Baader-Meinhof: Urban Guerillas or Barbaric Terrorists

As the Rajapaksa government completes it rout of the Tamil tigers, eroding the last remains of the Eelam to a 60x40 box buried 10 feet below, the debate rages on. A separatist martyr or an executed terrorist, a freedom fighter or a merciless murderer? The inventor of suicide bombing or the creator of Eelam? The assassin of Rajiv Gandhi or the savior of the Tamil aspirations? Who is Prabhakaran? My father, a core business once quizzed an adolescent me, “You are neither Tamil nor Sinhalese. Prabhakaran, LTTE, T.N.P (He meant TNTJ) are not even in your history books and considering your history score, shouldn’t you be reading Mahatma Gandhi.” More than six years of deliberation later I still am as perplexed, if not more, about all the above questions. So if you expect me to answer any of them, I sincerely apologize for having wasted your time.

In middle of one of the news articles (pointing towards my disdain of news articles) I couldn’t resist myself from thinking aloud “Terrorists? Do you even know what it means sucker?”(The loudest I might have ever thought to have shaken the American besides me). He smiled at me and said with complete bliss “Ones who kills innocent people, like Taliban.” I smiled back with the best sarcastic smile I could foster “Or the Americans of Cuba, Indochina, Congo, Bolivia, Iraq, Afghanistan ……” I think he hurriedly left somewhere between Congo and Bolivia. We, the people, live in the world of jargons without an iota of thought of how big a hypocrite it makes us.

If Prabhakaran is a terrorist, why isn’t Fidel Castro, Bhagat Singh, Che Guevara, or the FLN, or the MNC led by Patrice Lumumba. If he is not, how do you justify death of the order of 70,000,(make that more than 100,000 with latest figures courtesy Timesonline.co.uk, ironically half of them are attributed to government in power) the murder of Alfred Duraiappah, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Rajiv Gandhi, the Central Bank Bombings and a long list of other events? Some might say the comparison is just too inane, Bhagat Singh was a revolutionary. But he killed Saunders much the same way Prabhakaran killed Duraiappah. Picture a 17 year boy without the menacing mustache, an innocent face, avenging the 1974 Tamil conference killings, does it still sound inane? Subhash Chandra Bose used the Japs and formed the INA much the same way Prabhakaran used uncertain means to form the LTTE. Means to an end, but whose end?

Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me.

-Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

Oh wait, aren’t we reviewing Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, then why this digressing story on LTTE? What does the Sri Lanka of 2009 have to do with Germany of 1960’s? It should be something as follows. It is a very well directed movie with feel and the sense of the time really apparent. Technically a really sound movie, the cinematography, the editing, the screenplay are mind boggling. The acting of each and every character down to Sebastian Blomberg, who plays Rudi Dutschke with only 2 scenes, is the best you might see for a long time. But (no matter how flattering a review there is always a hairy little ‘but’ somewhere) the movie tries to incorporate an entire generation of German thinking in 150 minutes. It cuts and snaps between all the important events without detailing even one of them. While I concede each and every word above is ‘cross my heart’ truth, it is like saying godfather was a movie on the rule of Italian mafia sometime in mid 1900s, period.

I believe we need to start by admitting we don’t really understand terrorism to be able to even augment what Stefan Aust, Bernd Eichinger and Uli Edel are trying to portray. Charlie Kaufman simply said and he is hardly so simple in his articulation,

Knowing that you don’t know is the first step to knowing, you know!

-Charlie Kaufman

Germany of 1960’s was up in flames but the politik and the citizenry alike were too entangled in their own mess to notice the smoke. The country was divided and not just by the Berlin Wall (actually talking about West Germany only so pardon my euphuism here). The ideological gap between a generation that grew up on a conservative totalitarian diet, a bane of the Nazis, and the politically, sexually liberated even radically anti fascist younger generation was just too wide. The Bundestag completely dominated by the conservative class had traces of the old Nazi sympathizer, leading to a tendency towards authoritarian government. The media actually followed suit with Axel Springer AG which quickly acquired a string of papers and magazines to become the only influential voice.

In 1966, the coalition of CDU/CSU/SPD compromising of 95% of the Bundestag, come to power which completely eroded the opposition. The coalition made Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former member of NSDAP for 13 years and part of Nazi foreign office, the chancellor. This led to the formation of APO or 'Extra-Parliamentary Opposition', deemed as the starting point of the student’s movement. Various policies such Germany’s support of the American war in Vietnam and other countries and the emergency legislature were questioned by the APO.

The film starts with the happening of June 2, 1967. Students led a massive protest against the visit of the Shah of Iran. They believed the government’s co-operation to a suppressive and sadist dictatorial government was a sign of its own advent towards fascism or the Nazi era. During the first demonstrations the Berlin police and the Iranian service attacked the protestors which led to the death of one Benno Ohnesorg. The movie shows graphic images of police brutality during the attack and its aftermath which left students injured in hundreds. The subsequent propaganda by the Bild-Zeitung tabloid of the Axel Springer publication branded the students as brutal and aggressive. The officer who shot Ohnesorg is still a favorite topic of conspiracy theorist but the fact that he was promoted enraged the students further, also leading to fears of a police state.

This is the Auschwitz generation.

You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz.

They have weapons and we haven't. We must arm ourselves!"

-Gudrun Ensslin

Young scholars like Ulrike Meinhof and Holger Meins increasingly influenced by the writings of leftist laureates like Mao Zedong, Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse extensive wrote supporting the student’s movement. Both of them later went to be among the founders of Baader-Meinhof gang. The moment was at its high in 1968 with independents accounts showing the strength of almost 100,000 members. But the alleged indoctrination of the masses by the tabloid led to an attack on the then face of the movement, Rudi Dutschke. The student replied with rioting, damaging the Bild publication office. But the loss of Dutschke (severely injured, he died a decade later, of the injuries sustained during this attack) was too much of a dampener for the movement.

Throw a single stone, and that is a crime.

Throw a thousand stones and that is a political action.

Set fire to a car, and that is a crime.

Burn a thousand cars and that is a political act.

Protest is saying: "I disagree with this and that." Resistance is saying: "I will put a stop to this and that."

-Ulrike Meinhof

Along the while in spring of 1968 Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader with help of two others decided to set fire to empty department stores in Frankfurt, majorly in protest of German participation of Vietnam War. All four were convicted of arson and endangering human life. While on trial, Ulrike Meinhof published several sympathetic articles. She even met Gudrun in jail. The most defining moment of the film was this initial conversation between the two.

Meinhof: Can one stop the genocide in Vietnam by burning down a department store?

Ensslin: No. It was an error, as I said in court. It was an act of rebellion. While Fascism grows as strong as it was under Hitler. This time we offer resistance out of responsibility before history. People, here and in America, must eat. But they do not think about it, they just consume. We wanted them to think a little.

Meinhof: So you burned down a department store?

Ensslin: I will never resign myself to doing nothing, never! If people try to murder us, like Ohnesorg and Dutschke, then we will shoot back. That is only consistent.

Meinhof: Do you really mean that?

Ensslin: All over the world comrades fight with guns in hand. And if the fascists throw you into prison for that, so be it. Or do you believe that you'll change something with your grand theory (Meinhof’s writings)?

This conversation, I believe, radicalized an already hardened Meinhof. She then went on to play an important role in the escape of a recaptured Baader. Hence along with the Baader, Gudrun and the lawyer defending them Horst Mahler went on to create the Baader-Meinhoff gang later know as the Red Army Faction. They then went on to rob banks, train with Palestinians for a short while, bombing US Embassy and the list goes on

One of things I would really appreciate about the movie is that it has tried its best to maintain a neutral stature without taking sides especially as it is an all German staff.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat,

For which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator,

While the wolf denounces him for the same act,

As the destroyer of liberty.

-Abraham Lincoln

From a neutral point of view, I might as well go ahead say, it has succeeded to a great extent. But for the German masses, who even today more than a 3^rd of a century later, still associate a lot of emotions to RAF and related incidences, it will be the most difficult question. The hoopla that the pardoning of Christian Klar created about 6 months ago, is a point in case. This is exactly what makes me appreciate the maturity with which the movie has been dealt with.

The biggest criticism of the movie has been it does not delve into the background of the German history leading up to the events. I would defend this by just pointing out that it wasn’t meant to. It is meant to usher in a culture of an educated set of audiences who do their homework. I believe it was intended not to spoon feed, something that I plead guilty to in this article. Der Baader is a definite watch but not for everyone and anyone.