5
The May Offensive: Bringing the War Home

This decision, this project, was arrived at through collective discussions involving everyone in the RAF; in other words, there was a consensus of all the groups, of the units in each of the cities, and everyone clearly understood what this meant, what the purpose of these attacks was.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt

Stammheim Trial

July 22, 1976

IN MAY 1972, SHORTLY AFTER the release of Serve the People, the RAF left the stage of logistics and preparation, launching a series of attacks that were to go down in history as the “May Offensive.”

On the evening of May 11, the day the United States mined the harbors of North Vietnam, the RAF’s “Petra Schelm Commando” bombed the U.S. Army V Corps headquarters and the site of the National Security Agency in Frankfurt. At least three blasts went off, killing Lieutenant Colonel Paul A. Bloomquist and injuring thirteen others. As one military police officer noted, the toll would have been much worse had the bombs gone off during duty hours. Damage to property was estimated at $300,000.²

“We expected things like this in Saigon,” a captain just back from Vietnam was quoted as saying. “Not here in Germany.”¹

One can imagine that words like that put smiles on many a face, and within twenty-four hours, U.S. military officials reported receiving a number of threats promising all kinds of follow-up attacks. These quickly snowballed, and by early June, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was reporting that thousands of such calls had been made by “high school students, drunks, psychopaths, and criminals.”²

“These calls,” complained the American Lieutenant General Williard Pearson in a similar vein, “were made by mentally unbalanced or irresponsible individuals seeking to create tension or panic within our community.”³

Given that the RAF always issued proper communiqués, these threats were most likely the work of people who were simply glad to see the Americans finally being hit. The state was far from amused, and it was noted that the financial consequences of false bomb threats were substantial for warehouses, newspapers, factories, and banks. More importantly, the wave of political prank calls helped create a signal-to-noise situation that can only have helped the guerilla. Nor was the activity without some risk: prison sentences for these false bomb threats ran from a couple of months to as high as three years.⁴

The day after the first bombing, on May 12, attacks were carried out in two Bavarian cities in response to the March 2 shooting of Weissbecker. In Augsburg, bombs were planted inside the police headquarters, and one cop suffered mild injuries. In the state capital Munich, a car bomb was parked just outside the six-storey police building; when it went off, it blew out the windows up to the top floor. A nearby pay station had received a telephone warning, but by the time the police got wind of it, there was not enough time to evacuate—twelve people were injured, and damages were estimated at $150,000.⁵ These bombings were claimed by the RAF’s “Thomas Weissbecker Commando.”

On May 16, in Karlsruhe, the RAF’s “Manfred Grashof Commando” placed a bomb in the car of Federal Supreme Court Judge Buddenberg, who had been put in charge of all RAF cases. However, it was not the judge who was behind the wheel, but his wife on her way to pick him up from work. Gerta Buddenberg sustained serious injuries, but survived.

On May 19, the Springer Press building in Hamburg was bombed in retaliation for the constant red baiting and counterinsurgency propaganda published in its newspapers. One bomb went off in the proofreaders’ room, and two in the toilets. Three telephone warnings were ignored and, as a result, seventeen employees were injured, two of them seriously. The attack was claimed by the RAF’s “2nd of June Commando.”

A Springer editor was later quoted saying, “I was only surprised that if they wanted to hit a Springer Building they’d go for the proofreaders, whose views are rather left of centre. I’d have thought there were more rewarding targets if they wanted to strike a real blow. If they’d picked the computer centre, that would have done the building much more damage.”⁶

As many workers had been injured, this attack caused some consternation on the left, and it was subsequently alleged that it caused dissension within the RAF itself.⁷ An anonymous tip the next day led to the discovery of three more bombs in the building, which were all safely defused.⁸

On May 24, the RAF bombed the Heidelberg headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe. Two cars loaded with explosives had been parked 140 meters apart near a data processing center and the officers’ club at Campbell Barracks. They were timed to go off after most people had finished work for the day,⁹ but nevertheless three soldiers were killed¹⁰ and six others were injured. This was the work of the “July 15th Commando,” commemorating the date Petra Schelm had died in a firefight with police.

This was a more daring attack than any of the others so far: unlike the V Corps headquarters in Frankfurt, the Campbell Barracks were fenced off and military police were always stationed at the gates. Any person in civilian clothes or in a vehicle without U.S. military plates was supposed to show identification before entering.¹

The computer destroyed in this attack had been used to make calculations for carpet-bombing sorties in South and North Vietnam with the aim of achieving the highest possible number of deaths. This at a time when, though it was clear the war had been lost, the United States had stepped up bombings of Hanoi, Haiphong, and Thanh Hoa province.² The RAF would later claim that their pictures had gone up on walls in Hanoi as a result of this action,³ and this clearly remained a point of pride among guerilla veterans even decades later.

Regarding the May Offensive, it has been noted:

Although people were injured or killed in most of these bombings, with the exception of the Buddenberg bombing, they differ from later RAF attacks in not being directed against specific individuals, a point that should be kept in mind when examining the RAF’s history.⁴

Despite the many anonymous bomb threats called in during this period, and the fact that the RAF’s actions coincided with a global wave of protest against ongoing American military aggression in Southeast Asia, some observers have claimed that the May Offensive alienated many of the RAF’s liberal sympathizers. Those who had seen them as modern day Robin Hoods, or as romantic idealists, took a step back once they realized that this was for real.

It would be more true to say that the 1972 bombing campaign polarized the left, and, in a healthy way, provided direction and inspiration to numerous activists who had been considering armed politics, while clarifying the disagreements which existed with opponents of the guerilla struggle. Indeed, the period in question showed a marked rise in newspaper articles describing molotov cocktail attacks and other low-

Alienating Which Masses?

“When we heard about the RAF bombing the American Headquarters in Frankfurt and Heidelberg, we jumped with joy. At last someone had done something against the imperialist bases in the Federal Republic of Germany.”

These were not the words of a petit bourgeois sect, but rather come from the report of a freedom fighter fighting for national liberation in a land occupied by Portugal. He and his comrades had heard the news while he was in a guerilla base. For years the people there had heard of the FRG being one of the worst enemies of the African people—as a source of arms for Portuguese colonialism—and now for the first time the guerillas could see something happening in the Federal Republic which they considered to be an effective form of resistance to imperialism.

I remarked that their reaction was quite different from that of Marxist groups in the Federal Republic, to which the African comrade responded, “When you are struggling, you see things differently.”

Christian Sigrist

Christian Sigrist, “De Heidelberg au Cap Vert” in à propos du procès Baader-Meinhof, Fraction Armée Rouge: de la torture dans les prisons de la RFA, Klaus Croissant (ed.) (Paris : Christian Bourgeois Èditeur, 1975), 53-54.

level actions against symbols of state power, encouraged by the context the guerilla’s bombs had helped create. Years later, the Revolutionary Cells (another West German guerilla group) would explain the longterm effect of the May Offensive in this way:

At the time, these actions drew the widespread anti-imperialist movement together, causing the further development of an idea that had been rattling around in the heads of thousands of people. We saw that what had long been thought about was in fact possible. Without the RAF, there wouldn’t be an RZ today, there wouldn’t be groups that understand that resistance doesn’t stop where the criminal code starts.¹

One thing is certain: the RAF’s bombing campaign was strongly criticized by the Maoist K-groups who were enjoying their heyday and rejected such attacks as infantile adventurism. The KB (Communist League), whose newspaper Arbeiterkampf would later distinguish itself by offering some of the most intelligent commentary on the guerilla in Germany, even went so far as to suggest that the Springer attack might have been the work of right-wing extremists.

For its part the KSV (Communist Student Association), the youth section of the Maoist KPD,² complained about the RAF’s violence:

[It is] neither practiced by the masses… nor is it understood by the masses as an expression of their interests. The masses, on the contrary, perceive the actions as a threat, and therefore identify with the reactions of the state apparatus… The violence is not revolutionary. It sabotages the struggle against state repression in that it helps to conceal the class character of this repression and encourages the isolation of communists.³

These comments were delivered at a Teach-In Against State Repression, which was held at Frankfurt University on May 31, just a couple of weeks after the Springer Building in that city was bombed. Organized by Rote Hilfe (Red Aid), a network of autonomous prisoner support collectives which had their roots in the antiauthoritarian wing of the APO, the event attracted hundreds of people, not all of whom were as negative as the Maoists.⁴ Indeed, one leaflet produced for the event argued that, “If imperialism is a worldwide system, and that it is, then the struggle against it must be waged worldwide. It will and must be a violent and armed struggle, or it will not be waged at all.”⁵

The RAF itself sent a statement to the Red Aid Teach-In in the form of a tape recording by Ulrike Meinhof in which she once again encouraged the radical left to organize armed struggle, arguing that increasing repression and popular resentments were providing the potential which, properly exploited, could lead to a revolutionary situation. As was typical of the RAF at this time, Meinhof was attempting to engage directly with the guerilla’s left-wing critics.⁶

Remarkably, the Teach-In brought together Maoists and spontis, and as such was representative of the revolutionary left. As for the tamed left, in its eyes the RAF remained well beyond the pale. The pro-Soviet DKP made a point of condemning “anarchist demonstrations” in Frankfurt, pontificating that, “The anarchist groups have clearly made hysteria the order of the day. We are making the struggle to win the solidarity of the people of Frankfurt for the Vietnamese liberation struggle the order of the day.”⁷ Various labor leaders also took turns condemning the “political adventurists,” “terror,” and “murder.” The chairman of the Public Service, Transport, and Communication Union explained that his union supported the government, for, while it was independent, it shared many common concerns with employers.⁸

Clearly not reassured by claims that the RAF was driving people away from left, the state recognized that if it did not move quickly, the May bombings could easily inspire renewed resistance. “The longer the Baader-Meinhof gang remains at large,” Attorney General Ludwig Martin worried, “the easier it will be for the public to gain the impression that the powers of the state have broken down.”⁹

An essential feature of the campaign against the RAF consisted of psychological operations, meant to discourage any solidarity or identification with the guerilla, while legitimizing the state’s own repressive response. As an example of this, in the midst of the May Offensive, communiqués attributed to the RAF, but most likely penned by the secret services or police, were received claiming that on June 2 (the anniversary of Benno Ohnesorg’s murder) three car bombs would be set off in random locations in Stuttgart “as a reminder of the bombing war of the U.S. imperialists in Vietnam.”¹

The RAF promptly issued its own communiqué repudiating this as a false flag provocation.² Nevertheless, this denial was largely ignored, and on the day in question, “Stuttgart presented the appearance of a beleaguered city. Thousands of police checked all access roads, vehicles and ‘suspicious persons.’”³

One hundred and thirty thousand cops were mobilized, supported by both West German and U.S. intelligence units, in a determined effort to hunt down the guerilla. A $59,000 reward was offered for their capture, and Chancellor Willy Brandt warned the public that any solidarity shown would be treated as criminal complicity.⁴ At the same time, Genscher announced that supporters could hope for light sentences if they turned themselves in and helped in the hunt;⁵ there do not seem to have been any takers.

Nevertheless, the wave of arrests was not long in coming.

On June 1, RAF members Holger Meins, Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader were cornered as they arrived at a safehouse in Munich that had been identified by police. Raspe tried to make a run for it, but was quickly apprehended. Meins gave himself up, following police orders to strip down to his underwear before he did so.

Three hundred cops surrounded the warehouse where Baader was holed up, and eventually an armored vehicle tried to enter the building; Baader shot out its wheels. At that point, a sniper took aim and shot the eponymous guerilla fighter in the leg and the police moved in quickly to take him into custody.

Holger Meins was the only one of the three who had surrendered without resistance, a fact that did not stop the police from beating him so severely that he required hospitalization. “I didn’t squeal or scream,” he would later tell his father. “They kicked me black and blue with their big boots. It’s a thing you just can’t describe.”⁶

It later came out that the RAF had intended to kidnap the three U.S. Army City Commanders in Berlin, but called off this action due to security concerns following the June 1 arrests.⁷

On June 7, Gudrun Ensslin was arrested in Hamburg when a store clerk noticed a gun in her handbag. (The government’s somewhat farcical Mainz report would later explain this bust in memorably sexist terms: “The arrest of her boyfriend Baader affected this deviant woman to such a degree that she simply had to buy something new, like any normal woman does when something is wrong.”)⁸

On June 9, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Bernhard Braun were arrested in West Berlin; they were both former SPK members. Mohnhaupt had gravitated to the RAF via the Munich Tupamaros. Braun, who was also close to 2JM, had come to the RAF via the West Berlin Tupamaros.

On June 15, Ulrike Meinhof and Gerhard Müller were arrested in Hannover, turned in by a left-wing trade unionist who had agreed to put them up for the night.⁹ Police found forged passports, gun oil, a four-and-a-half-kilo homemade bomb, two homemade hand grenades, a semi-automatic pistol, two 9mm handguns, numerous fully loaded magazines, and more than three hundred rounds of ammunition in Meinhof’s luggage, which weighed over twenty-five kilos.¹⁰ With her capture, some observers felt that the guerilla’s entire leadership was now in custody, and yet there were more arrests to come.

On June 30, Katharina Hammerschmidt, who had fled to France, was convinced to turn herself in by her lawyer Otto Schily. The police suspected Hammerschmidt of setting up safehouses and perhaps having a role in the recent bombings.¹

Finally, on July 7, Klaus Jünschke and Irmgard Möller were arrested in Offenbach, set up by a nineteen- year-old who had been recruited by the guerilla earlier that year, and who had since been identified and turned by the police. Jünschke was a former SPK member sought in relation to the December 22, 1971, bank robbery in which police officer Herbert Schoner had been killed.² Irmgard Möller was sought in connection to the 1971 killing of police officer Schmid in Hamburg, and was suspected of participating in the May bombings.³ (With typical hype, Stars and Stripes described her as “the gang’s new chief, replacing jailed Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader.”)⁴

The RAF was decimated, and what few members remained at large could do little more than concentrate on their own survival.

Following the successes of this counterinsurgency campaign, the West German government felt confident it had snuffed out its fledgling armed opposition. Even sympathetic observers felt that the RAF might have met its end.

They were all wrong.

“The objective of these actions was clear…”

The RAF was at the time organized in the following way: there were eight groups established in six cities, and of these there were two strong groups in two cities. There was one group in Munich. The groups, the different units, were integrated into a logistical system. There was contact between the different groups for discussions, but they were autonomous in their decisions regarding how to carry out operations. That was left to the individual groups—and it couldn’t have been otherwise. We didn’t know anything in advance about these actions. However, even if we had known, we wouldn’t have prevented them, because, yeah, it’s not a simple thing to stop a group from doing what it has decided to do. In fact, we couldn’t have prevented it, both because of the underlying perspective and for practical reasons; it would have been impossible given the circumstances. The objective of these actions was clear: they were a response to the fact that fighters were shot in the street, for example, Petra and Tommy. It would never have been our intention to prevent them.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt

Stammheim Trial

July 22, 1976

For the Victory of the People of Vietnam

On Thursday May 11, 1972—the day the U.S. imperialist mine blockade of North Vietnam began—the Petra Schelm Commando detonated three bombs containing 80kg of tnt at the Frankfurt Headquarters of the V Army Corps of the U.S. Forces in West Germany and West Berlin. West Germany and West Berlin shall no longer be a safe hinterland for the strategy of extermination against Vietnam. They must understand that their crimes against the Vietnamese people have created new and bitter enemies for them, and there is nowhere left in this world where they will be safe from the attacks of revolutionary guerilla units.

We demand an immediate stop to the bomb blockade against North Vietnam.

We demand an immediate end to the bombing of North Vietnam.

We demand the withdrawal of all American troops from Indochina.

VICTORY TO THE VIET CONG!
BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY GUERILLA.
DARE TO STRUGGLE—DARE TO WIN!
BUILD TWO, THREE, MANY VIETNAMS!

Petra Schelm Commando

May 14, 1972

Attacks in Augsburg and Munich

On Friday, May 12, 1972, the Thomas Weissbecker Commando detonated three bombs at the police headquarters in Augsburg and in the LKA office in Munich.

On March 2, Thomas Weissbecker was murdered in a well-planned surprise attack by a death squad of the Munich Kripo and the Augsburg police; he had absolutely no chance to defend himself. The police had no intention of taking Thomas Weissbecker prisoner; they intended to shoot him.

The authorities responsible for the manhunt must understand that they can’t liquidate any of us without having to anticipate that we will strike back. The security services, the special squads, the Kripo, the BGS and their organizational and political employers must be made aware that their attempts to “solve” the problems of this fascist country by arming the police, by militarizing the class struggle, and by the ruthless and vicious use of guns will provoke resistance. This is also true of the police operations in response to the Munich bank robbery, in response to the Cologne bank robbery, against the Tübingen apprentice Epple, and against foreign workers.

The tactics and tools that we use are the tactics and tools of guerilla warfare. The Minister of the Interior and the BAW assess the situation incorrectly if they think that they can rule with their death squads. It is in the nature of the guerilla—because they struggle in the interests of the people—that they cannot be wiped out by military actions, because their freedom of action can be developed anew whenever it suffers temporary setbacks. Faced with the brutal arrogance of the authorities responsible for the manhunt and the “short cuts” of the fascists, our response is the steady development of the revolutionary guerilla and the long, protracted process of the struggle for liberation from fascism, from capitalist exploitation, and from the oppression of the people.

RESIST THE POLICE DEATH SQUADS!
RESIST THE SS PRACTICES OF THE POLICE!
STRUGGLE AGAINST ALL EXPLOITERS AND ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE!

Thomas Weissbecker Commando

May 16, 1972

Attack on Judge Buddenberg

On Monday, May 16, 1972, the Manfred Grashof Commando carried out a bomb attack against Judge Buddenberg of the Karlsruhe Federal Supreme Court. Buddenberg is the judge at the Federal Supreme Court responsible for the arrests and investigations in the current political proceedings under §129.

Buddenberg, the pig, allowed Grashof to be moved from the hospital to a cell; the transfer and the risk of infection in the prison put his life at risk. He attempted to murder Grashof. The police having failed, he tried again to kill the defenseless Grashof.

Buddenberg, the pig, is responsible for Carmen Roll being drugged in order to get her to talk. The foreseeable effect of the drug indicates that this was attempted murder.

Buddenberg, the pig, doesn’t give a shit about existing laws and conventions. The strict isolation in which prisoners are held to destroy them psychologically: solitary confinement, isolated yard time, the ban on speaking to other prisoners, constant transfers, punitive confinement, observation cells, the censoring of mail and the confiscation of mail, books, and magazines. The means used to destroy them physically—the glaring cell lights at night, frequent interruption of sleep for searches, chaining during yard time, and physical abuse—are not the bullying of insignificant, frustrated prison wardens; these are Buddenberg’s decrees, meant to force the prisoners to make statements. It is institutionalized fascism in the justice system. It is the beginning of torture.

We demand the immediate application of laws governing remand prisoners, the Geneva Human Rights Convention, and the United Nations Charter regarding the use of remand custody for political prisoners. We demand the justice system call off the systematic destructive attacks upon the lives and health of the prisoners.

We will carry out bomb attacks against judges and federal prosecutors until they stop violating the rights of political prisoners. We are, in fact, demanding nothing that is impossible for this justice system. We have no other means to compel them to do so.

FREEDOM FOR THE POLITICAL PRISONERS!
RESIST CLASS JUSTICE! RESIST FASCISM!

Manfred Grashof Commando

May 20, 1972

Attack on the Springer Building

Yesterday, Friday May 19, at 3:55 PM, two bombs exploded in the Springer Building in Hamburg. Despite prompt and early warnings, the building wasn’t evacuated and 17 people were injured. At 3:29 PM, the first warning was given to number 3471, who was told to evacuate the building within 15 minutes because a bomb would detonate shortly. The answer was, “Stop this nonsense.” The call was cut off. With a second call at 3:31 PM, we said, “If you don’t evacuate immediately, something horrible will happen.” But the telephone operators obviously had instructions not to pay attention to such calls. The third call, at 3:36 PM, was to the cops saying, “Goddamn it, see to it that the building is immediately evacuated.” Because the Springer Corporation can’t cover up the fact that they were warned, they distort it, stating, “There was only one call and it came too late.” Two telephone operators and the police can confirm that the Springer Press is lying once again.

Springer would rather risk his workers and staff being injured by a bomb than risk losing a couple of hours of work time, and therefore profit, as a result of a false alarm. For capitalists, profit is everything, and the people who make it for them are dirt. We regret that workers and staff were injured.

Our demands of Springer: that his newspapers stop the anticommunist hysteria against the New Left, against working class solidarity actions such as strikes, and against communist parties here and in other countries; that the Springer Corporation stop the hysteria against liberation movements in the Third World, especially against the Arab people who struggle for the freedom of Palestine; that he stop his propagandistic support for Zionism—the imperialist politics of the Israeli ruling class; that the Springer Press stop spreading lies about foreign workers here.

We demand that the Springer Press print this communiqué.

We demand nothing impossible. We will stop our attacks on the enemies of the people if our demands are met.

EXPROPRIATE SPRINGER!
EXPROPRIATE THE ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE!

2nd of June Commando

May 20, 1972

Attack on the Heidelberg Headquarters of the U.S. Army in Europe

Every form of monstrosity will be abolished

Mao

Yesterday evening, May 24, 1972, two bombs with an explosive capacity of 200 kg of TNT, were detonated in the Heidelberg Headquarters of the American Armed Forces in Europe. The attack was carried out after General Daniel James, Department Head at the Pentagon, said, on Wednesday in Washington, “For the U.S. Air Force, no target north or south of the 17th parallel in Vietnam will be exempt from bombing attacks.” On Monday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Hanoi again accused the United States of bombing densely populated areas of North Vietnam. In the last 7 weeks, the American Air Force has dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped on Germany and Japan during World War II. Many millions of additional bombs is the response the Pentagon intends to use to stop the North Vietnamese offensive. This is genocide, the slaughter of a people; this is “the final solution”; this is Auschwitz.

The people of the Federal Republic don’t support the security service in its search for the bombers, because they want nothing to do with the crimes of American imperialism and the support it receives from the ruling class here, because they haven’t forgotten Auschwitz, Dresden, and Hamburg, because they know that the bomb attacks against those who commit mass murder in Vietnam are just, and because they know from experience that demonstrations and words are of no use against the crimes of imperialism.

WE DEMAND AN END TO BOMB ATTACKS ON VIETNAM!
WE DEMAND A HALT TO THE MINE BLOCKADE AGAINST NORTH VIETNAM!
WE DEMAND THE WITHDRAWAL OF AMERICAN TROOPS FROM INDOCHINA!

July 15th Commando

May 25, 1972

To the News Editors of the West German Press

On May 26, Willy Brandt said in his television broadcast that the bombings of recent weeks have no logical political basis, and that they have endangered innocent lives.

The Federal Chancellor can deceive the people with these assertions because the West German press has almost completely suppressed the communiqués of the urban guerilla commandos.

Instead the Frankfurter Rundschau published a letter created out of cut out letters—which, when compared to authentic RAF communiqués, can clearly be seen to be a fake—to create the impression that the bombers are brainless twits who act chaotically in an effort to create fear amongst the people.

The Chancellor’s statement does not differ from similar statements by General Franco, General Patakos, von Howeida, the followers of Salazar, or the Turkish military dictator: the reasons for the actions are ignored, and only the condemnation of the Chancellor and the pundits is presented. The reasons for this conduct are obvious:

• The communiqué of the Thomas Weissbecker Commando was intended to bring every individual police officer to the point where he must think about whether or not he wants to be an active part of the hunt for the RAF;

• An investigation would have proven that the 2nd of June Commando warned the Springer Corporation on time and that Springer, as always, has lied;

• The people, who know from their own experience all about genocide and the terrorist bombing of civilian populations, can draw their own conclusions about the bomb attacks against those who commit mass murder in Vietnam and against the fascism of the Springer Corporation;

• And because of this, there can be no doubt that the bomb attacks were directed solely against the enemies of the people, the enemies of the working class, the enemies of the Vietnamese people, the imperialists.

“We’re all in the same boat” has always been the motto of the exploiters and fascists.

Springer has, under threat of further bomb attacks, published the demands made of him, albeit in a mutilated form.

The rest of the press must understand that they themselves will be provoking actions against Springer if they, as a result of economic pressure coming from Springer, submit voluntarily and opportunistically to this practice of censorship. We therefore demand that they no longer deceive the people about the political reasons behind the bomb attacks, that is to say, that they not aggravate the situation unnecessarily. We demand that they print in full the following communiqués: the communiqué of the Thomas Weissbecker Commando, the communiqué of the 2nd of June Commando and the communiqué of the July 15th Commando.

SERVE THE PEOPLE!
EXPROPRIATE SPRINGER!

RAF

May 28, 1972

Regarding the Fascist Bomb Threats Against Stuttgart

The two bomb threats pasted together out of letters cut from newspapers for next Friday, June 2, in Stuttgart don’t come from the Red Army Faction. Genuine communiqués of the urban guerilla commandos can easily be authenticated by comparing their contents with other RAF communiqués. And they are typewritten, as the cops well know.

The fake communiqués, given their contents, their purpose, their essence, and their style, more likely come from the cops themselves.

The cops know this. The Springer journalists, who have published the false communiqués without reservation, know this. Filbinger,¹ Krause,² and Klett³ know this. They are taking precautions only as a pretext to prepare new police actions and to drive the war of nerves to the extreme.

Because the authorities leading the manhunt are receiving no help from the people, they are seizing upon fascist provocation. It is possible that if by Friday they haven’t had any success in their hunt—if they haven’t met their kill quota—they will carry through on the crimes they have threatened. Just as Springer didn’t allow his building to be evacuated, although he himself said he could foresee the attacks coming. Just as the Nazis set the Reichstag on fire and attacked the Gleiwitz transmitter. One must assume that they intend similar communiqués and attacks in the future.

Fake communiqué threatening random bombings in Stuttgart.

We are not responsible for the crimes of fascists.

The actions of the urban guerilla are directed against the institutions of the class state, imperialism, and capital. They are never directed against working people or against people who have nothing to do with the crimes of imperialism. They are directed against those who plan vicious attacks against the people, such as those announced in the false communiqués, and those carried out daily by U.S. imperialism against the Vietnamese people.

FIGHT FASCISM!
DESTROY AND OBLITERATE THE POWER OF IMPERIALISM!
EXPROPRIATE SPRINGER!

RAF

May 29, 1972

Statement to the Red Aid Teach-In

Comrades, some of you still believe that you don’t have any reason to dialogue with the Red Army Faction.

Some of you still believe that the cops will soon have a handle on the armed struggle in the metropole. Some of you still believe what you read in the newspapers: that the RAF is on the run, that there are splits in the RAF, that the RAF has a hierarchical structure, that the RAF is isolated. You aren’t seeing reality.

The KB in Hamburg believed that the attack against the Springer Corporation was the work of right-wing extremists. Instead of engaging us in debate, they assure the police that they themselves are not guilty. And the Frankfurt KSV Frankfurt asserts, in agreement with the Rundshau, that the recent bomb attacks have nothing to do with the class struggle in West Germany and Berlin. These comrades no longer understand what’s going on.

Although they now understand that Genscher didn’t call out the police for show, that the murders of Petra, Georg, and Thomas were not mistakes on the part of the system, that the Kripo was responsible for the destruction of strike centrals during the strikes last year, that the Emergency Laws weren’t adopted just for the fun of it, that the banning of foreigners’ organizations isn’t just for show and that over sixty prisoners are being abused in prison—although they know all of this full well, they still believe it is too early to begin to resist.

They protest the death penalty in Persia and in Turkey; they wish the Palestinian resistance success; they protest the terror in Greece and Spain; they protest the complicity of the system with fascist regimes— but they are afraid to intervene or to act. They are clearly afraid to arrive at the obvious conclusion. They hide behind the masses and present their problem as one located outside of themselves.

We see things differently than these comrades. We are of the opinion that the hateful assembly-lines and piecework in the factories have gotten so bad that hardly anyone has any illusions any more about the fact that corporate profits require irreparable damage to the health of the workers. The masses already know that in the Federal Republic they must work themselves to death because that is the source of their employers’ profits, that the factory workers already know who they’re working for—soon it will be for themselves.

We are of the opinion that the problem these comrades see as lying elsewhere is their own subjective problem, that they project onto the masses their own lack of clarity. They want to identify their own inability—an inability to express solidarity with the masses because of their own privileged class position—as lying with the masses, to present it as an objective problem based in the masses’ need to develop a higher level of consciousness.

If, as occurred recently in Frankfurt, some women comrades say, for example, that they want to take to the streets if another one of us is murdered, then that indicates it would be easy to spontaneously intervene. Which is to say: the problem of agency is, as Springer journalists put it in a headline, one of marketing and competition. Political content as the commodity, the masses as the market. So they are ready to moan about imperialist crimes, but not to prevent them with clubs and bombs. For the imperialists, the assembly lines are still not going fast enough and the time required must be further reduced. They will consume as much as they can extract.

There is no reason for further delay in addressing the problem of armed struggle and resistance. Reduced hours, lay-offs, strikes, two million foreign workers, “Bild fights for you!”, “the extortionist of the week” in Stern, Citizens Initiatives, squatted houses—there is hardly any area in which the system can maintain its facade. The people’s desires must be unified and transformed into an organized leap forward.

This greed-driven system is ravaging the cities. Teachers must learn to muzzle themselves or they are fired. The mass media has been purged of decent critical journalists. Riot police are mobilized against strike centrals. Rulings of the Federal Labor Court prepare the way to criminalize future strikes. The BKA hopes to eliminate the remaining press freedoms. They are not waiting for the legal left to take up the armed struggle before proceeding with this. It’s happening now; it has begun. Is this the point when you will start to resist—or are you still waiting for something?

Comrades, stop hiding behind the masses! Stop shifting the question of resistance to the masses! Stop rationalizing your fear of the system’s excessive violence as a problem of agency! Stop presenting your confusion as erudition and your helplessness as a broad perspective!

The system is now producing contradictions at such a rate that they can no longer be integrated, and the masses no longer believe talk of reforms. It is equally true that the guerilla can only be anchored in the people to the degree that we carry out appropriate actions and you make effective propaganda. For this to happen, the revolutionary process and revolutionary consciousness must be developed further; the consciousness that action is justified—and possible!

When we build the revolutionary guerilla, we are creating an instrument that is beyond the reach of the system’s repression, that does not depend on the system’s tolerance for its capacity to act, that does not have its room to maneuver determined by the Verfassungsshutz. If you are domesticated like Müller’s¹ demonstrators in Frankfurt on May 18, you can continue to demonstrate for some time to come, and you can celebrate it along with the KSV as the most powerful and most insular demonstration in a long time. Under the watchful eye of the police and funneled between two water cannons and rows of batons, you can go on celebrating successes long into the future. But the price to be paid is the distance people took from Tuesday’s demonstration, the denunciation of the comrades who broke free from the Hauptwache;² the price in the end was betrayal of the goals in exchange for permission to walk in the streets.

Today, everyone understands our actions against the extermination strategy in Vietnam. Everybody should be able to understand our actions to defend the lives and health of the prisoners and of the RAF comrades still at large. That the media no longer publishes our communiqués about our bomb attacks, but publishes false statements of fascist origin, that they downplay attacks on U.S. imperialism and play up fascist provocations such as that against the citizens of Stuttgart, demonstrates how things really are, demonstrates what they are afraid of and how far they’ll go to hide the truth from the masses, to prop up their facade.

Dare to struggle; dare to win! Attack and smash the power of imperialism! It is the duty of every revolutionary to make the revolution! We call on all militants in the Federal Republic to make all American establishments targets of their attacks in their struggle against U.S. imperialism!

Long live the RAF!

Ulrike Meinhof

for the RAF

May 31, 1972