The Team House - Inside GSG 9 (Germany's Tier 1 Counter Terrorist Unit) | Martin Herzog | Ep. 383

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

This episode dives into the rise of modern counterterrorism in Germany, tracing how the failures of Munich ’72 led to the creation of GSG-9. Our guest, Martin Herzog, breaks down the Lufthansa hijacking, the Mogadishu raid, and the evolution of state response to terrorism. A sharp, detailed look at one of the most defining counterterror operations in European history.Buy Martin's book about GSG 9 here: https://a.co/d/gicXE0mToday's Sponsors:Wild Alaskan Company⬇️https://wildalaskan.com/HOUSE Get $35 off your first order!GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 – Start01:52 – Munich ’72 Failure06:43 – Birth of GSG-914:52 – Ulrich Wegener & Early Leadership24:47 – Building a Unit From Scratch39:04 – Rise of RAF Terrorism56:22 – The German Autumn Begins1:01:59 – Lufthansa Hijacking Begins1:14:14 – Murder of Captain Schumann1:28:01 – Mogadishu Assault Planning1:32:57 – The 8-Minute Raid1:43:22 – Aftermath & GSG-9 LegacyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

The Team House with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, folks, welcome to episode 383 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with today's guest, Martin Herzog. He is the author of GSG9 from Munich to Mangadishu, the birth of Germans counterterrorism force. Martin is a author, journalist, academic. I read this book just this week. you guys will go and pick it up. I thought initially, as I was telling Martin before we started the show, I thought I had read all about this subject already. But when I picked up this book and

started reading through it, I realized there's a lot I didn't know. And so we're going to talk about the Munich Massacre, the origin of GSG9, how that came about. And about, I guess it really is the very first successful aircraft takedown? And is it the first one that was ever done successfully? in Mangadishu? Hi, Jack. Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. And yes, I think it is actually the first takedown. And to this day, I think arguably the most complex that ever happened. So, yeah, it was a first for everybody involved, I guess.

And it showed the Western world, I think, that it's possible to fight back against terrorism, that they weren't helpless, that there was a way. We'll get into the implications of all of it during this show. I'm excited to talk about this. Like I said, there's a lot going on, actually, and there's a lot of ancillary things around that hijacking that are connected to it that we'll get into. But, Martin, if you could first tell us a little bit about your background. What kind of like, you know, I know your background is in journalism.

How did that kind of take you into this subject of, you know, the German military and police force in this case? Well, I studied philosophy and history and politics here at the University of Cologne, where I'm based. And I naturally am very much interested in the history. And I came across GSD-9. I think it was in 2007. That was the year when the Mogadishu operation was 35 years. years. They kind of celebrated this anniversary, and of course there was a lot of media coverage about that. And so I was working for WDR. That's the public broadcaster here, and they asked me to do a TV piece,

and I did a radio piece about that. And I came in touch with a couple of the veterans who had been founding members of the GSG9 in 1972, just after the Olympic massacre, but who have also participated in the Mogadishu operation. So that was when I first got interested in this whole matter. And then over the years, I went deeper and deeper into that matter and did a couple of segments for TV, radio documentations. And in 2018, I think it was, or 2019, I did a deep dive interview with Dieter Fox,

who is one of those who, founded the G-SG-9 and who was also very, very tightly participating in the Mogadishu operation. And so he told me the whole story, which I realized I only had covered part of it. And that was mainly the days in between the hijacking of this Luftanzah plane, LH-181, the Lansuit, that's the name of the aircraft. and it was hijacked on October 13th, 1977, and it was liberated five days later. And the story, what happens in between,

that was something that fascinated me, and Dieter Fox was the one guy who accompanied the commander of G9, Ulrich Wegener, all these five days when it was, the abduction of an aircraft developed into an odyssey throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and finally ended up in Mogadishu in Africa. So that was very fascinating.

And I thought, well, this is a story that has not been told in any great detail in Germany, surprisingly, because I looked it up and thought there must be literature about that. But there wasn't. And so I thought, well, this is a story that is much more than for a 20-minute radio show. and so I started researching the book. I asked Dieter Fox if he was happy to support me. And so through him and then through G's G9 headquarters here close by, they are based not far from Cologne,

I was able to really dive very deeply into the history, in the founding history and the story of the Mogadishu operation and finally write a book about it. that which was then published in 2022 and well now you have just said that you read this week the the English version of this these first five years of Gsg 9 from 1972 to 1977. And this book is available now through casemate people can go and find it. Yes that's that's the case you can buy it online I think in all the big online departments, you can find it, and also in good bookstores everywhere in the U.S. and in the UK as well.

It's a little bit hard to get your fingers on it when you're in Germany, but people living here probably will refer to the, or will rather go for the German version of the book, I imagine. So let's go back in time to 1972. We have to imagine for our younger audience, this is before the war on terror, before 9-11. This is a time in the 70s where terrorism is sort of a newish thing, international terrorism, and taking of hostages and hijackings is something that's becoming a weekly or monthly occurrence. and then one of the big catalyzing events of terrorism that happened at that time

was what later became known as the Munich Massacre. Most of our viewers are probably familiar with that event through the Steven Spielberg film. But I'd like to hear your description of that event. What happened and what went wrong and what were some of the lessons learned out of it? So the Olympic Games in Munich were in 1972. were the first after the 1936 Olympic Games in Nazi Germany. And they were very monumental and very, well, you could say, a rather grim Olympic Games. So that was all for the purpose of the propaganda of the Nazi regime.

And this time around, Germany wanted to do it differently. They wanted to create happy games. They wanted to create jolly games. that was the expression, Heiter Spiele, Jolly Games. So they wanted to present, you know, it was shortly after the invention of the color TV, so it was very colorful. They wanted to create a very, very nice environment, welcoming the international community. They wanted to present Germany as a modern, open, liberal state to the world stage.

So they planned for everything, and they had a very, very nice Olympic Stadium. I can strongly recommend whenever you're in Munich visit it. The Olympic Stadium is still magnificent. It's very, very beautiful. And so everything was planned for, but not for the security measures. Barely any existed. There was maybe, or not maybe, there was a fence, a two-meter fence around the Olympic village, and that was about it.

There were no further measures. There were no contingency plans for, any criminal or let alone terrorist activities. There were no plans for a crisis staff. Should something happened, nothing whatsoever. But nobody thought, I mean, you mentioned it. It was a time of rising terrorist activities, skyjacking of airplanes,

and the German homemade terrorism of the Red Army faction, we probably talk about that a little bit later on. It was rampant, but nobody expected for anything to happen on such an event, because it was a happy sports event. What should happen there? So nobody cared for it. And the first two weeks went fine.

The weather was great. The games were on, and everybody was happy. It was the first live event that was really. televised around the globe 24-7. And then on September 5th, in the nights of September 5th, Palestinian commando entered the Olympic Village, went to the location of the Israeli delegation, and they took the Israeli delegation hostage,

killed two of them right away, And they demanded, they took them hostage and demanded the liberation of some 230. I think it was Palestinian fighters from Israeli prisons, a couple from Turkish prisons and German RAF terrorists from German prisons. So that were their demands. And over the day, I mean, as I said, nobody really. thought that something like that could happen so haphazardly they established a crisis staff with police forces and ministers and the mayor of Munich and the mayor of the Olympic

village and they tried to gather police forces and tried to do well something because nothing was planned it was all very they were you you know, in over their heads. Nothing really worked out. And they tried in the afternoon. They tried an assault. But that was, you know, as I said, it was televised live all over the world. So on every TV set, you could see what was happening there.

And nobody bothered to shush away the journalists and the TV cameras. So everything was really broadcast live. worldwide. So when they tried to sneak up on this, on the delegations, on the delegation's house, the Israeli delegation's house, they could inside the house there were TV sets in every delegation there were TV sets. So they could watch the sneaking up of the policeman who tried to, yeah, go there. They were dressed in, in, World War II helmets and had old guns that were also probably from the Second World War and they didn't know how to approach.

They didn't know anything and while the orders are not really known what they actually said, but it was something along the line, well, get in there and then see what you can do. That was basically their strategy that was all their orders that were given to them. So within minutes, this all fell apart and the terrorists said, well, don't even think about it. And so this didn't take long for them to detect and to, well, end it, basically. And so the problem was that the Israeli government said, well, to the German government, of course, there were consultations between the German and the Israeli government and the Israeli government said, well, do whatever you want, but we will not agree to any prisoner exchange.

And so, yeah, the German government was left to their own devices. Additionally, there was the problem that the German government was not in power, really, of the situation because in Germany, in Germany, police. not unlike in the states, is authority of the states, of the lander, the provinces. So it was the Bavarian province that was responsible for the police there and all the action there and the Munich City Police. So the federal government couldn't do very much, really. And so there was the minister of the interior, Hans Dietrich Genscher, who was there and who was there to advise,

but he didn't have any authority of what should happen or not. So this dragged on. There are a lot of more details, very interesting details, but it dragged on for the whole day. And in the evening finally, it was agreed to fly the terrorists with their hostages to Cairo. That's what they told the terrorists. So the idea was to fly them with helicopters,

to the nearby military airport of Furstenfeld-Bruck and from there put them into an aircraft and fly them to Cairo. That's what they told them. But that was not what the plan was. There were a couple of policemen, no special forces. There were no special forces. There were just regular police cops. And they were given a couple of, I think, two submachine guns.

otherwise just like pistols. And they were told, okay, go into this aircraft that is parked there, that is ready for the terrorists, dress up as Luft Hansa employees, stewards. And when they come in, then you know, you just get control of the situation and seize them or kill them. That was the plan. these guys

when they were told that and there were not even all uniforms for them to dress them accordingly and they would know that 12 people Luftanzah people in one tiny plane would raise suspicion by the terrorists

right away they didn't have the right of the weaponry they were not trained for such a situation so they quickly talked amongst each other and decided no we will not go on such a suicide mission and left the aircraft in Filsenfeldbrook just at the time when the helicopters with the terrorists were arriving. So the helicopters landed. The terrorists got out of the helicopter, two of them, the leader and another one, and they went into the aircraft and saw that it was

empty and they suspected a trap. Of course they did. And then they came out and signaled as much to the other terrorists and that was the moment when the fire when the the the the fire fight began because there were like five sharpshooters that's a very well that's a very big word for these guys because that was just guys with some rifles and they were placed around the area where the helicopter was was sitting and nobody knew who gave these order because there were no radio contact they didn't have any any radio on them so at some point they just started shooting and this shooting lasted for almost two hours and the final result was that that all the that that all terrorists safe three it was all in all there were eight so five

terrorists were killed and everybody of the Israeli delegation are two both helicopters that landed there were blown up with everybody inside and so in total it was one German police officer was killed as well and so all in all

finally there were 16 dead bodies and a police that was completely in over their heads who completely it was a complete disaster complete failure

and this whole scenery was witnessed by Hans Dietrich Genscher, the minister of the interior. He sat there and couldn't do anything. And next to him was his liaison officer to the Bundesgrenzschutz, the border guards that was Ulrich Wegener at the time. He also witnessed the whole thing. And when it finally was clear that this was an absolute and utter disaster, they both came to the conclusion that in order to prevent something from happening again,

something like that from happening again, there need to be some unit that is able to deal with such threats and such terrorist attacks. That's when basically that when the idea came up to create GSG9 and within three weeks a GSG9 was founded and came into existence. Hey, what's up guys? I want to thank our newest sponsor Wild Alaskin company. It's the best way to get wild caught, perfectly portioned nutrient-dense seafood delivered directly to your door.

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We really love you. Thank you. Wild Alaskin.com slash house $35 off your first order. Thanks, guys. And, you know, GSG9 being, you know, an acronym, you can tell us exactly what it means, but it's one of the Border Patrol unit, you know, sections or, or, um, I don't want to say platoons, but one of their elements, was this counterterrorism unit placed within the border guards

because they were the force that had federal authority around federated Germany as opposed to, you mentioned earlier, the different provinces of Germany, each had their own thing going on. Yes, it was a very complicated situation. And without something like the Olympic massacre, the massacre at the Olympic Games,

in Munich, probably GSTG9 would never have come into existence because, as you said, Bundesgrenschutz, the border guard, is federal and it was at the time, it was still very paramilitarily organized because they were basically a force to protect the border to eastern Germany and the core, the eastern block. and but the Minister for the Interior Genscher wanted to make it a real police force and so this was part of it so it came in very handy that they had a paramilitary background on the one hand but that they were a police force and they were federal in normal times probably he would have had a hard time arguing for such a thing with his colleagues on the

on the provinces because they were very, very suspicious and they were very, very keen on keeping their authority in terms of police and security. That was a result of the Second World War, the decentralization of Germany, give the provinces a lot of power in terms of culture, of education, but also, most importantly, in terms of security and police forces. So they wanted to federalize that in order to have not such a centralized force. And so they were also the German ministers of the interior of the province provinces. They were really keen on keeping this authority and not handing over too much of that power

to the federal state. But, yeah, that was the reason why the, why the, Bundesgrenschuts, the BGS, the border patrol, was chosen to house such a unit. They had helicopters. They had what they thought was all the equipment that they would ever need. Turned out they didn't. They needed different stuff, completely different equipment, different weaponry. But that at the time they thought was ideal to bring a special unit.

and to to create a special unit like the GSG-9 and for the name just quickly there were, up to this time, there were seven Grenzschutzgruppen

GSG, Grensschutz group, one to seven and there was a, so that means border patrol group and there was a helicopter unit that was the eighth and then

came G SG-9 as a very small unit but they had regimental status which gave them access directly to the Minister of the Interior so they didn't have to they were not a subgroup within one of the existing groups and so Wigner who was the liaison officer for the for the Border Patrol to Minister Gensha he had a direct line and and kept it that way by having GSG-9 being placed in this kind of on the same level as the much bigger other groups within the Border Patrol. And part of that, or a big part of it, was because of that personal relationship between those two. Yes. He was working for Genscher for the last three years. I think 1969 was when they met. and he was

Wigner was very much in high regard with Genscher and so they worked together for three years he liked his very direct hands-on approach no-nonsense approach talking clearly not trying to

to soften things but just like a very direct approach he liked that And so it was the natural choice, it seems, for him. And there was no other competition in terms of leadership or anything like that. So something that would take place certainly today. But it was just, he was just named as the one who would create G's G9. And that was basically it.

So tell us a little bit more about Wagner. And you told us why he was selected. But who was this guy as a person? What was his background? His background was military. He was born in the late 1920s in Yutaburg, that's a little town southeast of Berlin, and that was a garrison city. And his father was a soldier.

He served with the Reiswere. That was the predecessor of the Wehrmacht, of the Third Reich. So he very early came into contact in touch with the military. And he was also, his father was very conservative. They were very Prussian in their whole approach. He liked that very much. He liked punctuality and values and keeping to your word. all these values that are connected with Prussian and German,

well, how do you say that? He was very, very Prussian in that sense. Very conservative, but not very keen on the national socialists that were just coming on in the 1930s. His father didn't like the whole ideology. He was very patriotic, very nationalist, but he didn't like the ideology of anti-Semitism of the NSDAP, the National Socialist Movement, and he liked the whole the Hitler cult and all that surrounds it. He clearly disliked that.

Ulrich, being a young kid at the time, he saw himself in a position that he needed to joined the Hitler Youth, the Hitler Youth. And so because everybody was going there, so he thought I have to go as well. And in his memoirs, he writes that

he had to apply the Hitler salute. That was a necessity, but he didn't like it too much. He was certainly no resistance fighter against the Nazi regime, but he was kind of swimming along with it.

When the war was almost over, he was just at the age that he could be drafted and was sent to defend the Eastern Front, but that was a very short episode and then the war was over. And, yeah, he was left in the eastern part of Germany that was controlled by the Soviet Union. And he hadn't been really a resistance fighter against the Nazis, although he didn't like them. but he surely was anti-communist. So he founded a kind of a little resistance movement himself, basically printing letters and leaflets and spreading them. And it didn't take long until the Volkspolice, the people's police of Eastern Germany, caught him and put him on trial,

very short trial, and 18 months later he was allowed to leave prison. so he was in a situation where he thought well what do i do now and he went to western germany returned for a short period but then finally went to to the western part of germany where he ended up after his incarceration he was very very thin and and yeah he had barely he was bones and and skin basically. And he ended up in a camp, in a refugee camp in southern Germany and was a little bit, yeah, you know, he got better after a couple of weeks. And then there were people looking for personnel for the local riot police.

And that's when he joined the police. And a couple of years later, he decided whether to go to the newly established Bundeswehr, so the National Army or the Bundesgrenzschutz, the border guard. He applied for both and he just ended up with the border guards because the acceptance letter arrived first from the border guard.

So that's how he got into the force. And then he worked his way up through the ranks basically in the coming years and decades and he obviously spoke very good English. So he was sent to Bavaria, to the border in the east,

and so every time American army officers came to inspection, he was sent there to give them at the tour. And so he was kind of the interpreter of this unit that he was serving with. Yeah, and so he worked up his way through the ranks, and then there was a big maneuver in 1968 called Falex 68, and he was sent to Bonn to the Ministry of the Interior as a liaison officer to prepare for this for this big maneuver, military maneuver that the Border Patrol was part of and was taking part in. And that's when he met Genscher and that was then when he became his liaison.

officer over the limited time, beyond the limited time that was connected with this maneuver. And that's how they met and how they got to know each other. So I would love to ask you how Ulrich Wagner went about establishing GSG-9, having to build this unit from scratch essentially. And for context for American viewers, 1972, this is five years. before the United States even began creating Delta Force. The unit was started in 77, I think fully activated in 1980. So we as Americans did not know how to do this stuff either in 1972.

There's no textbook, really, that he can go to and read. How did he start to put this capability together? Yeah, that was the first big question. As I said, the unit was established or at least the least the least the least, legal work for the unit was established within a couple of weeks after the Olympic massacre in Munich. So the letter of the Ministry of the Interior went out on the 26th of September, which was three weeks up to the day, three weeks after the massacre in Munich. So he had a couple of ideas, but as you said, there is no textbook for it.

there were in the US, there were the first swap teams kind of being created, but they didn't really seem to know what they were doing with it. The British had some experience with the SAS, that had a special air service, and there were basically only the Israelis who really had operational experience in this field. And so what Vigna did, and that was, is really. really something out of the ordinary is he went to Genscher and asked him to go to Israel and asked the Israelis how they do that stuff. And you can imagine just a couple of weeks after the whole Israel delegation, Olympic delegation, has been murdered on German ground

and with the complete and utter failure of German security forces, that they probably wouldn't be too pleased about hearing now as a German he wants to learn about all that. So Genscher told him that he was crazy, that they would certainly not have him. But they did. And they said, yes, you can come over. We have a course, a training course, and you can participate. and that was really something out of the ordinary because there, as a side note,

just a couple of weeks just on the day before Vigna went to Israel, there was another abduction of a German aircraft to Yugoslavia and the demand of the terrorists was to liberate those three surviving terrorists from Munich. And the German government, well, they didn't hesitate one moment. They just released the prisoners. So you can imagine that the Israeli government was not too amused about that. They really, really were disappointed and the Israeli German, West German, one must say there was an East German state as well, but the West German-Israeli relationships at that point were on an absolute low. So, and in this situation, Wurlich Wiggen,

Gina goes to Israel and takes part in this two-week course. And he is not received very well in the beginning. But within one week, they realized that Vigna is very serious about what he wants to learn. He knows exactly what he wants to learn. He asks questions. He doesn't say much. He just asks questions. and only stops asking question when he's really, really satisfied with the answers.

And they respect that. And over the time, there are even friendships that are being developed out of that. And even lifelong friendships came out of it. One that jumped out at me, Martin, was one of his friends in Israel was Yanni Netanyahu, which seems very natural, like knowing what I've read about the two. of them. They sound like very similar take charge leaders, you know. Right. Exactly. Yeah. There are a couple of names that stand out. One of the unit leaders, one who was ordered to stand by. That was another little side story of the Olympic story in 1972. There was a unit

on standby in Tel Aviv in order they were ready to go in there. And, solve the situation, but they were not allowed because the German government didn't allow foreign forces on German ground. So they never did that. And the leader of that unit was Ehud Barak, who later then became Prime Minister of Israel, of course. And so he was also on that course. And also from there, there was a friendship with Wigner that developed from this point on. And since then there has been a very close relationship between the Israelis and GSG9 in Germany. And up to this day, it's very, very close. Because they said, you know, of course that was a disaster what happened there in 1972 in Munich.

But, you know, we have to make sure that we're fighting on eye level with the Germans, that something like that might not happen again. And so they were open. And as they said, I've spoken to Riven Kasby, who was also, I'm not sure if he was in that first cause, but he was a lifelong friend and who established a special force, anti-terror force for himself. And he told me, we went much, much further with the Germans

than with any other nationality, because we knew that they could do the job, that if they set their mind to it, they would be very, very good in what they're doing and they understood how you go about special operations and counterterrorism measures. And so that's how this relationship was established. And as I said, it still stands today.

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Love you and love ghostbed. Thanks, guys. There were some unique things that Wagner took away. Like one of the things you talk about in the book is how he task organized his unit into smaller strike groups. Where did that kind of idea come from? Was that German or Israeli? Neither. He came back from this two-week trip.

with a bag full of ideas. And then, of course, then the next question is, okay, how do we implement that into German necessities and German structures? How do we incorporate that? And so he started wondering, okay, how do I organize this whole thing? And he looked through the literature

and couldn't really find something. And then he basically crossed the aisle to the opponent opposing side and he read a book by marigella is his name he that was the handbook for the guerrilla war that was very very popular in left leftish well left extremely left violent circles and so there were there were Yeah, it was a small book, basically, just like 40, 50 pages long. It was not an official print. It was only, you know, black copies that were circulating.

And so he suggests that there needs to be fire squads in order to be flexible and to do the things that a guerrilla, a guerrilla group has to do, you need to organize yourself in fire groups and that they consist of no more than five or six people. And they work more or less autonomously. Initiative is the key word here. So there's nothing without initiative. Of course, they are connected to each other and they have to follow orders. But in the situation, they have to decide for them. what is best and they have to act autonomously and also get into the initiative and don't just wait for orders from above. And so Wigner more or less took this idea one-on-one and just

implemented that. And he created not fire groups, as Marigella told it, but he named them SETs, Special Ensatsats troops, specials. special operation team. And that was the nucleus of GSG-9. So there were five man-strong SETs, and they would be part of one of the three G-S-G-9 units, operational units. And the idea was that everybody has to be able to rely on everybody else within this group. Trust is a key word for that. and also the possibility and capability that each member of the group can do the job of each other member of the group.

So that, you know, you can rely on each other and if one member is, well, is taking out or is not part of the group anymore, the group is still able to act and to work together. So that was the basic idea. And Wigner got that from a guerrilla handbook. And then he also faced all kinds of problems with sourcing equipment, right? Like the pistols were inadequate, the holsters for the pistols were inadequate. The repelling harnesses were inadequate. How did he go about the testing and evaluation and development of the gear that

the unit was to use. Well, that's funny. That's, of course, something that Wigner didn't do just by himself. So we have a couple of those veterans, some that I had the opportunity to interview as well. And they told me that they basically did nights on end with brainstorming, thinking about, okay, you know, what do we have? What is the equipment? What is the weaponry that we have? And what do we want to do? And what can we use for that? What we want to do? And the answer was basically nothing.

So they said, well, we didn't need heavy armament. We didn't need heavy armed vehicles. We need fast vehicles. We need helicopters in terms of the uniform. You know, they had nice uniforms from the border guards with nice, pockets and shiny buttons and all that stuff. And they said, well, for what we are going to do, if we have to, you know, if we have to go out on the night, we can't, can't have shiny buttons.

They had a nice, a nice tie, a bow tie. No, not a bow tie. A tie. And, you know, what happens with a tie? You get strangled by the, by the bed. guy so off with it so they started to redesign their own uniforms they took their working uniforms that they had and then they started literally with needle and thread to rework their uniforms to make them adequate for what they had in mind what they would do so that it could move that it could fight

you know that if you go into a close quarter fight you need to be able to move so and since as we have established already since there was no textbook and nowhere where you could see how it's done, it was just trial and error. And then at some point, Vigner would come in

and he would look at it and say, yeah, fine, okay, let's do it like that. And that was very much out of the ordinary because the Bundes Grenchertz, the Border Patrol, was very much, very traditional, very conservative, and you just wouldn't do certain things like the headgear.

They had a very nice cap, you know, so it looks a little bit like a baseball cap, but it's not it. And they said, well, you know, when we move, it just falls off. It's no use this cap. So what headgear can we use? And Wigner brought back from Israel a beret.

And so they said, okay, then let's have a beret. That's cool. it sticks on your head when you move. So let's have a beret. And they were able to actually have that inspected by the inspector general of the Bundesgrenschutz, the highest ranking officer when he came for inspection. He first said, well, you're completely gone nuts.

You can't run around. And with that had gear because nobody had that at the time. Nobody was wearing berets. And that was very, very unusual, either in the army nor in the Border Patrol, the Border Guard. So that was very out of the ordinary, but then they convinced him to do it anyway. And that stuck with it. And it didn't take long until other units within the Border Patrol were also wearing berets. And up to this day, that's the case.

Yeah, I was just checking, seeing the pictures of some of the heads of GSG. the pictures you have in your book, they're wearing berets. So that's a tradition that stuck around. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And they're very proud of their berets and also being like the first ones.

As the G-Sg-9 has been the first ones with a lot of stuff. And that is true for their uniforms. That's true for their equipment. They kind of served as a think tank and workshop. for the whole of the border guard. So what they developed and what they deemed serviceable, soon would make their way to other units as well of the border guard. And that is also true for the weaponry, of course,

because what they had wouldn't serve them any good in any counter-terrorist operation. So they talked to Hekler and Koch and to other manufacturers of weaponry and gave them their specifics. And basically a lot of new developments were not exclusively, but were first of all made 4Gs, G9 and they put it into service like sharpshooting rifles and so on. and then they made their way to the other units of the Bundesgangchords. So to kind of switch gears a little bit, I want to ask you about the Red Army faction or the Bader Meinov gang.

Who were they and what were they up to in Germany at this time frame? Because this is, of course, going to play into what we talk about next. Right. The Bana Meinhof gang, which was then later termed or called itself Red Army Faction, R-A-F, so not to be confused with the Royal Air Force, they were a result of the 1968, 69, demonstrations, the protests against the Vietnam War in Germany. There were big protests in the US, of course, but they were also in Germany. And there was a big left-wing movement. And some of those who protested there, most of them stayed, of course, illegal, but some moved into illegal terrain. And the Barna-Mainhofgang was one of those terrorist cells that established in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

And so Bada was, I'm just forgetting the first name of Andreas, it was his name. Andreas Bada was the head of the whole thing, the basically, yeah, the male head of the gang. And Rieke Meinhhoff was the intellectual figurehead of this gang. and they came into existence, as I said, in the late 1960s, beginning 1970s, and committed at least, in the beginning, in the beginning it was more like arsonists attack, but then soon turned into deadly attacks against politicians and against institutions. and just in the spring of 1972 there was a six-week-long offensive 1972, they called it, with a lot of attacks and killings, if I remember correctly, it was eight people were killed in that time against the state, the West German state.

And they were in the sub by the summer, they were all incarcerated. All members of this gang were incarcerated and waiting for trial. And that was then when the Olympic massacre happened in the summer. And so, of course, the terrorists demanded the release also of these terrorists of the Red Army faction of the Bada Meinhof gang, who had been trained before by Palestinian. terrorists. And so there was a very close connection between the German terrorist RAF faction and other German terrorist groups

and Palestinian terrorists groups like the PFLP. And so that's what it came about and it was clear when GSG9 was established that RAF would be one of their most exquisite opponents and that they would it would be necessary to mainly fight against them, that when a terrorist threat would arise, it would probably be the RAF that they would have to go against. Was there, I mean, this is probably a little controversial, but was there ever any connections

between the RAF and any of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services? Sorry, you were blocked out for just 10 seconds. I was just asking, this is a little controversial, but was there ever any evidence of the RAF working in tandem with any of the intelligence services in the Warsaw Pact? Yes, there is. It's not controversial that is well established that there was cooperation. I'm not sure if that was already in the early years, like 1972 or even 1977. I know that. there was cooperation in the 1980s and a lot of or quite quite a few of those RAF combatants terrorists they they went to the GDR to eastern Germany to live there to avoid being captured in West Germany. So yeah their close connections to the Stasi, the state's security. I think think it is established that there were the connections. How deep they were, I think this is not

completely uncovered so far. I'm not sure if it will be uncovered because the documents have been destroyed as far as I know. So there might be not much to discover anymore. There is, but I think the documents are just missing. And also in the lead up to what we're working up to, here is there was another incident too where there was demands for several RAF terrorists to be released. They were sent to third countries, but then they came right back to Germany and went back to their life of crime, right? Right. That was in 1975 when that was not RAF, that was the revolutionary cells. they abducted the candidate, the conservative candidate for the mayor of Berlin for a couple of

days. And so they demanded the release of hostages, sorry, the release of prisoners from German prisons. As it's always the case, this whole endeavor of the German terrorists soon turned into a liberate the guerrilla gorilla, you know, so they fought for release of their prisoners. And there were RAF prisoners as well that were supposed to be released. They were very close connected, the revolutionary cells and the RAF, partly the personnel was the same, different name, but same people. So that was the abduction of this candidate. and the German government under Helmut Schmidt,

it will become important in a moment, they decided and Helmut Schmidt decided to say, okay, we will give in, we release these prisoners, we demand that they leave Germany and never come back. That was what was agreed. And so the candidate for the mayor of Berlin, he was released and the prisoners were released and they were put into aircraft and sent away into the destinations they gave probably most of them in the Middle East countries in the Middle East

who would receive them but it didn't take very long for them to just show up in Germany again and then continue their terrorist career and that was the moment when Helmut Schmidt Chancellor when he decided, okay, we will not play this game again. Next time, we will remain strong and will not give in to the demands because this just leads to an encouragement to commit further terrorist attacks to have more abduction and press free more prisoners from their side. So this is a game we cannot win if we. given and that was the moment when he decided okay next time we will do it differently all right so

let's jump into the next time in this whole sequence of events that kind of culminates with uh this pretty epic gsg9 operation and mogadishu um to start at the beginning tell us about the kidnapping of the head of the employers association that was in uh september uh on september 5th 1977 and if you remember the attack on the Olympic team the Israel Olympic team was on 5th September 5th 1972 so it was to the day five years after that terrible event in Munich and so Hans Martin Schleyer who was a industrial leader the he was called the boss of the bosses in Germany. So he was a very high-ranking, industrial, very powerful person. He was abducted here in Cologne. And basically if you see the, if you see the photos from the crime scene, it looks like a Hollywood movie.

And so his personal detail and his driver, four people sitting with him in his car were shot. They were killed and he himself was abducted by the Red Army faction. One must say this wasn't the first incident in this year. It was the third abduction or killing in this year. A couple of months before the Attorney General, Bubak, he was killed on the street by RAF. then a couple of weeks later Jürgen Ponto the boss of the Deutsche Bank

was killed as it turned out later that was the first attempt to abduct one one political figurehead or not a political but a financial figurehead but a financial figurehead but the abduction failed and so they just killed him

and now this was the third one and this was the beginning of what now is called the Deutsche Habst. The Deutsche Habs, the German autumn. That was the six weeks that would lead from the abduction of Hans Martin Schlaier to then the operation in Mogadishu. That's when it started. And it was a situation and atmosphere here in Germany.

I can't remember it. I was five years old at the time. But from my parents and from everybody who has consciously witnessed, this time was really scared because it was a very spooky atmosphere when Hans Martin Schleyer was abducted this triggered the largest

search operation in German history. Tens of thousands of policemen were involved. You had checkpoints established cars were searched when you know wanted posters everywhere

when you looked a like a little bit like people from the RAF or if you drove a car of the same make that they would be known to be driving, then you would be stopped and searched with submachine guns, officers with submachine guns standing by, something that has never happened before in Germany. You know, German police was usually, you know, you're a friendly cop on the corner. and you would not be threatened with anything more than a truncheon. So this was really an extraordinary situation, and that went on for weeks on end,

because he was abducted and never found. And GSG-9 was involved in the search for Hans Martin Schleyer. They searched apartments. They searched whole buildings, but they never succeeded. Sometimes they seemed to have been very close, with, you know, entering rooms, empty beds, the bed still warm, coffee, warm, a cigarette still smoking on the table. And so they seem to have been sometimes very, very close, but they never got to him.

And then on October 13, 1977, there was the news that an aircraft has changed it. its cause over France, and it was obviously abducted, and that's when the Mogadish story began. And so tell us about that. Did GSG9 get pulled off of the search because that was a Luftanzah aircraft? Right. It was not clear at the beginning,

was it really an abduction, a skyjacking, that took a couple of hours. But at the time, GSD9 was just busy as well, Again, here in Cologne, there's a very, very big residential building called the Unicenter. It's close to the University of Cologne. A lot of students live there. And it's a complex of some 960, I think, apartments there. So a huge building.

And G6G9 was there the whole day, searching from the ground up, from the top down, from the inside, and from the outside. and they were like climbing with letters outside from balcony to balcony going into the apartment and searching for Hans Martin Schleyer because there was a car parked in the basement that obviously was rented by the Red Army faction. So they suspected and there was a suspicious apartment there that they had searched before. And so there was the suspicion that he was stashed. somewhere in one of these more than 900 apartments. So the whole day they were searching this whole building. And in the afternoon, when they were almost finished, the news came in that this plane has been deviating from its original course.

They were started in Majorca, Island of Majorca, so it was a tourist plane by Luftanzer, mostly German passengers on board on their way back to Frankfurt. But they deviated and then ended up in Rome. And so while they were on their way to Rome, G-SG-9, Ulrich Wegener, he got the information from the crisis staff in Bonn, which had been established after the abduction of Hans Martin Schleyer, with the industrial boss. And he was ordered to take action and start the pursuit of this Luftanzer aircraft to see what is possible. By that time, it was not clear that there was.

be an actual liberation operation, but they should just, you know, prepare for the eventuality. And the, as I recall, the Italians weren't a lot of help as they just wanted the aircraft out of their country as fast as possible. So by the time Wagner got out of Germany, the terrorists, the hijacked aircraft was heading to Cyprus? That's correct, yes. That was not the only government, though. The Italians that were happy when the plane took, took off again when they could get rid of them because, you know, that's always quite a big inconvenience if you have a foreign aircraft on your soil with hostages and terrorists on board. So how do you react? What do you do? So, yeah, the minister of the interior of Italy just

allowed for the aircraft to be refueled and then was very thankful that. they soon left and went to Cyprus. And when Wagner and 20 people of the GSG-9, when they were on their way to Rome, they heard the news, okay, now we have to go to Cyprus. When they arrived in Cyprus, they already knew that the aircraft was again, had taken off and was heading towards the Middle East,

where they tried to land in the Lebanon. and in other countries, I think four or five countries who denied the landing of the aircraft because nobody wanted to have them. And so finally they ended up in Dubai, but that was almost a day later. And Wigner then ended up with the plane in Turkey in Ankara because they were supposed to. it was not only GSG-9 on the airplane, but also people from the Ministry of the Interior, from the Bundeskriminal Act, the Federal Crime Administration,

or criminal administration, and all these guys on board. And they had the order to ask the Turkish government what they thought of the whole thing, because the demand of the terrorists was to liberate, a couple to liberate the German RAF terrorists, but also a couple of Turkish terrorists. So they went to Ankara to ask, okay, what do you guys think of it?

And how do you want to participate? And the Turkish just said, well, you do whatever you think you have to do and keep us out of the whole thing. And so they were in Ankara where they were detected by a camera team. And soon enough, not only the Turkish public, but also the German public, knew that G-SG-9 was in pursuit of the aircraft. And that was, of course, not a good thing. So they were ordered back to Germany.

They couldn't do that. And officially, the Turkish government said, well, we don't, of course, we don't allow a German... army unit in Ankara on our soil. We can't have that. So, they couldn't officially just leave them there. So they had to send them back. Of course, it was a police unit, but that didn't matter at the moment at this very moment. So, what happened was that most of the GSG-9 had to go back. But Wegener talked to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and he,

got the okay to select a couple of people to take up the pursuit again in a smaller aircraft. And that's what he did. He chose his adjutants. I don't know. Adjuncts, yeah. Like his deputy. I'm sorry? Like his deputy, his executive officer.

Exactly, yeah. And he chose Dieter Fox for whatever reason, never known to this day. but he wanted to have him on his side. So three G's G9 guys then took up the pursuit of the abducted aircraft. And, yeah, that developed into an odyssey because they first ended up in Dubai. And there they had the idea that they could do something and start a liberation attempt.

But they ran into trouble because the shake of Dubai, he didn't like the idea. And he said, well, if there will be a liberation attempt, I will have my Rangers do that. And maybe you can show them how you do that. So they can do it in a better fashion. And of course, G's G9 had trained for the liberation of, aircraft for years on end. That was something they really specialized in because as we said in the

beginning there were a lot of skyjacking incidents in the late 1960s and 1970s and it was clear from the outset that skyjacks skyjackings will be the most probable situation scenario that GSD9 would have to deal with. And so for days on end, and nights on end, they practiced aircraft assaults and did it over and over again, very, very detailed, very, very specific

in what they did and how they did it and learn every detail because it's the details that count in such a situation. You know, the liberation of an aircraft is basically the the highest level of liberation that you can have. A room is difficult.

A car or bus is even more difficult. A train, very, very difficult. Boat, yes, one more step. But since you don't know what is going on inside an aircraft and you only have those tiny windows and usually the blinds are shut in situations like that, you have no idea what is going on and you only have very few access points.

So you really have to train and exercise a lot in order to be able to do that. So now they're in Dubai and they are being told, well, okay, show our ranges in an afternoon how you deal with such a threat, how you do an aircraft assault. And that's what they tried and that's what they tried to teach them, but it failed. And they tried to convince the Sheikh that it would be better if the Germans did it. But he would not have it and would just insist that his people would do it. But before this actually could put into practice, the Lansuit, that's the name of the aircraft, it took off again.

and nobody would know where they would be going. And so they followed them once again and went to Aden and where the aircraft was touching down again. They were not allowed to land there, but they did it anyway. The runway was blocked by 10, tanks, but the co-pilot, he set down the aircraft on, basically on the, on the track next to the runway. Yeah, yeah. And so they thought that the landing gear was affected by that because it was just, you know, it was just a sand track that they,

they were landing on. They had to. They didn't have any fuel left in the tanks anymore. So they sat down there on the tracks and the captain of the aircraft, Captain Schumann, he said, well, I have to check the landing gear. And he was allowed by the terrorists to step outside and check the landing gear. But he didn't return for more than half an hour, almost an hour. and so the terrorists got nervous and when he finally came back the leader of the terrorists got very very angry

and shouted at him and had him kneel befront him and kneel before him in the middle aisle of the aircraft you must imagine like passengers left and right and in the middle of the middle aisle he would have him

kneel and asked him what did you do what did you do and he said nothing I just checked the the gear and then the terrorist, leader of the terrorist, executed him with a shot in the head. So that was the moment when GSI 9 learned of that, of that assassination, of that killing, that they knew, okay, it's very improbable that we reach a solution, a peaceful solution. It will be a violent solution necessary in order to end this whole. thing. So GSI 9 was not allowed to touch down in Arden. They deviated and then finally the

Mansu took off from Arden and a couple of hours later they ended in Mogadishu. What I've told now took place over four days. So this is basically a very concise even though I've talked for quite a bit. This is a concise, very, very shortened version of what happened there in these five days. But, yeah, that was the story that led to Mogadishu. And in Mogadishu, of course, Vaivina then tried to convince the president of Somalia, dictator of the name Barre. that was his name. He tried to convince the dictator to have G-Sg9 do the raid.

And it was more or less like a deja vu for him because the president said, no, I have my own people, I have Rangers here, they can do that. You can show them how to do it. And so once again, he ordered his guys to show the guys there on the... the ground how to do it and it was even worse than in Dubai and at some point the the commander the Somali commander said okay I agree we can't do this you do that and then it took some convincing of the of the president until he finally agreed okay we have a foreign force the German police

force on Somali soil conducting this operation But finally, he agreed. And that was the point when they called in the rest of the GSG-9 force that had been waiting in the Mediterranean in the meantime. And so they negotiated with the terrorists a couple of hours. So that G-SG-9, they told them basically, okay, we have reached an agreement. We set your prisoners free.

We follow your demands. but we need to bring all our the prisoners from German prisons together and have to put them on an aircraft to then send them over to Somalia. So that takes a while. And that was the story that they told them. They never planned to do anything like that. It was just the explanation to gain time in order to get the GSG-9 to Somalia to Mogadishu. And well, when they arrived, it was almost night.

And they started preparations for the assault. And all the time, the passengers on the plane, they were there and their situation was very, very miserable, very miserable because they had spent the last five days on this plane. And starting after two or three days, the toilets were clocked. it was really a disaster. They had no possibility to go to the toilet. They were forced to soil their seats.

You can imagine what that means. The terrorists had taken all the purses and the hand baggage from the female terrorists. Sorry, from the female hostages. So what happened, a lot of young ladies were. on board and they didn't have the anti-reception. The birth control medication. Yeah, the medication, they didn't have that. So they started to get their menstruation.

And so, you know, all of this happened on board during this time. And it was really nasty inside. And of course it was hot. They were sitting on the runway. they were only able to open a door, one door at a time. So there was no really exchange of air. It was really, really a terrible condition for the hostages. And so, yeah, in this situation, the preparations for the assault on the night of the 18th of October then began.

And so Wagner is on the ground with, I believe, was the German Chargeré that's having to go through the political process, and they have to go and get the OK from Helmut Schmidt, correct? Yes. Ultimately, it was Helmut Schmidt's decision. He had to give the order. And he was back in Bonn at the crisis staff. And one has to imagine that, of course, the telecommunication system back then was much more rudimentary than it is today. You had bad telephone lines, where you had to shout into the speaker in order for somebody on the other end to hear anything. And so maybe TeleX, but that was about it.

So he was reliant on the information that he was getting from the Charger de d'affair. Libal was his name. And of the, well, he was, Hans-Jyuggen-Ville. Vizhnevsky. He was the minister of state who was also sent there to negotiate with the president of Somalia and he was on the plane for a couple of days and he was very well known in the Middle East. He spoke the Arabian language and was very close as well with the Palestinians, not so much, but with Arabian states and with the Israelis as well. So he was basically the chief negotiator in the cabinet of Helmut Schmidt and he dealt with the president in the first place.

And so, yeah, he would then say, okay, I have Schmidt on the line, Helmut Schmidt, and you have to give now the order to actually do that. And that was a very tough decision for the chancellor because he knew that a lot of things can go wrong in such an operation. They didn't know if they had explosives on board. I think, yeah, they knew that there were explosives, but were they hot? Were the doors, for example, did they put explosives on the door? So when they would open the door that they would go off,

would they maybe blow off the plane? That was a risk that he was taking. and he had to make the decision to say, yes, we are going to do that. So it was for him, it was politically a big gamble. His resignation letter was already written. It just needed the signature. So if that whole operation had gone sideways, he would have stepped down the next morning. So it was a pivotal moment for this government, and to be honest, for the whole country

Western Germany. And I think it's hard to imagine how it would have turned out if this operation had gone wrong. Didn't Dieter tell you that if it had gone south, the entire unit would probably be finished at that point? Yes, that is what Dieter Fox told me. He's very convinced of that and he has discussed that with Ulrich Wegener several times, he told me. And I've talked to politicians.

I've talked to a former Minister of the Interior who denies that, who says, no, no, of course not. You know, things can happen and maybe if this had gone, if this had gone sideways, G-SG-9 would probably not have been abolished. But having said that, that would really have been the least of Germany's problems at that point because this, as I said, this was really a pivotal moment in the history of Germany,

of Western Germany, at least, I think for all of the German, or whole of Germany, because this was really a test for the German state, for the rule of law, for the German democracy, this whole German autumn, as it is called today,

that was putting, Germany, the West German state to the test. And if that had failed, as I said, I think the abolition or the ending GSG-9 would have been the least of the problems that would have come out of it. Before we get into the assault of the aircraft, one thing I want to mention that the terrorists who took over the aircraft was a Palestinian group, but they were doing this ostensibly sort of like as a favor to the RAF, right? That's right. It was kind of a terror joint venture, so to speak.

The relationships between the red army faction and the PFLP was quite close. As I said, the top members of the Bada-Mainhof gang had been trained in Palestinian camps. And so there were close relationships. between the two and there was also an agreement also with Japanese terrorist groups that in situations like these they could call in each other and to do jobs for them. And this is exactly what happened. It was about the whole abduction of Hans Martin Schleyer was an RAF, the Red Army Faction Operation.

They wanted to have their prisoners release, the original founding members of Red Army faction. And so when this didn't work out, when the abduction dragged on for weeks on end, they decided to step up a bit to up the ante and then hired basically PFLP to abduct the Lufthansa flight LH1N.5. one and that's how it happened yeah it's it's surprising that's you know it's they they had their demands were the release of german prisoners why yeah because of this tight connection and as uh vagner is preparing for the assault there's one final detail i'd like to mention i thought it was very interesting he noticed one of his men didn't have body armor and so he takes off his and

gives it to one of his men and then he personally leads the assault on the aircraft And like when I read that, I was like, okay, I understand immediately why these guys loved him. And this is exactly the reason why, yes. They were very happy because they received anti-bullet vests, new anti-bullet vests from the British. They supported the whole operation quite a bit. And one of the things they brought along were these vests. but they were one short of these vests. So Wigner had one and as you said he just took it off, gave it to one of his one man without the vest

and then said, okay, I'll be in the front and everybody after me. And that's why they loved him really. They admired him deeply because he was not one to be in the background. and, you know, being on the commander's hill far away where the bullets can't reach them. But he was the one to say, okay, I'll be in the assault group. He didn't go in as the first one. He was, I think, the third or fourth one. But because they had set rules for who opens the door, who holds the letters, who goes in first, and so on.

So they wouldn't disrupt that. But then Wagner went in and he is the only one to be known to have killed at least one of the terrorists. Otherwise, it is not known who executed the terrorists. Okay, so walk us through the actual assault. They have the chancellor of Germany says, this is a go. You got the green light. how do they decide when to execute this assault and go through with it? So they would approach the aircraft from the rear end

so that nobody who was maybe accidentally look outside would be able to see them. The approach took them about an hour. So they started at 11 at night a local time and it took them an hour. to go there, there were like some 20 G-SG-9 men carrying six letters, two carrying six letters, two of each. And in the surrounding dunes, sand dunes, there were snipers. So they had, of course, I'm not sure how many there was.

three or four sniper groups that would secure the approach, would start firing if accidentally a terrorist would look out of the window, or during the assault, when somebody tried to escape, they had the order to terminate the threat. And so they approached very, very slowly, very, very silently, and Dieter Fox told me that it was really nerve-wracking because they thought, because they were high, sensible to every noise, every little squeak and crack and thought, well, they must hear us,

they must hear us, which they didn't. Nobody looked out of the window, nobody looked out of the door. They were not detected. And then when they finally reached the aircraft, they had another problem because there were strong lights from the apron. lighting up the aircraft so their shadows would cast under the body of the aircraft and so if then somebody looked out they would see okay there are shadows there must be somebody underneath the aircraft but also that didn't happen luckily and so what they did is

they checked with microphones on the body of the plane and checked noises. They tried to make sure by the negotiation team that the terrorists would be in the front of the aircraft, in the cockpit. And then they leaned the letters against the hull of the aircraft very, very slowly, very silently. They crept up the, it was a Boeing 737. not a huge aircraft. So they had to be really careful not to start shaking the aircraft. You know, if you tread a little bit or if you push a little bit, it starts shaking.

So that nobody inside notices it and it's really silent. And that took quite a while until everybody was in position. And as a distraction, they had ordered, not ordered, but they had agreed with the Somali Air Force to light a fire just before the beginning of the operation in front of the cockpit. So that was a destruction measure. And then two stun grenades were thrown by British SAF officers who were there to support the operation. And that's when it started. As soon as they exploded, all six doors were.

opened at the same time they stormed in and started the firefight which lasted not longer than about a minute and then it was over three of the terrorists were dead two were dead at once one died on the way to the hospital and one miss andravs was severely injured but survived And she was the one in that iconic photograph. Basically the end. Sorry? She was the one in that iconic photograph where they're taking her off and the stretcher and she's like covered in blood and everything.

Yeah. And shouting, kill me, kill me. Yeah. She was actually put on trial back in the 1990s. It took that long until there was a trial against her. But she was also sent. in Germany but she was living in Norway I think by the time and Norway would not would not deliver her to the German authorities so yeah a very weird thing so she

survived but three of them were dead one was at least one was killed by Ulrich Wagner and it is not known who else fire deadly shots against one of the terrorists. So the hostages were evacuated. One of the terrorists was able to throw two hand grenades, one of which exploded and injured one of the stewardesses. But the other one just got caught under the seats, and it was still the next morning it was only found.

It was still hot. but yeah it didn't go off so that was luck and yeah apart from this injury and a couple of scratches from the evacuation procedure nobody was really hurt one of the Gs G9 guys was very very lucky because when they started when they tried to open the door in the front on the right side it was blocked so they just could open it a little bit especially with the Boeing 737 doors is you have to first push them in before you can open them. So they could push the door open a little bit, just a crack. And that was when one of the terrorists saw that and fired probably blindly a shot through this crack.

And it hit one of the GSG9 offices in the neck. And it went through the whole neck, but it didn't hit any arteries or. It's so crazy. He just failed to hit anything that was vital. And so with just basically a couple of stitches and a neck thing around his neck, he survived and he was good a couple days later. So that was the only, yeah, not casualty, but the only injury that GSD9 guys suffered. One bullet got stuck, I think, in an armor plate. but that was about it

and so eight minutes after the beginning of the assault Ulrich Wegener was able to finish to end the operation and to give a telephone call to Chancellor Helmut Schmidt who was really really happy

that this was a happy ending for him and he's not known to be a very sentimental guy, but that was the moment when he actually went into the next room to cry. He was really done with his nerves. Yeah, that basically saved his chancellorship. He went on to be Chancellor of Germany until 1982. So that was a big relief for everyone, not only for the Chancellor, but of course for all of

Germany. and when GSG-9 returned to Germany the next day, they were welcomed as heroes, which they were. But that was really out of the ordinary, one must say, because German reverence for heroism is strongly discouraged still to this day. So we're not big in that. And that was one of the very few moments

that National Pride could really, yeah, be taken out and everybody could say, well, now, today I'm proud to be Jim because these guys really did the job. And the sort of epilogue to this story is what happened with the RAF prisoners who thought they were going to get released? And what happened to, is it Scheler, the Employers Association leader? Yeah, that is the... the sad part because everybody was relieved, everybody was happy that this hostage situation came to a happy end and the next morning the news were full of it of course and there were extra issues of

newspapers being printed and everybody was happy that that was the talk of the day of course. But in the afternoon it was clear that this operation had more repercussions. And so the news came out that the prisoners of the Royal Red Army faction that they had committed suicide in their cells. Nobody knows up to this day how they got the information really that this operation of G-SG-9 was successful and there was no hope for them to be released. But somehow they did it and they were able to commit suicide.

And so that was that. But that again meant that the destiny of Hans Martin Schleyer was also coming to an end. And he was found two days later in the trunk of a car in close to the border in France. And he was shot dead because they realized this game had come to an end. and they would not get their prisoners free. They were dead, so there was no use anymore for their hostage. So they killed him and, as I said, put him in a trunk and called the local press to tell where to find them. One of the other kind of outcomes of this operation was you talk a little bit about how it changed this sort of hijacking or skyjacking culture.

this was the first time it really showed that, yes, we have a countermeasure, yes, we can fight back. And aircraft hijackings started to drop off quite abruptly. That's true. And of course, it's the question how much of it was contributed by this operation in Mogadishu by G's G9. We can see the security measures in airports being ramped up at the same time. It starts before the Mogadishu incident, but then really picks up afterwards. So the question is, of course, how much did that contribute to the reduced or to the lower numbers and receding numbers of skyjacks afterwards?

But it's pretty clear that this operation in Mogadishu by the GSG9 contributed quite a bit because at this point they knew terrorists knew that there was a force that could meet them and could just take them out and of course other countries saw that this was a success and of course there was a lot of interest afterwards in the G's G9 as a force and as a teacher, as an instruction team for the establishment and the inception of other special forces in other countries. So within a year, there were more than 60 requests from 60 different countries asking for advice, for training, for improvement of their own forces

that were more or less in the phase of being established at the time, or for the new development, of their own GsG 9, so to speak. And yeah, in my book I call it, it was kind of an act of a midwifery that GSG did there for quite a lot of different special forces, be they military or a police in origin. And Charlie Beckwith, as he was standing up,

Delta Force came to learn from them. And you wrote that they have, I guess it makes sense. because they're police officers, they have a very tight relationship with the FBI hostage rescue team. Yes, that was very early from the inception of GSG-9. They tried to establish good connections to the FBI and the hostage rescue team and have very good relations up to this day. And yeah, Charlie Beckwith, he came in 1977, a couple of weeks after Mogadishu, he came to Germany and he wanted to establish what was to become Delta Force afterwards.

He was still in the process of getting the go for his force. And so he traveled to the UK because he was a former associated formally associated with the SAS, so he came to the UK to learn from them. And then he heard of the G-SG-9 feet in Mogadishu, and he came to Germany to learn from the Germans. And shortly after that, German officers, one of them being Dieter Fox, went to Fort Bragg.

And well, yeah, trained, were born. part of the of the selection process for candidates for Delta Force and also brought a couple of quite good German weapons with them to see what maybe Delta Force could make use of them. And yeah, and later on they went to the Heckler and Kook MP5, so I guess they sold the worked. Yeah, sold some guns. So I'd like to, there's a couple chapters. you mentioned that didn't make it into the English version of your book. But I'd love to ask you

about it in this interview. In 1993, GSG-9 and Germany is still dealing with the RAF. And there was this, you know, you told me a sort of a political crisis in 1993 in the aftermath of a shooting. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. That was, yeah, in the, in the, in the, in the years after the German reunification. And so there was this little town of Butklin in Eastern Germany. And it was the end of a long observation mission that GSTY9 was not particularly involved, but a lot of other crime-fighting institutions in Germany. So that was a big thing.

And they were going after one of the... two or two of the figureheads of RAF. As we have established in 1977, the leading figures of RAF committed suicide after Mogadishu. So they are called the first generation of RAF. The ones who try to liberate them are called the second generation. And this now was the third generation of RAF terrorists that the German state was now looking for. So they got a hold of them and they knew that this RAF couple, they would be in Budklin on the central station, well, central station on the train station of Budklin, very small town in Eastern Germany and they wanted to

apprehend them there and make sure they get incarcerated. So they call in GSG-9. this whole thing went sideways because of a lot of different a lot of details that I can't go into right now that's that's a little bit too complicated for for such a podcast like this the whole operation went sideways and in the end one of the terrorists was apprehended and the other one made an escape went up from the underpass where they were supposed to be apprehended and he could escape, ran up the stairs to the platforms and started shooting while running, turning around shooting

and he shot the first GSG9 operative that was following him and that was Michel Nefzella and he was killed on that day. So that was a lucky shot and he was. He was a, hit in the heart and he died a couple of hours later. And so there was a wild shooting. There were like something like 150 shots being fired. You must imagine on a Sunday with full platforms. You know, people roaming everywhere. A lot of bullets ended up in trains.

So there was a lot of chaos. A lot of things happened all at once. within a couple of seconds and the result was that this terrorist, Wolfgang Grahms, he was lying with his back on the tracks and he was hit by several bullets and one was shot to his head. And it soon turned out that he had, that the bullet that went through his head was coming from his own gun. So he killed himself.

But there were a lot of inconsistency. and a lot of in the aftermath of this whole thing, there was a lot of discussion that would soon come up, a lot of mistakes that were taking place with the CSI operation in the aftermath, cleaning the whole thing up. There were jackets being cleaned that shouldn't have been cleaned because they had to serve the jacket of Wolfgang Grams. And there were like traces.

on his hands that had been wiped off. And a lot of things happened, which should not happen in the aftermath of such an operation, particularly when two people die. So that was all a pretty big disaster. And soon G-9 came into the suspicion that it was not Wolfgang Grimes who had committed suicide with his last breath, but that one GSI-9 operative had taken his gun from his hands

and had shot him from short distance. So, execution by the state. And this caused a huge uproar and a big, big scandal. All of this evaporated. All of this didn't turn out to be true. The GSD-9 was completely washed off

every accusation in the end, but only after more than a year. So in the meantime, there was a huge political scandal that developed particularly in a situation in Germany and with our historical background and, you know, the idea we don't have the capital punishment. You know, somebody dying and the suspicion of somebody dying by the hand. not in an, by the hand of a state actor, not in an emergency, but after the situation is clear, he is clearly lying on the tracks. He has no possibility to defend himself. And then being executed like that, that was a big uproar. The suspicion of that was a big, big uproar. And that led to the resignation of the Minister of the Interior. It led to the firing of the Attorney General. It led to

the firing of the Attorney General in Germany. It led to the firing of the vice president of the Bundeskriminal Amt, the federal crime investigation institution in Germany. So, you know, that it was really an uproar and it was a state crisis and all connected to the question, has G's G9 an operative of G.S.G9 willfully and intentionally executed a human being. Be he terrorist or whatever, you know, after the situation is done, that is not something that should happen. So there was a big debate and it took a very, very long time. And yeah, Germany, GSD9 really came into a very very very, very, very, very bad situation where even the end of G-SG-9 was being discussed shortly, but that was one of the

topics. And how did the Red Army faction eventually collapse? Like, how did that organization get dismantled? Well, I can tell you what factually happened. Why it happened is a little bit difficult, and I'm not sure if anybody has a good answer to that. They became irrelevant basically. After the death of one of their head figures, Wolfgang Grams, they didn't really commit any major acts. There was a bombing attack against a newly built prison, but that was, you know, nobody was hurt. It was just the prison wall. That was.

a big hole in it and that that was it and then by 1998 they declared their self-dissolution can you say that I'm not sure they just wrote one of their very famous infamous letters and with a lot of left-wing anti-imperialist rhetoric pages over pages where they didn't declare that anything that they're sorry for anything. They just declared it doesn't make sense to go on with armed action, with terrorist attacks. Of course, for them it was not terrorist attacks. For them, it was just a fight against imperialism.

But they said it doesn't make any sense anymore, and we try to find other ways to fight against imperialism and the fascists German state. And that was that. and then it was never heard from them again, apart from a couple of old RAF members who then started their private career with bank robberies and other stuff.

But I was just, you know, more or less just criminals. And this story is going on up to today, but the RAF, the Red Army Faction as a terrorist group, has been ended in 1998 with this, letter of resignation, so to speak. So let's talk a little bit about GSG-9 today. You're the opportunity to go and visit them at their home base and to interview the commander. Actually, it seemed like maybe two commanders you got to interview.

Tell us a little bit about, you know, what the unit is like today and what they do. Sure, yeah. I actually got to talk to four commanders. So the current one, Robert Hemeling, which I, actually we'll visit tomorrow and talk to him. I will present one of my books to him. And so his predecessor was Jerome Fuchs, up to 2023. He was the commander of GSG9.

I talked to his predecessor, Olavenna, who is now the president of the parent organization of GSG9, the Policai Direction 11 in Berlin. and I talked to one more commander who was commanding G-Sg-9 in the 1990s. So, yeah, I had the opportunity to meet the guys also, you know, the rank and file of them. And so it's very interesting there. They're still, their headquarters is still in St. Augustine. St. Augustine is a very small town close to Bonn.

and Bonn was the Cold War capital of West Germany. So that's how they were placed there in a border guard garrison. That just came in handy when they were established. They wanted to be close to Bonn and that was the right place to go. And so they have remained there for the last 50 years. But of course, after the reunification of Berlin, the capital moved from Bonn to Berlin and now the action is there

and well in Germany things take things take a while sometimes so the capital moved there in mid of the 90s and some five six years ago there was a dependency a branch was open up in Berlin of GSG9 so they spread out to there now GSD9 is

facing new challenges the whole of Germany and the whole of Europe is facing new challenges and that is to do with the war in Ukraine and the Russian threat so the Baltic Sea comes into focus and just this year they have opened up another branch

right on the coast of the Baltic Sea so their maritime unit that they always had is now permanently situated there. So they have now spread from St. Augustine here in the middle of Germany, or West Germany, to the north and to Berlin, and have spread out to engage with the threats that are now occurring there, particularly on the Baltic Sea, that this is something that really comes into focus in recent years.

that is something that will probably be a main focus in the next years of G6G9's situation here. I just want to ask you if there's anything else you want to talk about before we wrap up the interview today, Martin. There's lots of interesting stuff. I hope people will go and read the book. There's a chapter in here about East Germany's version of GSG9, which is pretty interesting. Anything else you want to talk about? Oh, as you said, there's so many things. I mean, one thing that we haven't talked about really in detail a little bit maybe is that G's G9 is a police force. And that is something that is really what fascinates me with G's G9.

because, you know, we have as a police force, the G-SG-9 is much more limited to the rules and the laws that are being set by the constitution and the German constitution is very strict indeed in terms of what you can do and what you cannot do. So what I find very fascinating is how they are able to, on the one hand, do the job, get the job done that they need to do. They need to be tough and have to be able to also apply lethal force. But on the other hand, there are restricted and limited by the German constitution. And so if this is, this goes back again to the German history and we are very cautious to allow lethal force being applied in whichever situation.

there might be. So there are very limited options when it's actually justified to apply lethal force. And what I find fascinating is how GSC9 has managed to bring these two sides together, being limited on the one hand, but then making the best of this limitation and trying to to act always in accordance with the constitution. And that leads to a different mindset than special forces in the military might have. The mindset is not, well, we go in and liberate the hostages, that too, of course.

But we save life. Our upper and foremost interest and objective is to save lives, even the ones of the terrorists. If I don't have another option, this is what the G-Sg-9 guys tell me. You know, I can only go by what they tell me, but this is very consistent, be it the old veterans or be it the ones, the operatives that are with G-S-G-9 today. They very consistently say,

we have to try to save lives, not because we have pity with the terrorists, or because of some sentiment, but because we need him for the trial. We need to bring him to court. And so that, again, then, it's a different mindset, which results in different tactics. And I find fascinating that this actually works.

So their whole mindset is we try to avoid using lethal force. We try to avoid using our guns. Every operation, be just an exercise or an actual operation, if we find ourselves in a situation where we have to use our guns, if we have to shoot, then afterwards in the debriefing, we will discuss very intensely what could we have done in order to avoid it. We don't see having to use our weaponry. Firearms is not.

not failure, but it is something that we need to work on so we can avoid it the next time. I find that very fascinating because, of course, this puts you in even greater danger if you go in and try to liberate a hostage and you have to make this decision in this, you know, microsecond that it is, where do I put place the bullets? When you talk to special forces, people on the military side, I hear and I read that it's very common to say, okay, we put two bullets in each terrorist just to make sure that he will not be a problem afterwards, you know, in whatever respect, particularly when you do room clearing, for example, and you have to go in the next room. You don't want to have somebody

even half dead behind you. So, you make sure that he will not be able to act. That is not the mindset that they have. They really go in and try to save lives, even the lives of the perpetrator, of the terrorist. And if I can add a little anecdote that I also write about in my book, I also talked to Renate Bonen, who is the medical officer for the operational medicine department of GSG9, and she was called in to a hostage situation here in Cologne at the central station in Cologne a couple of years ago. That was not the GSG9 that was operating there, but one of the SACAS, the special forces of the province here. So it was a hostage situation in a pharmacy and a guy took a couple of employees hostage and the whole thing dragged on for a couple of hours and they decided, okay, we have to go in and solve this problem with violent means. So they did.

And Renate Bonin as the medical officer, she afterwards she counted 18 holes in this guy's body, entry and exit. wounds, but all of them in the periphery, in the arms, in the legs, nowhere lethal. So when she told me, I asked her, well, good luck. And she said, uh-uh, good work. And that is the spirit that these units work, be it the special units of the lender or the special unit GSG9. they don't aim for the kill they aim for the saving of lives i find that very very impressive this guy survived he had 18 holes in his body where they were not supposed to be but he survived and that i i imagine there was also a little bit of luck involved in that but uh you know they were not aiming for the kill they were aiming for this the saving of the hostages and

the saving the life of the terrorist. It's actually, as far as I know, for our police officers, it's actually mandatory. If they're going to shoot at a criminal, they're shooting center mass. No trick shots allowed. Yeah. I mean, and there is this saying among special forces, probably not among special forces, a man who deserves being shot, deserves being killed. and I can understand from a military point of view that this makes a lot of sense

but yeah and of course from a normal police officer you will not be able to demand that he will put a shot in the periphery you know they just don't have the training how could they do that so they of course are aiming for the safe shot not safe for the perpetrator, but safe for stopping him. So I can understand that. But these guys are trained to a point that they actually can make this decision and can judge for the sake of the hostage and for the sake, hopefully, of the perpetrator, whether to make a lethal shot to give a...

fire a lethal shot or a non-lethal shot. And again, I find that quite impressive. Well, I hope everyone will go out and read the book. Again, it's called GSG9 from Munich to Mangadishu, the birth of Germany's counterterrorism force. I really enjoyed it. Got all my notes and underlines in here as I read through it. It was really cool. And because of Martin's background, you know, he was able to get access to all of these leaders in the unit and all of the source material in German, and I think you're really seeing it in English for the first time, I suspect, in this book, which definitely makes it worth going and picking up the people who watch this podcast will want to have this one in their library for sure. Martin, thank you for

joining us this afternoon. I imagine this evening for you in Germany. Yes, that's right, yeah. It's 1030 at night right now. Okay. Well, we'll let you get to bed. Appreciate you coming on the show and doing this interview. And, Look us up anytime you're in the neighborhood or writing another book. I will do so. Thank you so much for having me. It was great fun talking to you. Thank you very much.

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