Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

J. Smith, André Moncourt

Description

In 1970 a small group of West German revolutionaries decided to go underground, set up safe houses, and learn the skills of the urban guerilla. They were the Red Army Faction.

Seven years later, almost all of the original combatants were in prison or dead, yet, through their example, they had inspired a militant and illegal support movement, comrades willing to take up arms in defense of the prisoners.

1977 was to be a year of reckoning. Through daring attacks and devastating errors, the West German guerilla brought their society to the brink, mounting one of the most desperate and incredible campaigns of asymmetrical warfare ever waged in postwar Europe. That they failed is no excuse to not learn their story, to see who they were and what they fought for—and, most tragically, to bear witness to the lengths the state would go to silence them. This pamphlet is our very modest introduction to this story.

Sujets

• Fracción del Ejército Rojo
• Communism
• Red Army Faction
• Left-wing politics
• Guerrilla warfare
• Prison
• RAF

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604861259
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

DARING TO STRUGGLE, FAILING TO WIN
THE RED ARMY FACTION S 1977 CAMPAIGN OF DESPERATION
BY J. SMITH ANDR MONCOURT
PM P RESS PAMPHLET SERIES
0001: BECOMING THE MEDIA: A CRITICAL HISTORY OF CLAMOR MAGAZINE By Jen angel
0002: DARING TO STRUGGLE, FAILING TO WIN: THE RED ARMY FACTION S 1977 CAMPAIGN OF DESPERATION By J. Smith Andr Moncourt
0003: MOVE INTO THE LIGHT: POSTSCRIPT TO A TURBULENT 2007 By The Turbulence Collective
0004: PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX By Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans
0005: A BOLISH RESTAURANTS By Prole
PM Press PAMPHLET SERIES No. 0002 DARING TO STRUGGLE, FAILING TO WIN: THE RED ARMY FACTION S 1977 CAMPAIGN OF DESPERATION By J. Smith Andr ; Moncourt ISBN: 978-1-60486-028-3
Copyright 2008 J. Smith Andr Moncourt This edition copyright 2008 PM Press All Rights Reserved
PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
Kersplebedeb CP 63560 CCCP Van Horne Montreal, Quebec Canada H3W 3H8 http://www.kersplebedeb.com
http://www.germanguerilla.com
Layout and design: Courtney Utt
Printed in Oakland, CA on recycled paper with soy ink.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
SEVEN YEARS OF STRUGGLE AGAINST THE STATE
THE SUMMER OF 77: THE PRISONERS STRUGGLE HEATS UP
GERMAN AUTUMN, BITTER DEFEAT
THE STAMMHEIM SUICIDES
LOOKING BACK FROM A DIFFERENT WORLD
A FINAL NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND SOURCES
INTRODUCTION
Thirty years ago, the world was a very different place.
The division between Communism and The Free West -d tente notwithstanding-marked each and every political conflict, as did the anti-colonial revolutions, which had by no means run their course.
Millions of people around the world felt that it was reasonable and worthwhile to risk their lives fighting for liberation from capitalism and imperialism. Goals which were defined as such. This global upheaval found its epicentre in the Third World, and yet its effects would leave no nation untouched. While in the wealthy imperialist countries these liberation wars were most evident in the 1960s, there remained pockets of resistance, subcultural remnants, people who remained willing to put their lives on the line, fighting for revolution right through the 1970s and 1980s.
This pamphlet is one short sideways glance at a single chapter in this general twentieth century conflagration. It is a look at the most intense campaign waged by a group which no longer exists-the Red Army Faction-in a country which technically no longer exists-West Germany-at a point in history where everything not busy being born, was busy dying. (with apologies to Bob Dylan).
The reasons for presenting this story are many.
First of all, those of us who are active on the left today operate within the same broad tradition as the people who risked and even lost their lives in 1977. If one cannot agree with all that the RAF did or said-to do so would mean closing our eyes to thirty years of history-one can still recognize them as comrades. So in a sense, telling this tale is a matter of showing respect.
Secondly, there are lessons here. They may not be obvious, the forms of struggle are so very different now than they were in the seventies, but there are things that can be learned nevertheless. Questions of how to wage asymmetrical warfare, of what we mean by revolutionary morality, of what we risk when we underestimate our opponents. Perhaps most importantly, the story of the RAF can teach us that it is possible to not back down, to surpass our previous expectations, to follow through on our most daring plans.
Unfortunately, many of the lessons to be learned from the RAF s struggle cannot be gleaned from 1977 alone. Interested readers are strongly advised to check out the upcoming two volume documentary history of the RAF that is to be published later this year by PM Press and Kersplebedeb. (For more on these volumes, see the contact pages at the end of this pamphlet.)
There is one more obvious reason for looking back at the RAF and the German Autumn. This story has itself become politically relevant, as differing versions of what the RAF did and did not do, and what they did or did not think, have been imbued with symbolic importance for the new, 21st century, united Germany.
The year 2007 saw a glut of commemorations, ceremonies, and journalistic and scholarly retrospectives. Here the corpse of the RAF, and the memory of the dead on both sides, was put under a microscope as if we were assisting in an autopsy. Generally, the tone was excessively self-congratulatory: we beat the disease, we put it behind us. The disease in question being armed resistance to the imperialist state.
Mere memories can of course be tantalizing, and in certain quarters it was suggested that the best moments (from the point of view of the state, of course) could be relived: new charges against former combatants, new investigations into past assassinations, new repression against new radical movements too. More on this in the final section of this pamphlet.
Yet before we begin, a word is perhaps in order about the society in which all of this took place.
West Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, was an anti-communist state set up after World War II to threaten the Soviet bloc, and around which imperialism hoped to (and succeeded in) rebuilding the West European economy. As part of this process, immediately after the war the capitalist Allies decided to make peace with former Nazis and their supporters, so long as they were willing to play ball with the new democratic masters. Throughout the late 40s, the 50s, and the 60s, many of the key positions of power in the FRG were held by men who had played similarly important roles in Hitler s Third Reich.
As a substitute for any real denazification, religious and civil leaders simply repeated the mantra that the best way to make sure the crimes of the Nazi period would never happen again was for all Germans to concentrate on living decent, law-abiding lives. A message that would often be repeated by parents-not a few of whom had sieg heiling skeletons in their closets-to their children.
A stifling, authoritarian and conformist ideology was being imposed from above, a perfect match for the cultural wasteland that had been sterilized in the post-war period, just as it had been aryanized by fascism.
The wave of revolt that became known as the New Left reached the FRG at about the same time as it reached the other imperialist countries, in the 1960s. Gathered around Hans-J rgen Krahl and the East German refugees Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl, in West Berlin some students began questioning not only the economic system, but the very nature of society itself. The structure of the family, the factory, and the school system were all challenged as these young rebels mixed the style of the hippie counter-culture with ideas drawn from the Frankfurt School s brand of Marxism.

Communes and housing associations began to spring up. Women challenged the male leadership and orientation within the SDS [Socialist German Student Union] and the APO [Extra-Parliamentary Opposition], setting up daycares, women s caucuses, women s centers, and women s only communes. The broader counterculture, rockers, artists, and members of the drug scene all rallied to the emerging political insurgency. Political protests encompassed traditional demonstrations, as well as sit-ins, teach-ins, and happenings.
This revolt was all the more striking given the conservative cultural and political situation in West Germany at the time. Opposed by a rabidly right-wing gutter press and gratuitous police violence, the movement was forced to develop a capacity for street militancy, while the spectre of Germany s recent past imbued it with a sense of do or die urgency.
It was within this context, and inspired by the liberation struggles in the Third World, that the first militants began experimenting with a new form of political intervention: the urban guerilla.
SEVEN YEARS OF STRUGGLE AGAINST THE STATE
The Red Army Faction (RAF) had first announced itself in 1970, when a small group of radicals broke a young man out of jail.
Andreas Baader was serving a three-year sentence for having set a fire to a department store to protest the war in Vietnam. One of his rescuers, Gudrun Ensslin, had also participated in this political arson, and, as such, was also living underground at the time. Another rescuer, Ulrike Meinhof, was a well known left-wing social critic, a magazine journalist who had been finishing up a docudrama about girls in reform school. She was recognized and forced to go underground with the others.
The RAF made international headlines with this jailbreak, and the operation was hotly debated on the left.


May 1972: A car bomb goes off outside a police station in Augsburg.
Shortly thereafter, guerilla members travelled to Jordan, in the Middle East, where they received weapons training from the Palestinian group Al Fatah, part of the PLO. The RAF would make extensive use of various Arab countries as rear base areas throughout their existence, places where one could go not only for training, but also to hide when Europe got too hot . As we shall see, this friendly relationship with Palestinian revolutionary organizations would have other consequences as well.
Upon their return to the FRG, the guerilla once again grabbed the public s attention, carrying out a series of bank robberies and preparing for campaigns to come.
Successfully evading police, the RAF began to take on the aura of folk heroes for many students and leftists who were glad to see someone taking things to the next level. Thousands of people secretly carried photographs of RAF members in their wallets. Time and time again, as the cops stepped up their search, members of the young guerilla group would find doors open to them as they were welcomed into people s homes, including those of not a few middle class sympathisers academics, doctors, even a clergyman. Newspapers at the time carrie