WEST GERMANY: Ambush in a Civil War

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After a brutal kidnaping Bonn plans to get tough on terrorists

The two-car armed convoy that wound its way through Cologne's streets last week was bringing well-known Industrialist Hanns-Martin Schleyer, 62, home from his downtown office. Suddenly the blue Mercedes carrying Schleyer screeched to a halt in order to avoid crashing into a yellow sedan that was blocking half the street and a baby carriage that had rolled across the other half. Sensing danger, the driver of the convoy's second car pulled up behind Schleyer's auto. As three of the bodyguards jumped out, they and Schleyer's chauffeur were mowed down by at least 300 machine-gun bullets, fired by about half a dozen terrorists. His ambushed guards sprawled dead in pools of blood, Schleyer was dragged into a white Volkswagen Kombi bus and whisked away.

The abduction sent waves of anger and fear rippling through West Germany The brutal incident was the latest round in what many West Germans have begun calling a civil war between their government and a small army of nihilistic urban terrorists bent on disrupting public order. Since April, Chief Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback has been gunned down on the streets of Karlsruhe and Banker Jürgen Ponto slain inside his estate near Frankfurt (TIME, Aug. 15). A report by the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Office) estimates that some 1,200 persons in West Germany could become active and dangerous at any time," and an additional 6,000 might give the terrorists "more than verbal support " No wonder that traditionally law-abiding West Germans are clamoring loudly for Bonn to take swift and decisive action against what appears to be a terrorist epidemic.

The daring, meticulously executed kidnaping was a humiliating shock to authorities. Less than two weeks before it happened, police had warned Schleyer that he might be in danger and urged him to travel with bodyguards, as an increasing number of German businessmen have been doing. Not only had police found the initials H.M. (possibly standing for Schleyer's first names) on papers in the possession of terrorists, but the industrialist was also a natural target. A director of Daimler-Benz, Schleyer also heads both the Federation of German Industries and the Confederation of German Employers—the country's two most powerful business associations. He has often appeared on television as a spokesman for Big Business on policy issues and labor disputes

After receiving word of the abduction Chancellor Helmut Schmidt dropped all other work to take personal command of a special "crisis staff' composed of high officials, security police and crime experts. A nationwide alert was ordered, and Schmidt made a televised appeal for all Germans to cooperate in the search.