The Daily - Day X, Part 2: In the Stomach

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Franco A. visited the workplaces of two of his alleged targets. We meet both targets to hear the stories of two Germanies: One a beacon of liberal democracy that has worked to overcome its Nazi past, the other a place where that past is attracting new recruits. Today, we explore how Germany's history is informing the fight for the country’s future.

Today, episode two of our series, Day X. You mentioned Francois, Yes, Franco A. I was informed by the Federal Criminal Police Office. They had found a diary of Franco A, Franco A, a former Bundeswehr officer. And there was a list of names, including the foreign minister, some intellectuals, some human rights activists, and my name, Claudia Roth. And this was a so-called animalist, to be killed.

Animist to be killed. Really, he's a soldier in the Bundeswehr, and he posed as a Syrian. He posed as a Syrian to make refugees responsible. So this was the idea. They would kill people, enemies, but then they would blame refugees to be the perpetrators. The case against Franco A. is remarkable for many reasons. Not only that, as far as anyone I've talked to can remember,

he's the first active duty soldier to stand trial for plotting terrorism since World War II. Or that his arrest opened the door to a country-wide network of people planning for Day X. Or even that he had lived a double life as a Syrian refugee. What's most remarkable is that the German authorities had been utterly blind to him. It took a maintenance man stumbling upon a gun in an airport bathroom to uncover it all. It was just chance. Back when I first started reporting on this case, I called one of Franco A's lawyers to ask if Franco would talk.

The lawyer was doubtful, but said he'd pass along the message. I also called the prosecution. They wouldn't talk on the record, but in their indictment, they're making the case that Franco A has a far-right mindset. They quote from voice memos found on Franco's phone, where he questions how Germany atones for the Holocaust, argues that immigration has ruined Germany's ethnic purity, and says things like, I know you will murder me. I will murder you first. They say Franco A. was firmly decided to commit a violent act

and they point to handwritten notes with the names of prominent politicians and activists and they say that one Friday in the summer of 2016 Franco A. traveled to Berlin where one of those people worked they say he drew a map of the location of the building and that he went inside the parking garage and took pictures of the license plates of several cars. And in the days

after, according to one witness, he was at a shooting range with an assault rifle. Franco A. denies all the terrorism charges against him But his case has come to represent something Investigators are increasingly worried about That Day X is not just an imagined day of future crisis But a call for action

A pretext for terrorism, or worse, a coup. And that's why, prosecutors say, Franco A. picked the targets that he did. From the New York Times, I'm Katrin Benhold. This is DayX. I wonder if that's where he got access to the parking garage. And there's no guard in this building that we can see. Yeah, I wonder what security is going to be like. Should we ring the bell? Yeah. In December 2019,

I went with producers Claire Tennesketter and Lindsay Garrison to that office building in Berlin to meet one of Franco A's alleged targets. Let me maybe start just by asking you if you could just sort of say who you are and what you do. My name is Annetta Kahane. I'm the chairperson of the Amadeo Antoni Foundation. And the Amadeo Antoni Foundation is trying to fight racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism. Annetta is one of the most prominent human rights activists in the country. And in this sort of position, have you had particular moments of being threatened?

Yes, of course. It's part of our daily life. It's part of my daily life. And it's not so easy to deal with that. But in the end of the day, I'm used to it somehow. She's also one of the most hated figures on the far right, up there with Chancellor Angela Merkel. She pulls out her phone and shows us the emails she's been getting. Wow there's sort of endless like dozens and dozens of hate mail. Horrible things I have a lot of this. This is really striking this arrived this morning on email. It's like congratulations. Congratulations you are now first place on our killing list. We will cut you a swastika into your face with a very sharp axe.

And afterwards, we will cut your spine and we will leave you to die in some side street. Yeah. We'll kill every non-Aryan, every Jewish, Muslim and worthless life in our wonderful, beautiful Germany. And erase you from our history books. Yeah. And then this. We will be a lot more efficient than our ancestors in 1938. I mean, this is...

How does it end? What's like the final line? Ha. Sieg Heil. Mm-hmm. And is this every single day that you get something like this? Not every day, but sometimes, yes. Is it safe to be Jewish in Germany today?

It is not safe, no. When was the time in Germany that you felt the most comfortable with being Jewish? I don't remember. It was always difficult. Always. Tell us a little bit about your childhood. Where did you grow up? In Berlin, mainly.

Which part? East Berlin, in Pankow. Annetta grew up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, in a Soviet-controlled East Germany that had claimed to have eliminated the Nazi problem. Her parents were Holocaust survivors. They were Jewish, and they were communists who fought in the resistance against fascism.

And they taught their daughter that communism was the surest way to prevent something like the Nazis from ever happening again. They tell her that under communism, everyone was equal. So things like racism and anti-Semitism, they simply couldn't exist. But going to school in East Berlin, Annetta started to sense something else. I saw all these parents of my friends and they were looking at me like a little bit, what is she? Somehow she's different.

And I just knew that I feel strange. I was a strange one. But of course they told me all these terrible jokes about burning Jews and what a fun it is to kill Jews and things like that. Blaming me also as a Jewish pig and things like that. Yes, it was very present. as a Jewish pig and things like that. Yes, yes, it was very present.

For a long time, I didn't know it was antisemitism. I just felt like I'm an idiot. She'd go to her dad and tell him what she was feeling. They came home and said, I don't feel good. I was feeling like something, like very strange and very lonely. But he didn't really get it. One day he said, I don't know why you always have these problems.

I mean, what is the problem? This is all comrades outside. They're all members of the party, so they must be nice. So this was the impression that I'm not good enough for being a good communist. I was not trusting my impressions, you know. It was like a gaslight situation. For years, Annetta convinced herself that what she was experiencing wasn't real.

She says she tried to be a good communist. When she was 19, the Stasi knocked on her door. And for several years, she was an informant for one of the most repressive police intelligence services in the world. Of course, it was a terrible thing. And I mean, I'm not proud of it. But by the time she's in her 30s, the problems her parents had dismissed her whole life

were now visible on the streets. In the middle of the 80s, this neo-Nazi movement started to be very, very strong. A potent neo-Nazi movement with thousands of members was growing. You could see them, that they look like what we in those early 90s, like basically bald hats. Yeah, bald hats and skin hats, all this stuff. And they were really very violent and they beat up a lot of people.

And yet, the government denied the existence of far-right extremists point blank. The official line was, there are no neo-Nazis and communists in East Germany. This was a very, very bad situation. And I thought, well, my God, this is a state that calls itself anti-fascist and does nothing about these Nazis. And I thought, why? I used to be so naive. Now I see this anti-fascism is not real. The opposite of fascism is not anti-fascism, but a democratic, vibrant culture.

You have to discuss all this thing. You have a process of things and bringing this. And if you don't do that, this is exactly what is happening. The next generation is going back to the same pattern. And so... Thousands of East Germans came across the border today. When the Berlin Wall falls in 1989, Annetta felt hopeful about a new democratic future.

Every time they repeat that, I started to cry again. It was so touching. East Germany had been frozen in time behind the wall, a near-homogeneous white country. And suddenly, thousands of Easterners were pouring into a multicultural West Germany. Put bulldozers right through the wall so that more people could cross to the West. The day after the border opens, Annetta crosses into the West herself. And when I first crossed the bridge, there were these Turkish people with the fruits and everything and were giving away and they were shouting welcome

and some nice things, you know. It was like they were just giving people some fruits. And the first thing I heard, I mean, it was exactly by my side. There was a guy who was shouting, give me those. And he took the fruits and he said, now you can go home, you bloody Turks. Now we are the Germans and Ausländer raus, foreigners away. And so it was the first reaction, taking the present, you know, the gift, and then immediately shouting out some racist stuff.

I mean, it was so, it was terrible. It was terrible. And then, as the economy in the former communist East collapses and millions lose their jobs, a wave of racist violence sweeps through Germany. This was a moment of fear. Immigrants are chased, beaten up and sometimes killed hunting all these black people their homes are firebombed so many incidents all the time all the time they never stopped

german police have arrested a teenager in connection with a weekend arson attack on turkish immigrants sometimes eastern onlookers would watch, clap, and even join in. There were a lot of horrible things going on at that time. I cannot tell you. I mean, there were entire cities completely dominated by neo-Nazis. So as the violence increases, Annetta throws herself into organizing against it. And nobody really counted them

as a right-wing motivated killing, you know, a murder. But she says when she and other activists talk to politicians in the East to tell them about what they were seeing. Oh, don't talk bad about my city. I mean, these are Einzelfälle, single cases. They would always say. Einzelfälle, you know.

Single cases, lone wolves. And when she talks with leaders in the West. Well, we have a big problem with neo-Nazis. She hears the same thing again. Well, no. These are Einzelfälle, you know, single cases. Don't talk so bad about East Germany. This is not productive.

You know, this is not good. Please. But it is a little bit like this gaslight feeling i had in my childhood or when i was a teenager uh because i say always this is anti-semitic this is everywhere and people say yes it's a single case it's not the society. But I find it everywhere. This is the problem in Germany. This is very deep inside of the stomach of the German heritage or family narratives. There are parents, there are teachers, there are officers.

This very deep, deep, deep inside of the internal life of the German. And so when it comes to the story of Franco A., Annetta sees it as just another example of what's always been there do you remember the very first time that you heard of Franco did you get a phone call as I remember

I saw it in the newspaper you read it in the newspaper and she's used to people not seeing the problem and only then people from the police department came and they told me, well, probably you read it in the newspaper. There is a guy who wanted to kill you, but don't be afraid. These neo-Nazis, you know, we got them.

All three neo-Nazis, you know, we got them. All three neo-Nazis. And my reaction was to break out loudly laughing because three neo-Nazis is ridiculous. There are a lot of neo-Nazis. And it was like kind of funny, you know. The police tell Annetta Franco A. was arrested along with two suspected accomplices. Both were eventually released. And after seven months in prison, Franco A. is released too. And then when he was set free, they didn't tell me. No, they didn't tell me and they didn't tell me.

I asked police whether they had failed to inform Annetta, but they declined to comment. And what I was, I was kind of angry the other day when somebody called me and he said, do you know that Franco is running around here in Berlin? He said, no, really? here in Berlin?" He said, no really. It could be a good idea to send you a picture of him because he is running around here where my office is. So probably you run into him and you don't know. Oh yes, this is a good idea. And this was the first time I saw him. I mean, this should be done by the police, you know, to tell me he is in Berlin, be aware, or something like that.

But they didn't tell me. There's nothing. Not long after Franco A. is released from prison, a state court dismisses his terrorism charges. And Annetta is a key reason why. The court rules that Franco A. had nine months between staking out her parking garage and being arrested. Plenty of time to kill her. But he didn't. So they conclude that there wasn't enough evidence to show that Franco A. had firmly decided to take action.

Prosecutors appeal, and for over a year, the case is in limbo. And while all of this is going on, Franco A. is living at home in his apartment in western Germany, on leave from his job as an officer, but still being paid by the military. And it's around this time that he visits the workplace of another alleged target. Claudia Roth. Maybe just introduce yourself and say who you are, what you do. Okay. My name is Claudia Roth. I'm vice president, deputy speaker of the German Bundestag, German parliament since 2013.

Claudia Roth is kind of like Germany's Nancy Pelosi. And she says, one day in the fall of 2019, during an open house event at Germany's capital, thousands of people are coming and the political groups are represented. I'm represented the parliament as a vice president,

but also as a Green. And Franco A. came. Franco A. walks into the building and makes his way towards the Green Party booth. I was told afterwards that Franco A. was exactly at the table or the place where the Greens presented themselves, that he saw me, that perhaps he spoke even spoke even with me and I did not know.

I don't know because I did not recognize him. The police did not inform me before or was not aware of this. Eventually, the police are notified and they escort him out of the building. Of course, it's a strange feeling. It's a very strange feeling. And of course, I spoke to the police and the police said, as long as he's not in prison, he's allowed. So he can move freely. But I tell you the truth, I'm not afraid. As the highest ranking politician in the Liberal Green Party, Claudia, like Annetta, is used to getting threats. Earlier on in her political career, extremists claimed she was Jewish.

Then after 9-11, they switched from Jewish to Islamist. The far far right came up with something else. And in 2015, when the refugees arrived in Germany, the threats got even worse. Refugees arrived in Germany. The threats got even worse. Terrible ideas how to rape, how to kill me. Claudia is everything the far-right despises. She's a feminist, a liberal.

She supports refugees. But what riles them the most about her is how she sees herself as a German. Claudia's mom was in the Nazi youth. Her dad served as a soldier under Hitler. And so I had terrible problems to get a normal relationship

to myself. And being a German, get a normal relationship to myself? And being a German, what does it mean to be German? This was one of the most difficult questions. And it was around 1968 when a door was opened towards your own history, your own German crimes. During the 1960s, as a countercultural revolution swept across the United States, Germany had its own reckoning. One question was asked and asked and asked. It was the question to the parents, why was Auschwitz possible? Why?

It was only then that the generation of Claudia's parents began to confront the past. My parents took us, me and my two sisters, to Dachau. Dachau is a former concentration camp where many people were killed. I'm not sure whether we, the children, understood what probably nobody can understand but i think it was my parents that wanted to understand what had happened and what it means to be german what does it mean and my father said, you are born 10 years after the end of the Second World War, after the worst crimes ever.

But what happened in the Nazi time, the Nazi terror, the crimes are part of your biography. Not easy to understand what it means. This German struggle for national identity actually became part of German identity. And for Claudia, there's still this sense of humility, this sense that, as a country, Germany has been on the wrong side of history.

Can I love Germany? I would never say this. Can I be proud being a German? Never. I would never say I'm proud. German flag? No, this was never, ever. I'm a German, yes. I do not hide, but proud? No. I'm a German with all responsibilities. I am, meanwhile, happy and proud that there are so

many people who are fighting for a stronger democracy, who try to establish a multicultural democracy. A society of the many. A society of the many. A society of the many. The idea of a multicultural democracy and how to protect it is enshrined in Germany's post-war constitution. Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Article 1 in our constitution, the most wonderful sentence ever. Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. The dignity of human being is untouchable.

is untouchable. The dignity of human being is untouchable. It was written with the explicit aim to prevent something like the Nazi era from ever happening again. Not the dignity of a German human being or a white or a Christian, but the dignity of any human being. Yeah, perhaps this is why I am like, why I am Claudia with all her fights against racism, against xenophobia, against sexism, against homophobia, against Islamophobia, against anti-Semitism, against all these things that try to discriminate and separate people. separate people. Claudia was first elected for the Greens in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. And who she became, and what fuels her politics, this is what defines Germany today.

It's the Germany that atones for the Holocaust with memorials and history lessons in every public school. The Germany that elected Angela Merkel, that admitted over a million refugees, and that has come to define liberal democracy in Europe and beyond. But it's also the Germany that has given rise to a powerful backlash. The AfD 13th party. In 2017, a far-right party was elected into parliament for the first time since the Nazis. This is a party that didn't even exist a few years ago.

The AfD. Alternative for Germany. Its power base is in the former Communist East. And it's the polar opposite of Claudia's party. Of course I'm concerned and I'm afraid and I see this radicalization. The AFD's popularity has surged amid Chancellor Angela Merkel's open door migration policy. They are the loudspeaker for the extremists. And outside of parliament. A deadly attack near a synagogue in Germany. The far right has turned increasingly violent. Two people killed in a shooting rampage near a synagogue in the eastern German town. To say they are only Einzeltäter, they are only lonely wolves, it's absolutely not true.

It has happened again. Germany is reeling tonight following the deaths of 10 people in another far right terror attack. Over the past few years, Germany has suffered a series of deadly far-right terror attacks. Police in Germany have arrested a suspect in connection with the shooting of a CDU politician. Including the assassination of a politician in 2019. Walter Lübcke, who was head of the city council in Kassel. Walter Lübcke, a regional official in Angela Merkel's party, who, like Annetta and Claudia, was on numerous far-right death lists. Lübcke had previously received death threats from right-wing extremists after he voiced his support for Merkel's decision to open Germany's borders to refugees. He was shot on his terrace at close range by a well-known neo-Nazi.

Nearly three months after the Lübcke murder, prosecutors win their appeal in Germany's Supreme Court to try Franco A. on terrorism charges. The judges rule that just because Franco A. had not killed anyone by the time he was arrested, that didn't mean he wasn't going to. That it wasn't the timing, but the intention that really mattered. And so now, Franco A. is standing trial. A single case. But for Claudia, this is about something bigger. What I do not understand, he committed a lot of different crimes. He was very outspoken in his

anti-Semitism. Nobody understood that he's anti-Semitic and at the same time in the Bundeswehr, he had evidently stolen explosives, whole boxes of ammunition from army, and no military, superior, no intelligence service, no investigation officer noticed this. Difficult and hard to believe. For her, and for many others, it's about a pattern in Germany. Of the authorities turning a blind eye to the far right. Because Franco A. is not the first case to be discovered by chance.

Do you think that the blindness of the police towards the possibility of neo-Nazis being behind this, does this tell us that the police had sympathies in that direction? Or is it just that they couldn't imagine it? This is the point that I want to understand. The point that I want to understand, I would not say that these policemen are all Nazis, but they all make the same mistake. So I want to understand why.

Why? Day X is made by Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tennisgetter, Caitlin Roberts, Larissa Anderson, Michael Benoit, and Katrin Benhold. Additional reporting by Chris Schutze. Engineered by Dan Powell. Original music by Hauschka and by Dan Powell. Research and fact-checking by Caitlin Love. To hear more, search for DayX

wherever you listen to podcasts and hit subscribe. Special thanks to Anita Batajou, Liz O'Balin, Lisa Tobin, you listen to podcasts, and Cliff Levy. Thank you. Here's what else you need to know today. President Biden has offered Senate Republicans a set of major concessions in negotiations over an infrastructure bill, expressing a willingness to scale back the size of the plan from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and to remove a proposed increase in the corporate tax rate to pay for the bill. That increase in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% has been vigorously opposed by the Senate Republicans because it would reverse tax cuts put in place by former President Trump.

Instead, Biden is now proposing to pay for the infrastructure package through other tax proposals, such as cracking down on offshore corporate tax shelters. such as cracking down on offshore corporate tax shelters. But even with those offers, no Republican support is assured, and Biden may abandon the negotiations as early as next week to pursue an even larger bill with only Democratic support. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.