blame for McLeod’s death onto the Stuttgart cops.

  The Munich Prosecutors Office thought they would be able to raise a smokescreen to block investigations and deny journalists information. They intended to draw upon the counterpropaganda they’ve been using against the RAF for two years, claiming that there really is no antiimperialist struggle, that it is only an illusion—to the left of the Social-Liberal Coalition, there is nothing but crackpots, anarchists, criminals, and sick people.

  Eppler8

  The tactically appropriate position, the position required to serve the immediate interests of the FRG, was developed by Eppler: no blanket judgment, no sanctions, continuing development aid, though only in the Maghreb in keeping with the imperialist policy of encirclement, undermining through investments, etc. Those who are prepared to allow the theft of their oil, their mineral resources, and their labor force, will benefit from friendship between nations and partnership.

  Their Unmasking

  Black September stripped the mask off of the Social-Liberal Coalition and their propagandists by forcing the system’s real, rather than the purported, contradiction out into the open. The contradiction between imperialism and the people of the Third World forced them at a certain point to abandon their original goals and intentions, because they could clearly no longer be achieved. The cops wouldn’t play along, refusing to carry out the massacre on the plane.1 The news media wouldn’t play along. Foreign powers wouldn’t play along. The West German masses weren’t consulted. The Arab people for the most part grasped what West Germany represented: the imperialist policy of extermination.

  Unmasking them means forcing them to take the step after next before they have time to take the next one, forcing them to abandon their goals, so that everyone can see what has been going on for a long time now. Pressure must be brought to bear while the revolutionary left is still able to mount a counterstrategy, not after everyone has been banned and fired and is sitting in prison. Unmasking them means forcing the contradictions out into the open, clarifying laws governing trade, seizing the initiative while it’s still possible, not waiting until it becomes impossible.

  It is childish to imagine or to assert that the system can once again use ruling class control of the press and the fundamental unity of the establishment to hide behind a smokescreen, and that lacking a smokescreen it might actually collapse, and that therefore whoever contributes to the smokescreen contributes to the system’s preservation. The anti-imperialist struggle doesn’t take place at the level of election campaigns and detergent ads.

  Anti-Imperialist Consciousness

  The propaganda target of anti-imperialist action is the dialectical relationship between being and consciousness, because the masses’ loyalty to the system is based on their accepting its pretty exterior, its promises, and its lies. Their loyalty to the system is based on its capacity to discourage all spontaneity in its quest to completely assimilate the masses into the “the silent bondage of the relationship” (Marx), which it forces the masses to accept as if it were only natural. Anti-imperialist action rips apart the system’s facade and manipulation, along with the loyalty of the masses, and forces it to admit the truth, about which the masses say, as always, “This is not what we wanted.” That they would then act to put an end to the horror of the system, which has long been apparent, is not the madness the opportunists make it out to be.

  Who wanted the Fürstenfeldbruck massacre? The athletes who were dragged away from the Olympics didn’t want it. The aggrieved and frightened people who experienced the aftermath and who felt the enormous cold-bloodedness of the IOC and the Springer Press didn’t want it. It would be idiotic to believe that the revolutionaries wanted it. They wanted the release of the prisoners. They wanted what millions in this country still want: not to be tortured—just as political prisoners here don’t want to be tortured—and an end to the theft of land, the murder, the napalming and the bombing terror Israel carries out against the Palestinian refugees. And that is why they were massacred. Because success would have meant an unimaginably higher level of identification with them and their revolution—with their “humanity,” their rage, their solidarity—which would have been a setback.

  Anti-imperialist consciousness attempts to prevent the perfection of imperialist rule from being firmly established. The masses are assaulted by Bild everyday. T
hey are swamped on every side with prefabricated positions and postulations, making it difficult for them to express their actual pain and suffering.

  “Terror”

  The RAF’s actions are directed towards developing anti-imperialist consciousness. The system’s cast of characters understand that. They have understood that this form of struggle gradually builds a mass base, because resistance that grows slowly more powerful and more courageous cannot easily be defeated.

  With the tactic of phony bomb threats—used against Stuttgart—they have turned their full attention to addressing this problem. They do this after failing to achieve any breakthroughs, even though they have raided hundreds of houses, scoured thousands of kilometres of streets, and released a million media appeals directed at RAF sympathizers. With the tactic of phony bomb threats and the simultaneous banning of statements from RAF prisoners from the media, the cops themselves are trying to create chaos, which is intended to lead to calls for greater law and order. The socialist left proved incapable of telling the difference between genuine and false bomb threats, although all of the genuine ones were directed against the ruling class and aimed to clear buildings and disrupt the ruling class’s establishments, cultural venues, communication structures, and media outlets—only the Stuttgart threat was directed against the people and was openly fascist and hostile to the masses.

  The anti-imperialist war turns the system’s weapons against the system itself—the counterrevolutionary terrorizes the people. The legal left—confused by the police actions—has ceded the issue to the opportunists (Negt).

  (What needs to be said in detail about the June and July arrests, the imprisoned comrades must say themselves.)

  Black September

  The Black September action in Munich leaves no room for misunderstanding. They took hostages from a people who are carrying out an extermination policy against them. They put their lives on the line to free their comrades. They didn’t want to die. They put off their ultimatum. In the face of the uncompromising attitude advocated by Israel, they held the Israeli hostages prisoner. The Israeli hostages understood that this was a last resort. They were betrayed by the German authorities just as the revolutionaries were. The German police massacred the hostages and the revolutionaries.

  The Black September action in Munich will live on in the memory of the anti-imperialist struggle.

  The death of the Arab comrades weighs as heavily as Mount Tai.

  THE STONES THAT THESE BEASTS THREW AT FÜRSTENFELDBRUCK WILL FALL AT THEIR OWN FEET!

  SOLIDARITY WITH THE LIBERATION STRUGGLE OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

  SOLIDARITY WITH THE VIETNAMESE REVOLUTION!

  REVOLUTIONARIES OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE!

  RAF

  November 1972

  7

  Staying Alive: Sensory Deprivation, Torture, and the Struggle Behind Bars

  By 1972, practically the whole founding generation of the RAF were behind bars. Yet there was still a second generation and a third generation. Why? Primarily because of the conditions of imprisonment and state-organized terror.

  Dieter Kunzelmann former K.1 Communard1

  HAVING CAPTURED THE IDEOLOGICAL LEADERSHIP of the RAF, the West German state set in motion the second element of their counterinsurgency project: one which would eventually become known as the “Stammheim Model.” The mere incarceration of the guerilla was insufficient. Those captured were to be rendered ineffective not only as combatants, but also as spokespeople for the anti-imperialist resistance. If at all possible, they were to be deconstructed as human beings and reconstructed as representatives of the counterinsurgency project. If this was not possible, at a bare minimum, they were to be destroyed.

  The state’s weapon on this terrain was complete and total isolation of the prisoners, both from each other and from the outside world.

  As early as June 7, 1972, the importance of isolation was enunciated by Horst Ehmke, the SPD minister responsible for coordinating intelligence operations. “We all… have an interest in completely breaking all solidarity [with the RAF], to isolate them from all others with radical opinions in this country,” Ehmke told the Bundestag. “That is the most important task.”1

  The prisoners were scattered around the country.2 While they would all be targeted by the state, particular pains were taken to attack those who were considered the five ringleaders: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, Holger Meins, and Jan-Carl Raspe.

  Andreas Baader was held in total isolation from the day of his arrest on June 1, 1972, until November 11, 1974. In that entire time, he did not see another prisoner.

  As of April 11, 1973, Holger Meins was held in Wittlich prison in solitary isolation, with the cells above, below, to the left, and to the right of him kept empty. His cell was searched daily, he was denied all group activities, including church services,3 and he was shackled whenever he left his cell.

  Ulrike Meinhof was put in the so-called “dead wing” at Cologne-Ossendorf prison,4 where Astrid Proll had previously been held. In order to ensure the women remained separate, Proll was transferred to the men’s wing.

  The “dead wing” was intended not only to isolate, but also to induce a breakdown through sensory deprivation torture. It consisted of a specially soundproofed cell painted bright white with a single grated window covered with fine mesh, so that even the sky could not be viewed properly. The cell was lit twenty-four hours a day with a single bald neon light. It was forbidden for the prisoner to hang photographs, posters, or anything else on the walls. All other cells in the wing were kept vacant, and when other prisoners were moved through the prison—for instance, to the exercise yard—they were obliged to take a circuitous route so that even their voices could not be heard. The only minimal contact with another human being was when food was delivered; other than that, the prisoner spent twenty-four hours a day in a world with no variation.

  The use of sensory deprivation had been studied by doctors in Canada and the United States since the late 1950s, the line of research being taken up in the FRG by Dr. Jan Gross of Hamburg’s Eppendorf University Hospital. Studies carried out by Gross found that sensory deprivation consistently caused feelings of unease ranging from fear to panic attacks, which could progress to an inability to concentrate, problems of perception (including hallucinations), vegetative disorders including feelings of intense hunger, chest pains, disequilibrium, trouble sleeping, trembling, and even convulsions.5

  (It is worth noting that just as research into isolation was not limited to the FRG, many prisoners in the United States today are also subjected to various forms of isolation clearly intended as a form of torture.)6

  Astrid Proll had been held in the dead wing for two periods, from November 1971 to January 1972 and from April 1972 to June 1972. She would later describe this experience:

  …I was taken to an empty wing, a dead wing, where I was the only prisoner. Ulrike Meinhof later called it the “Silent Wing”. The shocking experience was that I could not hear any noises apart from the ones that I generated myself. Nothing. Absolute silence. I went through states of excitement, I was haunted by visual and acoustic hallucinations. There were extreme disturbances of concentration and attacks of weakness. I had no idea how long this would go on for. I was terrified that I would go mad.7

  After four and a half months of this torture, Proll’s physical and mental health were so badly damaged that she could hardly walk. When she was brought to trial in September 1973, the court ordered her examined by a heart specialist, a man who happened to be a former POW from Russia: he testified that her condition reminded him of the prisoners interned in Siberia.1 The state was obliged to release her to a sanitarium in the Black Forest where she stayed for a year and then escaped, making her way to England.

  Even when recaptured years later, she remained scarred by her ordeal, as she wrote in 1978:

  During the 2½ years of remand I was 4½ months completely isolated in the Dead Wing of Cologne-Ossendorf. Not even to
day, six years later, have I completely recovered from that. I can’t stand rooms which are painted white because they remind me of my cell. Silence in a wood can terrify me, it reminds me of the silence in the isolated cell. Darkness makes me so depressive as if my life were taken away. Solitude causes me as much fear as crowds. Even today I have the feeling occasionally as if I can’t move.2

  Ulrike Meinhof was held in these conditions for 237 days following her arrest on June 15, 1972, and for shorter periods in December 1973 and February 1975. After eight months of this torture, she wrote:

  I finally realized I had to pull myself out of this, I myself had no right to let these frightful things keep affecting me—it was my duty to fight my way out of it. By whatever means there are of doing that in prison: daubing the walls, coming to blows with a cop, wrecking the fitments, hunger strike. I wanted to make them at least put me under arrest, because then you get to hear something—you don’t have a radio babbling away, only the bible to read, maybe no mattress, no window, etc.—but that’s a different kind of torture from not hearing anything. And obviously it would have been a relief to me…3

  Through it all, she would remain unbroken.

  Having failed to destroy Meinhof through such severe isolation, the state moved to directly and medically attack her brain. On the basis of an operation she had undergone in 1962 to correct a swollen blood vessel in her brain, Federal Prosecutor Peter Zeis theorized that her political behavior might be the result of some neurological problem.

  In a letter dated April 18, 1973, Zeis asked the right-wing4 director of the University of Homburg-Saar’s Institute for Forensic Medicine and Psychiatry, Dr. Hermann Witter, to ascertain what interventions might prove necessary. In a letter dated May 10, Witter responded that he felt both x-rays and a scintigraphy—a routine and normally harmless diagnostic test which involves the injection of radioisotopes—would be required to establish a diagnosis. On July 13, Federal Supreme Court Judge Knoblich ruled that the state could proceed with these tests, even against Meinhof’s will, and with the use of constraining devices or anesthesia if she resisted.5 Correspondence between Witter and the Attorney General indicates that an appropriate diagnosis would have been used to mandate neurosurgery, regardless of the prisoner or her relatives’ wishes.6