Showdown Against RAF Terror: Helmut Schmidt’s Crisis Management in the German Autumn

"The killing of individuals must be accepted."

Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Bonn, in a telephone conversation with Minister of State Hans-Jürgen Wischnewski, Dubai, October 1977

The year of terror in 1977, which included the kidnapping of German industrial leader Hanns Martin Schleyer and later the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane "Landshut" with 86 passengers and five crew members on board, presented the Federal Republic of Germany with its greatest test to date. Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt had to engage in crisis management like no other incumbent before him. Hanns Martin Schleyer was ultimately murdered by his abductors, also the Captain of the “Landshut” Jürgen Schumann. The other "Landshut" hostages were freed by members of Border Guard Force 9 under Commander Ulrich Wegener.

In this book, political scientist and historian Martin Rupps, who was responsible for bringing the "Landshut" wreckage back to Germany from Brazil, retells the story of these fateful weeks, drawing on a range of previously unpublished sources to do so. For the first time, he shares deep insights into the thoughts and actions of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the members of the core and extended crisis teams. Contrary to the official narrative, Schmidt has never practiced more political cooperation than in these weeks. Further, in the hijacked "Landshut" itself, events unfolded differently than previously reported. "Man is the wolf of man", as philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously wrote.

Martin Rupps, born 1964, is a political scientist, historian and an editor and author at Südwestrundfunk Mainz, a public broadcasting corporation serving the southwest of Germany. He is the author of several book publications, including a biography on Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor. His books inclunde: "Der Lotse. Helmut Schmidt and the Germans" (2015), and "Kanzlerdämmerung. Whoever comes too late is allowed to govern" (2017).