A FAR-RIGHT terror group had planned to storm the German Bundestag (parliament), overthrow the government and install a new army.
Over 3,000 German police were involved in raids on high-profile targets which included a prince, an ex-MP and former soldiers.
This was not a rag-tag bunch of internet plotters and conspiracy theorists. German police have said that this was a real attempt at a coup which was the brainchild of an aristocrat called Heinrich XIII.
The group had organised a “council” to take charge after the putsch, as well as a “military arm that would build a new German army”, chief federal prosecutor Peter Frank told journalists.
“Some members of the terrorist organisation also considered using force to enter the German Bundestag (parliament),” Frank said.
He later told the ARD broadcaster that the group’s preparations were “already at an advanced stage”, though no concrete date had been set.
“We are sure that it would have come to a strike,” he said.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told public radio MDR he was “deeply concerned” by the alleged plot, describing it as a “new level”.
Around 3,000 officers including elite anti-terror units took part in the early morning raids searching more than 130 properties, in what German media described as one of the country’s largest-ever police actions against extremists.
The raids targeted alleged members of the “Citizens of the Reich” (Reichsburger) movement, federal prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors in Karlsruhe, southern Germany, said they had arrested 25 people, including one in Austria and another in Italy, and identified a further 27 people as suspected members or supporters of the network.
Julia Ebner is a journalist who infiltrated some of these extremist and radical groups.
Speaking on The Newsagents podcast, Ebner explained what these members of the Reichsburg actually want.
“They believe in the old German borders, they believe that the system was better and that today’s political system and today’s borders are not legitimate and that since World War Two, Germany has been a puppet state and has not been basically sovereign.
So that’s also why they call themselves sovereign citizens or Reichsburg because they want to reestablish this idealised version of the German right.
“They don’t really adhere to any of the Democratic pillars of Germany and to any of the legal framework. So they are completely outside of the legal framework, which is, of course, why it makes them so dangerous, because they would just not adhere to anything that’s written in the Constitution or in the laws.”
Those arrested are accused of having formed a group that “had set itself the goal of overcoming the existing state order in Germany and replacing it with their own kind of state”, prosecutors in Karlsruhe said.
“The accused are united by a deep rejection of state institutions and the free, democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany,” they said.
The suspects were aware that their plan “could only be realised by using military means and violence against state representatives”, prosecutors said.
They allegedly planned to appoint one of the arrested suspects, identified by local media as aristocrat and businessman Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss, as Germany’s new leader after the coup.
Heinrich XIII had already sought to make contact with Russian officials to discuss Germany’s “new state order” after the coup, prosecutors said.
There was however “no indication that the contact persons responded positively to his request”, they said.
A Russian woman named only as Vitalia B., who was among those arrested yesterday, is suspected of having facilitated those contacts, prosecutors added.
Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a former member of parliament for the far-right AfD party and Berlin judge, was also arrested.
The ex-MP had been tapped by the group to take over as justice minister after the planned coup, chief prosecutor Frank said.
Other suspected members include current and former members of the German army in the “low single digits”, a spokesman for the defence ministry said at a regular press conference.
The Reichsbürger believe that the modern German state, the Federal Republic of Germany, is a fake. They believe that it is not a state, but a private company (GmbH, German for Ltd.) They have many explanations for that, but I do not want to go into the details. Important is 2/x
— Sergej Sumlenny (@sumlenny) December 7, 2022
One of those arrested was an active soldier in the KSK special forces, who worked in a “support” role, the spokesman said.
“A former officer of the special units of the German army” was likewise held near Perugia, Italy, the local police said in a statement.
Many media analysts have argued that what happened in Germany yesterday is the result of the fomenting of old conspiracy theorists mixed with the same slogans as those involved in Q Anon – a US based group of conspiracy theorists who believe the world is controlled by the “deep state” and a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles.
Julia Ebner added: “It’s very interesting actually, and not just Germany, the Q Anon scene is using the same slogans, you really see that it’s a global pattern. And of course, they might then tailor it to national or even regional political news events and to individual politicians that they would see as their main enemy figures and main targets for attacks in Germany.
“In fact, we saw even before the January 6, capital storming in the US happened, we saw that in 2020, something very similar happened in front of the German parliament where people associated with that Reichsburger scene and with Q Anon, they’re trying to storm the German parliament. So all of this doesn’t really come as a completely new trend or as a surprise, but it’s definitely exacerbated over the last few years.”
The Reichsburger movement includes far-right extremists, conspiracy theorists and gun enthusiasts who reject the legitimacy of the modern German republic.
Its followers generally believe in the continued existence of the pre-World War I German Reich, or empire, under a monarchy and several groups have declared their own states.
Long dismissed as malcontents and oddballs, the Reichsbuerger have become increasingly radicalised in recent years and are seen as a growing security threat.
The investigation gave “a look into the abyss” of far-right terror from the movement, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
As part of the preparations for the coup, members of the alleged terror cell acquired weapons, organised shooting practice and tried to recruit new followers, particularly among the military and police, according to prosecutors.
Germany considers far-right terrorism the biggest threat to its security following a spate of attacks in recent years.
In April, police foiled a plot by a far-right group to kidnap the health minister.
With reporting by AFP
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