Recent Book: Terror! The West Fights Back
| Author | Richard Clutterbuck |
| Published date | 01 October 1982 |
| Date | 01 October 1982 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X8205500426 |
| Subject Matter | Recent Book |
CIENfUEGOS
PRESS: The German Guerrilla: Terror, Reaction and Resistance
Cienfuegos Press and Soil of Liberty, 1981. £2.00.
This book was compiled and published
by two extreme left publishing groups,
one in the Orkneys and one in
Minnesota. It consists mainly of a long
interview with Hans Joachim Klein,who
was one of the combined Red Army
Faction (R.A.F.) and P.F.L.P. team, led
by Carlos, which kidnapped the II
O.P.E.C. ministers in Vienna in 1975.
Klein was severely wounded in this
attack and chose to be released with the
team but later defected, though he
remains underground and has not
forsaken his extreme left-wing aims.
In
the
interview
(conducted
clandestinely at his invitation) he givesa
clear insight "into the way in which the
R.A.F. and the Revolutionary Cells
(R.Z.) operated and how they were
recruited and organized. It makes a
useful companion volume to the book
about the third main German terrorist
movement, the 2nd June Movement,
Bommi Baumann's Terror or Love which
was reviewed in this journal in
November, 1981.
Klein reveals a lot of especially
interesting information about the links
between the R.A.F. and Wadi Haddad's
splinter group of the P.F.L.P. which has
been responsible for most of the
Palestinians' international terrorist
attacks since 1972. His book gives us an
insight into the psychology of people like
himself- who joined political terrorist
groups. At first, he was"overjoyed by the
killings" but the O.P.E.C. operation
sickened him, particularly the sight of
Carlos unnecessarily pumping bullets
into a wounded and disarmed policeman.
We also learn a lot about the relative
luxury in which the terrorist lived,
staying in the best hotels, financed by the
wealth of the P.F.L.P.
The book also contains a long answer
to a questionnaire sent by Stern
magazine into the prison where four 2nd
June Movement prisoners were held
(Ralf Reinders, Gerald Klopper, Ronald
Fritzch and Fritz Teufel). Once again,
though it is clearly a propaganda
document (they were disappointed when
Stern did not publish it) it is again very
revealing.
Police officers should find this book
worth reading (though not, probably
worth buying) because it vividly
illustrates the violence of the hatred
which the "bourgeois society" arouses in
the extreme left. Klein (who was
incidentally the son of a policeman)
keeps a horrifying picture of a hunger
striker (Holger Meins) in his wallet "to
keep my hatred sharp".
Richard Clutterbuck
CHRISTOPHER
DOBSON
and
RONALD
PAYNE:
Terror! The West Fights Back
London: Papermac, 1982.£3.95.
Another valuable contribution from two
experienced journalists, late of the
Sunday Telegraph and
NOW!
magazine.
As in The Carlos Complex and The
Weapons
of
Terror they have done their
research extremely well.
This book outlines the development
and organization of the West's anti-
terrorist squads - the British S.A.S., the
German GSG9, the Dutch Commandos
and the equivalents in the V.S.A., Israel,
France, Italy and Spain.
The S.A.S. chapter inevitably starts
with an account of the London Iranian
Embassy rescue and describes the
evolution of the Regiment and the
workings
of
COBRA. There is then an
interesting but depressing account of the
failure of the V.S. armed forces' attempt
to rescue their hostages from Teheran..
398
The authors place the lion's share of the
blame not on the troops but on the highly
complicated V.S. Defence Department
Command Structure. They did not,
however, find any similar faults with the
Israeli equivalent, the Sayaret Maktal,
though anyone with astrict regard for the
rule of law will read this section with
some disquiet.
There is a useful chapter on the
German GSG9, which is part neither of
the police nor the army but of the
Frontier Force (Bundesgrenzschutz).
The account, as well as discussing the
German laws and intelligence system,
highlights the problems of an elite force
kept at concert pitch but very seldon
used. This makes a comparison with the
chapter
on
France
particularly
interesting. The equivalent unit there is
October 1982
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