A sweep raid has taken place in Germany with police authorities on the alert following credible reports that far-right extremists were planning a coup in the Eurozone locomotive. Authorities have already made at least 25 arrests of members of the "Reichsbuerger" ("Citizens of the Reich"). Some of them are taking a positive view of the creation of an armed wing and are preparing for "Day X", when they will revolt against the government.
In recent hours, the German authorities have been "combing" the area around the Thuringian Forest Palace as well as the residential area of Berlin. According to the German newspaper "Bild", the country's elite "SEK" forces have raided a house in the Wannsee district of Berlin. The police raid on the far-right "Reich Citizens" was carried out after reliable sources said that they were planning a violent "system change".
Since the early hours of the morning, officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and special units such as the SEK have taken action throughout Germany against the "Reich Citizens."
Under the code name "Soko" (Shadow), some 3,000 men conducted a search of 137 houses belonging to 52 suspects. According to German media reports, authorities have already made at least 25 arrests. At 6am today, according to the German publication, special forces stormed a house in the residential area of Berlin's Wannsee district. Three minutes later, there was a raid on the Weidmansale hunting lodge in the Bad Lobenstein district, located in Thuringia, the German newspaper writes.
At the same time, police raided around 30 properties in Baden-Wuerttemberg, including a car repair shop and a carpenter's workshop in the mountains of Saxony. Further searches were carried out in Bavaria, Hesse, Lower Saxony, Kitzbühel in Austria and Perugia in Italy.
Searches are still being extended to Kitzbuehel, Austria, targeting at least 52 people, including Prince Henry 13th of Royce, 71, and former paratrooper unit commander Rudiger von P, 69, who have already been arrested. Also involved in the organisation was Birgit Malzak Winkemann, a former federal MP of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and currently a judge in Berlin, who is also a shooting sportswoman and in possession of "many firearms". Among those arrested and suspects are also a lawyer, a doctor, former soldiers and an active KSK soldier. A particular role in the radicalization of the organization appears to have been played by the conspiracy organization QAnon, which motivated the January 2021 mob to storm the Capitol in the U.S.
Other members of the organization are: Maximilian E., Michael F., Paul T., Norbert T., Marcus H., Frank H., Matthias H., Root L., Andreas M. Thomas M., Harald R., Renee R., Melanie R., Ralph S., Norfram S. Thomas T., Marco H., Riddinger R., and former councillors of the anti-immigration party "AfD" Christian B., and Peter B. It is worth noting that among those arrested are the two Russian nationals, who are being treated as suspects by the authorities.
Information and surveillance
Berlin police had traced the "secret coup" by monitoring the movements of a man in Hesse. According to BILD, the Berlin government was informed of the existence of an anti-constitutional group by information received from federal security authorities at the end of August 2022.
For the federal prosecutor general, "The defendants belong to a terrorist organization that was founded at the end of November 2021 with the aim of overthrowing the existing order in Germany and replacing it with its own form of government. This organisation is not deterred by violence. It knows that there will also be deaths. However, it accepts at least this scenario as a necessary intermediate step to achieve the systemic change it is aiming for at all levels."
After the coup, the organization's goal was to form a government. The new government apparatus was to be established as a "principality" according to monarchical principles and divided into several ministries. The high-ranking members of the organisation were said to be people with influential positions in socially or economically powerful sectors of public life. Former soldiers of the German "Bundeswehr" are also involved in the coup plans.
According to information from BILD, several of these individuals had allegedly acquired weapons legally.
Who are "Reichsbuerger" ("Citizens of the Reich") in Germany
Some of them are increasingly positive about the creation of an armed wing and are preparing for "Day X", during which they will revolt against the government. For the German agency "BfV" - charged with monitoring extremist organisations that threaten constitutional order, the number of members of the movement reached 15,600 in January - an increase of more than 50% in a year.
Most of the extremists are in Bavaria, where they are estimated at 3,500. They are followed by Baden-Wuerttemberg with 2,500, North Rhine-Westphalia with 2,200, Lower Saxony with 1,400 and Saxony with 1,300. The extremist movement is also reportedly working on plans to create an armed wing that would engage in violent acts, according to the German magazine "Focus."
"They are preparing for Day X," an unnamed security official told the magazine. The "Reichsbuerger", according to Die Welt, is a loose coalition of nationalist organizations across the country who believe that modern Germany and its political institutions are controlled by a "puppet" government installed by the victors of World War II, making it illegitimate.
Many members of the "Citizens of the Reich" are reportedly on the far right and argue that the Third Reich (which ended in 1945 with Germany's capitulation) should return to its pre-1937 borders, which included large tracts of territory in Poland, the Czech Republic and other neighbouring countries. In the past they were seen as quaint conspiracy theorists, but a series of attacks on the police has forced the German government to become more concerned with them. For some, they are the future face of the German far-right.
Some identify with the Reich and do not recognize today's Germany, and others make racist rhetoric in a cultural way.
They are also called "Reich Germans" or "Germanites" and as the title suggests, they feel they are citizens of the Third Reich and manifest this at every opportunity by proclaiming that they do not recognize the Federal Republic of Germany, its constitution, its state institutions, its services while refusing to fulfill the obligations a citizen has to the state in which he or she resides.
This attitude is inspired by the far-right ideology that is common in the ranks of the far-right movement. Among its members - whose numbers are growing - there are at least 1,000 who have "a closed far-right worldview", according to Timo Reinfranc, an expert on right-wing radical ideology at the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
A spokesman for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution clarifies, however, that the group is heterogeneous and fragmented and that it offers ideological shelter to "those" who live in their own world, up to far-right nostalgic Prussian right-wingers. Some of them do not pay taxes and fines, drive around with Prussian ID cards or Prussian car registration numbers and do their best to annoy services and officials. The relevant ministries in many federal states have issued circulars with rules for "difficult customers".
Source: protothema.gr
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