The ringleader is wearing a handkerchief and tie, and his gray hair is combed back. “Germany is not a sovereign state,” says Henry XIII. Prince Reuss. The 71-year-old speaks at a conference in 2019, the video can be viewed online today. In his speech he explains his world view. The Freemasons triggered the First World War, he explains. Hitler was backed by US funds to create a Jewish state. In the end, the man demands a peace treaty so that Germany can become an independent state.
What Prince Reuss says sounds confused. But he is dangerous according to security authorities. Prince Reuss is one of the leading figures of a right-wing extremist terrorist organization from the Reich bourgeois milieu. With his comrades-in-arms he planned a coup in Germany. And that specifically. The group included a soldier from the KSK in the Bundeswehr and a number of former military personnel. The organization had weapons and considered using force to invade the Bundestag.
The federal prosecutor arrested 25 people from the group in a large-scale raid on Wednesday morning: 22 members and three suspected supporters. Around 3,000 officers were deployed in eleven federal states, it was one of the largest raids against extremists that there has ever been in Germany. There were 150 searches. “The investigations allow us to look into the abyss of a terrorist threat from the Reich citizen milieu,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). The association was driven “by violent fantasies of revolution and conspiracy ideologies”.
The association is aware that there will also be deaths.
federal prosecutor
The scene
The Reichsbürger scene was ridiculed for a long time. Their relatives deny the existence of Germany as a sovereign state, reject the legal system of the Federal Republic and often pay no taxes. Your crude ideas seem crazy. But they are not harmless weirdos. As early as 2016, a Reich citizen in Bavaria who had hoarded weapons at home shot at several police officers and killed one of them. Last year, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated the number of Reichsbürger and self-governing people in Germany at 21,000, and the trend is rising. About one in ten is considered violent.
According to security circles, the starting point of the investigations into the terrorist group led by Prince Reuss were the spring searches at the United Patriots group, which had planned to overthrow and kidnap Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD). The investigators came across a network, observed, put the pieces of the puzzle together.
The case has a dimension for the security authorities that is “absolutely unusual,” says an expert in the Tagesspiegel. Such a large terrorist group beyond left-wing extremist and Islamist militancy has never existed in the history of the Federal Republic.
The network
According to security circles, the striking thing about the case is how quickly the terrorist group has grown. There is talk of a snowball system. More and more people were approached and recruited. The terrorist group’s network includes Reich citizens, conspiracy ideologists, corona deniers and right-wing extremists. In addition to the Hessian businessman Prince Reuss, who is said to own a hunting lodge in East Thuringia, the second ringleader, Rüdiger von P.
He was once an officer in the German Army’s paratroopers, but was dishonorably discharged several years ago. He is said to have stolen weapons from the former National People’s Army of the GDR. The lieutenant colonel commanded the 251st Parachute Battalion from 1993 to 1996. The Bundeswehr’s Special Forces Command (KSK) later emerged from the troops stationed in Calw, Baden-Württemberg. According to information from the Tagesspiegel, von P. has a registered address in Brazil, but was last in the Freiburg region. This is where he was arrested.
According to security sources, the group has recruited numerous former soldiers. For example, there is the former Bundeswehr Colonel Maximilian E., who as commander led a Panzergrenadier battalion in the Kosovo operation. There is also an active soldier from the KSK, according to “Spiegel” the staff sergeant Andreas M., who officially still serves as a logistician, but was classified as a “lateral thinker” by the military counter-intelligence service and applied for his release from the Bundeswehr.
Several members of the group had become radicalized during the Corona protests, security circles said. These “lateral thinkers” then came into contact with Reich citizens who had been agitating against the Federal Republic for some time. It is alarming for the security authorities that once inconspicuous citizens become so radicalized in such a short time that they even drift into terrorism.
The group also includes the former chief inspector Michael F. The police officer was relieved of duty in 2020 after he compared the Corona rules of the time with National Socialism in a speech. F. was one of the leading protagonists of the Lower Saxony “lateral thinker” scene. There are also members of the neo-Nazi prepper scene such as Peter W. from Bayreuth, who offers seminars in so-called survival training under the name “Wolfzeit Naturkraft”.
A central figure in the coup group is also the former AfD MP Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who returned to her job as a judge after leaving the Bundestag. She is said to have advised her comrades-in-arms to strike soon.
The group’s plans
According to the federal prosecutor, the terrorist group had been planning the overthrow since November 2021. The association wanted to overcome the existing state order in Germany, reports the federal prosecutor. “The members of the association are aware that this project can only be realized through the use of military means and violence against state representatives,” it says. This also includes the commission of homicides.
The members of the group followed a conglomerate of conspiracy myths consisting of narratives from the Reichsbürger scene and the QAnon ideology. They are firmly convinced that Germany is currently governed by members of a “deep state”. The group believes that intervention by a technically superior secret society of governments, intelligence services and military personnel from various countries, including the Russian Federation and the United States of America, is imminent.
Death accepted with approval
A “military arm” should also “eliminate” the democratic constitutional state at the level of the municipalities, districts and municipalities. The association is aware that there will also be deaths, but has at least accepted this as a necessary intermediate step to achieve its goals.
The terrorist group wanted to form an interim government that would negotiate the new state order in Germany with the Allied powers that were victorious in World War II. From the point of view of the association, the central contact for these negotiations is the Russian Federation. Prince Reuss had already contacted representatives of Russia in Germany. His partner is apparently from Russia. However, security circles emphasize that so far there are no signs that the terrorist group was supported or even controlled by Russia.
Since the end of November 2021, the group has been working towards their goal. According to the investigators, this included the planning of administration-like structures, the procurement of equipment, the implementation of shooting training and the recruitment of new members. According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the central body of the group is the “Council”, headed by Prince Reuss. He should be the future head of state. The ex-AfD MP Malsack-Winkemann should be responsible for the justice department. She also had the local knowledge in the Bundestag that was important for the implementation of the coup plans.
The group has set several dates for a “Day X” on which they should strike, security circles report. However, there were internal discrepancies, so nothing happened on any day X.
The danger was still high that the group would attack. Several members had legally owned weapons, and firearms had also been procured illegally. In chat groups and in personal meetings, the members had developed their plans. “That was very specific,” says security circles.
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Source: Tagesspiegel
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