Blood and Rage_ A Cultural History of Terrorism - Michael Burleigh [150]
Baader was sent to complete the remaining twenty-two months of his sentence for arson. Meanwhile, Ensslin and Meinhof laid plans for his escape. The publisher Klaus Wagenbach was prevailed upon to write to the authorities, claiming that Baader and Meinhof had a contract to write a book on juvenile delinquents. She needed to consult regularly with him about their co-production. The authorities decided that it would be a pity to spoil Baader’s future career as a writer by refusing. Mahler provided Ensslin, who was also on the run, with false identity papers so that she could inform the imprisoned Baader of what she and Meinhof were hatching. Meinhof visited Baader in prison too, insisting to the authorities that she needed him to be escorted to the Institute for Social Questions to examine key sources for their book, for which contracts were hastily drawn up as proof. Mahler insisted that Baader was not a flight risk.
Meanwhile, Astrid Proll and Irene Goergens made their way into the unaccustomed setting of a pub frequented by neo-Nazis called the Wolfschanze after Hitler’s bunker, where in return for 1,000 DM a man known as Teddy sold them a 6.35 mm Beretta with accompanying silencer. An Alfa Romeo was stolen from a car-showroom forecourt and equipped with false plates. Ulkrike Meinhof despatched the twins, by now aged eight, to a writer friend in Bremen, the last time they would see their mother at home or free in Berlin.
Shortly before 10 a.m. on Thursday 14 May 1970, Baader appeared in handcuffs escorted by two prison officers. They removed the cuffs and sat down while the two authors got down to business. The atmosphere gradually relaxed, as the room filled with cigarette smoke, and Meinhof chatted to the two guards about their wives and children. Elsewhere in the building, the bewigged Goergens and Proll appeared, insisting on seeing books they needed as students of forensic medicine, which they had selected the day before as they scouted the crime scene. After being reluctantly admitted to the reading room, just before eleven o’clock they rushed to the entrance, flinging open the doors to admit two masked figures, one of whom brandished a gun. They were most likely Gudrun Ensslin and a professional criminal brought in for this job because as yet the women were unused to shooting people. There was a brief struggle with an elderly doorman who was shot through the arm and liver from close range. The two masked gunmen were joined by Goergens and Proll, by now flourishing a Reck P8 and a machine pistol. The two prison guards were overpowered after a brief struggle. Their assailants, followed closely by Baader and Meinhof, leaped from a window and raced to the stolen Alfa Romeo. By the evening, Meinhof’s surly pudding face was on twenty thousand wanted posters pasted up across Berlin, with a 10,000 DM reward offered for her capture.
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VI DESERT DAYS
In June 1970 two groups of Germans, totalling twenty people, arrived in Beirut from East Berlin’s Schönefeld airport, en route to a Fatah training camp outside Amman in Jordan. They included Baader, Ensslin, Mahler and Meinhof. Originally their PLO hosts envisaged nothing more than showing the guests the revolutionary sights, including refugee camps, field hospitals, and schools. The Germans insisted on receiving military training. All were kitted out in green uniforms and caps. Horst Mahler grew a beard and wore a Fidel Castro-style forage cap to show he was in earnest. There was a minor moment of feminist assertion when, to the incredulity of the Algerian camp commander, Baader and Ensslin insisted on men and women sharing sleeping quarters. Rations were primitive: tinned