Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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Replacement of members arrested or killed in the Red Army Faction is
not a problem. In 1984 the authorities arrested seven of the twenty to
twenty-five hard-core RAP members, and still the '84/85 Offensive' went
ahead. This appears nonnal as the group remains active and maintains
fifteen to twenty members in the hard-core, despite the arrest of
seventy-eight hard-core members since the group's founding. 6o
The media, and some security officials, see the new RAP recruits
coming from squatters, anti -nuclear groups, and others associated with
the .Autonanen. They believe that these groups, with their violent
fringes, act as a 'pressure cooker' as the person moves from these
groups to the RAP, which can offer more militancy in the long run than
the other groups. 61
This viewpoint overlooks that the AUtonanen are against hierarchy
and group indoctrination, which are found in the RAP, and that any
Autonanen members who joined the RAP were already members of RAP legal
support groups62 (see chapter two).
The usual route to RAP hard-core membership begins with visits to
RAP members' trials, membership in one of the commi ttees seeking
improvement of prison conditions, personal contact through prison visits
or other persons such as lawyers, and participation at public
demonstrations, seminars and other events. On top of this is added a key
experience such as participation in occupying offices, or some other
demonstration. 63
A key experience is sometimes not necessarily one particular event,
but long-tenn exposure to events, such as Christof Wackernagel's
attendence at the Stammheim trials of Baader and others while working
for the lawyer Klaus Croissant. During this job Wackernagel' s belief
system shifted to a position that the government system could only be
changed through violence, and he joined the RAF in 1977 .64
All of the suspected Red Army Faction members in the 1986 campaign
were all active for at least three years in the legal arms of the RAP
before becoming hard-core members, and had joined the underground in
60 Gerhard Boeden, "Die RAF und ihr Nachwuchs", Terrorismus:
Infonnationsdienst 7 T 1987, 1-4, 1. The ten people arrested in the
Gennan Democratic Republic in 1990 were all hard-core members, and had
all 'retired' from active membership.
61 ibid., 2, Boeden uses the word Durchlaufhitzer; Friedrich
Zintnermann in Die Welt 25 October 1986.
62 Horchem (1987 I), 13-4.
63 Boeden Terrorismus: Infonnationsdienst 7/1987, 2.
64 Frank Nicolaus, "Theater urn einen Freigaenger" stern 39 (35) 21-7
August 1986, 152.