The Daily - Day X, Part 5: Defensive Democracy

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

In this episode, we get answers on just how bad the problem of far-right infiltration in the German military and police really is — and how Germany is trying to address it. We learn about Germany's "defensive democracy," which was designed after World War II to protect the country against threats from the inside. One of those threats, according to some German officials, is the Alternative for Germany, widely known by its German initials AfD. We meet intelligence officials who have put parts of the party under formal surveillance.

Today, episode 5 of our series, Day X. A year and a half into my reporting, in late August 2020, tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Berlin, protesting the government's coronavirus lockdown measures. There were anti-vaxxers, QAnon followers, several thousand members of the far right seem. Some of these groups have been chatting on Telegram, calling for a storm on Berlin, and posting images of themselves with their weapons. And as the day went on, a few hundred of them gathered directly in front of Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag. Most of them were white men, many of them from far-right groups. They were waving the old black, white and red flag of the German Empire that once inspired the Nazis

and has now become the flag of choice for neo-Nazis, because the swastika is banned. And it's that evening, hours into the protest, when a woman got up on stage in front of the capital and told the crowd, We are writing history in Berlin here today. There are no more police. We have won.

The crowd went wild. And just like that, they headed straight for the Reichstag. Shouting things like Widerstand, resistance, and Wir sind das Volk, we are the people. They broke through the police barrier and ran up the main stairs. And when they made it to the top, in front of the main entrance to parliament, some of them tried to get inside. The only thing stopping them were three police officers, who were able to hold the line until backup arrived.

The whole thing only lasted for a few minutes. But it led Germany's president to call it an unbearable attack on the heart of democracy. It all happened four months before rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, some with military and police backgrounds. And it all made me think how my reporting on far-right infiltration had started. With a gun in an airport bathroom and a military officer accused of wanting to bring down the Federal Republic of Germany.

In many ways, Franco A's case felt exceptional. But the attempted storming of the Reichstag and everything else I've seen in my reporting made it clear that it's not. And so I wasn't all that surprised when I learned that at the demonstrations in Berlin there were several police officers, military reservists, and people who fantasize about the day

when the democratic order collapses. From the New York Times, I'm Katrin Benholt. This is Day X. When I started my reporting on Franco A., it was clear that the institutions responsible for identifying him, let alone the network his case uncovered, were largely blind to the threat of far-right extremism. Two years later, after everything that's happened,

I wanted to see how much that's changed. So, oh, there we are. I think that's it. In April 2021, producer Caitlin Roberts and I go to the Military Counterintelligence Agency. Oh, they're already waiting for us. Look at that. They're going to shut us off immediately. It's the smallest of Germany's three federal intelligence agencies. And one of its core missions is to monitor extremism inside the military. This is the first time they're speaking to me on the record. And the interview is tightly controlled.

We're not allowed to ask about Franco A. Because it's an ongoing case. We actually had to submit all our questions in advance. And we can't turn our recorder back on. Are we rolling? Okay. Until we're walking up to the conference room. Where we meet one of the vice presidents.

Burkhard Even. He's a civilian and has only been there for two years. He was brought in as part of a sweeping effort to address the agency's failures in how it handled far-right extremism. And the first question I have for him is the same one I started with two years ago. When I first called the defense ministry, the guy I spoke to told me the confirmed number of extremists was in single digits and falling. He said there were four. What are the latest numbers? How many cases of extremism are you looking at inside the German military today? Burkhardt tells me that the number of far-right extremists they've identified in the military has grown significantly.

The most recent data they have shows 32 confirmed cases and 843 suspected ones. And he says about two dozen of those are in the most elite and highly trained unit, the KSK. The unit has become a special focus after a series of scandals. Several soldiers were reported to have flashed Hitler salutes at a party, and at least one of them had stolen military-grade plastic explosives, an AK-47, and collected SS memorabilia. They also discovered that nearly 50,000 rounds of ammunition and 137 pounds of explosives had gone missing from their arsenal. It reached the point where the defense minister took the unprecedented step to disband an entire fighting company, one of only four, because it had become

so infested with far-right extremism. And of course, the far-right network Franco A was a part of was started by a KSK soldier, which led me to another question I had for Burkhardt. Two years ago, I was told by your agency that you did not see a network. But I found in my reporting that there was, in fact, a network of people who knew each other across the country. Do you see a network? Burkhard tells me that the agency now sees networks. He says that for a long time it overwhelmingly treated suspected cases as single cases, Einzelfälle. But they now make it a point to systematically study how all these cases are related. And not only that.

He acknowledges that some of these networks stretch beyond the military into other state institutions and also civilian life. And so they've started working much more closely with the domestic intelligence agency and law enforcement to avoid extremists slipping through the net. As he's telling me this, it sounds to me like the case of Franco A. and the network it uncovered

has fundamentally shifted how the agency understands the nature of the threat. Burkhardt says that essentially, their definition of what an extremist is had been far too narrow. It used to be that an extremist was defined as someone who belonged to an extremist organization and was ready to commit violence. But now, he says, an extremist is anyone who is disloyal to the constitution or doesn't actively stand up for its values. It's a definition that better reflects what the far-right can look like today. The kind of new right who often don't have a formal affiliation with an extremist organization,

but have anti-constitutional views all the same. People like Franco A. Or the people who tried to storm the Reichstag. So, some newspapers have called this network a shadow army. Are you concerned that there is such a thing as a shadow army? When I ask Burkhardt if he's concerned about a shadow army, he's adamant that the networks they've identified don't rise to that level. But he says it's still a threat.

Because there are people who dream of forming one. The question of a shadow army was something Parliament had been looking into too. He's just down there on the left. When I began my reporting, the committee in charge of overseeing the intelligence agencies, including military counterintelligence, had already started their own investigation. I think it's the next one. So we went to see the deputy chair of that committee. I'm Konstantin von Notz and I'm since 2009 here in the German Bundestag for the Green Party.

Konstantin von Notz. So you launched that report. Konstantin's committee had asked a special investigator to look into how serious the infiltration in the military was. And he came to a somewhat different conclusion than what I'd heard from Burkhardt. And what did you find? One of the headlines after this report was that there was no shadow army that was almost taking over the country. But he didn't say that this does not exist. While the investigator said there's no evidence of a shadow army ready to stage a coup. He said he couldn't rule one out either.

And his investigation is ongoing. You shouldn't be involved, yeah? Reassured. Reassured. You should take serious what's happening. The word shadow army is very loaded in Germany because you know there was something like a shadow army in the 1920s. There were plots to overthrow the government, there were people hoarding weapons and ammunition and when you hear the word shadow army as a German you do kind of get goosebumps. Oh you better get goosebumps because this is a serious security threat to Germany and to this democratic system. And we have to deal with that.

For Konstantin, the infiltration of the military by far-right extremists is a reflection of a much bigger phenomenon. A couple of floors up from his office are offices of the AfD. The first far-right party to be elected to the German parliament since the Nazis. The first far-right party to be elected to the German parliament since the Nazis. It's only been around for eight years. But it's now the main opposition party in the German parliament. And it's broken every taboo in Germany's post-war playbook.

It's nationalist. Anti-immigrant. It plays on real fears about refugees. It wants to close mosques and stop immigration. It staunchly defends the notion of Germany as a Christian state. It challenges Germany's atonement for the Holocaust. They claim Nazi history takes up too much school time and say the culture of remembrance is bad for Germany. And it has close links to extremists.

Several members of Nordkreuz, the northern branch of the network Franco A was a part of, were also members of the AFD. And a friend of Franco A's, a fellow officer, who was initially accused of being one of his accomplices, was later hired to work inside parliament for an AFD lawmaker, himself a soldier. The party actively recruits police officers and soldiers,

and its leaders openly march with extremists on the street. In fact, some of them were among the tens of thousands of people in the crowd on the day that group of protesters tried to storm the Reichstag. And Konstantin points to what happened a few months after that, during another mass demonstration. When AFD lawmakers invited a handful of protesters inside the parliament building. People were going everywhere and knocking on offices of the parliamentarians.

So a strong violation of the integrity of this building. They walked around, shouted derogatory insults at a minister, and intimidated lawmakers before an important vote. And everybody locked their doors so nobody could come in. So your staff locked these doors that we're seeing here, they locked the doors to make sure... It's this attitude toward democratic institutions that worries Konstantin.

So democracy doesn't prevent that people get elected that are anti-democratic. People use democracy as a train and when they're in the train station, they step out. Step out and what would you then... Step out of the train of democracy and they reach their goal with that and then they done. So you use democracy to get into power and then you get rid of democracy. Yeah, it's a form of infiltration and if you look into history, it can be very successful. For Konstantin, all of this comes down to one of the biggest lessons of World War II.

In the Weimar Republic, the Nazis were in free elections. That Hitler's Nazi party was democratically elected. And it was only once they were in office that they abolished democracy. So that's the reason why we have to understand where the infiltration can happen. We should not be naive. On our way out, Konstantin walks us to the elevator. He tells us that just a few weeks earlier... I came in here on my regular way to my office and there was this swastika. Someone had carved a swastika into its metal doors.

If you scratch that into a door of the German parliament, that's a symbolic attack against democracy. The perpetrator was never identified. But given the strict security in the building, there's a pretty good chance that whoever did this knew someone or was someone working inside Parliament. I'm going to go to the next one. What makes Germany's democracy so unique is that after the war, it was rebuilt to be what's called

a defensive democracy. The idea was that because Hitler's Nazi party was elected and they only got rid of democracy once they were in government, Germany equipped its democracy with the tools to protect itself against threats from the inside. Tell me where we are. Inside the domestic intelligence agency. One of these tools is the domestic intelligence agency. One of these tools is the domestic intelligence agency.

It's actually called the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Like other domestic intelligence agencies, it monitors domestic threats. But it was also set up as a kind of early warning system for democracy, with the power to put individuals, organizations, and even political parties suspected of being a threat to democracy under surveillance. Basically, this office determines who is crossing the line into extremism. So I went with producers Claire Tennesketter and Lindsay Garrison to talk to the man who runs this office.

His name is Thomas Haldenwang. Pleasure to have you here. But we will do it in German language. He's worked at the agency for over a decade, but only became president in 2018. Both of his predecessors were caught up in scandals involving far-right extremism. The first resigned after the office failed in its handling of the NSU murders, and the second was reassigned after playing down anti-immigrant violence during a neo-Nazi riot.

He's since become a hero of the far right. And while his predecessors were primarily concerned with Islamist extremism, Thomas has shifted the agency's focus. He says that far-right extremism and far-right terrorism are now the biggest threats to democracy. Would you say that there's an increase in the far-right terrorist threat in Germany right now? He mentions recent terrorist attacks, like the murder of Walter Lübcke, a regional politician who supported Chancellor Merkel's refugee policy, and who was shot at close range by a well-known neo-Nazi. He also talks about the attack on a synagogue in Halle, where a far-right extremist killed

two people after his plans for a massacre failed. After these attacks, the spotlight turned to the AFD and its nationalist anti-immigrant rhetoric, which some people said was empowering extremists to commit violence. And by the time we meet with Thomas, his office is already looking into the party. They place two of the most extreme factions under surveillance, a group known as the Wing and the youth organization, the Young Alternative. Both factions stood out in the party for their links to extremist

groups and for claiming that ethnic and religious differences between people make immigration a threat to Germany, which for Thomas is a violation of the Constitution. And in particular, its first article, which states the dignity of human beings is untouchable. And for Thomas, where the dignity of people is questioned, where people are degraded and humiliated as a group, that crosses the line into extremism and has the potential of fermenting violence. Thank you so much. Not long after we talked to Thomas,

there was another far-right terrorist attack. I heard a loud shooting. A man walked into multiple locations in the city of Hanau and shot and killed nine people. He shot straight to the head of everyone he saw. He laid down and then he fired at all of us. All of them with migrant backgrounds.

Before the gunman returned home and shot both himself and his elderly mother, he published a manifesto filled with the same hatred for migrants that is often heard from the AFD. German leaders are calling out the quote, poison, that is, hatred and racism. The news of the Hanau attack shook Germany. The AFD condemned it. But once again, the AFD is to blame for creating a basis for exactly the kind of thinking that led to the shootings. Many people said the party's anti-immigrant rhetoric shared the blame.

They should be under surveillance for some of their language. And some started calling on the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to put the entire AfD under surveillance. And then… Germany's domestic intelligence agency has placed the country's largest opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany, under surveillance. In early 2021, Thomas and his office did. This is a big constitutional step to put a whole party under surveillance. This is a big constitutional step to put a whole party under surveillance. It was the first time in its post-war history that Germany put its main opposition party under surveillance. And it's probably the most dramatic move by any Western democracy to act against the far right.

Intelligence services are now formally monitoring the party for having suspected links to right-wing extremism. It meant that the agency could tap phones and emails and monitor the movements of any of the AFD's nearly 32,000 members. And if, in the end, the agency found enough evidence to classify the party as extremist, it would also mean that party members who work for state institutions like teachers, court officials, police officers or soldiers could potentially lose their jobs.

The party could even be banned. The day after the news breaks, the AfD holds a rally in Offenbach, the same city Franco A. is from. And the featured speaker is the party's most notorious figure, Björn Höcke. And the featured speaker is the party's most notorious figure, Björn Höcke. He leads the AfD in the state of Thuringia, the same state where the NSU terrorists grew up. He's a former history teacher who says that Germany needs a 180-degree change in looking at its past.

He calls the Holocaust memorial in Berlin a monument of shame. A few years ago, a German broadcaster read quotes from Höcke to AFD members and asked them whether Höcke or Hitler said it. Most of them were stumped. Björn Höcke is so extreme that one court ruled you can legitimately call him a fascist. He denied my request for an interview. But when he addresses the crowd, he says, The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is spying on the AfD. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is spying on the AfD, that it is using wartime methods and that it wants to destroy the party. He says the government is run by politicians who hate Germany and want to destroy the German nation by embracing multiculturalism.

and want to destroy the German nation by embracing multiculturalism. He says the AfD is the only party that loves Germany. The party of freedom, dear friends, is love. Our German fatherland is love. That's true Europe. Thank you. Hi. Hello. When we talk to people at the rally, it's a clear danger to free speech and the whole democracy. They say the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is wrong to put them under surveillance. They say it's being used as a political instrument of the left.

Because it's against political culture to suspect that people are criminals just because they are a member of a political party. That's wrong. And that it's undermining the Constitution rather than protecting it. They tell us you're living in a democracy, but at the same time they are trying to influence people to change their opinion, to follow, to be quiet, to be a good citizen. And you're only a good citizen if you shut up. Some of them question whether they're living in a democracy at all. And this, in a way, is the central dilemma of Germany's defensive democracy. In trying to draw the line on what constitutes extremism, it will be accused of crossing a line itself.

That's what the AFD is arguing. In the end, the federal constitutional court will indeed have to decide whether or not a position that is fundamentally critical of government policy is permitted in our liberal democracy. When it became public that the party was now officially suspected of far-right extremism and could come under surveillance, they immediately filed a legal challenge, claiming that this could interfere with their chances in the upcoming national election, one of the most pivotal elections in years, as Chancellor Angela Merkel leaves office. as Chancellor Angela Merkel leaves office.

Soon after, a German court ordered the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to suspend their surveillance of the party, pending the outcome of the case. But a handful of states already have their local chapters of the AFD under surveillance. We're talking about up to one-fourth of the population that has a different point of view. Including the eastern state of Thuringia, where the party gets almost one in four votes, twice the national average. That's the state where Stephen Kramer

heads the regional branch of the office for the protection of the constitution. So voters of the AFD, they don't feel this is a real democracy if it targets the party they vote for. So how do you explain this decision to them? That's exactly what they are saying. They see the federal democracy as a dictatorship. But what we're talking about is a party that promotes hatred, that promotes racism, that promotes the idea of bypassing and overcoming the principles of a democracy. And that is clearly not within the framework of a democratic exchange of even radical opinions. But yeah, you're right. It's hard to explain.

Stephen admits that it's a tough sell telling voters that defending democracy can involve spying on their party of choice. So in many ways, the question is, are those tools that this democracy has given itself, are they strong enough? Look, this is one of the most severe tests that we are in right now as a defensive democracy. But state agencies, public agencies are only one part of it. He says that even if Germany's institutions do everything right, the institutions alone can't protect against what once put the Nazis in power in the first place. The people who voted for them. If this democracy doesn't find the majority of citizens

that is in favor of it, you can have the best laws and the best agencies, but they will not be able to protect democracy. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution remains locked in a legal tug-of-war with the AfD. And at a time when the memory of the Nazi era is fading into history, it's just one of many tests that Germany is facing. The trial of Franco A. is another. Both cases will set a historic precedent

and will define the point where people or parties cross the line into extremism and where extremism crosses the line into terrorism. And ultimately, they'll start to answer whether the institutions Germany put in place after the war are working in the way they're meant to. Or if they'll provoke an even stronger backlash against liberal democracy itself. If you look on Germany, if you look on Europe, the house is on fire. If you look on Germany, if you look on Europe, the house is on fire. This was long before you had your problems with QAnon and the extreme right that is now basically understood as domestic terrorism in the United States of America. And I admit nobody of us thought the pictures of storming Capitol Hill and everything else,

that that could happen in the United States. But I'm not surprised anymore. And I'm afraid to tell you guys and our guys, this is not the end of the story. We're just in the middle of that fight. In June 2021, over four years after Franco A's arrest and the discovery of a nationwide network of far-right extremists, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution released its latest report. And in some ways, it looks like previous reports. It has the usual statistics.

The number of suspected far-right extremists is now up to 33,000. And 40% of them are ready to commit violence. But this time, there's a new section On the new right And it lists a whole range of targets the office now has under surveillance A far-right think tank A far-right magazine A far-right publishing house

A far-right marketing group It's basically watching the entire ecosystem of far-right extremism. And then there's something else, another new section that talks about extremists inside Germany's security agencies. It talks about far-right chat groups and threat letters signed NSU 2.0 about police officers hoarding weapons and ammunition. It says there are around 1,400 cases of far-right extremists who have infiltrated the military, police, and other state institutions. The report warns that these people who have special training, access to weapons, and sensitive information

represent a significant danger for the state and for society. And it raises the alarm about the day many of them are preparing for. Or even trying to trigger. Day X. 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 Thank you. Here's what else you need to know today. We had a really good meeting. And to answer your direct question, we have a deal. On Thursday, after weeks of negotiations, President Biden struck a deal with a bipartisan group of 10 senators on nearly $600 billion in spending on infrastructure. None of us got what we all wanted. I clearly didn't get all I wanted. They gave more than I think maybe they were inclined to give in the first place. That figure is far less than the $2 trillion plan Biden had originally proposed. But if adopted with Republican support, it would represent a significant political breakthrough in an era of hyper-partisanship. But this reminds me of the days we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress.

Democrats hope to pair the infrastructure bill with a much larger package of spending and tax increases that is not expected to win Republican votes. And a New York state court has temporarily suspended the law license of Rudy Giuliani after finding that he had repeatedly lied to judges, lawmakers, and the public in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election on behalf of Donald Trump. The court found that Giuliani's actions represented a, quote, immediate threat to the public and had directly inflamed tensions that led to the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.