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Bringing the War Home The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the General Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Associates. Bringing the War Home The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies Jeremy Varon UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · London Lyrics to Bob Dylan songs: “Ballad of a Thin Man”; copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; copyright renewed © 1993 by Special Rider Music. “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Caroll”; copyright © 1964, 1966 by Warner Bros. Inc.; copyright renewed © 1992 by Special Rider Music. “My Back Pages”; copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; copyright renewed © 1992 by Special Rider Music. “No Time to Think”; copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music. “Paths of Victory”; copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; copyright re- newed © 1992 by Special Rider Music. “This Wheel’s on Fire”; copyright © 1967, 1970 by Dwarf Music. “The Times They Are A-Changin’”; copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; copyright renewed © 1991 by Special Rider Music. “When the Ship Comes In”; copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; copyright renewed © 1991 by Special Rider Music. “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through the Dark Heat)”; copyright © 1978 by Special Rider Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission. Lyrics to John Fogerty songs copyright Jondra Music. Used by permission. Lyrics to Grateful Dead songs copyright Ice Nine Publishing Company. Used by permission. Lyrics to Phil Ochs songs used by permission of Meegan Lee Ochs. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2004 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Varon, Jeremy, 1969–. Bringing the war home : the Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and the revolutionary violence of the sixties and seventies / Jeremy Varon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0–520–23032–9 (cloth : alk. paper).—isbn 0–520–24119–3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Weather Underground Organization. 2. Weatherman (Organiza- tion). 3. Baader-Meinhof gang. 4. Radicalism—United States— History—20th century. 5. Radicalism—Germany (West)—History— 20th century. 6. New Left—United States—History—20th century. 7. New Left—Germany (West)—History—20th century. 8. Political violence—United States—History—20th century. 9. Political violence— Germany (West)—History—20th century. I. Title. hn90.r3 v37 2004 322.4'2'0943—dc22 2003019002 Manufactured in the United States of America 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 11 10 987654 321 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).8 To the loving memory of my mother, Barbara Frass Varon In Hell they say Heaven is a great lie. Daniel Berrigan Contents Acknowledgments xi List of Key Acronyms xiii Introduction 1 1. “Agents of Necessity”: Weatherman, the Red Army Faction, and the Turn to Violence 20 2. The Importance of Being Militant: The Days of Rage and Their Critics 74 3. “Hearts and Minds”: The Antiwar Movement, Violence, and the Critical Mass 113 4. The Excesses and Limits of Revolutionary Violence 151 5. Deadly Abstraction: The Red Army Faction and the Politics of Murder 196 6. “Democratic Intolerance”: The Red Army Faction and the West German State 254 Conclusion 290 Notes 313 Select Bibliography 361 Index 375 Plates follow p. 195 Acknowledgments The “spirit of the sixties” has always seemed to me to involve at its core individuals with shared passions working together in pursuit of common goals. Scholarly work, while not entailing quite that kind of coopera- tion, is far from an isolating endeavor. Indeed, my project has been shaped by many scholars, friends, and others, through whom the rewards of co- operation and something of the spirit of the era I have tried so hard to understand has brightly shone. Professor Dominick LaCapra of Cornell University played the central role in the conception and execution of this book. He has set a standard for intellectual intensity and professionalism I shall always take as my guide. At Cornell, he headed a team of professors who coached and chal- lenged me: David Bathrick, Laurence Moore, and Michael Steinberg. My friends and colleagues in graduate school are owed equal thanks: Ajay Agrawal, Paul Apostilidas, Michael Doyle, Jeannie Moorefield, Libbie Rifkin, Douglas Usher, and Greg Wawro. Juliet Williams’s intellect and character deeply inform all aspects of the project. Outside of Cornell, numerous scholars have enriched my work: Omer Bartov, Frank Beiss, Bella Brodzki, Michael Burleigh, Belinda Davis, Gary Darden, Ron Grele, Jeffrey Herf, Dagmar Herzog, Matt Matsuda, Eliza- beth Pfeiffer, and Michael Schmidtke. Several institutions also provided invaluable support. I am grateful for that offered by the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, by the German Historical Institute, and by the staffs at the Columbia Oral History Research Office, the Freie Univer- xi xii Acknowledgments sität in Berlin, the Hoover Institution, and the research libraries at Cor- nell University, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley. My colleagues at Drew University have made the transition into professional life a happy one, while supporting me in completing this project. Monica McCormick of the University of California Press has been an ideal editor, grasping right away the “essence” of my project and guid- ing it to completion with unwavering care. Her staff at the press has been impeccable. Peter Dreyer is owed special thanks for his stellar job in refining the text. Sam Green, a filmmaker working on similar themes, provided assistance and encouragement; it was always a comfort to match impressions and to see our projects as complementing each other. I ex- tend thanks also to Lynne Okin, Alan Trist, and Meegan Lee Ochs for granting me permission to quote the song lyrics of Bob Dylan, the Grate- ful Dead, and Phil Ochs, respectively. The music of the 1960s was wo- ven into the events of the era—even when it did not provide direct po- litical and social commentary—and served as a constant companion as I studied, thought, and wrote. This project, by its nature, has drawn me far beyond academia into the worlds of political activism, both past and present. I am immensely grateful to the women and men formerly of the Weather Underground who spoke to me with great honesty and insight about their experiences. I hope to have honored the trust they placed in me by dealing responsi- bly and fairly with their histories. Contemporary activists—Brooke, David, Stuart, Tyler in New York, all those in the Philly house, and my dear friends Jordan Ash and Jonathan Rosen—have reminded me that “making history,” or simply “making a difference,” as the sixties generation did, is the far greater challenge than studying the past. Habib Gharib has uniquely embodied for me the ideal of the scholar-activist, demonstrating that good acts start with sound thinking. I have the privilege of counting as colleagues, friends, companions, and family people of great caring and intellect, who shared generously their ideas, advice, and editorial talents. John McMillian, inspired by the same intellectual callings, has my enduring loyalty and respect. Know- ing Anne Kornhauser has been a recent blessing, for the text and in my life. My sister Elizabeth Varon and her husband William Hitchcock, both history professors, blazed the trail I now walk. Barbara and Ben Varon, my parents, provided more than familial love, engaging the substance of the project and the intellectual and political dramas it spawned. Key Acronyms APO Ausserparlamentarische Opposition CDU Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands DDR Deutsche Demokratische Republik (“East Germany”) J2M June 2 Movement (2. Juni Bewegung) KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands LNS Liberation News Service NLF National Liberation Front (Vietnam) NYT New York Times PFOCs Prairie Fire Organizing Committees PL Progressive Labor [Party] PLO Palestine Liberation Organization RAF Rote Armee Fraktion [Red Army Faction] RYMRevolutionary Youth Movement SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund SDS Students for a Democratic Society SLA Symbionese Liberation Army SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland UCB University of California at Berkeley WP Washington Post WUO Weather Underground Organization xiii Introduction All over the world during the 1960s, movements led by the young radi- cally challenged existing forms of political and cultural authority. With great optimism and energy, they attacked governments, militaries, insti- tutions, ideologies, and common ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. The year 1968—that potent symbol of the 1960s as a whole—can be evoked by reciting the places where left-wing rebellion erupted with spe- cial force and drama: Paris, Prague, New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Saigon, Mexico City.1 New Leftists were not only implicitly united across national bound- aries by their shared opposition to oppression, their commitment to dem- ocratic participation, and their use of militant direct action as a means of protest; they were also consciously internationalist. In what amounted to a global crusade, students and youths throughout the world protested the Vietnam War. They assimilated dimensions of Black Power and Third World revolutionary ideologies, in which they saw