European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 28, 1977, Darmstadt, Hesse Home guard for Politico Franz Josef Strauss. By Paul Hofmann new York times he dominant response in West Germany tothe current outbreak of terrorism appears not to be fear anger or even the inevitable Law and order backlash. It is utter bafflement. Why should Well educated and intelligent Young men and women from Good families go under ground and fire sub machine guns to bring Down the Rich est and seemingly most successful society in Europe what on Earth do they want what kind of political and social order would the terrorists set up once they had achieved their avowed objective destruction of the fascist imperialist capitalist system and Why is the Law enforcement machinery in a coun try that has always taken Pride in its own efficiency unable to curb the violence that has caused the death of at least 22 persons in six years these Are the questions that stunned germans have kept asking Ever since an Urban guerrilla com Mando kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer the top spokesman for the country s powerful Industrial establishment in Cologne on sept. 5. It May not yet be fully realized abroad that the Cologne attack has shaken West Germany More than anything in years. Capping a series of terrorist assassinations Kidnap pings arson and bombings the Cologne ambush has demonstrated to a shocked country that its government and indeed the democratic system seem impotent in the face of a Small band of anarchist Chancellor Willy Brandt has likened the terrorists to the sinister forces that doomed the Weimar re Public and German democracy in 1933. A British writer Jillian Becker in a new Book on the murderous Baader Meinhoff gang Calls the Urban guerrillas Hitler s Chil Dren. Others have viewed the militant anarchists rather As the bored children of a smugly affluent materialistic bourgeoisie who hanker for adventure and am sick and tired of All that caviar gobbling Susanne Albrecht the daughter of a Well to do Hamburg lawyer is supposed to have complained before she became the prime suspect in the murder last july of Jirgen Ponto a leading banker and a Friend of her the terroristic conspirators Are vocal in their contempt of today s West German consumer society they Are vague on their ultimate Aims. They have never faced a Public debate and their badly written leaflets speak vaguely about egalitarian social ism and Solidarity with the underdeveloped nations of the world. The Small pro Moscow and pro peking communist parties in West Germany denounce West German Urban guerrillas certainly have no links to the Broad masses of the Industrial workers let alone the one million jobless and the sub proletariat of the Gost Arbeiter the turks greeks italians yugoslavs another foreigners working in the country. To the terrorists violent action seems an end i itself. The loyalties of the extremists appear to be West Germany Battle terrorism a besieged reserved to their own Small in group. One does t join their sect one is co opted by it. Security officers estimate that maybe 1,200 men an women form the hard Core of the anarchist conspiracy. Each of them May count on five sympathizers who pro vide help when it is needed. University professors churchmen other intellectuals Are in the ranks of the sympathizers. Their motivation often is disaffection with the overfed West German society and its Strong anti intellectual currents. Radical Chic. West German style surely plays a role Between the West German terrorists and the Weatherman faction in the United states of the 1960sare tempting. As in the United states the terrorism in West Germany grew out of student protests. In the Amer ican Campus unrest the main theme was Vietnam. Once that War ended the movement in the United states petered out in West Germany terrorism instead has Bur Days German officials and newspapers Are in Censed at some French comments that would Trace the terrorist phenomenon to fundamental flaws in German society. Only a society that in itself is monstrous can give birth to monsters a correspondent of be Monde of Paris Oestreicher a German born Clergyman and chairman of the British Section of amnesty International writing in the times of London repeated the thesis of Becker and be Monde there May appear to be no direct line from Adolf Hitler to Andreas Baader. Were it possible to merge today with yesterday the two would unhesitatingly gun extra Security for president Walter Scheel. Each other Down. Their left and right Wing labels however Are less relevant to understanding them than their messianic dreams. The real link is a deeply romantic idealism that will Stop at nothing to prove itself. The Ideal is More important even than Success. Such irrational Ideal ism nearly always envisages some kind of new and better humanity before that Ideal is buried with its proponents 40 or 40,000 or 40 million May have to die. With Hitler it was 40 million. With the Baader Meinhoff gang itis not yet and i Hope will not reach 40." these Days there is much talk about How vulnerable an advanced Industrial and technological society like West Germany s is whenever a tiny band of fanatics who May be highly intelligent and imaginative chooses to attack. More and More West germans Are also asking uneasily Why their police Are unable to find the murderers and kidnappers. The criminals Are by no Means wanted posters show the pictures of five Young women who Are being sought As suspects in the jul murder of Ponto. All five have vanished. The Federal criminal Bureau also has a fairly Clear idea of who participated in the Cologne ambush in which Schleyer was abducted and his Driver and three police bodyguards killed. Data on hundreds of terrorists and persons believed to be capable of terrorist violence restored in computers investigators Are said to have Nar rowed the Field of suspects to about 50. Many of these also seem to have disappeared. The 62-year-old president of the West German confederation of employers associations and of the Industry federation an Active member of the nazi party in the1930s and a member of Hitler s elite is during world War ii was the latest prominent target of terrorist april gunmen Riding heavy japanese motorcycles shot and killed Siegfried Buback West Germany s chief prosecutor in Karlsruhe. A key suspect in the Buback assassination was captured in utrecht last week after shootout that left one dutch policeman dead and another , chairman of the Board of Dresdner Bank was murdered in his Well guarded Villa near Frankfurt by three visitors led by Susanne Albrecht. The nature of the targets even More than the Cun Ning techniques of West Germany s Ultra left terrorists explain Why their operations have such a paralysing effect. They aim High. A directive by a group of jailed left Wing extremists issued from a Stuttgart Penitentiary two years ago ordered their associates who remained a Large to hit the imperialist apparatus its military Polit ical economic and cultural institutions its a dead chief prosecutor a dead top banker and a kid naked head of the Industrial establishment show that the terrorists have been quite successful so the Adenauer Allee in Bonn double barbed wire coils one above the other and a Mobile Security Wall Ofa Mored cars and heavily armed police patrols with watchdogs protect the offices and residences of West Germany s head of state and head of gun emplacements and Miles of barbed wire Are All Over the West German capital. The effect i that of an unstable country awaiting the next coup d eat. This is a nation where pedestrians will patiently wait for a Green Light at an intersection even if there is no on coming traffic for half a mile. In the View of some for Eigners germans generally like rules and expect to behold what to do. The terrorist offensive with its unforeseen shocks unsettles them More than similar event would in a less highly organized society. Ambush scene after terrorists abducted Hanns Martin Schleyer killing Driver guards. Balance Sheet of violence by Wellington Long United press International he body count in the 10-year old Battle Between West Germany s Urban guerrillas and the state is 22 government officials and 10 add to that four american servicemen killed in West Germany by terrorist bombs and dutch policeman killed in a shootout with one sus to that 102 persons who were the targets of terrorist murder attempts 90 persons injured by terrorist bombings and gun attacks 14 persons held As hostages by terrorists. On the other Side of the Ledger 136 guerrillas have been convicted of various crimes ranging Down from murder. Ten of them were sentenced to life imprisonment. Thirty four guerrillas now Are serving out prison sentences. Another 66 Are in investigative arrest. Arrest warrants have been issued against 36others. The figures taken from a balance of terror published by the West German ministry of Justice Are Small compared to those of some other countries in and beyond Europe shaken by near civil War. But the Urban guerrillas known variously As the Baader Meinhoff gang or the red army fac Tion nonetheless Are changing the face of Ger Many. Armoured cars patrol the streets of a capital where Only 10 years ago it was difficult to find a policeman. Barbed wire surrounds government ministries that Only recently were open to the Public. Three police men holding sub machine guns at the ready guarded the door of a banquet room in a Bonn restaurant when the president of a Power company held a news conference there the guerrillas have said their next kidnapping target will be someone from the Energy industries. But the changes Cut deep through and below that visible government of the West German Republic founded in 1949 has been at pains to divorce itself from and pay compensation for Germany s nazi past. The Constitution banned the death penalty be cause of its abuse by the nazis. Penal reforms have gone so far that recently the supreme court heard an Appeal arguing that sentences of life imprisonment were unconstitutional. Convicts Are Given leaves to spend with their fam Ilies in order to prepare them for their reentry into person arrested for just about anything except a capital crime is allowed to go free pending trial provided he can prove he has a fixed abode in West Ger Many. The Baader Meinhoff gang says All of this is Eye band s top lawyer Klaus croissant arrested on suspicion of participation also in the guerrillas criminal activities took advantage of West Ger Many s Liberal regime to jump bail recently and Goto France. He appeared on a National television pro Gram there to argue that West Germany despite anew facade remains essentially a fascist state. Leaders of West Germany s parliamentary parties counter by saying this is the most demo cratic state Germany Ever has known and that they will not allow the guerrillas to destroy it. Nevertheless the guerrillas have forced the state to adopt a More restrictive attitude in order to defend itself. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt s social democratic free Democrat government coalition has approve plans to tighten gun control Laws and to give judges Power to expel lawyers believed helping their client sin the commission of crimes. Parliamentary deputies of All parties report an in crease in constituent mail demanding restoration of the death penalty at least for Christian democratic opposition began plastering the Republic with posters demanding harsher prison sentences and an end to the practice of Grant ing convicts time off for Good behaviour and demand ing increased monitoring of conferences Between sympathetic lawyers and their terrorist clients. Opposition Leader Helmut Kohl added he thinks the Law should be amended to allow the authorities to keep a convicted guerrilla in custody even after he has served his prison sentence in order to prevent him rejoining his underground unit. Behind the gun Meinhoff hanged herself in prison. Seven years ago a woman fired a shot in German guerrilla attacks for the first half of the Urban guerrilla wanted by Federal criminal police on suspicion of murder bombings Bank robberies and associated crimes Are Albrecht daughter of a wealthy Hamburg lawyer led a Man and another woman into the Home of banker Jurgen Ponto her father s close Friend and a Man who always had considered her As a god handed him a bouquet of red roses just before the Man with her opened fire on onto. Police say one of the two women perhaps Albrecht also fired a gun at onto. Ulrike Meinhoff a left Wing journalist who abandoned her husband and two children when she turned to Vio Lence opened the terrorist Era on May 14, 1970, when assisted by the two other women she shot a guard in West Berlin to free Andreas Baader then in jail for setting fire to a department store in Frankfurt. Meinhoff acted because of disappoint ment with the Lack of results achieved by the leftist anti parliamentary opposition which set out during the late 1960s to Reform West German society. Meinhoff told an interviewer that fellow left Wing intellectuals have gone far enough in their theory to know that armed action is necessary for the revolution but they Are afraid to take the broke the impasse by forming the red army facti9n" and by personally leading the shooting raid that freed Germany s Urban guerrillas then became known As the Baader mein Ofgang. The women on the police wanted list no include Ingeborg Baz for Bank robbery Gabriele orb Cher Tiedemann convicted in1973 of the attempted murder of a police Man suspected of one or two killing during an attack on open Headquarters in Vienna in 1975, and Angelika Luther suspected of Bank robberies and of participation in the slaying of West Berlin judge Gunter von Drenkmann. There Are also Juliane Plambeck suspected of participation in Drenkmann s murder Astrid Proll sought for participation in the attempted murder of police men Ingrid Siepmann convicted Bank robber Angelika spite and Sigrid Sterne Beck both wanted for suspected complicity in Ponto s murder and Inge Viett sought for participation in Bank robberies. Krutcher Tiedemann and Siepman both were serving sentences in a West Berlin prison in 1975 when they were exchanged for Peter Lorenz a West Berlin politician kidnapped by other Urban guerrillas. Verena Becker was on the wanted list until May when police in the Southern Cit of Singen arrested her and Gunter Sonnen Berg on suspicion of participation in the Albrecht suspect in murder. April murder of Federal prosecutor general Siegfried also had been released from prison in Exchange for Lorenz. At the time she was serving a six year sentence for helping to Plant a bomb at the British yacht club in West Berlin. The bomb blast killed one captured Meinhoff and Baader in 1972, and charged them with hanged herself before the trial ended. Another woman guerrilla Gudrun Ensslin was convicted in that trial and is in prison although she has appealed Thev endict. Up pegs 14 the stars and stripes wednesday september 28,1977 the stars and stripes Page 15
