Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 275 - The Red Army Faction Part 4: The Body as a Weapon

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

In the final episode of the series, we learn about the run-up to, and aftermath of, the Deutscher Herbst, or "German Autumn" of 1977. In two months in late 1977, the leadership of the first generation of the Red Army Faction would murder a high-profile German industrialist (and former SS officer), hijack a plane, and commit group suicide. And let's just say it made an impression in West Germany. Join the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: The Red Army Faction. A Documentary History. Volume I: Projectiles for the People. Margrit Schiller. Remembering The Armed Struggle. My Time With the Red Army Faction. Stefan Aust. The Baader Meinhof Complex

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook, read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast.

Once again, Joe flinched visibly as I started doing the intro because he was about to do i i have been uh conditioned as if by a russian scientist to whenever we do our clap sync in the beginning to roll into the intro and now that i don't it uh for the last four weeks it is um it's causing me to sweat a bit i mean that could be because i'm drinking hot coffee in 94 degree weather but it could look who's to tell which one it is this is your version of the numbers mason but uh you're very welcome back to part four and the final oh also i am tom uh i'm uh irish tom is in the hosting chair this time as opposed to the other tom that uh regularly comes on the show uh yeah so this is part four our final part of the raf series if you're tuning in on this episode go back and listen to the other ones if

you haven't nothing will make sense about what we're about to talk about agent of chaos listening from part four back to part one the benjamin button of the uh fucking red army faction so joe what do you think of the of the red army faction so far well like i said before i didn't know a lot really much of anything going uh about them going into this other than you know we've occasionally touched on them uh kind of like on the other than you know we've occasionally touched on them uh kind of like on the periphery especially whenever we talk about momar gaddafi and the plo and stuff like that um i will say they're a lot more prolific than i thought like i know they carry that like i know of a few attacks they carried out but uh oh fun fact s got a notification on my computer saying record high temperature for Yurivan.

Cool. But I wasn't aware of the weird, almost slapstick nature of their organization and how they function. I feel like that's not unique to the Red Army faction. I want to say that's probably the case for most groups of their kind. Obviously, you have truly international terror groups, like the greater PLO umbrella during their heyday, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, not comparing the three of them, but

there's more of an international organization and almost like a centralization of leadership. They have a leader. So that tends to, I guess, make things a little bit more smooth, as smooth as being international terrorists can be, while the Red Army factions to be like bickering college students you know the big difference as i see it is the red army faction was never really a paramilitary organization it was much more kind of stochastic terrorism like kind of unstructured strike when you can in this episode we'll get into much more of their organized operations. And the bombing campaign that ended them up in prison is really the most organized operation that they undertook. But it's very different from, say, something like the PLO or even the IRA, where it is like there is some sort of command structure in place, you know, making it a paramilitary organization whereas really it's andreas bader gudrun ensling and

the rest of them kind of figuring out oh what do we do next i think like and like the history of terrorism is not my field um however like i i think a main difference is a lot of these terror groups even other leftist militant paramilitary and terror groups like the leader of their group is generally seen as like when we take over this guy is going to be in charge and that tends to streamline things a lot better where like i mean unless there's something hidden in the writing there's something i haven't learned yet like andreas bader or rika meinhof is ever like i'm going to be the the communist party chairperson of communist west germany like that's not really they seem to be serving an ideology rather than an organization

um which is kind of what i expect from a group of like fresh out of college kids you know yeah and it they did get their training you know from fata and the plo but it was more so you know it was ideologically ideologically driven rather than a concrete goal. Right. Like if you look at something like the IRA in the 70s, the goal was to end British occupation in Northern Ireland and a reunified Ireland in the name of Irish republicanism with the PLO. It's the return of lands to the Palestinians and other groups generally have like a very clear definable goal whereas when you have groups that are driven by you know a not necessarily vague goals but like

less easily defined ones this is kind of what you get yeah um like obviously they are being funded in some part and supported by the ced which is the communist party of east germany um i believe it's a cd and they and the kdp to some extent which is the communist party of west germany but was one of the stated goals of the rf even the reunification of germany not not really it was more so like the opposition to state oppression well it's a very broad goal i must say yeah um when we left off the last episode three of the four main members of the raf had just been picked up that is gudrun ensing yamperl rasp andreas badder and hold your mind so all five of them had been picked up badder got his leg completely shattered by a sniper's bullet yeah but there's one person who we conspicuously left out at the

end of the last episode and that is ulrika meinhof who was separated from all the rest of them at this time but on thursday the 5th of june just before midnight someone rang the doorbell of an apartment owned by a teacher in waltz road or strassa um in hanover when he opened the doorbell of an apartment owned by a teacher in walsroederstrasse in hanover when he opened the door in his dressing gown and saw a young woman with long brown hair standing outside the teacher later told the police that he didn't know her and he she asked may i have a word with you he let the woman in she looked distressed and they entered his living room. She asked, could two people spend the night tomorrow with you? He agreed and next morning at breakfast he told his girlfriend about this visit. She said there was only one very specific conclusion to be drawn, you must go to the police.

So at the police station he was immediately referred to the Badr Meinhof Special Commission. Police officer Robert Severin was approaching retirement. police station he was immediately referred to the badr meinhof special commission police officer robert severin was approaching retirement he and two younger colleagues were detailed to go and find out the best way of keeping watch on the apartment so in plain clothes they assessed the possibilities of of you know hiding in the stairwell to watch the building and as they were about to leave the apartment complex at nearly 6 ppm, a woman and a young man came towards them. The caretaker of the building was standing at the doorway and asked the couple where they were going. They told him.

And the caretaker pointed up the stairs and directed them to the second floor to the apartment they were looking for. But he said that the owner wasn't in so they probably won't get in. So the pair went upstairs and the police officers asked for reinforcements. They were still discussing whether or not they ought to enter the apartment without a search warrant when the young man came out of the building. The officers picked him up in a telephone booth. He had just put a coin in the slot to make a call. The officers threw open the doors and grabbed a pistol from him. Severin, who had come out of the operation unarmed stuck in his pocket but none of them realized they had just arrested ulrika meinhof one of the most wanted

people in west germany and they had no idea they arrested her yeah after they arrested the man when they went up to the apartment and they got her they didn't realize that it was ulrika meinhof um but because she looked so thin and so like sickly that she didn't realize that it was ulrika meinhof and but because she looked so thin and so like sickly that she didn't resemble the photographs on the wanted posters at all got that revolutionary aesthetic yeah so when the policemen searched uh the apartment they found a bag containing an open copy of an illustrated magazine stern showing x-ray pictures of ulrika Meinhof's skull. Huh. Okay. Because, bear in mind, remember in episode one or two, we talked about how Ulrika Meinhof

had to have a metal clip placed on her brain for a blood vessel? That is true, yeah. So she, wait, they figured out who she was because she happened to have a scan of her own brain laying around? So essentially what happened is after she was because she happened to have a scan of her own brain laying around so essentially what happened is after she was taken into custody they did a scan to confirm her identity and obviously

she had a scar on her head so they confirmed it was her that way um but also when they searched her jacket that was lying in the apartment they took out a letter out of out of the pocket it was gudrun essling's letter to ulrika meinhof so that just like doubled down okay this is who it is this is like when uh like a murderer gets caught because they have like a google document on their computer that says like how to get away with murder so with ulrika meinhof now imprisoned all of them are locked up and for the first year all of the raf prisoners were in separate you know confinement they were all isolated from each other and from normal life in the prison so they all spent the first year in isolation

i mean i'm not surprised. And no one's going to let their local militant group all be bunkies, you know? Mm-hmm. So Andreas Bader was in jail in Schwalmstadt. Gudrun Ensling was in Essen. Holger Mainz was in Witlich.

Irmgard Mohler was in Rathstadt. Gerhard Mueller in Hamburg. Jan-Karl Rasp in Cologne. And Ulrike Meinhof was in Cstadt gerhard mueller in hamburg young carl rasp in cologne and ulrika meinhof was in cologne's ossendorf jail in a cell that used to be astrid prohl's cell oh i wonder if they're like her name was scratched on the wall or something like that like yeah so during her eight months in isolation ulrike Meinhof was only allowed visits from family. And at that, it was only for half an hour once every two weeks under the supervision of the guards. I mean, this is a long time ago. Germany is obviously a little bit more forgiving in their penal system. I'm sure Germans will write it and tell me I'm completely incorrect on that, and it's fine. But if you get arrested for terrorism, say the guy who tried to blow up the airplane over Detroit with a bomb in his underwear,

they send you to a place called ADX Florence, which we've talked about before, which is like no visitors, no letters, no phone calls. You get stuffed into a hole to die and i kind of assumed the germans would do the same thing especially because obviously the state is terrified of these people well like this is the thing and this will come up like much later in the script that you know they weren't putting an oubliette they were you know put in regular cells just away from all the other prisoners now bear in mind they were very bare bones but you know as time goes on they get more amenities and kind of more concessions while in isolation alerika meinhof wrote a lot about how she was feeling you know that feeling

that your head is exploding that feeling at the top of your skull must be must be going to split off and come off the feeling of your spinal cord pressing into your brain the feeling at the top of your skull must be going to split off and come off. The feeling of your spinal cord pressing into your brain. The feeling of the cell is moving. You wake up and open your eyes and the cell is moving. In the afternoon when the sun shines in it suddenly stops. You can't shake off that sense of movement. Furious aggression for which there is no outlet.

That the worst thing. That's the worst thing a clear awareness that your chance of survival is nil utter failure to communicate that visits leave no trace behind them half an hour later you can tell if the visit was today or last week only by mechanically reconstructing it on the other hand a bath once a week a bath once a week means a moment's thawing out recovery and that feeling persists for a few hours the feeling that time and space interlock so this is really you know they're like she kind of sums it up they're all in isolation for a year yeah it's not good for your mental health i mean the even i don't know how you know behavioral sciences were

back then but today we we certainly know like oh wow this is torture uh i'm kind of curious like ideologically did they had did they ever write about like you know we'll die before we get taken in we'll become martyrs because like they they had to know that this was a possibility. They were blowing up people. Hold on to that thought once again. So, do you know what we get to talk about next? Bombs? Is it bombs? Black September.

Oh boy. So, on the 5th of September 1972, at 4.30am, a commando unit, the Palestinian group Black September, climbed the fence of the olympic village in munich they forced their way into the israeli team's quarters and shot two israeli athletes nine others were taken hostage and the commando unit were demanding the release of palestinian prisoners in israel as well as the release of their comrades in the red army faction

and finally failing out that plo camp's coming in handy for these guys. So that evening, the hostages and their captors were taken to Fustenfeldbruck Airport and were ostensibly flown to Cairo. As the first two Palestinians were about to enter the aircraft, two German sharpshooters opened fire the hostage takers mowed down the israelis with kalashnikovs i should point out here i mean we'll eventually do it like a series or something on the munich massacre these guys were not sharpshooters they didn't have scopes they didn't have night vision they were that's why they missed but like

they they were meant to drop all of the hostage takers at the same time to stop this from happening because obviously they machine gun the hostages one terrorist throws a hand grenade into one of the helicopters that has the hostages in them and that's kind of one of the reasons why after this west germany actually forms this like a counter-terror unit because everybody in the world is like wow you guys really fuck this up then they returned fire on the police and at the end of the day 11 israeli athletes one german policeman and five of the black september members were dead and three palestinians were arrested the organizer of that attack according to investigations by

was hassan salameh the same abu hassan that andreas badder or argued about having a hot cooked chicken it would be really funny if uh hassan salameh was like look you we demand the release of our comrades in arms except andreas butter that but see that is a badder level of pettiness that i think would have been like really funny that'd been great like yes i just uh organized up until that point one of the most prolific terror attacks in human history yes i still carry this petty grudge from years ago, from Jordan or wherever. So in response to the massacre, Ulrike Meinhof wrote a statement. The comrades of the Black September movement, she wrote, have brought their own Black September of 1970, when the Jordanian army slaughtered more than 20,000 Palestinians, home to the place whence that massacre

sprang. West Germany, former Nazi Germany, now the centre of imperialism. The place from which Jews of Western and Eastern Germany were forced to emigrate to Israel. The place from which Israel derived its capital by way of restitution and officially got its weapons until

1965. The place that was celebrated by the Springer press when they hailed Israel's blitzkrieg of June 67 as an anti-communist orgy. This is really the origins of a lot of the accusations of anti-Semitism that are leveled towards the Red Army faction. It's this statement and also you know

subsequent support for the plo and the plfp yeah and other things that come later i'm sure i mean like you know we've talked about this before on the show and uh especially during our uh and tebby raid bonus episode we talked about like there was the german leftist they were not part of the raf they part of something of a splinter group kind of and uh they kind of fell apart under a pile of antisemitism from their leadership and one of the the the hostage takers uh who was confronted with a holocaust survivor with their like their their camp tattoo on their wrist and she pointed out like a german is holding a a jewish person at gunpoint who survived the holocaust a few decades ago and he comes back with like whoa whoa i'm not a nazi i'm just an idealist

hold on to that thought we're going to talk about that at the very end. Oh no. This statement would cause so much infighting among the prisoners. In response, you know, Gudrun Edsling, Andreas Bader were mad that Ulrike Meinhof put out this statement on behalf of the RAF. Yeah, they didn't pass this through the struggle session or whatever first. Well, speaking of the struggle session or whatever first well speaking of the struggle god damn it uh very quickly as they were separated and they did not have any way to communicate with each other they would begin you know communicating with each other using a complicated system of code names based on the book moby dick notes. Notes were passed to lawyers which were then communicated back to the other prisoners

through a series of letters passed back and forth. At this time, the letters were uncensored and judges allowed info to be passed back and forth under the guise of, you know,

this is just legal communication. Okay. So this was done in order for the political identity and revolutionary consciousness of the group to remain intact but with the mail from their defending lawyers the members of the group and custody regularly received copies of all of the letters they wrote to each other it seems like um it's not legal correspondence so these these letters included you know private correspondence and sometimes exercises in what they called

criticism and self-criticism they're doing struggle sessions by correspondence yeah like one of the raf prisoners klaus jun, wrote in August 1974, I had been acting like a counter-revolutionary shit. Instead of exposing my deficiencies and consistently extending my training by means of info, etc., I just absorbed the info rather than using it as a tool, as equipment for the struggle. for the struggle so this kind of news circular of criticism self-criticism and also communication in order to keep the group strong will become so increasingly important as we go through this final episode okay i mean you're they're bored in a prison cell isolated i mean i don't think anybody's gonna be more self-critical

in any moment of their life than they're going to be right then. So, at the end of 1972, Andreas Bader was called to give evidence at the trial of Horst Mahler in Berlin. He, Ulrike Meinhof and Astrid Prohl were called by the defense to supply information about conditions in jail. And from today said badder i won't eat until those conditions are changed badder's words were in every newspaper the next day and with them started all of the raf prisoners on hunger strike their first which lasted for

almost two months holy shit how did they die how did they not die um we'll we'll get onto that they got that german reserve sausage supply somewhere in their cell i don't know like the thing is is that like for 60 days they could survive but this is something we're going to talk about in a second but you know communications between prisoners in various jails had improved considerably with the introduction of this info system that we just talked about some 40 prisoners took part in the second hunger strike including some who were member who were not members of the red army faction the second hunger strike which lasted six weeks from the 8th of may to the 29th of june 1973

the prison authorities employed forcible feeding for the first time after a slow okay yeah yeah the prisoner so but they realized that this wasn't going to be a solution to the problem so after the the slight easing of the conditions of the prisoners probably in part due to the widespread publicity given by the strike, the prisoners began eating again. All while this was going on, the preparations of the Stamheim prison were continuing where all the prisoners were meant eventually to be held. All of them being kept separately was presenting a logistical nightmare for prison authorities but on the 28th of april 1974 gudrun ensling and elrica meinhof were moved to cells 718 and 719 on the seventh

floor of the stamheim prison further referred to as the batter meinhof wing god now they're so privileged to get a whole wing of their own prison so but this is like they are the highest security prisoners in the entirety of germany that's fucking wild to me i mean i was i was thinking for a moment because like i think rudolph hess is still being held but i i do remember that he was being held in uh england he wasn't being held in germany so like why why do they send these like rudolph has chucky taylor or well charles taylor senior is held in england i think because uh charles taylor is being held there because uh like some kind of icc agreements um and hess is being what will obviously isn't anymore he'd be some kind of undead monster at this point uh but he was being

held in england because that's where he fled via airplane and and because this whole thing and one day we'll do an episode about him is he was not mentally well before he got there and he believed if he jumped on a plane acted as an emissary for nazi germany he could end the war by negotiating with uh with uh britain and instead he was just arrested for the rest of his life so with the arrival of the new prisoners some new rules were set about you know their confinement and how they were to conduct themselves daily. According to this order, their cells numbered 718 and 719 on the 7th floor of the building were to be double locked day and night. Two men and one female prison officer were to be present at all times whenever the cells were opened.

The prisoners were allowed to wear their own clothes and underwear. Food was handed out in the kitchen to the officers on duty who signed for it and then delivered to the prisoners. So it's like what we'd consider modern day solitary confinement. Yeah. So the pair were allowed to take an hour and a half of yard exercise together every day on the roof terrace

of the seventh floor of the building. During the day they would be locked in the same cell for four hours. Their cells were to be particularly thoroughly searched daily they were to have body searches at regular intervals female prison officers had to look in in on one of the prisoners at least once an hour until 8 p.m they could have a bath twice a week though not on saturdays sundays and holidays we love when our personal hygiene runs on banker hours business hour bath the prisoners were barred from all community activities including going to church and only visits from family and their lawyers were allowed

i mean that seems like that still sucks but it sounds better than I thought it'd be. Yeah. Like, I think in general, stuff that we'll get into later aside, it's not the worst. Like, they're not being put in an oubliette. And this is not me apologizing for the carceral system. Okay, first of all, what the fuck is an oubliette? What kind of cursed British thing are you bringing me? It's actually french so an oubliette is a hole in the ground with a grate on the top and you you put a prisoner in it ah give him the core v-rop

treatment yeah so it's a dungeon with the only entrance or exit being a trap door in the ceiling the the jesse pinkman prison cell from the end of breaking bad yeah so like it was developed in the middle ages by the normans in in english prisons fair enough like i said cursed british things so over a period of several months the prisoners prepared for a new hunger strike, their third. It was to be their longest and their toughest, and it ended in death. And Andreas Bader wrote about it. I don't think we shall call it a hunger strike this time. That means some people will die.

I mean, you can still call it a hunger strike. Hunger strikes, you know you know famously we've talked about bobby sands um like yeah the end goal of an understrike a hunger strike is obviously to get your demands or die with the idea that the public relations disaster of having a prisoner die under your watch would be too shameful for the state to take and this is you know something that will come up once their trial begins is the idea of using the body as a weapon as you know this is the last weapon that a prisoner has and it is the most useful thing they can do well it's certainly not the last weapon these prisoners would have so over this time

the relationship grew even more tenuous and in august 1974 andreas badder copied ulrika meinhof self-criticism for the info system and it goes as follows the essential thing my disturbed relationship with you both that is gudrun ensling and Andreas Batter, and particularly Andreas, will arise from the fact that I wasn't animated by revolutionary violence. It was just a phrase shamelessly used as compared to my situation now. My social development towards fascism through sadism and religion, which caught up with me because I never fully resolved my relationship to it. I mean, the ruling class, and I was once a starling, had kept killing things inside me. That really bad part of my delusion, behaving to the RAF as I used to behave to the ruling class, toadying. I don't really know what this word means, toadying, but someone let me know. ass toadying i don't really know what this word means toadying but someone someone let me know is kind of like a slang term for like becoming like subservient to like being like as soon as

you're a toady like you're kind of like a servant oh okay it's kind of like a tout in ireland sure i've never heard that one before um i mean treating you like cops which simply means I was like a cop myself a long time. In the psychological mechanisms of domination and submission, of fear and clinging to the rules, a hypocritical bitch from the ruling class that merely self-knowledge everything just as if. as if so andreas badder obviously put this self-criticism in the you know info circuit in order to get at ulrika meinhof you know i don't know necessarily whether it's because he was worried that she was going to flip on all of them to save herself right but this is kind of a long continuity in you know both gudrun ensling and andreas badder targeting ulrika meinhof you know it goes back as far as you know him calling her a bourgeois cunt for

for feeling guilty about abandoning her children or you know him targeting her during the grenade training because she didn't throw it away you know this is a long continuity and it's something that a criticism that i don't think anyone can really come back against is that like andreas batter was like a person who deeply deeply seemed well seemed to deeply deeply hate women i'm kind of getting that feeling because his all of his criticisms are saved for the only person in the group who could kind of sort of challenge his leadership and who happened to be a woman. And not to mention, he doesn't really have anything in his life, right?

Like he's been kind of sort of disconnected from society at large when this whole thing started. He was a petty criminal. He didn't really have a lot of friends, no relationship with his family. Well, Eureka Meinhof was married. She had children. She had a life before all this,

which was unique because she dropped it all. And he still uses that as a cudgel despite the fact she gave what could have been effectively a very normal life for what they considered the struggle. And he gave up nothing yeah and also to bear in mind that andreas batter also you know believed that women were not part of the working

class that's telling yeah yeah i mean he so he's a deeply sexist asshole who's attacking the only other woman of stature within his group even when they're both in fucking prison so the other raf prisoners received the document together with self-reproaches from everyone else margaret schiller wrote hatred uh i was always terrified of andreas batter which was the only nasty which was only the other nasty side of hate, defence against being taken over by someone who couldn't or wouldn't be corrupted. Replying to Schiller, Gudrun Ensling described the characteristics of Andreas Badr's role in the group. The rival, absolute enemy, enemy of the state. The collective consciousness, the morale of the humiliated and insulted of the urban proletariat that's what andreas is in in clear non-theory based english he's a dick

yeah he he's a miserable asshole who hates women but she went on hence the hatred of the bourgeoisie the press the middle class left concentrated on him because on the 14th of may 1970 the date of the freeing of badr in berlin has turned out to mean just that the struggle for power it was the first battle we won an armed rescue operation our model we could measure ourselves by andreas by what he is because I would disagree with, I mean you can't't you don't know how you square the circle exactly but like you can't say things like that when he fundamentally thinks that women cannot be a part of the working class he sees everybody outside the working class as being an enemy like that's just bigotry he's just yeah he's just communist jordan peterson andreas boulder i have nothing against our women comrades other than the fact i believe

that being born with a uterus makes you inherently bourgeoisie oh people are gonna be so mad at at us Like if people are mad at This man's own words And the words of his comrades You're not mad at us, you're mad at a dead guy But on the 2nd of October 1974 The Federal Prosecutor General Officially indicted the 5 core members

Of the group Andreas Batter, Gudrun Ensling Ulrike Meinhof, Holder Mines and Jan-Karl Rasp. In November, Batter and Rasp were moved to Stamheim. Holder Mines would remain in Whitlitch due to his failing health caused by the previous hunger strike. At the beginning of every hunger strike, the prisoners gave the prison officers all the food they had in their cells. Biscuits, chocolate, soup cubes were packed up and deposited in the food cell outside of the prisoners' reach. But more than not, foodstuffs had been kept back

and hidden among books and were occasionally found during the regular inspection of the cells. But the more often hunger strikes were staged over the years, being employed as a quote, weapon against your own body. The more that weapon wore out, the general public didn't really know the strikes were being were taking place. The prison officers and the security apparatus tried to keep it quiet. So it limits their strength.

Yeah. And at this stage, quite a lot of tabloid press that weren't explicitly right wing like the springer press were sympathetic to their cause the prisoners took to eating increasingly often in secret once bubeck found that one of the defending lawyers had a dozen ham sandwiches with him in his files he's he's going through his law files like you know motion to dismiss motion for attorney ham sandwich ham sandwich ham sandwich but this is this is because all of the files and the conversations between the lawyers and the prisoners were meant to be you know private and confidential so their file binders weren't searched right and i think that's still the case in most prison systems that legal correspondence is privileged and also apparently

full of ham sandwiches so when he spoke to the lawyer about it the man said he was diabetic and had to eat frequently bubeck said to him not very tactful is it eating in front of hair batter while he's on hunger strike uh this is great like i am on the hunger strike uh sir your ham sandwich literally just fell out of your pocket oh no you you do not understand it's uh i am not on the hunger strike for for for food i am on hunger strike for dairy, you see. It makes my tummy very upset. Herr Bader, I can see bread in your teeth. That is just a fur

coat to keep me warm in my prison cell. That's just plaque that's building up from all the food I'm not eating. So, at the end of October 1974, Manfred Grashov gave up on his hunger strike but resumed it a few days later in this situation hold your minds then you know extremely malnourished from his own hunger strike guy who's actually doing the hunger strike like wow you guys aren't losing

any weight what's going on he said you are not with us anymore you are saving your own skin and just and thus giving the pigs a victory that's that's to say if you deliver us up you are a pig yourself a pig defecting going behind our backs that's so so that you can survive personally in that case i mean if you're not going on with our hunger strike you'd better you'd do better and more honorably if you still know what honor is to say there is there it is i'm alive down with the raf up with the pig system and included included this little poem either a pig or a man either survival at any price or a fight to the death either problem or solution there's nothing in between i'm just picturing an uh raf symbol with the red star instead of the mp5 sabashiga just a

fist clasping a hand sandwich this is one of the few parts that i find genuinely quite sad on november 8th 1974 the first of the RAF prisoners would martyr themselves for the cause. Holder Mines got in touch with his lawyers and instructed them to come visit quickly. The following morning, on Saturday the 9th, Mines' lawyer, Siegfried Haag, arrived at the prison but was not permitted entry to visit Mines. Haag pressing the fatality of the issue and that a doctor that could be trusted by minds be brought in, the judge allowed Hag to visit but refused to supply a doctor. Two of the prison officers carried Holder Mines into a room in the administration area on a stretcher. His eyes were half closed. Siegfried Hag bent over him and put his ear to his lips. I'm finished. It's over. I'm dying, whispered Hold Your Minds.

Over the next two hours, Haag stayed bent over Minds' stretcher as the two had their last conversation. Finally, Hold Your Minds asked Haag for a cigarette. He lit it and put it between Hold Your Minds' lips. And with that, Haag left. Soon, Hold Your Minds will be pronounced dead. That only makes me hate the rest of this group. Like, they struggle-sessioned one another into taking part in these hunger strikes as a collective action,

while they're all eating. And this fucking person starves to death. Yeah. Thinking that they're doing the same thing. Mm-hmm. Once the news of Hold Your Mind's death had been broadcast, there was immediately protest marches in the streets of Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg the Superior Court of Justice and Berlin's senior judge, was assassinated on his doorstep by a man posing as a flower shop delivery man. It's worth noting that he had no connection to the RAF case and it would later be suggested

that he had been killed by a 2nd of June commando movement in a botched attempt to kidnap him, but nonetheless this was seen in the media as the as revenge for the death of holder mines i could see that i could see that going either way because i mean he's a even though he's not connected to the case he's still a judge 2 000 people attended the funeral of holder mine holder mines in hamburg there were chants calling for revenge and at it journalists took a now iconic photo which I actually anytime I look at it I find quite

moving of Rudi Deutsch the man who got shot in the face at the start of episode 2 holding his beret in his left hand and his right clenched in a fist in anger and calling out Holger the fight goes on. It's such a shitty situation like obviously

like i don't sympathize with the red army faction and i don't sympathize with the german state uh but you know we expect the german state to do what they did to holger mines right like he's in prison we expect him to be treated badly because that's what prisons do i mean that's what they still do they're awful we're not here to support the carceral state my criticisms of are the rest of the group that allowed him to starve to death you know you're supposed to act as a collective you're supposed to have one guiding ideology that you all talk each other into through these the smuggled fucking lawyer-based pony express and you allow someone you believe to be your comrade arms to fucking starve himself to death while you're hoarding ham sandwiches and bouillon cubes and shit it's one of the more fucked up things that we've talked about in the series i

think joe hold on to that thought andreas Batter obviously did not take his hunger strike too seriously. Of course he fucking didn't. Once after a lawyer had visited him in his cell, he vomited and brought up pieces of chicken. See, this all goes back to his time at the PLO camp. He just wanted a nice cooked chicken. Yeah. On another occasion, prison officers found 200 grams of chopped roast meat wrapped in a handkerchief carried in by another lawyer the lawyer

argued that this was you know his you know tea time treat at the same time Bather was proving himself zealous in the common cause he frequently used green ink in his communiques as denoting that he was the leader in his notes to the others

insufferable prick. He's like the only guy who gained weight during a hunger strike. Oh, Joe, just wait. He wrote to Ulrika Meinhof in his green pen. But of course you're one of those liberal cunts. You liberate yourself only in the fight and not by whirling around yourself in the fight like a spinning top. And of course

what you're producing does it no good either this guy sucks i hate him so like before i just thought he was uh like you know the the telltale petty criminal turned revolutionary um whatever but now i'm just learning he is just a misogynistic dickhead. Yeah. And then around this time, André Spader got an unusual visitor. Do you want to know who it is? Unusual visitor. I'm going to assume some agent of the state. It was Jean-Paul Sartre. Fucking what?

paul sartre fucking what so jean-paul sartre in the previous you know couple of weeks had made a statement of his sympathy to the treatment of the red army faction prisoners so he was there enough we don't have to like people to believe that they should be treated well so he decided to visit Andreas Bader, partially to, you know, understand what he thought as, you know, he called them a quote unquote force. So, you know, he wanted to understand their beliefs, their motivations, et cetera, et cetera. So when the two greatest intellectual minds of the 20th century met in a small prison cell. Do you know what happened? Did Sartre fucking hate him? He absolutely fucking hated Andreas Bader. He called him an asshole.

The guy kept chain smoking and offering me sandwiches. Yeah, so after the visit, Sartre, you know, spoke in kind of a press conference and spoke about the, you know, the conditions the prisoners are being held in and, you know, squalid conditions, you know, empty cells. There was only one problem. Jean-Paul Sartre was 69 and nearly half blind and was more than likely confused the meeting room that they met in that had no furniture with their actual cells. Ah, yeah, that'll do it.

I cannot believe they have only given you a table and two chairs to live on. Like at this stage, you know, the prison, and this is not to say that this alleviates being in prison. I'm sure it's awful.

They had radios, you know, they had books had radios you know they had books uh i think young carl rasp had a record player shit that's better than some fucking prisons today yeah so like you know the conditions were not not to be what sartre believed they were and slightly due to the fact that i can't remember if he had two heart attacks or two strokes and was like half blind at this stage and 69 years of age. Nice. Yeah you know Simone de Beauvoir did a real job on him.

I mean it is endlessly funny this guy like holds a press conference he's like look the man is just terrible but that doesn't mean he needs to be treated this way. Even history's assholes should be treated this way even even history's assholes should be treated with some modicum of respect this hunger strike would last 140 days

that's not a hunger strike that's just a crash diet they're doing keto in prison yeah they got really into prison crossfit and started doing paleo shit you don't understand you only need to eat nuts and seeds and the occasional roast smuggled in by your lawyer around the same time a new generation of revolutionaries would go underground many of the new groups that had sprung up in the previous two years since the group's imprisonment had no connection to badder meinhof and sling or any of the group's imprisonment had no connection to Badr, Meinhof, Ensling or any of the group. Ah, the telltale leaderless

resistance. Yeah, so many of them had not met the enigmatic leaders and were instead motivated into action by the injustice visited upon the imprisoned parties. This would include groups such as Red Aid and the Committee Against Torture and Isolation,

the further radicalizing Commune One, which we talked about in the first episode, and you know, Second of June movement and other left-wing groups that were slowly getting more, you know, radicalized and more violent. One such person was Volker Spietel, who, after the death of Hold Your Minds, wrote, The death of Hold Your Minds and the decision to take to the gun were one and the same.

Sober thought was impossible by now. It was simply the emotional drive of the last few months reacting. But at this point, the police had mostly wiped out the RAF, save for some explosives and money that had been left over from prior to the group's arrest. This was when the second generation of the RAF began to form in earnest

alongside the growth of other groups. On the 27th of February 1975, a group of six people organised under the banner of the 2nd of June movement kidnapped the Berlin mayoral candidate for the CDU, Peter Lawrence, three home in the Zehendorf district. Three minutes later, 1500 meters from his house, a four-ton truck blocked the road across from his Mercedes, and a Fiat rammed it. Lawrence's driver was knocked out with a broomstick, and the CDU mayoral candidate himself dragged into a car standing ready. You gotta love a terror attack carried out via a bludgeon a bludgeoning on a via broomstick. Whack whack whack whack.

So they demanded the release of 2nd of June prisoners as well as Horst Mahler which kind of weird Horst Mahler is much more connected to the Commune One movement than the RAF. He was a member of the RAF but had much more close ties to them

and it's also worth noting that the prisoners they demanded to be released none of them had been convicted of murder or attempted murder it was just you know it was a smart move because it was it was demands that could be met at least it's reasonable i mean i'll think well reasonable in comparison you know so the transfer was negotiated by former west german mayor heinrich alberts and upon meeting the kidnappers and negotiating with them to come to terms when he left the negotiating room he asked the police officers that were nearby about a microphone that was placed in the room. The meeting wasn't supposed to be

taped and in order to get around what this suspected bugging, the kidnappers had a transistor radio that they would occasionally turn on and off. Although, Alberts argued that they didn't turn it on and off enough to mess with the recording

they weren't meant to record this this will be very important later on just a guy with a giant boom mic in the corner do not mind me I am just going about my job just some key grip is just there standing in the corner don't mind me i'm not recording um and on the 2nd of march alberts and the freed prisoners landed in aden

and on the following night peter lawrence was released action by these groups since 1972. On the 25th of April 1975 the Stamheim trial was set to begin but also at the same time a group of RAF sympathizers were casually milling about the West German embassy in Stockholm armed with pistols and explosives. Around lunchtime they seized an employee who had keys to the upper stories of the building then fired their guns in the air. Most people fled the building

and the group gathered 11 hostages on the third floor in the consulate office. The Holder Mines Commando called the Stockholm office of the German press agency and laid out their demands. The Holder Mines Commando was holding members of the embassy staff in order to free prisoners in West Germany. If the police move in we shall blow the building up with 15 kilos of TNT. They had

already laid out explosives and blasting cables all over the room and warned the police if they did not retreat they would blow up the whole building. When they got no response, they ordered the West German military attache, Lieutenant Colonel Baron Andreas von Mirbach, to walk out onto the landing. With his hands tied, he walked out and was shot in the head, chest and leg. I kind of figured where that one was going when they picked the military attache. At 3.30pm, the terrorists again called the german press agency in stockholm specifying demands for the freeing of 26 prisoners in west germany including meinhof badder rasp and ensling towards 8 p.m the swedish minister of justice was told was told of the firm stand the government of the federal public was taking making a a solemn

press conference in his giant chef's hat and mustache after a moment of hesitation he said we accept this decision the minister then telephoned the embassy and told the terrorists that bonn had uncompromisingly rejected their demands at 20 20 past 10, that's 10.20pm for the Americans. That is 10 burgers followed by 20 burgers. No, it's 10 McDoubles by 20, you know, regular hamburgers. That's fair. Yeah, it's burger time, baby. Burger time!

One of the terrorists then asked for the economic attache uh dr hildegard he was then led to an open window looking out and handed the phone over the phone he was heard to say hello hello can you hear me then three shots were fired the 64 year old economic attache slowly fell forward and lay there half hanging out of the window, dead. 13 minutes before midnight, the group detonated their charges. The building immediately went up in flames and in the end, three people had died.

The two attaches, von Mirbach and Hildegardt, and one of the hostage-takers, Ulrich Wessel. The Stamheim prisoners, this would delay the opening of the trial for some time i can imagine you know also this is like one of the most violent attacks they've ever carried because like they they carried out bomb attacks and stuff like in the barracks but like this is different you know this is decisively both more destructive and more lethal than a lot of their attacks and like more directly violent

because they're not using bombs to kill people they're just shooting people like a bomb is to whom it may concern you know a a bullet has someone's name on it so the stamheim prisoners trial would officially begin just over one month later on the 21st of may 1975 over the court now bear in mind, a lot of the source material spends a lot of time talking about the trial. I've tried to condense it

as much as I can because a lot of it is repeating statements. It's, you know, Barter, Ensling, Meinhof, Rasp kind of fighting back against any kind of like judicial movement.

I can't imagine that at any point they were pleading innocence or anything like that. No, we did that shit. Our defense is you deserved it. So over the course of the next year, the trial would stop and start. Firstly, Badr was adamant about defending himself during the trial, citing that because his chosen lawyers were not allowed to be appointed and he refused to work with the court appointed representatives

he instead would hear the case himself as both defendant and legal aid. Of course. That's the least surprising thing he's done so far. Then Baller petitioned for the suspension of the trial until he had found defending counsel and was allowed unsupervised conversations

with his lawyers. He said that he made that a condition. For three years, he claimed the prosecution had checked every word of the case for the defense by searching cells and lawyers' offices and confiscating mail, and, Badr added, by planting bugs in the cells used for lawyer visits and saying, we've known about them since the summer of 73 i mean i also have no doubt that the german state was doing that like i i don't doubt that they were confiscating bail and all these other things to try to learn more about the upcoming trial i'm not giving the

german state the benefit of the doubt but i'm certainly not giving Andreas Badder the benefit of doubt by wanting to be his own lawyer. So over the course of the following months there would be interruption after interruption the defendants were removed from the court several times due to disruption and disorderly conduct they had undertaken. They argued because of the authoritarian and fascist nature of their

prosecution it was their revolutionary duty to resist the judicial process at with any mean i assume they would do that anyway i mean if you consider the state illegitimate i mean the same goes for like you know the ira was a good example they consider themselves prisoners of war not criminal prisoners so they held themselves to a different standard so like you're not going to submit yourself you know if you believe these things uh how could you feasibly submit yourself to a court you already find legitimate or illegitimate rather like that ideologically to them that makes sense to me they undertook more hunger strikes and on the 26th of september the ailing held of the group

would cause them to be classified as unfit to stand in the court. They came to a unanimous decision that the defendants were suffering from weakness, a poor state of physical fitness and disorders of speech and vision. They were between 41 and 23 kilos below their proper weights, had low blood pressure and poor powers of concentration and Ulrike Meinhof in particularly was suffering from an actual inability to concentrate. Bader was also found to have an unusually low pulse. Okay, so they

finally are doing a real hunger strike once the trial has started. Okay. By April 1976, the group's relationship became extremely frayed. the four years three of which had been spent in strict isolation had taken its toll

in particular there was growing conflict between Meinhof and the rest of the RAF prisoners prison officers had sometimes seen Andreas Bader tear up things Ulrike had written and hand them back to her saying shit again of course he would do that

so on so on Saturday the 8th of May 1976 the anniversary of the end of the second world war the printers were still on strike the following Sunday was Mother's Day all of these circumstances were brought up later in the interpretation of what would happen that night on the 7th floor of the Stamheim jail. At 7.34am on Sunday morning, two prison officers unlocked the cell 719. Ulrika Meinhof was hanging from the grating on the left-hand window of her cell. Her face turned to the door. Six minutes later, the prison doctor, Dr. Helmut Henck, was on the spot. He determined that the body was already completely cold and saw numerous liver mortis marks on the woman's arms. The corpse was not taken down from the window until 10.30am. Jesus Christ.

By then, a dozen police officers had been in the cell, collecting clues and photographing every inch of it. The officers conducting the inquiry reconstructed the way in which Ulrike Meinhof must have died. A dozen police officers had been in the cell, collecting clues and photographing every inch of it. The officers conducting the inquiry reconstructed the way in which Ulrike Meinhof must have died. She had torn blue and white prison towels into strips, knotted them together and twisted into a rope. Then she pushed her bed away from the window, laid the mattress on the floor in front of the window and put a stool on it. She tied the rope around her neck, climbed on the stool and put a stool on it she tied the rope around her neck climbed on the stool and jumped there was no farewell note from ulrika meinhof but she had written months before in the margin of a paper on strategy suicide is the last act of rebellion this rings kind of like um jim jones saying you know when he had the people's temple you know mass suicide and also murder

people there said you know we're not committing suicide we're committing an act of revolutionary suicide well this is the thing there is a lot of argument around her death i was sure there was going to be so one argument argues that the prison officers killed Ulrika Meinhof you know the marks on her arms the way in which she hung herself the fact that there was no suicide note

like a lot of people argued that if she was going to do it more than likely she would have written something of a note you know in the way that she always did i can kind of see that uh but at the same time i mean she had been in even years ago she was writing about the crushing you know the crushing depression of being in solitary confinement like this is not uncommon because solitary confinement and incarceration destroys your mental health

um not not to mention the hopelessness of their situation like they know they're not getting out of prison ever also there's some other things that are worth noting one the fact that the body was not taken down until 10 30 a.m that's bad two the fact that the person who conducted the state autopsy was a former SS officer. I mean, that is darkly ironic given the situation. Now, some people argue that she was killed by either Gudrun Ensling or Andreas Batter. All of these theories, you know, are, you can argue back and forth about them and they are really really just conspiracy theories you know yeah i mean like occam's razor demands the most

the most simple conclusion is most likely true like if the german state was going to kill these people they would have done it before they're in prison before they literally built a wing of a prison and employed hundreds of gsg9 counter-terror officers to protect them every single day why not just fucking execute them in the apartment and be like she had a gun yeah and like like there's loads of like things that were left out in terms of the testing there wasn't a histamine test administered to the body which would have helped determine whether she was alive or not when she hung herself and they also completely contaminated the crime scene by packing every fucking cop in the prison in there at once but i i tend not to buy these kind of conspiracies i especially when it

comes to people being you know assassinated in prison or whatever. If the state's going to assassinate you, they're not going to go through the hassle of putting you in fucking prison first. It's a lot more believable that they're just going to kill you in a shooting, seeing how they've already done that a couple of times to the same group. Yep. So on the 16th of May, Ulrike Meinhof was buried in Berlin. 16th of May, Ulrike Meinhof was buried in Berlin. Over 4,000 people followed her coffin to the Protestant cemetery

of the Holy Trinity in West Berlin. Many of them had painted their faces white, some were masked, they carried banners reading, We bear mourning and rage that we will not forget. Ulrike Meinhof, we will avenge you. And I have a feeling that they did. After

Ulrike Meinhof's death, additions were to be made to the Stamheim group. Prison officer Horst Bubeck, that we mentioned earlier, went up to the seventh floor several times on behalf of the judiciary to suggest which woman member of the RAF might be transferred.

In one case, Gudrun Essling said, if she comes here, there'll be a hunger strike. Of another woman, it was said, if she comes here, you'll have the three of us dead the day after tomorrow.

So, you know, not really fond of other members of the group at this stage. Quite fractious, these people are. Yeah. In the end, it was agreed to transfer Irmgard

Moeller to Stamheim. Soon after, Ingrid Schubert followed, and finally, on the 3rd of June 1976, Brigitte Monhaupt was allowed to join the RAF founding members in the high-security wing, and they had essentially sent

the RAF's successor into their training camp. Outstanding. Well done. Throughout the next six months, the group's lawyers would assist the group by secretly smuggling in contraband items such as cameras and tools into the prison under the guise of their document folders, like we had said earlier. They were also allowed access to materials on how to, you know, urban guerrilla tactics, how to make bombs, etc.

I don't know why they were allowed this stuff. Why did they even have it? Crack work done, gentlemen. On the 15th of March 1977, Otto Schilly, one of the group's lawyers, applied for the suspension of the trial due to the wiretapping of the prisoners' cells and their meeting rooms. The revelation threw the whole trial into jeopardy as the unlawful wiretapping was tantamount to entrapment of the RAF. A letter from the Baden-Württemberg Justice minister bender arrived giving arrived giving a statement on the matter i can assure you first of all that i fully understand the attitude of the judges in the defense on both occasions however monitoring uh monitoring measures had been employed as a method of crime prevention of a purely precautionary nature and and thus had no relevance to the Stamheim trial.

On the 29th of March, the RAF members would make their final appearance in the courtroom, where Badr announced their application once again to have Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt appear in court to give evidence, as well as the Baden-Württemberg ministers Bender and Scheiss, I don't know if it's Scheiss or Sche Scheiss to give evidence on the wiretapping. Upon its refusal, he left the courtroom, and the same followed for Jan Karl Rasp and Gudrun Enssling. But before Gudrun Enssling left the courtroom, she informed the judges that the group had begun another hunger strike. It would end up being their last. On the 7th of April, Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback was murdered in a drive-by

shooting by a commando union under the command of Brigid Meinhof, who had gotten out of prison at this stage, trained by everyone else else while this attack was being carried out her and peter yogan book were in baghdad staying with wadi haddad aka abu hani joe do you want to explain why wadi haddad is really important i really like how we keep running into characters from past episodes uh wadi haddad was uh i'm like the leader of the pfl op external operations so like we talked about them in the entebbe raid uh bonus episode he was the one that planned the original plane hijacking that ended up in entebbe and led to the israeli raid there and i'm 99 sure that the masad had something to do with his death as a greater

part of like their targeted assassination program after um the black september attack it's kind of like a toss-up people say he died from leukemia and other people say that he was assassinated by the masad via poisoned chocolates are they trying to kill augustus gloop or something but like it is really interesting how there's so much crossover between like everyone who is like involved in 1970s terrorism you know abu hassan wadi haddad you know momar gaddafi yeah it's something we didn't talk about because you know the stuff with gaddafi it's a bit more tenuous than like their actual connections to like wadi haddad and abu hassan um it's also worth noting this isn't in the script but they were treated like dignitaries on this trip incredible they were like put up in like

wadi hadad's like really lavish home and like they were there to organize okay well when we get these people out of prison where can we send them and like they would send you know requests to uh the people in prison said like would you you go here? Would you go here? Most of them just said no. On the 28th of April 1977, the RAF members, Botter, Ensling and Rasp were all found guilty in

absentia. The judge read out in the name of the people, the defendants Andreas Botter, Gudrun Ensling and Jan-Karl Rasp are found guilty of jointly committing the following crimes. Three murders in conjunction with six attempted murders. One further murder in conjunction with one attempted murder. In addition, the court found three defendants guilty of 27 other attempted murders in conjunction with the bomb attacks. Batter and Rasp were each found guilty of two more attempted murders

and Gudrun Ensling of one more attempted murder. The defendants are found guilty of having formed a criminal association. Each of the three defendants is sentenced to life imprisonment. After this verdict, permanent measures for the imprisonment of the group were set in action and the Stamholm prison was to be modified to suit the requirements of hosting the formerly most wanted people in Germany permanently. Ah, fuck me. So, in reaction to this, on the 5th of September 1977,

a chauffeur was driving a wealthy German businessman named Hans Martin Schleyer home from work. Schleyer was the president of the Employers Association, a board member of Daimler-Benz. He was also a former high-ranking member of the SS. Oh, doesn't get a much more ripe target than that. He was aware of the danger posed to people like himself by both ideological fanatics and those looking to, you know, score some easy money. Schleyer, as was his custom, had a car hired with bodyguards

to follow the vehicle he rode in, he traveled in. Suddenly, a baby carriage was in the middle of the road. Schleyer's driver slammed on the brakes, the car in the back with the bodyguards smashed into the back of his car, and a van drove up.

Men from the van ran to the second car and immediately opened fire, murdering the bodyguards in a burst of bullets. They then shot Schleyer's chauffeur and pulled the businessman out of the car and threw him in the back of a van and sped off. It's worth noting that his kidnappers, while firing machine guns,

ran in front of each other's fire. Truly a crack team of commandos. Like, that is one way to die very easily. Let's just say, rookie mistake. So, a letter soon appeared saying that Hans Schleyer would be killed unless the RAF prisoners

were freed and given 100,000 Deutschmarks each and flown to the country of their choosing. Libya. It was going to be Libya. Accompanying this demand

was a handwritten note from Schleyer saying I have been told that if investigations continue my life is in danger the same would apply if the demands were not met and the ultimatums observed. However the decision is not mine. Horst

Herold, Commissioner of the BKA it's you know the internal West German agency that coordinates you know all the law enforcement around the various states, asked that further proof be given that Schleyer was in fact still alive. The kidnappers complied

by making a tape of the businessman answering several personal questions. Dennis Payot became the intermediary between the kidnappers and the West German governments. He travelled to Stamheim to hand out questionnaires to the prisoners to find out if they wanted to leave prison under these

circumstances and asked what countries they wished to journey to. The prisoners listed countries like South Yemen, Vietnam, Algeria and Libya. He'll do it. On September 25th, the BKA informed the kidnappers that both libya and south yemen had refused to accept the raf imagine momar gaddafi being like no we're good we're good

over here word traveled to gaddafi that he was about to receive a man who loved talking more than he did however the, the BKA representatives said that Vietnam had not answered yet. So Vietnam, still on the option list. They were a little busy at the time.

Two days later, Alfred Klaus of the BKA met with Jan-Karl Rasp at his request. Rasp handed him a typewritten note listing other countries that he and his comrades

would be willing to travel to. Do you want to have a couple of guests what uh this includes take a swing here so bear in mind it's 1977 okay uh soviet union of course no china angola mozambique guinea-bissau and ethiopia bold choices for the mid-70s. Early in October, the people holding Schleyer sent another photo of him, together with a letter... It's also weird that

absolutely none of them ever said East Germany. Yeah. Early in October, they sent, you know, a more recent photo of Schleyer to prove that he was still alive. Alfred Klaus,

you know, BKA representative, later visited Badr and Ensling, but he found them, they were a little bit off, you know, they were extremely weak, tired, and they seemed much more morose than they usually were. And on the 13th of October, a Lufthansa plane bound for Frankfurt was hijacked by Palestinians. The four

hijackers apparently demanded the release of the RAF leaders, counting passengers and crew members. They had a total of 91 hostages. The terrorists forced the plane to land in South Yemen, where they murdered the pilot, Juergen Schumann, and shoved his corpse

into a cloakroom. Sure, nobody will find it there. Yeah. From there, they ordered the co-pilot to fly to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, and he complied with their demands. While all this was going on, those holding Schleyer issued another ultimatum.

Two Palestinian prisoners must be released and 15 million in American dollars are to be paid for Schleyer's ransom. They wanted the ransom delivered by the businessman's son. Unbeknownst to the four Palestinian hijackers of the plane on its way to Somalia, they were tailed by a plane carrying a German anti-terrorist unit. When the terrorists landed in Mogadishu, the second plane was right behind them, and the anti-terrorist units stormed the first plane. Three of the hijackers were killed, and the fourth arrested. No passengers or crew were physically injured, except for a female flight attendant who had suffered a leg wound. Rasp had been following this drama on a small radio that had been smuggled into him. When the plane was retaken by West German authorities, Rasp communicated the dispiriting news to his comrades via a secret

phone system that he had developed. You know, essentially cups and wire. I was gonna say they had a large system of string and cup movement. Um, this is apparently where they would decide how they were going to get out of prison during the night of october 18th as it would become known black night or death night the raf

leaders uh father rasp and ensling would meet their end Batter took a smuggled pistol out of its hiding place. He shot at the wall, then at a pillow. Some people speculate this was to, you know, simulate a fight. He then put the gun behind his neck and pulled the trigger with his thumb.

How fucking terrible are these prison guards? They didn't hear three gunshots? I don't know, maybe, maybe you're busy, you know, if you're on your smoke break, you know, having a dernappy time. Yeah. I don't know, maybe you're busy. You know, if you're on your smoke break. You're sleeping, you know. Having a dernappy time.

Yeah. And he blew a hole from the back of his neck to the top of his forehead. Jan Karl Rasp put a smuggled gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Gudrun Ensling chose a method similar to Ulrike Meinhof and took a piece of speaker wire and put it through the narrow mesh covering her window and made a noose, put her head through it,

stood on a chair, and hung herself. Irmgard Muller, who was imprisoned with them in the Badr wing, stabbed herself four times in the chest with a stolen knife. That is dedication. She came within millimeters of her heart. In the morning the guards found Batter and Ensling dead in their cells. Rasp was still alive, but

died soon after being rushed to hospital. This is why, don't shoot yourself in the temple. I mean, the person that stabbed, the person who stabbed themselves multiple times they're more dedicated than anybody else. You stab yourself once, you're like, ah, fuck, that shit hurts, I'm going to quit.

Just keep going back for more. Mueller survived, but when she recovered, she vehemently denied stabbing herself and instead claimed that her deceased comrades had been attacked, giving rise to the persistent rumors that this was a government mass murder. I assume that's what Badr was going for when he was firing off other rounds. The kidnappers of Hans Schleyer then decided upon hearing the news of the death of their leaders to respond in kind. Schleyer was driven to a wooded area and ordered to kneel.

Three bullets were shot into the back of his head at point blank range. He fell forward and the pine needles would still be clinging to his mouth when the corpse was found. A leftist French newspaper received a letter telling them of Schleyer's demise. It read, after 43 days we have ended Hans Martin Schleyer's miserable and corrupt existence. The Red Army faction pretty much ended at this time. Those who joined after its leader were, for the most part, imprisoned or dead, and those who weren't continued to commit acts under the name of the Communist Revolution. Hans Herbert Kerry was the economics minister of West Germany's state of Hesse. Deeply concerned about, you know,

the wave of violence that happened after this, he offered substantial awards for information or the arrest of any remaining members of the RAF. They assassinated him on May the 11th, 1981. All right. So there's still, I mean, there's got to be a very small group of people still working however by 1981 the RAF had dwindled

considerably and its remaining members were growing worn out and disillusioned very few remained underground and the West German government offered leniency to those who surrendered and took advantage and those who took advantage of this offer spent

relatively small amounts of time behind bars. And in 1998, a communique was sent to Reuters declaring that the Red Army faction had officially disbanded. The end. Huh. I think, like, my favorite footnote to the Red Army faction is one of its members ended up becoming a hardcore Nazi. Yeah, let's talk about horse mauler like he's been in prison for hate speech a couple of times i think so horse mauler a very early member of the red army faction eventually pivoted to like like nazi ideology and just became like the stereotype that people have online of like national bolshevists

like nazi because if i remember correctly he explained it as like my ideology hasn't changed the enemy is still the same and by enemy he's like speaking of the quote-unquote judeo uh bolshevik corruption and he's like a massive Holocaust denier which of course is illegal in Germany and has landed him in prison multiple occasions. Yeah, like in like 2000 he joined the NDP which is the National Democratic Party of Germany which is like the far right, as far

right up until the founding of like the AFD. Yeah, which I'm sure he's a huge fan of if he's still alive. Yeah, and like you know he made some like interesting comments about you know 9-11 oh I'm sure I can guess those interesting comments where

he was you know charged for holocaust denial in 2004 you know he's been like in and out of like legal trouble for the entirety of his life. I guess when you go from like street gorilla and like kind of be given a second chance at life, you're not going to be normal again. Yeah.

And the most recent news on Horst Mahler, you know what he tried to do in 2017? Oh, I was going to say recent news is probably something with covid denial but since it's 2017 what was it he tried to seek political asylum where 2017 russia hungary perfect so that is the end of the red army faction joe have you got a question from the legion i do so if you'd like to ask us a question from the legion you can donate to the show ask us to it on discord patreon um you can load it into a conspicuous mail parcel and mail it to tom uh don't do that last one that's probably illegal um please don't today's question is if you could redesign the seven circles of hell what would be the mildest punishment you

could think of chewing with your mouth open like you're just surrounded by people like chewing cud like they're cows forever yeah either that or wearing you're forced to wear like mildly uncomfortable shoes for eternity like they're not half size too small not even a half size they're just like they're your size but either they're slightly too narrow so it's like a little bit uncomfortable i would hate that so much or you have to wear a t-shirt that's a little bit itchy where the tag is like scratching the back of your neck. A little bit too long. I am going to say my most mild version of the seven circle of hell would be you walk in and everyone around you is carrying out a cell phone conversation on speakerphone.

That's a good one. Or you're constantly trying to listen to music but it's always buffering yeah or you have to queue for something for eternity and every like the person in front of you and behind you are just like slightly too close for comfort not quite touching you but you can smell them yeah that's just called going to the airport i mean yesterday when i was on the overground there was a literal bag of feces on the ground. Oh, that was mine. I was wondering where I left that.

God damn, I left my shit bag. But Joe, thank you so much for letting me host a series once again. I really enjoyed it. I spend so much time reading about Andreas Batter and him being really weird. And I feel like i am free now you're free of badder thought no it was it was great man um i hope everybody enjoyed listening to it as much as i enjoyed being subjected to andreas badder um and yeah man thanks a lot uh plug your show um yeah listen to beneath the skin the show about the history of everything told through the history

of tattooing you don't necessarily have to have tattoos to listen to it it's a fun history show where we talk about how tattooing interweaves with a lot of history stuff like Russian prison tattooing, colonialism in the Pacific

we're doing a series about people who've influenced tattooing who aren't tattooists so we've done one about the history of pinups we're doing one about the inventors of uh you know modern animation like max fleischer and tex avery soon so yeah if that sounds like your job check it out thanks again and if you like what we do here consider supporting us via patreon you can get episodes like this early you can get access to our discord you get access to

five plus years of bonus content including the intabiorate episode which we've talked about and all of our various Gaddafi related nonsense that we've talked about you get stickers you get pre-orders on merchandise before anybody else and you know of course you help support the show and merchandise before anybody else and you know

of course you help support the show and leave us a review and wherever it is you listen to podcasts it helps us immensely and until next time uh I don't know wash your goddamn self take a shower

don't be so annoying that John Paul Sartre hates you that is a good one don't be so annoying that john paul sartre hates you that is a good one don't be so annoying in your in your political ideology that everybody who's ever met you hates you