Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

act for their awn ideas of organisation. They know that without partners
they stand alone and that the armed struggle is lost.16
56
3.2 State Sponsor hip of West Gennan Terrorism
Until recently it was safe to say that there was no direct state
control of the West German left"':'wing terrorist groups. An article in
1980 stated that there never was any evidence of direct influence by the
Soviets or East Europeans on the Gennan terrorist organisations, while a
1987 publication said the Federal Prosecutor General had no evidence in
recent history of this. It did, however, caution that there was a
suspicion of East German money laundering aiding the terrorists based
upon their high frequency of trips to East Berlin, and mentioned the
possibility of East German money to leftist groups in the Federal
Republic finding its way into terrorist coffers.17
A danger of emphasis on foreign sponsored state terrorism is the
assumption that if foreign supporters of domestic terrorist groups are
removed, then the terrorist group will end. This ignores terrorists'
local political bases. The quesion of state sponsorship must also be
tempered by the caution of sponsors because of the potential ex~nple the
supported group could set for the sponsor's own people if it is
successful. Furthermore, there is the problem of control over the group,
who may have its awn ideas, and the potential damage revelation of the
support given to the groUp.18
Given these caveats, it is possible to conceive of outright state
control of a terrorist group, its funding of a group, and its toleration
of a group operating from within its borders. Only the last two appear
to have occurred with the West German left-wing terrorist groups.
Before the West German terrorist groups were organised, Ulrike
Meinhof and her former husband, Klaus Rainer Rohl, were secret members
of the outlawed Communist Party of Germany from 1956 to 1964, when Rohl
was expelled. From 1955 until 1964, Rohl, the publisher of the left-wing
magazine konkret was funded by monies received from the East Germans.
16 Red Army Faction, ffDokumentation: Erklaerung der RAP zur
Erschiessung von Rohwedder ff , Clash: Zeitung fuer Widerstand in Europa 3
(April [?J 1991), 40-2; Hans Josef Horchem, ffDer Verfall der Roten Armee
Fraktion ff Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 9 November 1990, 54-61, 60.
17 Hans Josef Horchem, ffTerrorism and Government Response: The
German Experience ff Jerusalem Journal of International Relations 4 (3)
1980, 43-55, 48; Dobson, Payne (1987), 133, 161.
18 Wilkinson (1986), 193-4; Richard E. Rubenstein, Alchemists of the
Revolution: Terrorism in the Modern World (London: I.B. Tauris and Co.,
Ltd., 1987), 54.