“Get up – no fisimatenments – hands up” – what sounds like a bad crime story was the prelude to a successful double strike against the RAF terrorists. On February 4, 1974 at 3:57 a.m., a so-called mobile task force stormed a conspiracy apartment in Hamburg for the first time. "You bastards," a woman shouted at them - as the eavesdroppers from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution heard over the tapped telephone line.

Just five minutes later, police officers in Frankfurt am Main stormed an attic on Eleonore-Sterling-Strasse: naked and with their hands raised, three "accomplices" of the four arrested Hamburg residents approached the officers in the "hallway brightly lit by police hand lamps." “They were woken from their sleep and couldn’t even get out of their shock” – sneered the head of the state security department of the Hessian LKA.

"In one fell swoop," SPIEGEL wrote admiringly at the time, the state authorities had "cleared a piece of the German terrorist scene" without firing a single shot. The “profile catalog” of the wanted “anarchist violent criminals” shrank to 14 people.

Although those arrested belonged to the “rearguard” of the group, their arsenal of weapons was still noteworthy: 30 hand grenades, 2 anti-personnel mines, submachine guns and handguns, as well as 800 grams of the plastic explosive “Nitropenta” were seized. There are also around a hundred, some of them fake, personal documents.

The detainees had apparently set up a kind of “shock squad” “that could possibly prepare for the taking of hostages and the release of prisoners.” According to the findings of the Frankfurt criminal police, the “blowing up of prison walls” also appeared to have been planned. Hamburg's Interior Senator Hans-Ulrich Klose reported "new efforts to procure weapons." Bank robberies were planned and implemented to finance the actions. “You have to stop tinkering,” urged group members on the tapped telephone, “this stuff has to be put to use.”

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Mugshots of suspected RAF members, 1971

Photo: dpa

Eavesdropping was initially difficult because the suspects had agreed on a code - "time-shifted dates and times" and a "mixture of neo-left jargon and suggestive language interspersed with code words." "You talked about pictures and meant pistols," explained a constitutional officer. The tailing was also not trivial: to avoid detection, the terrorists disguised themselves with “sticky beards” and wigs.

The arrests of Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, for example, were previously more likely to be due to chance. Now the investigators demonstrated that they had apparently found the right means in the fight against left-wing terrorism. "West German investigators have never known so much about an underground group," praised SPIEGEL. Eavesdropping and surveillance continued for months, and only after “careful secret service preparation” did the authorities strike in a completely bloodless manner.

After the successful attack, BKA officials assumed that although some "dispersed individuals and radical enthusiasts" would continue to commit violent acts, there was no longer an "organized group" among the "remainders." From an official perspective, the “wave of anarchism” is a “phenomenon typical of the time that we can adapt to,” a problem that we “now have under control,” as one Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution put it.

That was, as we soon learned, premature. The wave of terror reached a cruel climax in 1977 with the murder of Federal Prosecutor General Siegfried Buback, Dresdner Bank boss Jürgen Ponto and employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer.

SPIEGEL 7/1974: The BM code was cracked

To the table of contents of issue 7/1974

Otherwise in this issue:

Mysterious upgrade

Parallel to the disarmament talks between East and West, the Soviet power in Eastern Europe was massively arming itself. Thousands of state-of-the-art T 62 battle tanks were relocated to the Eastern Bloc countries, the number of guns was doubled, and the number of nuclear warheads increased by 50 percent.

Was the Kremlin preparing to launch a war to the west? Or was this just an attempt to drive up the price of reducing the size of the troops “with a strong gulp,” as “Peace Chancellor” Willy Brandt suspected?

SPIEGEL Soviet expert Fritjof Meyer (house jargon "Meyer-Ost") did not think he had discovered anything during his research: Moscow only wanted to secure its western flank, which was classified as insecure, in order to arm itself for a war in the east. The military conflict with the People's Republic of China is imminent, at least that's what US military experts predicted.

Cover photo of issue 7/1974

Leonid Brezhnev had already warned Washington in 1973 that the USSR "couldn't hesitate too much longer to do something against China." It was said that the Kremlin leader had shown an "almost schizophrenic obsession" with an alleged Chinese threat. China's long-range nuclear missiles would soon be able to reach Moscow. US intelligence officers therefore expected a Soviet first strike in 1974.

Since the conflict on the Ussuri border river in 1969, both powers had assembled a huge military force on the border. Rumors of skirmishes circulated. A real war between the red states was extremely unlikely: China neither had the means to bring Russia to its knees nor could China be practically conquered - "Beijing is not Prague," SPIEGEL knew.

So for the time being both sides left it at a “propaganda war” for supremacy in world socialism. People insulted each other as much as they could. It was said from Beijing that the Soviets had "gone extremely mad." Moscow conjured up a “new Mongol danger,” while Pravda was horrified by the “deliberately slanderous character of China’s cries.” The Soviet military magazine “Red Star” criticized the “Maoist group,” while the Chinese news agency Xinhua criticized the “Brezhnev clique.” Every trick was used to incite the minorities in the enemy's empire to rebel.

Behind this was a deep-rooted fear of each other, which extends from the storm of the medieval Mongol ruler Genghis Khan to the present day.

SPIEGEL 7/1974: “A black cloud hangs over us”

Proven in urban warfare

The battle for the socialization of empty old buildings raged in the big cities; in the spring of 1974 several squatted houses in Frankfurt were to be evacuated. SPIEGEL didn't want to withhold practical tips for progressive squatters from its readers and printed an excerpt from the "Handbook for Squatters", published by the "Verlagskollektiv Rote Klinke".

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Eviction of an occupied house in Frankfurt am Main, 1974

Photo: Manfred Rehm / picture-alliance / dpa

To protect against rubber truncheons, the work recommended “sliding multi-folded newspapers under your clothing”; If necessary, supplemented by a jockstrap for the particularly sensitive soft tissues.

The recommendation is that the defense of a house threatened with eviction should, if possible, begin on the upper floors, as this makes it easier to throw stones, paint bags and Molotov cocktails. But be careful with poorly filled bottles, as there is a risk of an “explosive gasoline-air mixture” that also endangers the launcher itself. Naturally, the stairwell was marked as strategically crucial – the “eye of the needle through which the police officers” had to get through. “Pouring soft soap” and defending with long iron rods would have proven effective here, but these should only ever be used for pushing, not for hitting.

Indispensable for “every fighting comrade” were a “protective helmet with a chin strap,” a face cloth, protective goggles and “at least one pack of bandages.” It is not known to what extent the required birth control pills were helpful in urban warfare.

SPIEGEL 7/1974: “Comrades, save throwing material”