TERRORISM (4): The German Autumn of 1977

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The German Autumn is now 40 years behind us. Parallels are still being drawn to today's terrorism. The crucial differences are more apparent. Especially the choice of targets: back then, only top politicians and other high-ranking members of society were attacked, whereas today's terrorism targets the civilian population.

Islamic terrorism targets the civilian population: public places, busy (shopping) streets, and large events. This terrorism theoretically can target anyone, it doesn't even need a triggering event. The slogan of the "Islamic State" to "hate and fight against" the West is directed against a lifestyle - from tolerance towards homosexuality to alcohol consumption - and against the abandonment of faith, meaning the lack of acceptance of Allah. Democracy and human rights are considered blasphemies against God in this way of thinking, an arrogant preference of man-made laws over divine laws. Accordingly, society as a whole is targeted - public spaces are meant to become spaces of fear.

The "classic terrorism"

This is the central difference to the terrorism of the RAF and similar groups. The "conventional terrorism" was directed against the system, personified by high-ranking politicians and members of society and the state apparatus: The enemy were the "bloated elites, whether they are in the judiciary, the executive, the parties, corporations or the media," as the RAF expressed it.

The goal was to send a message to "the interested third party, who should be motivated to resistance and uprising by the terror spread in the elite," as political scientist Herfried Münkler calls it: In the case of left-wing terrorism, critics of the system marked as capitalist-imperialistic should therefore be motivated to armed struggle. At the same time, the state apparatus was supposed to be tempted to overreact in order to lose its legitimacy as a constitutional state.

Accordingly, the "Movement of 2 June", which was also active in Austria in 1977 through the kidnapping of businessman Walter Palmers, was basically careful to avoid civilian casualties. Besides the political significance, it was mainly about financing their activities through ransom money. The best-known act of the "Movement of 2 June," the kidnapping of CDU front man Peter Lorenz in 1975, was intended to free prisoners close to them. It was the first kidnapping of a politician in West Germany.

The attacks of the "Movement of 2 June" were also directed against institutions - such as a British yacht club in Berlin-Gatow (where, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, a person was killed) in response to the "Bloody Sunday" of 1972. In the same year, law collections were burned at the law faculty in Berlin after a case against police officers was dropped, who had killed two RAF members in a shootout. ("We don't want a Law Faculty where new pigs are trained!" was the statement at the time.)

The RAF also targeted representatives of the state and the elite: after their core group was imprisoned and the hunger strike of an RAF member ended fatally, the highest judge in Berlin was murdered in 1974. The following year, there was an attack on the German embassy in Stockholm, which was blown up after the German government did not respond to the demands. Also in that time period was the hostage-taking at the OPEC conference in Vienna by the terrorist "Carlos" and five other attackers.

Key year 1977

The German Autumn was preceded by a series of other attacks: the assassination of Attorney General Siegfried Buback, the failed kidnapping of Jürgen Ponto, CEO of Dresdner Bank, who was killed after fierce resistance, and an attempted attack on the building of the Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe.

The German Autumn itself showed the increased readiness for violence of the RAF to force the release of Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. During this time, the kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer, chairman of the Federation of German Industries, and the hijacking of the "Landshut" to Mogadishu by Palestinian terrorists took place. After the GSG 9 special forces freed the hostages, Baader and Ensslin took their own lives. Schleyer's body was found in a trunk in Mülhausen shortly afterwards (his murderer has still not been found to this day).

The role of the media

Regardless of the differences in target selection, the media played a central role then and now. The kidnapping of Schleyer and the RAF in general dominated the front pages in September and October. Historian Walter Laqueur described the terror as a spectacle that fascinated millions of people, even though they were not directly affected.

In the "Welt," Golo Mann spoke of a "new kind of civil war" two days after Schleyer's abduction: "We are at war, we face determined enemies who are ready to kill. And Germany is as innocent as an angel. In the same issue, a commentator spoke of the fact that "the authority of the state as a protective community of all citizens is at stake": "Only the state can protect against terror. Citizens expect from it the authority and the strength to enforce the legal order."

Süddeutsche Zeitung titled on September 7th "Terror in a new dimension," one day later, the column "Das Streiflicht" rejected returning to normality and denying the terror threat by saying that one is not affected: "Could you not, according to the proven recipe, even suppress the terrible images from Vincenz-Statz-Straße, as if they were from a traffic accident: We are not prominent, we are not policemen, this cannot happen to us! But then you can't get rid of the images...". Consequently, citizens should prepare for a longer, potentially endless struggle with the RAF: "It is true - for those affected, the idyll is completely ruined. The feeling of absolute aimlessness (and endlessness) of the carnage is awful."

Threat to every individual

The media and politics declared the RAF a threat to the entire public order and thus to every individual. Accordingly, one must also be willing to restrict basic freedoms to save the state order as a whole: "Citizens fear that the slogan 'Better a helpless than a heartless state' could possibly result in a helpless state in all its heartlessness - 'with South American conditions and ultimately South American solutions' it said in the "Welt" on September 8th. A day later, the question was raised there whether the state was failing its primary purpose - to ensure security: "This state, which takes so much tax out of our pockets - what does it actually do to protect its citizens from terrorists? Is the police completely blind and helpless?"

The newspaper reports at the time paint an extremely emotional picture that fueled fears. Those who tried to understand the perpetrators and their motives quickly became suspicious.
Calls for moderation - like those of Constitutional Judge Helmut Simon - were rare, and often you also had to look into the foreign press (specifically the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung").

When it is emphasized today time and again that the real threat of terrorism is much lower than the coverage suggests - and even claimed that "Islamic terrorism" is a "fabricated threat" - this applies even more to left-wing terrorism. To clarify: In 28 years of RAF activity, fewer people (to be precise, 33) were killed in Europe than by Islamist terror.

Political reactions

Politics also reacted extremely emotionally to Schleyer's kidnapping. The "Bayernkurier" (the CSU party organ) spoke of the final stage before civil war, SPD faction leader Herbert Wehner and representatives of CDU/CSU reported that the people were pressing for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Even the suggestion circulated to shoot one of the captured RAF terrorists every half hour in case of extortion attempts. The topic of the death penalty was also very prominent in opinion columns and letters to the editor, already after the killing of Jürgen Ponto, more people had spoken out in favor of the death penalty (44 percent) than against it (39 percent).

Politicians also demonstrated ostentatious uncompromisingness, with the statements at the time showing surprising parallels to today's rhetoric: the "Bayernkurier" demanded "toughest measures" and an amendment to the Basic Law, Chancellor Schmidt said in a government declaration from mid-September that he wanted to go to the limits of the rule of law if necessary, Helmut Kohl described the abduction as an attack on the entire people "as a declaration of war against the constitutional order of the Federal Republic". The terrorists wanted to change the nature of the state. To prevent this, the liberal constitutional state had to take action against terrorism with all means at its disposal. Accordingly, there could be no taboos in the fight against terrorism.

Conclusion: The world did not end

In retrospect, the alarmist reports of a civil war and an attack on the entire people were greatly exaggerated. The debates about far-reaching emergency legislation and the reintroduction of the death penalty should also diminish again. The aforementioned historian Walter Laqueur initially drew a parallel to the rise of the NSDAP, which shows that even a small movement can "rapidly gain strength" if no countermeasures are taken. Against this historical background, the excitement in Germany was not exaggerated. A few weeks later, however, he concluded that the Germans were lacking "the phlegm of the Italians" and the "ability to live with disorder," which is why they dealt poorly with terrorism: "People will have to get used to living with some terror, even in Germany. One must not ignore the matter, but one must not overreact either; it is necessary to find a middle ground, which is difficult especially for Germany, as we all know."

Has Germany now become accustomed to terror? The media and political reactions to recent attacks seem - although terrorism has changed - at first glance more sober than in autumn 1977. However, the population itself is still deeply unsettled: in a survey conducted by the R+V insurance in September 2017, terrorism ranked at the top of a list of "fears of Germans."

ADDENDUM article series on the topic of terrorism on SPARTANAT: 

Part 1: Criminals, Heroes, Freedom Fighters

Part 2: The History of Terror in Europe, Visualized

Part 3: What's New About the New Terror? 

More to come ...

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