Military sports group Rohwer
The military sports group Rohwer was an armed group of right- wing terrorism in the Federal Republic. She carried out seven armed robberies and attacks before she was drafted in 1978.
history
The Otte group can be seen as a forerunner of WSG Rohwer . It was also a right-wing terrorist group that was active in the years before the WSG Rohwer. She hoarded weapons and explosives and set off two bombs in the fall of 1977. After it was broken up by the police, the military sports group Rohwer took over the implementation of further right-wing terrorist actions. From 1977 to 1978 the group carried out seven attacks and assaults.
The leader of the group was the businessman and NPD member Uwe Rohwer . The aim of the group was to their attacks left groups foist to prepare through an insecure population to land on a legal coup. The weapons and funds obtained through the group's actions were ultimately to be used to liberate Rudolf Hess and to blow up a concentration camp memorial. Furthermore, the murder of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld was planned. An attack on the Berlin Wall and the Lauenburg – West Berlin transit route was also planned.
In its organization, the group acted on the model of left-wing extremist associations.
Actions
On November 22nd, 1977, the group of Bundeswehr soldiers attacked a barracks in Wentorf near Hamburg and stole the gun ( HK G3 ) of the guard on duty.
On February 5, 1978, a squad of five men drove 200 kilometers south in two cars from northern Germany. At 2:40 a.m., three black-masked members climbed onto the Bergen-Hohne NATO training area and stormed the guard tent of a unit of the Dutch armed forces . With submachine guns they forced the Dutch soldiers to lie down and stole their weapons, four Uzi - machine guns and ammunition. The group overpowered two Dutch people who had rushed to help. One of those attacked reported as a witness at the later trial that he was supposed to be shot first, but the perpetrators then left it at "punching us in the face with their fists and kicking us".
In the same style, the group attacked several Bundeswehr outposts.
In addition, two members of the group attacked the Hamburger Sparkasse on Volksdorfer Damm. The masked men, armed with pistols and MPs, robbed DM 66,000. They also robbed a Cologne businessman. In the end the group had made a total of 150,000 DM.
Defendants and Trial
In 1979, five terrorists in the group were sentenced to between six and eleven years in prison in the first German trial against right-wing terrorists . 132 witnesses and 12 experts were heard during the trial.
The main defendant and spokesman for the group was the then 23-year-old former Bundeswehr lieutenant Michael Kühnen . He was dismissed from the Bundeswehr in 1977 for violating his official duties.
The youngest accused was the photo merchant Lutz Wegener (* 1957), who already had a criminal record for the devastation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp memorial . He viewed Bergen-Belsen and the other Nazi extermination camps as a “memorial for lies in the past, for lies of manslaughter, for lies of extermination”. He was charged with fourfold robberies.
The accused group member Schulte (* 1955) was a staff sergeant in the German Armed Forces and claimed to have received National Socialist training from his superiors in the German Armed Forces.
Uwe Rohwer (* 1937) was the oldest defendant and a former functionary of the NPD and "Gauführer" Nordmark of the right-wing radical Wiking youth . As a "sergeant" in a "military sports group Nordland", he is said to have trained young Nazi-minded people in the military. He worked as a merchant and had five children.
On the first day of the trial, right-wing lawyer Peter Stöckicht filed a petition for bias against a judge because he belonged to the SPD . He justified this with the fact that the SPD was a party "in which traitors and agents like Brandt and Wehner work", so he could " not speak objectively against National Socialists ".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Susanne Kailitz: Combat Groups in the Underground: Review The terror from the right has a long history in Germany . Parliament , 29–31 / 2012, accessed on 14 January 2017.
- ^ A b Rainer Roeser, Tomas Sager , Andrea Röpke , Anton Maegerle : 40 years of right-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic . In: SPD parliamentary group (ed.): Arguments - right-wing extremism in Germany . Publication of the SPD parliamentary group, Berlin 2013, p. 10 (pdf; 1.4 MB).
- ↑ a b c Ulrich Völklein: Criminal case against "Kühnen and others": "I am not a democrat". Die Zeit , July 13, 1979, accessed on January 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Right-wing radicals: tanks from the left . Der Spiegel 20/1978, May 15, 1978, pp. 132-134, here p. 134.