The puzzle of the Baader Meinhof Gang, communist terrorists of West Germany
A few months ago, a former member of West (when the country was divided) Germany’s Red Army Faction, popularly known as the Baader Meinhof Gang, was released from prison. Eva Haule had served 21 years for the 1985 murder of an American soldier and a bombing at an American air base.
This story got me thinking of the article I wrote for Court TV’s Crime Library about the this left-wing terrorist band. Baader Meinhof Gang was a somewhat misleading nickname for the group. While Andreas Baader was indisputably the group’s leader, Ulrike Meinhof was neither second in command nor was she Baader’s girlfriend. Her name got attached to his because she had some fame as a journalist before joining up with the terrorist group.
I found Andreas Baader an interesting, sad, and somewhat baffling character in and of himself. He had been raised in a permissive household in which he had rarely, if ever, been disciplined. In this respect, he was somewhat like 1930s American desperado Clyde Barrow who was reported to have grown up without being disciplined. As youngsters neither Barrow nor Baader had learned to delay gratification and, as a result, were completely unprepared for the adult world. In another parallel with Barrow, Baader had been a common criminal prior to his conversion to Marxism at which point he became a criminal with a cause.
Perhaps the greatest puzzle was why the Red Army Faction originated in what was then West Germany. The post-war country was a prosperous one although, as I noted in my story, the rewards of capitalism can be frustratingly uneven and, by some standards, unfair. However, the West Germany of the RAF was not a nation of widespread starvation, homelessness, or extreme want and would not, at first glance, seem like a fertile soil for Marxist terrorism.
There were other peculiarities about these extremists. Like others of their generation, they grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust and the guilt that so many of the generation of their parents bore for that extraordinary historical horror. However, the radicals of the RAF and other, similar groups often seemed like they were trying to prove, a couple of decades too late, that they WOULD have fought against Nazism if they could have. They also seemed to want to somehow demonstrate their psychological freedom from the guilt of their forebears by opposing the existence of Israel.
Another peculiarity of the Baader Meinhof Gang/Red Army Faction was that they were robbing, bombing, and killing to create a communist society when there was one right next door to them — East Germany – to which the members of this group could easily have emigrated. The Berlin Wall was erected to keep people from the East from traveling West not to keep West Germans from defecting to East Germany. Yet these dedicated communists never seemed to have considered moving to the Marxist land so close to them so they could enjoy the fruits of the “workers’ paradise” and help build it up. Maybe they just liked the excitement of robbing, bombing, and murdering for a communist revolution a lot better than they would have enjoyed living under the gray regimentation and restriction that constitutes communism in the real world.
When re-reading my article on the Baader Meinhof Gang, I noted a sentence that could rankle some Men’s News Daily readers. In it I refer to 1966 as a period in which the women’s liberation movement was beginning and “many political programs wanted a woman to leaven up the traditional monotony of male talking heads.” I would not have write this sentence today as it could be read as displaying anti-male prejudice. However, I have to admit that I prefer a diverse group of commentators and I do believe that we are more likely to see women political commentators on programs today than in 1966 and previous years. (No, I don’t prefer programs with ONLY women political commentators).
At any rate, I’ve told you my speculations as to the making of the Baader Meinhof Gang/Red Army Faction. My article is at http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/meinhof/1.html. Readers, what are your thoughts on this group? On any of its participants? On the way I dealt with them in my article?
Thanks to those who reply – even if you are critical.
| More from Denise Noe
Stumble It!
November 18th, 2007 at 9:15 am
After two years of working with “disturbed teens” 24 hours a day five days a week, for 25 months, my wife and I took a much needed trip to Europe to relax, to regain some sanity.
We bought a volvo in Holland after some time in England, started wandering and at some point entered East Berlin without a visa in the 70’s. We have been following signs to Berlin expecting to see, at some point, a sign for East or West. The directions didn’t work that way. The East Berliners considered themselves Berlin.
Naive tourists and we didn’t Spraken (sp) German but at some point we knew we were not in West Berlin. The war like statues looked too Nazi-ish – just didn’t look right. We had entered a traffic trap and found our way to the wrong side of Check Point Charlie. The “Eastie Beasties” as they were called by the military police, when we finally got to the other side, harrassed us after they learned we were Americans. The took extra joy in harrassing my young pretty wife, holding me at gun point. The found her cash, they didn’t find my dime size Kugerands in my belt and I could barely contain my fear or my rage. Little guys with big guns. I thought, if you want my money and gold, find it, I continued to deny that I had more than American Express Checks (Don’t leave home – without them) She and I had both taught martial arts classes and I also taught weight-lifting, we would have been tempted to kick their asses when it looked like a possible rape coming up, … the guns on the guard towers would have ended that battle. I did tell her not to get in their car, to go where? Thinking a fight would be better and hoping the guys at Check Point Charlie would see us. No one we knew, knew where we were.
After hours of harassment at gun point, serious intimidation, theft too, 2 hours, they finally let us go.
I called a West Berlin couple that I had been in touch with through a travel group but they didn’t want anything to do with any more Americans, the last one burned them out with his “our country is so much cooler than yours” rap. I told them what we had just gone through, they said “Come over”
Turned out that the male partner couldn’t enter the US because they thought he had connections to the Baader M gang but his wife could enter the US. Women complain about being relegated to the support roles whether in the government or revolutions, but they are also the ones who generally don’t pay the price whether in work or war, compared to men.
They took us to a bar with bad guys, some Irish IRA types. On the wall was a photo of Ronald R and Margaret Thatcher with an atom bomb going off in the background. In German were the words “She promised to follow him to the ends of the earth, he promised to provide that end.” Another gender stereotype, the strong man with the devoted female follower. They took the poster off the wall, said I could have it if I shared it with other Americans. So I just did, more than three decades later.
I haven’t thought about the Baader Meinhoff Gang for years. I appreciate the variety of interests Denise Noe has shared with MND where, even if off on a tangent at times, the connection to gender issues, whether a strong connection, or not, around the US and around the world, is always worth my time.
Thanks Denise for your many eclectic contributions.
Steven D
November 18th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Nothing on the BMG but I like woman commentators too but not of the Katy Couric-DianeSawyer variety. It is too bad that Katy became the first woman to anchor an evening news show as it is too bad that the first woman candidate for President is Hillary Clinton…whoops! sorry, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
“Cokey” Roberts, Laura Ingraham and Michelle Malkin are intelligent, insightful commentators. Margaret Thatcher was a great PM as is the current German Chancellor.
Too bad the first woman anchor and first Woman Presidential candidate couldn’t have been of he same calibre as the first Black baseball player, Jackie Robinson, a great baseball player and a fine human being.
November 18th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Denise: “Perhaps the greatest puzzle was why the Red Army Faction originated in what was then West Germany. The post-war country was a prosperous one although, as I noted in my story, the rewards of capitalism can be frustratingly uneven and, by some standards, unfair. However, the West Germany of the RAF was not a nation of widespread starvation, homelessness, or extreme want and would not, at first glance, seem like a fertile soil for Marxist terrorism.”
fourthwire: It’s rather simple, when you think about it (and even simpler if you do a bit of digging!), Denise. The Red Army Faction was committed to an ideological war against Western society and capitalism.
Who were our greatest ideological adversaries of the time? The Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies.
Although some of the Red Army Faction’s supporters and operatives could be described as having an anarchist or libertarian communist slant, the group’s leading members professed a largely Marxist-Leninist ideology.
That said, they CLAIMED to have shied away from overt collaboration with ‘communist states’ although R.A.F members did receive intermittent support, training, funding, and sanctuary over the Berlin Wall in the German Democratic Republic/East Germany.
When the Berlin Wall finally fell, the Stasi were hard at work destroying their records.
We may ultimately never know the full extent of cooperation that the Kremlin’s fingers and those of her Eastern European minions were involved beyond providing ideological support to groups on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Kudos, Denise – this is certainly not a “fluff” piece. And best of all, nobody was raped……..;-)
November 19th, 2007 at 1:59 am
They knew how to sentence women criminals better in those days. Today Eva Haule would get counselling and probation after claiming she had been abused as a child. I don’t doubt she will get some spreads in women’s magazines and not a little under the table cash along with it. A Father who tells you off and sends you to bed early for being naughty is a far worse abuser than a Red Army battalion stomping through your living room and those nasty Englanders raining bombs on you, night after night.
Denise wonders why the RAF members didn’t just go to East Germany if they liked that regime better. That’s a bit of a naive question. They were trained and supported by the Communists to destabilise West Germany, not enjoy the superior pleasures of life in the freedom-loving people’s democratic republic of East Germany. The more mayhem they could cause, right where they were, the better.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:07 am
fourthwire said,
Kudos, Denise – this is certainly not a “fluff” piece. And best of all, nobody was raped……..;-)
(Denise) Will wonders never cease! fourthwire, is this the FIRST time you’ve LIKED something I’ve written?
Did you follow the link to my article at Crime Library? I’d be very interested in what you — or anyone else — thinks about that story.
November 19th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Denise: “(Denise) Will wonders never cease! fourthwire, is this the FIRST time you’ve LIKED something I’ve written?”
fourthwire: Very likely. But remember, I have no great liking for quite a bit of the fiction pieces involving that you seem to appreciate.
And Amfortas is perfectly correct in his comment where he points out your naive question. Groups like the Baader-Meinhof gang were simply paid, trained proxies of the Soviet Union and their Eastern European proxies’ intelligence services.
Those individuals in the terrorist networks would be no more likely to cross over to East Germany (unless they needed temporary sanctuary, training/indoctrination, or intelligence briefing f.ex.).
As Amfortas points out, their overall mission involved destabilizing West Germany, murdering, kidnapping, and generally behaving like a “fifth column” for their masters in the Stasi and the Kremlin.
And shamefully, no I have not followed your links, yet.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Sorry, typo: “Very likely. But remember, I have no great liking for quite a bit of the fiction pieces involving those topics that you seem to appreciate.”
also, there was no need for me to point out your “naive question” as Amfortas had already done so……. so I ask that you ignore that particular sentence in my last post (in football, that penalty is called “piling on”……).