The Daily - The Far-Right Plot to Overthrow Germany’s Government

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

Three thousand security officers fanned out across Germany this past week, raiding 150 homes, arresting 25 people and putting more than 50 others under investigation for plotting to overthrow the national government in Berlin.The target of the counterterrorism operation, one of the biggest that postwar Germany has seen, was a movement known as the Reichsbürger, or citizens of the Reich.What does the Reichsbürger plot reveal about the depth of right-wing extremism in the country?Guest: Katrin Bennhold, the Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times.Background reading: Among those arrested was a German aristocrat called Prince Heinrich XIII of Reuss. Nostalgic for an imperial past, the prince embraced far-right conspiracy theories.The Reichsbürger movement picked up momentum from conspiracy theories that grew during the pandemic and gained strength from QAnon.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From New York Times, I'm Michael Bilbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the story behind a highly organized plot to overthrow Germany's government. My colleague, Berlin Bureau Chief Katrin Benholdt, on what it reveals about the depth of right-wing extremism inside the country. It's Tuesday, December 13th. Katrin, walk us through exactly what happened last week in Germany. So, Michael, we had what was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, counterterrorist operation that post-war Germany has ever seen. In early morning raids across Germany, thousands of police officers...

There was like 3,000 police officers and special forces fanning out across the country. And by the end of the day, they had raided 150 homes, arrested 25 people, and put over 50 under investigation for basically plotting the overthrow of the German government. The armed conspirators are planning to take over government ministries and storm the parliament. So this is sort of crazy news, but it's obvious that the authorities are taking it very seriously. And that has to do with the composition of this group.

There was a member of the special forces, Germany's KSK, elite commando unit. Two thirds of the people who were arrested were described as having very serious links to the military. But there was also something that called itself the political wing. And what's worrisome there is that there was, for example, a former lawmaker from this far-right party called the Alternative for Germany, the AFD. So this woman was in parliament until last fall and therefore still had access to the parliament building, which made this all very serious. So she conceivably could have given access to the group. If you look at the things that police uncovered

in these various homes, it is a very worrisome collection of things. They had weapons from guns to explosives to ammunition, but also military equipment like night vision goggles or, you know, bulletproof vests, all this kind of stuff that you can imagine a kind of military coup wanting to use. And the other thing that had people very worried was a list of names. This was a list of 18 names of prominent politicians and journalists considered enemies of this group. And these names included the name of the chancellor. It included the name of the current foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock. It made this all feel quite scary.

So Katrin, I want to talk about what motivated these dozens of conspirators who just got arrested. You have covered the far right in Germany for a very long time. In fact, you hosted a podcast devoted to that subject for The Times called DayX. So put this plot into that larger context of radicalism within Germany. So Michael, at the heart of this plot that was just busted is this movement

that is known as the Reichsbürger, which translates to citizens of the Reich. They want that is known as the Reichsbürger, which translates to citizens of the Reich. They want to go back to the Reich, the German Reich pre-1918 when it still had an emperor. They basically believe in this conspiracy theory that Germany is not a sovereign country. It's a conspiracy theory that says that after World War II, the allies that defeated the Nazis, you know, the West, led by America, and the Russians, the Soviets at the time, they basically occupied Germany.

And to this day, that they still occupy Germany. And Germany is, in fact, only a sort of corporation. This all kind of started in the 1980s. The founding father, if you will, of this movement is this guy called Wolfgang Ebel. He was a West Berlin railroad worker who was fired. And he sort of tried to get civil servant status. He tried to get a pension. But basically the courts never really responded favorably.

He lost all his cases and he got very bitter about it all. Eventually he kind of said, you know, the system was rigged. The system, in fact, was totally illegitimate. There was no sovereignty. And he started calling himself Chancellor of the Reich and his own home, the commissariat of the imperial government. It kind of led to a whole bunch of people in various parts of Germany jumping on the bandwagon and living their own random life, often in rural areas. Some of them declaring their sovereign territory as their garden, deregistering at their local authority, handing in their passports, their official passports, and instead demanding a kind of yellow slip that identified them as members of the German nation. that demanding a kind of yellow slip that identified them as members of the German nation.

Most of Germany really laughed at these people. Occasionally there would be a big kind of feature article in a big magazine, and they were considered very French and very random. And it sounds like not all that much of a menace, right? Yeah, they were considered eccentric, but basically harmless. And just to be sure I understand the meaning of the central conspiracy, which is that the German government is kind of a pretense. It's a bunch of foreign governments pretending there's a democracy. That clearly has its roots in the very unique experience

of what happened to Germany at the end of World War II, which is that, like you said, Russia and the United States do come in, they do take over the country, and they kind of have their way with it. So there's a kind of historical bitterness at the center of this all, a kind of sense that Germany had been robbed of its essential German-ness. Yeah, like all conspiracy theories, they sort of take history, and then they distort it, right? After World War II, the Allied forces split Germany into different sectors. You had the Soviet sector in the east, which became communist Germany. And then you had the American sector, the British sector, and the French sectors

kind of dividing up the country. But it was still a sovereign government elected by the German people. And this is the part that this conspiracy completely delegitimizes. Okay, so when is this very fringy movement of people trading in their passports and calling their gardens sovereign land, when does it start to gain more adherence and become a bigger threat? So a first wake-up call happened in 2016 when the security services were concerned about one member of this group, somebody who was known to have a lot of arms. And there was basically a raid on his house.

And this guy had locked himself into his top room, heavily armed, and started shooting at the door as soon as the police officers were outside. Shooting four of them and killing one police officer, that was when the security services realized that group may be eccentric and nutty, but it's also potentially dangerous. But the moment when this group really starts gaining a serious following is during the pandemic. Suddenly you have these mass street protests all over Germany. We want our children to be free and safe, not with a vaccine, definitely not with a vaccine.

And you've got this very eclectic mix of concerned citizens who genuinely worry about civil liberties being a jeopardy. Not here for experimental issues. You have this far-right party in Germany, the AfD, marching side by side with these fringe groups, including the Reichsbürger. Protesters from a demo against the country's coronavirus restrictions tried to storm the German parliament on Saturday. Among them, people carrying flags of the German Reich, a symbol that is now associated with

Germany's far right. And you have QAnon spilling across from the other side of the Atlantic. What do you think about Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel? Because internationally, she's been praised for the way she's dealt with the coronavirus crisis. I think she is Hitler's daughter. You think she's Hitler's daughter?

Yes, I think. And finding a very neat overlap in terms of the conspiracy theory with the citizens of the Reich. The deep state have long time manipulated the people, the human, and that must end. Both believe that there's a deep state. Both believe that basically governments are not real, that they run the people,

that they're sort of, you know, these elites that basically enrich themselves, that are decadent and that don't look after the people, that they're sort of, you know, these elites that basically enrich themselves, that are decadent and that don't look after the people, and that there is a need for some kind of revolutionary moment, right? Some kind of cleansing. And so in the spring of 2020, there was a big NATO exercise that was planned in Germany. It was called Defender Europe 20, which was scaled back because of the pandemic. This was a moment when conspiracy theory circles, and particularly QAnon followers,

then started saying that this was actually the government in Germany using a fake pandemic to thwart this secret plan by President Donald Trump, who was coming to liberate Germany and finally turn it into a sovereign country. So this was a gift to the conspiracy theory world. And it was also the moment where this Reichsbürger, citizens of the Reich movement, just jumped on QAnon traffic online because this just worked for them. I mean, QAnon spread in various European countries, but in the non English speaking world, no country was as receptive towards the QAnon conspiracy theory. Germany had some 200,000 followers of QAnon at the time. And you have these Facebook groups and these Telegram channels that actually are now shared by these Reichsbürger, by these citizens of the Reich, and the QAnon followers.

So these two conspiracy theories basically become one. And that kind of supercharges QAnon in Germany, and it definitely supercharges the Reichsbürger. QAnon in Germany, and it definitely supercharges the Reichsburger. It's fascinating that at just the moment when QAnon is taking off in the U.S., because people are stuck at home and locked down and on the internet and very aggrieved about the role of government, the same thing's happening in Germany. And so the Reichsburger movement is being joined by its American counterpart, and the two, it seems like, are feeding and amplifying each other, especially in Germany. Absolutely. And it's curious. So you have this incredibly, you know, Germany-specific movement rooted in German history, you know,

kind of German grievances, linking up with this incredibly American-inspired conspiracy theory, and they find each other. And, of course, what's especially ironic about that is that isn't the center of the Reichsberger plot antipathy for America as an occupying force, and yet suddenly an American conspiracy theory is feeding that? It's all very tricky. Well, and they overcome that, of course,

by seeing an ally in Donald Trump. I mean, one of the incredible things I remember from one of these marches is when, you know, these people marched with Trump posters, with Q posters, sometimes even with Putin posters. I mean, basically, Putin, Trump, they're all heroes for these people. And for them, it all makes sense because Donald Trump was fighting the deep state. Remember, that was QAnon's assertion. And of course, Donald Trump was fighting the deep state, remember? That was QAnon's assertion. And of course, Donald Trump was considered the savior in Germany by those who hoped that he was finally the guy who would negotiate that peace treaty and give Germany its independence again.

And in many ways, it is sort of these multiple crises that build on each other and give these people the kind of sense of urgency. You know, when before they had talked a lot about crisis and they talked a lot about having to address these grievances, now it seems that several of them felt compelled to actually act. We'll be right back. So, Katrin, how do all of those forces that you just described connect back to this plot that was just disrupted in Germany? I mean, in many ways, this group is kind of a perfect cross-section of the super eclectic mix of people that we saw on the streets during the pandemic.

And that often connected online and in the internet and these rabbit holes over conspiracy theories, right? So you have an esoteric kind of alternative medical doctor, you've got a pilot, you've got a classical tenor. And then there was this former lawmaker from the AFD, this far-right party who still had access to parliament. And the ringleader was someone who considers himself a prince. Heinrich XIII basically ran this operation from this tiny little village in the state of Thuringia, which is kind of known for having quite a lot of far-right sympathies, in this hunting lodge. And it kind of fits. This is a guy who was the descendant of this 700-year-old minor German noble family,

which before World War I did rule over this tiny state in Eastern Germany. And so because of the noble background of his family, he is incredibly nostalgic for this pre-1918 German Empire, when his own ancestors ruled over this piece of land. So he had embraced this conspiracy theory and was now involved with this group and hoping to become the post-coup leader of Germany. So he has a very personal stake in this movement because its goals are a kind of restoration of an old Germany. And it sounds like he very much wishes for the restoration of his own nobility and power in a Germany that no longer exists. Absolutely. And it was in his hunting lodge that many of these meetings took place where, you know, the political wing of this group plotted what the future government would look like, who would take which brief. The classical tenor would be the culture minister, you know, the former lawmaker, who's also a judge, in fact, an acting judge until she was arrested, would become the justice minister and would lead this

national purge in Germany, a kind of Nuremberg 2.0 in reference to the post-Nazi trials led by the Allies in Germany. But there was also this military wing consisting of these former soldiers and current soldiers and police officers, people who knew how to deal with weapons. And they would occasionally do target practice in the forest behind, we hear, from intelligence sources and store weapons and ammunition in the basement. we hear from intelligence sources and store weapons and ammunition in the basement. So Katrin, how close did this ever really come to being a plausible revolution, an actual overthrowing of the government?

So nobody really believes that they had the capability to actually take down the government. They had fantasies that all the kind of security staff of the Bundestag, the German parliament, would just join them. That ultimately, like a lot of these conspiracy theorists, that, you know, they were representing this majority. And as soon as they would kick off this war or this coup, that the majority of the people would be grateful and join them. But nobody I spoke to believes that this is the case. They would have eventually been subdued. What they did have the capability to do, given how many of their members were well-armed and well-trained, and given that they had the access because of this former lawmaker inside their group, was to enter parliament, do a lot of damage, potentially kill a lot of people.

So what we're talking about here is a very serious terrorist threat. And this is what security services are ultimately very concerned about. Right, a January 6th-style event, in this case, it seems perhaps even more highly organized, that would inevitably result in people dying. Exactly. And this is kind of the danger of this type of accelerationist ideology

that, you know, is shared by QAnon, which talks about the storm, and the Reichsbürger, which talks about having to restore the order of pre-1918 Germany of the Reich, these people feel compelled to act and impose their own ideology. And that is what's dangerous. And that's what people now in Germany consider a very serious terrorist threat. Now, those terrorist attacks would not necessarily threaten the integrity of the state. But over time, they are dangerous because they chip away at democracy, they lower trust in institutions, they spread fear. And of course, each one of these events, and even a plot like this, even though it was busted, will feed into the kind of narrative of other groups, just the way that January 6th obviously inspired people over here. So that's the real danger of this kind of group

and this kind of attempt. You're saying because these ideologies thrive on crisis or sense of crisis, even when they fail, they kind of, in a way, perversely succeed because they tell people that there's a crisis, they draw attention to their own ideology, and they have seeded some next version of themselves. Absolutely. And in Germany, where we think a lot about history,

we had a situation 100 years ago, which was the first time that we had a democracy in Germany, where there was a lot of violence, small events, if you like, that didn't bring down democracy immediately, but over time proved incredibly harmful. We had assassinations of politicians. We had a coup attempt. It didn't go anywhere, but it paved the way to more violence over time. And 10 years later, the Nazis gained power within that democracy before doing away with it. I don't believe we're anywhere near that situation in Germany, but it's a sort of cautionary tale of the way that terrorist attacks and violence can damage democracy over time. Right. And these forces we're talking about, they are not unique to Germany. That's clear. This is a global phenomenon. But it does seem like

Germany is especially fertile ground for these conspiracy theories because of its history. And those histories have become central to this kind of ideology. I mean, is that how you see it? Well, you know, there's another way of looking at this. And that is that this history also can help protect Germany. You could argue that the crackdown last week was actually a success story of institutions that were designed after World War II and that were actually working together very well in thwarting this plot. So, Michael, I would argue that the jury is still out whether this German history makes Germany more immune to something like that happening again or more vulnerable. We are right at that time when the witnesses of that time are actually dying out. So it's sort of a period where our democracy is being tested in that way. Now, when it comes to your question of how uniquely German this phenomenon is,

I would argue that the threat is just as great or perhaps even greater in the United States. You probably have more acceptance of conspiracy theories in the U.S. You have more people who don't believe in elections anymore, and you have a whole lot more guns floating around the system. So between those things, you have all the crucial ingredients for violent efforts to challenge the government. So is this a uniquely German problem? Not at all. Well, Katrin, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Michael.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, took a dramatic new turn on Monday when U.S. prosecutors filed criminal charges against him, and he was arrested in the Bahamas. Bankman-Fried is being charged with, among other things, wire fraud, and securities fraud over the implosion of FTX, a company once valued at $32 billion that filed for bankruptcy in November. And on Monday, in a closely watched legal case, the Supreme Court refused to stop California from banning flavored tobacco. Cigarette makers had asked the court to block the action, arguing that it violated federal law,

which allows states to regulate tobacco, but prohibits them from banning it. Because the Supreme Court did not agree, California's ban will take effect next week. Today's episode was produced by Jessica Chung, Nina Feldman, and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Lisa Chow and Lexi Diao, with help from Anita Batajou,

contains original music by Alisha Baetube, Marian Lozano, Rowan Namisto, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Rundberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.