The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History (40 page)

Solidarity manifests its reality and power as proletarian internationalism, i.e., through attacks against the common enemy, U.S. imperialism, at the strategic points where each of us encounter it. This is the basis upon which the anti-imperialist struggle can be unified.

Our hunger strike is an expression of solidarity with:

• the IRA and INLA prisoners and their long and determined struggle for political status.
  
• the Red Brigades prisoners in their struggle against the extermination strategy, in which they have seized the political initiative.
  
• all prisoners from the anti-imperialist resistance in Western Europe, particularly in Turkey.
  
• the struggle of the Palestinian prisoners for Prisoner of War status.
  
• with all prisoners who have begun to resist in prison and are struggling to organize themselves.
  

ARM THE RESISTANCE!

ORGANIZE THE UNDERGROUND!

ORGANIZE ARMED RESISTANCE IN WESTERN EUROPE!

Prisoners from the Red Army Faction
February 6, 1981

_____________

1
. Ingrid Schubert's nickname.

2
. This article, by Margaret Thatcher's advisor Paul Johnson, appeared in the October 1980
NATO Review,
and is discussed on
page 177
.

3
. Here the prisoners are referring to the movement against nuclear weapons of the 1950s and ‘60s, not the movement against nuclear energy of the 1970s. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 22-23.

4
. As part of its psychological war against the guerilla, police sources routinely warned that they had received information that the RAF was planning to use biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons against the public. No evidence has ever been provided to indicate that any of these far-fetched stories was true.

We've decided to break off the hunger strike, since it seems that following two interventions by Amnesty International prisoners will no longer be held in individual isolation and more prisoners' groups will be formed. Also, over the past few days it has become clear that after ten weeks on hunger strike, Sigurd Debus died as a result of force-feeding carried out with the most brutal violence possible. We can barely express our pain about his death.

His will could not be broken.

Intelligence counteractions—such as the bombing of the Cologne subway, and other obscure targets, like laying tree trunks across train tracks—are meant to legitimize his death and the deaths of other prisoners should they occur.

The fact that there is now a resolution doesn't mean that the state has abandoned its extermination strategy. However, we don't think that we will repeat the December 1980 experience of the IRA, not least of all because of the solidarity we've received.

The prisoners from the RAF
April 16, 1981

ATTACK THE CENTERS, THE BASES, AND THE STRATEGISTS
OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY MACHINE

Today, with the “Sigurd Debus Commando,” we attacked the Ramstein Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. The U.S. imperialists will not be permitted to prepare and carry out their plans for world domination in peace and quiet.

They want war. They want to roll back history to the point before the liberation movements' offensive undermined their political and military power around the world. To do this, it is essential that they disrupt the military balance between the socialist and imperialist states. Their stated goal is to reverse the historic changes and to become, once again, the most powerful ruling class in the world. That means they must be prepared to wage war on all fronts, both in Europe and in the Third World. All of the steps they have taken in the past ten years—the technological modification and the restructuring of the war machine since the peak of the Vietnam War, the achievement of NATO's long-term objective of perfecting the neutron bomb, the “struggle against international terrorism” which included united action against uprisings in Western Europe, the supervision of mass murder in El Salvador, and the NATO putsch in Turkey.

The imperialist war of annihilation is now returning from the Third World to Europe, its point of origin. The people of Europe, and of the FRG, understand that unless it can be stopped, this will mean their extermination. They are now getting a clear and direct idea of what reality has been like for people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for hundreds of years, of the impact of imperialism when you yourself are its target. Imperialism, in its essence and as a system, means extermination—so far and so long as the resistance is not strong enough to stop this class from acting.

In the face of all of the defeatist, escapist fantasies about an atomic inferno and all of the helpless pacifist hopes that accompany these fantasies, we assert that this monster can be defeated if resistance develops in the centers that addresses the gravity of the actual situation, and if an offensive strategy for speeding up the collapse of imperialism's political base in the center is developed quickly enough to prevent the imperialists from proceeding with their plan.

Ramstein, the European Headquarters of both the U.S. Air Force and of the NATO Air Force, is the largest American airport outside of
the United States and is key for any nuclear war in Europe. Ramstein is where the headquarters for nuclear warfare are located. It is the launch pad for both the Cruise and Pershing II missiles. It is where jet fighters equipped with atomic missiles and AWAC reconnaissance planes leave from. It is the relay point for the U.S.A.'s strategic bombers and the gateway for its troops, and serves as the launch pad for war in the Third World. If the imperialists feel they are losing their hold on the Middle East or the Gulf region, their oppressive machinery will be launched from Ramstein.

U.S. military strategy is the most extreme option available to the imperialist chain of states. All of the other political, economic, and social methods are based on this strategy, which determines the social developments within the NATO countries. This strategy serves as a focal point, reducing this system—imperialist politics overall—to its purest form: the slow death of the twenty-four-hour day in the metropole, the destruction wrought by the struggle for survival, the lack of perspective, the alienation, the dehumanizing labor, the widespread replacement of humans by machines in the production process, the destruction of people's living conditions by the nuclear power industry, chemicals, and concrete, the prisons, and the regimentation of any expression of life, as well as the repression of anyone unwilling to adjust themselves to the system.

BUILD THE RESISTANCE AGAINST THIS DESTRUCTION INTO THE FRONT FOR REVOLUTION IN EUROPE

CARRY OUT THE STRUGGLE IN THE METROPOLE ALONGSIDE THE STRUGGLE OF REVOLUTIONARIES IN THE THIRD WORLD

Red Army Faction
August 31, 1981

ATTACK THE CENTERS, THE BASES, AND THE STRATEGISTS OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY MACHINE

Today, with the “Gudrun Ensslin Commando,” we attacked General Kroesen, the supreme commander of the U.S. Army and of NATO's Central Europe Section. He is one of the U.S. generals who directly control imperialist policies in an area stretching from Western Europe to the Gulf region. It is he who decides on the nature of missions and the methods to be used in cases of confrontation. He decides when conventional means of destruction are to be used and when and where neutron bombs are to be deployed. He commands the U.S. intervention troops that are stationed here for deployment in the Middle East. He and Rogers are the strategists who are called back to the Pentagon from the European front when decisions, such as the decision to intervene in Iran, are taken. Should the resistance seriously threaten the colonial status of the FRG, he will be one of the American military figures who will openly control this country instead of Schmidt, Genscher, Kohl, Strauß, or whoever it might be at the time. For that reason, information about the left in the FRG has been stored in the computers at the Heidelberg Headquarters for years now. He regularly meets with the BAW to coordinate what steps are to be taken, and he personally assesses the reports of the Western intelligence services working within the context of NATO to wage the U.S.'s war against the guerilla in Western Europe. Kroesen is a front line general.

Western Europe is no longer the hinterland from which imperialism wages war. With the victories of the Third World liberation wars, with the development of the guerilla in Western Europe, and with the generalized crisis now facing imperialism, it has become part of the worldwide front. While it is the region where they own everything, it has also become the critical region for the worldwide liberation process.

The struggle in the metropole can keep the global imperialist system in check if a fresh breakthrough develops in conjunction with revolutionaries in the Third World. The struggles in the metropole now constitute genuine revolutionary steps in the centers themselves, and can now be seen as permanent upheavals within the process of developing revolutionary resistance.

Resistance means attacks against the counterrevolutionary attack. Resistance means situating your own practice in the context of the
guerilla. The guerilla, the struggle of the prisoners from the guerilla, and the struggle of the anti-imperialist militants are the elements that together form the revolutionary front in Western Europe—or will form it.

CARRY OUT ALL STRUGGLES FOR DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS IN ALL AREAS AS ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLES AND AS PART OF THE FRONT.

MAKE THE PRISONERS' STRUGGLE, WHICH IS CENTRAL TO THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, YOUR OWN.

SUPPORT THE PRISONERS HERE, IN IRELAND, IN TURKEY, IN ITALY, AND IN SPAIN.

THE WEST EUROPEAN GUERILLA IS SHAKING THE CENTER

S
TRUGGLE ALONGSIDE US

Red Army Faction
September 15, 1981

Even if it's not really our thing to issue rebuttals to police fabrications, we want to make a few things clear, because they are trying to make an example out of some public political figures to show that they can use whatever scare tactics they want—to spread terror.

The cops don't know anything about how we move about, how we plan our actions, or the practical details of how we work with the legal left. It is no surprise that they shamelessly resort to lying about the growing anti-imperialist resistance. Here they are:

• The most outlandish story is the one about the “first arrest in the Kroesen case.” Of course, Helga Roos has been a thorn in the cops' side for some years now. She has struggled politically in the anti-imperialist movement and on behalf of the prisoners from the guerilla. She had nothing to do with the action of the Gudrun Ensslin Commando. It wasn't her, but two of our men who bought the tent from the
  Kaufhof
  ¹
  at the Paradeplatz in Mannheim early in the afternoon on September 14 (the day before the action). Their books can verify this. It's true that we were on the hill for several days before the action, but we didn't use the tent there. Nor did she ever bring us any cocoa. If there was a bottle with her fingerprints on it there, then the cops planted it or put her fingerprints on it afterwards, as has already happened in Ireland. This is also meant to create the impression that we get in position and then “sympathizers” come to serve us.
  
• Gabriele Gebhard was arrested, because Gisela Dutzi is said to have lived with her while she was underground. Anyone who knows anything about the Heidelberg-Mannheim scene knows that the police know that address. It seems obvious that nobody from the underground would live there. Another fascinating detail is that Gabriele is supposed to have worked on the Sigurd Debus Commando's statement. Really.
  
• During the last hunger strike, two guys were arrested in Heidelberg. After our action against Kroesen, the cops looked at two men they said they had seen driving a motorcycle behind Kroesen. They claimed a success in their manhunt when they
  conveniently found the license plate number in the notebook of one of the two. The fact of the matter is that no motorcycle was ever used in preparing for this action. In the case of one of the two men, Karl Grosser, who at the time of the attack had already spent five months in prison, an order to detain him was issued due to his “updated status,” with the fabrication: “participation in the Kroesen attack.” He had as little to do with the action against Kroesen as he did with the Ramstein action.
  

All these fabrications are absurd. Obviously, apart from those of us who actually carry out the actions, nobody knows when, where, or what we are planning.

In the case of both actions, from beginning to end, only RAF people were involved in surveillance, planning, and execution. There are many ways we can cooperate with people living aboveground, but working as closely and as intensely on a concrete action as the police allege in this case isn't one of them. If we have such a relationship with someone, it is because he is one of us.

The “threat of a manhunt” that they are subjecting us to would be funny, except for the fact that it means the extermination machinery is going to be directed against people who aren't prepared to deal with it. What we have here is an attack against a structure that they know nothing about.

What began with the arrests of Sabine Schmitz and Johannes Thimme in 1976 and continued with the arrests Christine and Harald Biehal a little later, and the over fifty arrests during the hunger strike, the “black bloc,” all of that, has now taken on a new dimension. This indicates a new repressive line, with which they hope to destroy that which they cannot control, this is why they've started using the formulation “the aboveground RAF.” No such thing exists or could exist. What has sprung up is the beginning of an anti-imperialist movement in the FRG—isolated circles, “antifascist groups,” Third World groups, women's groups, prison groups, antimilitary groups, etc.—this movement sees itself existing in the context of the strategy of the guerilla in the metropole. It is understood that fundamental resistance—every political step that is meant to be serious—must stay outside of the state's control. It has been obvious to everyone for years now that when people who live aboveground want to meet, they must outmaneuver state surveillance if they don't want the
Verfassungsschutz
and the political police to see who meets who where and about what. Of course they have no choice, faced with the preventive state security strategy that intends to destroy these developments before they have taken shape.