Stockholm, 24 April 1975: The Embassy Siege and a Police Force Caught Unprepared

In April 1975 six RAF members seized the West German embassy in Stockholm. Two hostages were killed, and Sweden's police showed how little they were…

6 October 2026 · Part of Cold War — a guide to 18 articles →

On 24 April 1975 six members of the Rote Armee Fraktion walked into the West German embassy in Stockholm, took twelve people hostage and demanded the release of 26 prisoners in West Germany. Twelve hours later the building was burning, two hostages and one attacker were dead, and a second attacker was dying. The demand had been refused, and Sweden's police had been shown to be unready for an event of this kind.

Not the other Stockholm story

The word "Stockholm" in hostage history usually points to the 1973 bank robbery at Norrmalmstorg, which gave "Stockholm syndrome" its name. This is a different event, two years later and a few kilometres away: a political seizure by a West German armed group, on foreign soil, aimed at a government that was not Sweden's. That Sweden had no part in the dispute is the first fact about it.

Who they were and what they named themselves

The group called itself Kommando Holger Meins, after a prisoner who had died on hunger strike in Wittlich prison on 9 November 1974. Naming an operation after a dead comrade was the group's settled habit, discussed in our piece on the Kommando statement. The six were Siegfried Hausner, who led the group, Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Hanna Krabbe, Bernhard Rössner, Lutz Taufer and Ulrich Wessel.

Their demand was the release of 26 imprisoned members and associates, who were to be flown out of West Germany. It was addressed to the Bonn government, led by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and it came at a moment when the group's leading figures were facing trial, a trial that eventually needed a purpose-built courtroom building at Stammheim. The attackers said they carried 15 kilograms of TNT and would blow up the building if the police intervened.

The day

Two points about this record need care. The sources agree that the two attachés were killed by the occupiers, but the order of events inside the building, and what exactly was said at each deadline, rests largely on later testimony and on the court record, not on any neutral observer. And the sources describe the explosion as apparently accidental; the occupiers' own intentions at that moment are not something an outside historian can establish with certainty.

The decision in Bonn

The central political fact is a refusal. The government in Bonn did not release the prisoners, and it held to that. Whatever one makes of the decision, it set a pattern that was repeated in the autumn of 1977, which we trace in the German autumn, day by day: the state would not trade prisoners for hostages, and the cost of that policy would be borne by the people held.

What the Swedish police could not do

The Swedish side is the least known part of the story. The scholar Dan Hansén, in his study of the episode, concludes that for everyone involved it was obvious that the Swedish police did not have the capacity to act professionally in a terrorist situation. The group wanted something no Swedish official could grant, which left the police with little to do but wait.

The more striking point is what followed. Hansén's argument is that the decade after the siege was marked by stasis in Swedish counter-terrorism policy making. Other states moved faster. West Germany had created its GSG 9 unit after the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, and Norway installed a comparable force in 1975, in the wake of what had happened in Stockholm. Sweden's own response, on this account, was unusually limited for a crisis so plainly instructive.

That is an interpretation by one research team, and it is worth keeping apart from the narrative facts above. But it is a useful correction to the assumption that a dramatic failure automatically produces reform.

After the explosion

Hausner was flown to West Germany, where he died of his injuries on 4 May 1975, at Stammheim. The four surviving attackers, Krabbe, Dellwo, Taufer and Rössner, were tried by the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf and on 20 July 1977 each received two life sentences for two murders, with hostage-taking as an aggravating circumstance.

For the people killed, the record is plain and should be said plainly. Andreas von Mirbach and Heinz Hillegaart were embassy officials, not parties to the dispute the attackers were pursuing.

What this episode shows

The siege is the clearest example of the RAF's second phase, as the German federal agency for civic education describes it: an organisation that now acted to free its imprisoned members, not merely to attack targets. Four features stand out.

• The operation was built around a prisoner exchange, which made the German state's refusal the decisive event.
• It was staged abroad, which exposed a country with no experience of the group.
• It failed on its own terms, ending in the group's own casualties and no releases.
• Its legal record is unusually complete, because the survivors were convicted of the killings.

This is why the siege is a separate row in our record of these operations. The later decades, covered in the third generation, look very different, because convictions became rare.

Chronology

• 9 November 1974: Holger Meins dies on hunger strike in prison.
• 24 April 1975: Embassy seized; two hostages killed; explosion before midnight.
• 4 May 1975: Siegfried Hausner dies of his injuries.
• 20 July 1977: Four surviving attackers sentenced in Düsseldorf.

Conclusion

Stockholm 1975 is remembered, when it is remembered, as one more RAF operation. Read closely it is two stories. One is German: a refusal to negotiate that the state held to at the cost of two lives. The other is Swedish: a police force that was publicly shown to be unready and a political system that, on one careful reading, learned remarkably little from it.

Frequently asked questions

Is this the event that gave "Stockholm syndrome" its name? No. That term comes from the 1973 bank robbery at Norrmalmstorg. The 1975 embassy siege was a political seizure by a West German group and is a separate event.

Who was killed at the embassy? Military attaché Colonel Andreas von Mirbach and economic attaché Heinz Hillegaart were killed by the occupiers. Among the attackers, Ulrich Wessel died in the explosion and Siegfried Hausner died of his injuries ten days later.

Did the German government give in? No. The Bonn government refused to release the 26 prisoners whose release was demanded, and the siege ended with the explosion shortly before midnight.

What did Sweden change afterwards? According to Dan Hansén's study, very little for about a decade, even though the police had shown they lacked the capacity to deal with such an event. Norway, by contrast, set up a comparable unit in 1975.

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