This book about the Red Army
Faction of American-occupied Germany is one that should be read by any
serious student of anti-imperialist politics. “Volume 1: Projectiles
for the People” provides a history of the RAF’s development through the
words of its letters and communiqués. What makes the book
especially important and relevant, however, is the careful research and
documentation done by its editors. Their effort makes this work far
more than a collection of communiqués. From this book you will
learn the mistakes of a group that was both large and strong, but which
(like our own home-grown attempts in this regard) was unable to
successfully communicate with the working class of a “democratic”
country on a level that met their needs. While the armed struggle can
be the seed of something much larger, is also another means of reaching
out and communicating with the people. Students interested in this
historic era would do well to study this book and to internalize both
the successes and failures of one of the largest organized armed
anti-imperialists organizations operating in Western Europe since World
War II.
contents
Foreword By Bill Dunne............xiv
A word from Russell “Maroon” Shoats............xv
Acknowledgements............xvi
Translators’ Note............xviii
Preface............xxi
Acronym Key............xxv
German Terms............xxix
1. “Democracy” Comes to Deutschland: Postfascist Germany and the Continuing Appeal of Imperialism............3
2. The Re-Emergence of Revolutionary Politics in West Germany............19
3. Taking Up the Gun............45
Faced With This Justice System, We Can’t Be
Bothered Defending Ourselves
(Thorwald Proll, October 1968)............66
Build the Red Army!
(June 5, 1970)............79
The Urban Guerilla Concept
(April 1971)............83
4. Building a Base and “Serving the People”............107
Andreas Baader: Letter to the Press
(January 24, 1972)............120
Serve the People: The Urban Guerilla and Class
Struggle
(April 1972)............122
sidebar: on the treatment of traitors............160
This is Edelgard Graefer...
(March 27, 1972)............162
5. the may offensive: bringing the war home............163
For the Victory of the People of Vietnam
(May 14, 1972)............174
Attacks in Augsburg and Munich
(May 16, 1972)............175
Attack on Judge Buddenberg
(May 20, 1972)............176
Attack on the Springer Building
(May 20, 1972)............177
Attack on the Heidelberg Headquarters of the
U.S. Army in Europe
(May 25, 1972)............178
To the News Editors of the West German Press
(May 28, 1972)............179
Regarding the Fascist Bomb Threats Against
Stuttgart
(May 29, 1972)............181
Statement to the Red Aid Teach-In
(May 31, 1972)............183
6. black september: a statement from behind bars............187
The Black September Action in Munich: Regarding
the Strategy for Anti-Imperialist Struggle
(November 1972)............205
7. staying alive: sensory deprivation, torture, and the struggle behind bars............237
Ulrike Meinhof on the Dead Wing
(1972–73, 1973–74)............271
Second Hunger Strike
(May 8, 1973)............274
Provisional Program of Struggle for the
Political Rights of Imprisoned Workers
(September 1974)............279
Third Hunger Strike
(September 13, 1974)............285
The Expulsion of Horst Mahler
(Monika Berberich, September 27, 1974)............288
Holger Meins’ Report on Force-Feeding
(October 11, 1974)............292
Holger Meins’ Last Letter
(November 1, 1974)............296
Interview with Spiegel Magazine
(January 1975)............300
Andreas Baader Regarding Torture
(June 18, 1975)............319
8. a desperate bid to free the prisoners: the stockholm action............325
Letter from the RAF to the RAF Prisoners
(February 2, 1975)............338
Occupation of the West German Embassy in
Stockholm
(April 24, 1975)............339
Defense Attorney Siegfried Haag Goes Underground
(May 11, 1975)............341
9. shadow boxing: countering psychological warfare............343
“We know why he’s saying it”
(Brigitte Mohnhaupt, July 22, 1976)............355
On the Liberation of Andreas Baader
(Ulrike Meinhof, September 13, 1974)............359
The Bombing of the Bremen Train Station
(December 9, 1974)............371
The Nature of the Stammheim Trial: The
Prisoners Testify
(August 19, 1975)............372
No Bomb in Munich Central Station
(September 14, 1975)............376
The Bombing of the Hamburg Train Station
(September 23, 1975)............378
The Bombing of the Cologne Train Station
(November 1975)............380
10. the murder of ulrike meinhof............381
Jan-Carl Raspe: On the Murder of Ulrike Meinhof
(May 11, 1976)............395
Fragment Regarding Structure
(1976)............397
Two Letters to Hanna Krabbe
(March 19 & 23, 1976)............400
Letter to the Prisoners in Hamburg
(April 13, 1976)............405
Interview with Le Monde Diplomatique
(June 10, 1976)............408
11. meanwhile, elsewhere on the left… (an intermission of sorts)............433
12. & back to the raf… ............453
RZ Letter to the RAF Comrades
(December 1976)............457
Monika Berberich Responds to the Alleged RZ
Letter
(January 10, 1977)............464
Andreas Baader: On the Geneva Convention
(June 2, 1977)............467
13. daring to struggle, failing to win............469
Fourth Hunger Strike
(March 29, 1977)............487
The Assassination of Attorney General Siegfried
Buback
(April 7, 1977)............490
Statement Calling Off the Fourth Hunger Strike
(April 30, 1977)............493
The Assassination of Jürgen Ponto
(August 14, 1977)............494
Statement Breaking Off the Fifth Hunger Strike
(September 2, 1977)............495
The Attack on the BAW
(September 3, 1977)............496
The Schleyer Communiqués
(September–October, 1977)............498
Operation Kofr Kaddum
(SAWIO, October 13, 1977)............503
SAWIO Ultimatum
(October 13, 1977)............505
Final Schleyer Communiqué
(October 19, 1977)............507
14 the stammheim deaths............511
15 on the defensive............521
Appendices
appendix i: Excerpts from the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung............544
appendix ii: The European Commission of Human Rights and the RAF Prisoners............548
appendix iii: The FRG and the State of Israel............550
appendix iv: The Geneva Convention: Excerpts............554
appendix v: Strange Stories: Peter Homann and Stefan Aust............557
appendix vi: The German Guerilla’s Palestinian Allies: Waddi Haddad’s PFLP(EO)............559
dramatis personae............563
armed struggle in west germany............579
note on sources and methodology............629
bibliography............632
index ............663
Starting in the Sixties, a new revolutionary
strategy began to plague the capitalist metropolis—the urban guerilla.
Warfare once waged by peasant armies in the countryside of a Cuba, a
China, or a Guinea-Bisseau, was suddenly transfered to small cells of
ex-students in the imperialist centers of Berlin, Rome and New York. No
urban guerrillas became more famed or more demonized than West
Germany’s Red Army Faction (RAF). We knew their signature bold actions
in the headlines: from the damaging bombing of the u.s. army V Corps
headquarters in Hamburg in 1972, in response to Washington’s mining of
Hanoi’s harbor in an escalation of the Vietnam War, to the kidnapping
and later execution of the head of the West German industrialists
association, in an effort to negotiate for the release of revolutionary
prisoners. But we never heard their political voices. Since the RAF’s
political statements, debates and communiqués were untranslated
and unavailable in English even within the left.
Now, at last, a significant documentary history of the RAF has come
into the spotlight, complete with a readable account of the postwar
German New Left from which it emerged. Even better, this work was done
by editors/translators who reject the obedient capitalist media’s
trivializing of the RAF as “pathological” death-wishing celebrities. In
their hands, the words of the RAF are revealed as serious responses to
the failure of parliamentary reformism, trade-unionism and pacifism, to
stop the solidification of Germany’s own form of a neofascist
capitalism (lightly cosmeticized with a layer of that numbing “consumer
democracy”). The young RAF fighters hoped for liberation in their
dangerous experiment but were willing to accept tragic consequences,
and their story is emotionally difficult to read with eyes open.
Controversial as the RAF was, their systematic torture in special
“anti-terrorist” facilities stirred worldwide unease and even protest.
In fact, those special prisons were the eagerly studied forerunners for
the u.s. empire’s own latest human rights abuses, from Guantanamo to
the domestic “maxi-maxi” prisons. We all and the RAF are much closer
than the capitalist public wants to believe. It is all here, in this
first volume of the Red Army Faction documentary histories, and we
should thank all those who worked on this book.
Clear-headed and meticulously researched, this
book deftly avoids many of the problems that plagued earlier attempts
to tell the brief but enduring history of the RAF. It offers a
remarkable wealth of source material in the form of statements and
letters from the combatants, yet the authors manage to present it in a
way that is both coherent and engaging. Evidence of brutal—and
ultimately ineffective—attempts by the state to silence the voices of
political prisoners serve as a timely and powerful reminder of the
continued need for anti-imperialist prisoners as leaders in our
movements today. At once informative and inspirational, this is a
much-needed contribution to the analysis of armed struggle and the
cycles of repression and resistance in Europe and around the world.
Armed struggle was one of the most controversial
yet widespread phenomena of the worldwide revolutionary upsurge in the
1960s and 1970s--and the Red Army Faction was a centerpiece of this
strategy in the imperial West. This valuable documentary history
gathers RAF primary documents with an impressive set of contextual
essays, providing the raw material necessary to understand the
strategies and consequences of attacking from within the belly of the
beast.
Of all the revolutionary organizations to have
been forged by the so-called sixties generation, the German Red Army
Faction has been perhaps the most mythologized and maligned. Here at
last is their story, told in their own words through “official”
communications, comprehensively assembled and available for the first
time in English translation. This is essential material for anyone
wishing to know what they did, why they did it, and to draw consequent
lessons from their experience.
Our goal is to have all of this book uploaded to this site, however this will probably take some time. Meanwhile, what we have uploaded is available here:
- Foreword by Bill Dunne
- A Word from Russell "Maroon" Shoats
- Chapter 7: Staying Alive: Sensory Deprivation, Torture, and the Struggle Behind Bars
Product Details:
Edited by J. Smith and André Moncourt
Forewords by Russell "Maroon" Shoats and Bill Dunne
Published by Kersplebedeb and PM Press
ISBN: 978-1-60486-029-0
Pub Date February 2009
Format: Paperback
Page Count: 736 pages
Size: 6 by 9
Subjects: Politics, Armed Struggle
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