Earlier this year, a trial began in the case of the “Bommeleeër Affär”, a series of bombings that which shook quiet Luxembourg in the mid-1980s. Targets included government offices near the Glacis and the offices of Wort publisher Éditions Saint Paul (photo). On Friday, writer Fausto Gardini offered a primer on this period of the Grand Duchy’s history. Here, in the second of three excerpts from his new e-book, Luxembourg Under Fire, Gardini explains how the terrorist attacks took place in the midst of the Cold War.

Excerpt from “Luxembourg Under Fire”

Certainly, all intelligence and secret services throughout the world had to have been in a state of heightened and tense vigilance. Cuban, Russian and Eastern European countries are intervening on the African continent, in many countries from which their former European colonists had withdrawn or are withdrawing.

When Algeria (1962), Morocco and Tunisia (1956) gained their independence from France, close to two million colonists (known in France as pieds-noirs) fled to the home country.

Guinea-Bissau in 1974, Angola and Mozambique in 1975 gained their independence from Portugal, resulting in over one million Portuguese colonists displaced to the homeland. In late 1975, Spain withdraws from its Western Sahara colony, leaving a vacuum and neighbours at odds over the territory.

Germany emerges from its year of terror (1977). Der Spiegel magazine states [translation from German]: “There has never before been so much fear, so much confusion as in this German autumn in the Federal Republic”.

The United Kingdom suffers through its distressing “Winter of Discontent”. Revolutionary movements are brewing in Central America while socialist liberation fronts continue to battle corrupt and dictatorial regimes in several South American countries.

In 1978 the world is in turmoil. The apparent lack of international competence of US president Jimmy Carter, in office since January 20, 1977, is eyed with wariness and skepticism by leaders worldwide. Communist parties in France, Italy and Spain gain supporters with a new version of the traditional, stale communism, dubbed “Eurocommunism”.

Could the geo-political state of affairs be viewed with some level of suspicion by certain domestic officials within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, within the Central Intelligence Agency, by officials as well as by certain leaders of member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?

Could there have been instructions and co-ordination directives to and between national European stay-behind networks to activate their operatives, perform training and drills in order to be ready for a soon-to-come anticipated invasion or implosion?

How real is the threat for Western European democracies to be taken over by communist parties through legitimate channels, i.e. elections, and then impose communist-style totalitarian regimes with sham democratic structures, common in post-World War II Eastern European countries?

Part three tomorrow.

Fausto Gardini is a Luxembourger living in the United States. His current e-book, Luxembourg Under Fire: Luxembourg’s Bommeleeër Affär is available on amazon.com for €5.52. Gardini’s previous books include The American Aunt (2011), Luxembourg On My Mind, Volumes I (2011) and II (2012) and Storms Over Luxembourg (2012). He also writes the Luxembourg-US history blog Luxembourgensia.