Baader-Meinhof still of interest.

The BBC has some coverage of Brigette Mohnhaupt’s pending release from German prison. Mohnhaupt was a member of the Baader-Meinhof gang (also called the Red Army Faction, or RAF), a communist terrorist organization famous for numerous violent acts committed in the seventies. The name is from the surnames of two of the members, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof (pictured).

Their most famous victim was Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the CEO (or something) of what was then called Daimler-Benz. He had been a Nazi industrialist, and had remained prominent in West German society. The gang kidnapped and murdered him, something described in graphic detail in one of the BBC pieces.

The woman pulled out two machine guns, and her accomplices, following behind, bundled Hanns Martin Schleyer out of the car. His bodyguards were killed at the scene and one month later, his body was found in the boot of a car.

But Baader-Meinhof were not simply or uncomplicatedly to be terrorists, as the article mentions. They were considered by many to be “legitimate” political partisans; it was a popular position, as the BBC notes, to reject the violence of the RAF but not their aims, principally denazification, the struggles against capitalism and imperialism, and also attacks on the American military installation in the DDR.

At the height of its popularity, around a quarter of young West Germans expressed some sympathy for the group. Many condemned their tactics but understood their disgust with the new order, particularly one where former Nazis enjoyed prominent roles.

But while describing Mohnhaupt as “having been described as the most evil woman in Germany,” a rather lurid depiction of a political partisan, no mention is made of Schleyer’s Nazi ties until later in the article, when they describe him as a “former member of the Nazi party.” They go on, predictably, to wonder whether there was anything ideological about the movement at all, or whether the kidnappings were purely to agitate for the release of prisoners.

All I am saying is this: Schleyer — a Nazi — is allowed a mediated relation to his politics denied to Mohnhaupt, “the most evil woman in Germany.” And, of course, this:

The group was considered such a threat to the state that many of its leaders have since spent longer in jail than any Nazi war criminal ever convicted in Germany.

Update: Driving around, I heard on NPR a story about the impending release that was even less sympathetic. They did not mention Schleyer’s Nazi membership, except very obliquely: some comment about how the RAF resented the “continued prominence of former members of the Nazi party.”

(I also edited the above somewhat).