"For reasons of conscience": fighting conscription then, and again

On November 1, 2024, my father Anton Fertl passed away on his farm in Australia aged 74. Retired, living alone among the trees, plants (not least his beloved orchids), animals, and insects, few locals knew of his youthful adventures, traveling overland from Bavaria to Australia (and back again, and then to Australia again!). These tales take quite the telling, but are for another time. Yet another achievement that he proudly carried with him throughout his years was his refusal to allow himself to be conscripted into West Germany's Bundeswehr at age 19, and the battle he fought to win this small victory for peace and reason. This is a tale worth telling - not least because of the rapid and reckless militarisation taking hold of Europe once more - but also, because in sorting through his paperwork, I've come across the key documents again, and so it seems opportune. First, however, some quick background.

In the Shadow of the War 

The Second World War ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of the Nazi Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945. In November 1945, conscription in Germany was abolished, and the Wehrmacht itself was disbanded in August 1946. Influenced by the anti-war, anti-militarist sentiment that formally drove the development of the post-war German state, the 1949 Grundgesetz (constitution) of the new Federal Republic of Germany explicitly mentioned the possibility of Kriegsdienstverweigerung (conscientious objection), but made no such reference to Wehrpflicht (conscription).  

When the current German army - the Bundeswehr - was formed in 1955, it was promoted as a "parliamentary army" made up of "citizens in uniform", and with a revised definition of military obedience, all of which was meant to prevent future Nazi-style excesses. This new army was, however, tainted from the outset: in the late 1950s, the Bundeswehr hired 300 officers from the Waffen-SS to fill its ranks, and more than 12,000 Wehrmacht officers were soon serving in the Bundeswehr - including over 40 Nazi-era generals. 

Unfortunately, this was only one aspect of a widespread rehabilitation of Nazis in the new West Germany. At local, institutional, and civic levels, former members and collaborators were welcomed back into the fold. Military barracks were named after "good Nazis", even as the story of German collective responsibility for the Nazi horror was expounded, providing a smokescreen for the generals, the industrialists, the politicians, and others, all themselves guilty as sin of helping the fascists take - and keep - power. This has also allowed those most responsible to shift blame onto a collective "national failing", rather than face justice for their role in constructing and supporting a fascist dictatorship, of which the first victims were the West German left and the representatives of the working class. Meanwhile many elements of the antifascist and communist left were vilified, hounded, and even banned outright. 

My father's generation had few illusions in the greatness and goodness of their rulers and betters - they knew exactly who their parents, uncles, grandparents, and neighbours were - and inspired by social movements and student protests elsewhere they dreamed of a better, fairer society than the patronising, smug, suffocating capitalist one into which they had been born and raised, under the shadow of the Cold War and nuclear sabre-rattling. Simultaneously, the war in Vietnam provided a stark reminder that actual, blood-soaked, war hadn't ended with the fall of Hitler, and that imperialist violence and mass murder continued to reap a grim harvest among the world's population beyond the borders of Europe.

Cold War and Social Discontent

In the 1950s, the Cold War was in full swing, and as part of the associated military build-up across Europe, West Germany underwent a rapid Wiederbewaffnung (rearming). With the entry into force, in April 1957, of the Military Promotion Act, all West German men born after June 30, 1937, were once again subject to military service. A decade later, in 1968, this requirement was modified to allow for the option of substitute service due to "reasons of conscience", reflected in the following text enshrined in the West German Constitution:

Art. 12a [obligation of service]

(1) Men may be obliged to serve in the armed forces, the Federal Border Guard or a Civil Protection Association from the age of eighteen.

(2) Anyone who refuses military service with weapons for reasons of conscience may be obliged to provide a substitute service. The duration of the replacement service must not exceed the duration of military service.

1968 was also the peak of several years of protests and strikes across France and West Germany. In West Germany, these were led by a student movement deeply disillusioned with a political establishment heavily populated by former Nazis, worried that it was becoming increasingly authoritarian. In 1962, several journalists had been briefly arrested for "treason" for writing about the weakness of the Bundeswehr in the magazine Der Spiegel. In the fallout of the affair, the suddenly-unpopular ruling Christian Democratic Union was force to form a first "grand coalition" with the Social Democratic Party in 1966. However, the appointment of Kurt Georg Kiesinger - a former Nazi with close links to Joseph Goebbels - as Chancellor did nothing to quell fears of a quiet Nazi restoration.

In June 1967, first-time student protester Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the back of the head by a police officer at a protest in West Berlin against a visit by the Shah of Iran - a murder that further spurred the growth of the student movement and radicalised it. Then, on 11 April, 1968, German student leader Rudi Dutschke was also shot in Berlin in an attempted assassination attempt by a Josef Bachmann, a petty criminal with links to neo-Nazis, inspired by the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. only days earlier. The right-wing Springer Press was accused of complicity for its vilification of Dutschke and the student movement, and demonstrators tried to storm the Springer house in Berlin and set fire to Bild delivery vans. In Munich, a demonstrator and a policeman were killed when students ransacked the Bild editorial offices. Over a thousand people were arrested. 

Federal Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger claimed the protests had a "revolutionary character", and on May 30, 1968, the Notstandsgesetze (Emergency Acts) were passed (by a government controlling 95 percent of the Bundestag and led by an ex-Nazi). They inserted emergency clauses into the West German Constitution allowing the government to restrict civil rights (such as privacy and freedom of movement) during crises such as natural disasters, uprisings, or war. Critics drew parallels to the emergency decrees power of the Weimar Republic, which Adolf Hitler had used to establish a totalitarian dictatorship by "legal" means.

Indeed, by 1968, such was the scale of the protests, which had spread - especially in France - to the trade unions and other sectors of society - that there was discussion in both countries about deploying the army against protesters, and in West Germany there was also talk of using widespread preventive detention. In West Germany, ultimately only the police were deployed, but the fact that the police were - then, as now - deeply infiltrated by Nazis and the far-right only intensified the fear that right-wing authoritarianism was once again being imposed on West Germany's fragile democracy.

And so, in this broader context, on January 14, 1969, my 19 year old Bavarian father was called in for muster and a physical examination for conscription into the Bundeswehr, with a special Wehrpaß (military passport) quickly issued to him, dated March 14, 1969. Already on February 28, however, he had indicated his intention to register as a conscientious objector - taking advantage of the renewed recognition of that right - and he was given until April 21 to submit his justifications and grounds for refusing to serve. Submit them he did indeed, as we shall see. 

No to War and all its Trappings

Perhaps ten years ago, my father took me through his most prized papers and documents. These included various stamp-filled passports, photos from his journeys through Iran, India and South-East Asia, papers for the purchase of the farm in Australia, the charge sheet for an arrest in Munich 1970 for possessing hashish, and his official renunciation of the Catholic Church in 1973. (This letter only formalised a mundane reality that had already taken hold when he was 8, and had decided he would rather go fishing with his friends, or play table tennis in the priest's garage, while the rest of the village suffered through mass). But pride of place in these documents were his letter justifying his conscientious objection, and another (which we shall come to below) that accompanied it.

The full text of my father's letter is as follows:

Betrifft: Begründung meines Antrags

Sehr geehrte Herren!

Aus Gewissensgründen habe ich mich gegen den Dienst mit der Waffe entschieden. Krieg oder Kriegsdrohung oder schon allein die Existenz von riesigen Armeen als politisches Machtmittel erkenne ich nicht an. Denn der Krieg ist für mich das schrecklichste und folgenreichste Verbrechen, das es je unter den Menschen gab.

Krieg ist nicht nur sinnlos, sondern auch menschenunwürdig, grausam und verbrecherisch. Er ist die Summe alles Bösen schlecht-hin. Darüber erübrigt sich jegliche Diskussion.

So will ich nicht nur selbst passiv und zugleich aktiv meinen Beitrag zum Frieden leisten, indem ich mich dem Waffendienst verweigere, sondern ich versuche auch, andere von der Verabscheuungswürdigkeit des Krieges und seiner Vorbereitung in der Bundeswehr wie in allen Armeen zu überzeugen.

Die Summen, die die Kriegsmaschinerien in aller Welt jährlich verschlingen, müßten nach meiner Überzeugung besser und nutzbringender für Bildung und Entwicklungshilfe aufgewandt werden. Auf diese Weise wären sie ein Beitrag für dauerhaften Fortschritt und langfristige Entspannung zwischen der jetzigen Dritten Welt und den hochindustrialisierten Ländern.

Hauptgrund für die Verweigerung ist meine Überzeugung als katholischer Christ, daß es ein immer und überall geltendes Gesetz sein muß, fremdes Menschenleben zu achten. “Du sollst nicht töten!" gilt für mich ohne Ausnahme. (Extreme Fälle ziviler Notwehr sind Ausnahmen) Nächstenliebe und Gewaltlosigkeit sind aber nicht nur christliche, sondern auch ethische Prinzipien, die das friedliche Zusammenleben der Menschen besser garantieren als waffenstarrende und Jederzeit für das kollektive Morden einsatzbereite Armeen. Diese sind für die Zerstörung ausgebildet, nicht für den Frieden.

Es gilt also, die Armeen in Ost und West abzuschaffen. Jeder muß dazu seinen Beitrag leisten. Natürlich können das nur aufgeklärte, denkende Menschen, die frei sind von dem Wussch, ihr mögliches Groskapital mit dem Einsatz fremder Menschenleben zu verteidigen. Natürlich hat ein Staat das Recht, sich selbst zu verteidigen, aber die beste Verteidigung ist die Überlegenheit seiner Kultur, und im Notfall (an den ich nicht glaube) passiver widerstand gegen eventuelle Unterdrücker, jedenfalls kein Blutvergießen um irgendwelcher propagandistischer Fiktionen willen wie “freiheitliche Ordnung", “Vaterland", "Heimat" etc.. "Freiheitliche Ordnung" ist deshalb als Fiktion zu sehen, weil sie selbst bei uns recht relativ ist und im Begriff ist, die Ordnung zu werden, die die Freiheit der Herrschenden garantieren soll. Hierbei ist a die Jüngste Entwicklung zu denken, vor allem a die Verabschiedung der Notstandsgesetze und die Pläne für die faschistische Vorbeugehaft. "Freiheitliche Ordnung " in Opposition zu kommunistisch-diktatorischer Unfreiheit im Osten ist ebenfalls fragwürdig, denn diese Gegenüberstellung ist zweifelsohne einseitig und dient nur propagandistischer Hetze, nach der unsere Nachbarn im Osten böse und äußerst angriffslustig sind. Gegen sie gelte es aufzumarschieren. In der Tat ist die Kommunistenhetze schon traditionell und die Höhe, die sie im Dritten Reich erreichte, wurde in der Ära des Kalten Kriegs fast wieder erreicht.

Aus all diesen Gründen leite ich ab, daß das bei uns existierende Recht auf Kriegsdienstverweigerung nicht nur erhalten, sondern voll ausgenützt und sogar zur moralischen Pflicht erhoben wird. Brat wenn dies erreicht sein wird, wird es einen "ersten deutschen Friedenstaat” geben. Ulbrichts Staat ist aus diesem Grund nicht dieser erste deutsche Friedensstaat.

Der nach den Notstandsgesetzen mögliche Einsatz der Bundeswehr im Inneren gegen demonstrierende Arbeiter und Studenten stellt für mich einen weiteren Gewissensgrund dar, diesen “Dienst" zu verweigern. Wer kann es noch als Dienst am deutschen Volk ansehen, auf demonstrierende und unbewaffnete Menschen, noch dazu möglicherweise auf Bekannte und sogar Verwandte zu schießen.

Besänftigende Worte können diese reale Möglichkeit nicht aus der Welt schaffen.

Anton Fertl 

In English:

Subject: Reasons for my application 

Dear Sirs! 

For reasons of conscience, I have decided against serving with a weapon. I do not recognise war, the threat of war, or even the mere existence of huge armies as a political means of power. For me, war is the most terrible and consequential crime that has ever existed among humans.

War is not only senseless but also inhuman, cruel, and criminal. It is the sum of all evil, plain and simple. Any further discussion is unnecessary.

Thus, I want not only to make my own passive and active contribution to peace by refusing military service, but I also endeavor to convince others of the abhorrence of war and its preparation in the Bundeswehr, as in all armies. 

It is my conviction that the sums that war machines around the world devour annually should be better and more usefully spent on education and development aid. In this way, they would contribute to lasting progress and long-term détente between the current Third World and the highly industrialised countries. 

The main reason for this refusal is my conviction as a Catholic Christian that respecting the life of others must be a law that applies always and everywhere. "Thou shalt not kill!" applies for me without exception. (Extreme cases of civilian self-defense are exceptions.) Love for one's fellow man and nonviolence are not only Christian but also ethical principles that better guarantee the peaceful coexistence of people than armies armed to the teeth and ready to commit collective murder at any time. These are trained for destruction, not for peace. 

Therefore, the goal must be to abolish the armies in East and West. Everyone must contribute to this. Of course, this can only be done by enlightened, thinking people who are free from the desire to defend the potential for big business by sacrificing the lives of others. Of course, a state has the right to defend itself, but the best defense is the superiority of its culture, and in an emergency (which I don't believe we are in), passive resistance against potential oppressors, certainly not bloodshed for the sake of any propagandistic fictions like "Free [Democratic] Order," "Fatherland," "Homeland," etc.. "Free Order" should be viewed as a fiction because, even here, it is quite relative and is in the process of becoming an order that is meant to guarantee the freedom of those in power. Recent developments are important to consider here, especially the passage of emergency laws and the plans for fascistic preventive detention. "Free Order" in opposition to communist-dictatorial oppression in the East is also questionable, because this juxtaposition is undoubtedly one-sided and only serves propagandistic agitation, according to which our neighbors in the East are evil and extremely aggressive, and it is necessary to march against them. Indeed, anti-communist agitation has a long tradition, and the heights it reached during the Third Reich were almost matched again during the Cold War era. 

For all these reasons, I conclude that the right to conscientious objection that exists in our country must not only be preserved but fully used - and even elevated to a moral duty. Only when that has been achieved will there be a “first German peace state.” For this reason, Ulbricht’s state is [also] not this first German peace state. 

The possibility, under the emergency laws, of internal deployment of the Bundeswehr against demonstrating workers and students represents, for me, yet another reason of conscience to refuse this "service." Who can still consider it a service to the German people to shoot at demonstrating and unarmed people, and possibly even shooting at acquaintances and relatives?

Soothing words cannot erase this real possibility from the world.

Anton Fertl 

A father's support

Together with this letter was a shorter one written by his father in support of his case. My father and grandfather were never that close. My uncle - 8 years the senior - was their father's heir (even sharing his name), and he was similarly distant to my father, being almost of a different generation. My father, on the other hand, was his mother's son, and more a product of the post-war era. He was quickly caught up in dreams of social change, and bewitched by vistas of far-off lands - a very different worldview to his village-dwelling blacksmith father. So, to receive such a letter of support from his own father meant the world to mine, still bringing tears to his eyes fifty years later. 

Erklärung 

Ich bin politisch nicht besonders interessiert, aber soviel an elementarenn Überzeugungen besitz ich, daß ich mit der Kriegsdienstverweigerung meines Sohnes Anton vollkommen übereinstimme. Er und mein weiterer Sihn Hans haben mich von der menschlichen Notwendigkeit dieser Verweigerung überzeugt.

Ich selbst war nicht an der Front, habe aber genug Elend miterlebt, un alles war eine Folge des Krieges, den von den aufgehetzt durch die Propaganda, aber heute soll das meined Söhned ersparts bleiben und ich halte ihre eigene, verantwortliche Entscheidung für mutig und richtig. 

Auf einzelne Äußerungen kann ich mich natürlich nicht entsinnen, das wäre zuviel verlangt. Ich hoffe, daß die Gewissensentscheidung meaines Sohns anerkannt wird.

Johann Fertl 

Again, in English:

Declaration 

I'm not particularly interested in politics, but I possess enough fundamental convictions to completely agree with my son Anton's conscientious objection to military service. He and my other son, Hans, convinced me of the human necessity of this refusal. 

I was not at the front myself, but I witnessed enough misery, and it was all a consequence of the war, incited by propaganda. But today, my sons should be spared that, and I consider their own responsible decision to be courageous and right. 

Of course, I can't recall individual statements; that would be asking too much. I hope that my son's decision of conscience will be recognised. 

Johann Fertl 

My grandfather's disavowal of politics here is not quite as disingenuous as my father's invocation of Catholic values earlier, which some readers may have picked up on. The burden of the War fell heavily on Johann Fertl, who had lost his four year old daughter to Scarlet Fever because the Wehrmacht had taken all the medicines, and was later provided a (very non-optional) "job" working at a chemical weapons factory near the Austrian border. The facility was a satellite camp of Dachau Concentration Camp, and used slave labour, while forcing more "free" Germans to work there as well (under strict supervision and controls). Already a political outsider in the village for his progressive politics, my grandfather's subsequent PTSD and alcoholism after the War served to further drive him, a somewhat broken man, away from politics.

Even so, he recognised the importance of making himself heard here - and not only for my father's benefit. The possibility of a civil alternative to military service, justified by "reasons of conscience", had only been introduced the year before, and my father claimed that he was one of the first (perhaps even the first) in Bavaria to avail of this avenue to avoid military service. When I asked him what he would have done had such an option not existed, he said "Go to prison, perhaps. Or leave Germany - but where would I have gone?".

So convinced was my father of the moral imperative to oppose war and militarism, he managed to convice two of his friends to make similar arguments and to refuse to serve, and he even convinced his elder brother - who had already carried out his own military service, and had continued in a non-commissioned role - to abruptly end his own association with the military (indeed, my grandfather's letter makes references to both his sons in this regard). 

War drums beat once more

This, one of my proudest memories of my father, is now a core motivating issue for me too, nearly 60 years later. As I write, the German government has breached its own austerity-mad, quasi-religious spending cap to enable enormous expenditure on weapons (ensuring megaprofits for the arms companies), remilitarising in a way not seen since the Third Reich. The German government is also threatening to reintroduce conscription if enough people "fail" to volunteer for the new, expanded army reserve. 

At the same time, Germany is defending - and has helped arm - an Israeli government hell-bent of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinian people of Gaza. Germany's own dark history has now been twisted so far by those in power that - for "reasons of state" - the population is expected to support war crimes and genocide without question, while those who call for the defence of international law, and decry the deliberate murder of tens of thousands of children, are demonised as "anti-semitic" (ironically, disgustingly even, this includes Jews in Germany and elsewhere critical of the slaughter). Recent polls show that ordinary Germans overwhemingly oppose Israel's war crimes, but the media and political elites allow no such opinion to enjoy oxygen.

The European Union, too, is beating the drums of war loudly, with its ReArmEurope agenda - ostensibly driven by the need to defend the bloc from Russia since its ongoing aggression escalated into a full-blown invasion of Ukraine, but in reality part of a larger agenda, including a resurgent European imperialism, and expansionist NATO politics. Whether Russia, under Putin's fascistic leadership, poses a threat to Europe, or not, is entirely irrelevant to this militarisation of Europe - there have long been reckless warmongers on all sides. Indeed, the European Commission's Vice President and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, seems hell-bent on picking a fight with Russia anyway, calling for it to be broken up into smaller states.

The other side of my family has roots in Ireland, which - due to its centuries-long experience of colonial violence by Britain - has been militarily neutral for years (at least in the part not still occupied by Britain). But, here too, the media, government, and establishment are busily undermining the country's "triple lock", to enable the country to join in the military projects underway across the continent and further afield. The European Union - supposedly formed as a "peace project" for Europe, is rapidly being converted into a "war project", with military spending joining austerity in the hearts of Brussels' policy-makers. Even Denmark's traditionally "frugal" (that is, pro-austerity) government has recently distanced itself from its penny-pinching outlook in order to facilitate expanded military spending across Europe.

This last example is perhaps the most relevant today, for I - too - am a father, with a young daughter growing up with dreams and hopes in the relative safety of Denmark. I say "relative" with some bitterness: as of July 1 2025, Denmark's (admittedly limited) military conscription has been lengthened to 11 months and extended to include women - ostensibly in the name of "equality". While military experts, and even the Danish military union, opposed the move (many arguing against conscription entirely, for being expensive, ineffective, and damaging to education, careers, and even to democracy itself), the political class - including even the country's main radical left party - all supported the change. The dark reality, of course, has less to do with defence, and more to do with preparing the population for the idea of a coming war (when conscription would likely be extended much further, creating a generation of cannon fodder).

If Denmark's conscription law remains as it is now, and my daughter remains in Denmark, when she reaches 18 she will be entered into a lottery to serve in a military force that has joined in brutal illegal invasions and occupations, such as Afghanistan. Words cannot express my rage. Fortunately, the right to conscientious objection also exists in Denmark too - for now - and my father's words ring in my head: "the right to conscientious objection that exists in our country must not only be preserved but fully used - and even elevated to a moral duty". 

As the far-right rises in many countries once again, and the sabres rattle louder than ever, resisting normalisation of war, stopping the far-right, and putting an end to militarism and war entirely - redirecting the countless billions spent on bombs to be spent on books, beds, and a better future for all the world - must be a paramount struggle, alongside the fight to rescue a liveable climate on this small planet of ours. For my father, and my daughter, I can demand nothing less. 

“Security and the Left” - Impact Workshop

On 8-9 June 2023 the Brussels Office of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) hosted a workshop in Malmö to facilitate the exchange of experiences and strategies between several left-wing parties grappling with the issue of security policy, particularly in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The event was held face-to-face and invitation-only to guarantee an atmosphere of trust and confidentiality to participants.

The workshop brought together 20 party activists and decision-makers from the political left in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Germany.[1] Participation included current MPs, and members of party leaderships, from Enhedslisten (Denmark), Vänsterpartiet (Sweden), Vasemmistoliitto (Finland), Socialistisk Venstreparti (Norway), Rødt (Norway), and DIE LINKE (Germany).

Participants had the opportunity to exchange views on analysis and strategy, to connect and to learn from each other – gaining useful insights into the experiences of, and debates within, left parties in the Nordic countries and Germany. Through a dynamic mix of inputs and interactive discussions, the workshop concentrated on key questions and challenges for the left in the area of security policy, including the thorny question of left strategies and tactics towards military and security alliances such as NATO.

The workshop was part of an ongoing series of events with a focus on the Nordic countries organised by RLS Brussels.

Read the full report at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.  

Impact workshop: “The Left in Power”, Copenhagen 9-10 June

In June 2022, the Brussels Office of Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung hosted a workshop in Copenhagen to better understand and compare the central issues, experiences and strategies of left-wing parties’ participation in, or support of, governments in the region. The event was face-to-face and by-invitation only to guarantee an atmosphere of trust and confidentiality to participants.

The workshop brought together 30 party activists and decision-makers from among the political left in Sweden, Denmark and Germany.[1] Participation included current MPs, members of the party leadership, and activists with experience at the regional and local level from Enhedslisten (Denmark) and Vänsterpartiet (Sweden), as well as DIE LINKE officials and elected representatives from several German states and state parliaments (Thuringia, Brandenburg, Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bremen and Hamburg).

Participants had the opportunity to exchange viewpoints on analysis and strategy, learn from each other and connect, gaining useful insights into the experiences and debates of left parties in the Nordic countries and Germany. A dynamic mix of inputs, interactive methods, small group discussions and strategy development, concentrated on a number of key questions, including the case for the “left in power”, strategies and tactics for making this a reality, and the question of placing limits or “red lines” on government participation.

The workshop was part of an ongoing series of events with a focus on the Nordic countries organised by RLS Brussels.

Read the full report at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office.

Countering the neoliberal privatisation of services

Will the COVID-19 pandemic drive further privatisation of the services sector and a new wave of austerity, or can we expect a departure from neoliberal orthodoxy, towards re-municipalisation and increased public investments? These were just some of the questions posed in an online debate with Dr Dieter Plehwe and Dr Mirjam Katzin on 11 November.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the injustice and inefficiency of the privatising, outsourcing and commodifying of vital public services. It has also exposed the inadequacy of the current system in dealing with the mass job losses from national lockdowns, magnifying levels of inequality already worsened by several decades of austerity. However, there has also been growth in awareness of the importance of such services in times of crisis, underlining the need for strong, public, services.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office. 

Don’t Panic - Analysis and Strategy on Right-Wing Populism

Over the past decade, many countries have seen the rise and consolidation of support for right-wing populist movements and parties. This development is being increasingly reflected in parliaments and governments alike and now poses a serious challenge, both to parties of the left and to the values at the heart of liberal democracy.

For the past two years, the Copenhagen-based Democracy in Europe Organisation (DEO) has teamed up with the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office (RLS) on a joint project to address the rise of the populist right and the future of European democracy. This collaboration brought together the political left in Germany, Sweden and Denmark for a number of workshops and has now culminated in the publication of a new anthology: Don’t Panic – Analysis and Strategy on Right-Wing Populism.

Contributors include political actors and analysts such as Swedish anti-fascist researcher Mathias Wåg, DIE LINKE policy advisor Kerstin Wolter, Enhedslisten MP Rosa Lund and Vänsterpartiet Party Secretary Aron Etzler, among others. Divided into three sections, the book examines the development of far-right populism in Germany, Sweden and Denmark and the counter-strategies and tactics deployed by the left. It is an informative and thought-provoking contribution to understanding and combating right-wing populism in Europe and sets out some visions for building a stronger left alternative.

Read the full article at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Brussels Office. 

Download the book as a PDF.

The Munich Oktoberfest Bombing, 40 years on.

Forty years ago today - on September 26, 1980 - neo-Nazis detonated a nail bomb in a bin at the entrance to the Munich Oktoberfest, killing twelve people and injuring 221 more, many of them seriously. It remains - alongside the 1972 Munich Olympics attack - the deadliest terror attack in modern German history, and is the most deadly by the far-right since 1945. Yet the investigation by the Bavarian State Criminal Police remains one of the most serious failures by German investigative authorities.

The man still officially considered to be the sole perpetrator, Gundolf Köhler, was killed in the blast. He was known to be involved in neo-fascist circles, including the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (“Hoffmann Military Sports Group”) - a neo-Nazi militia organisation which was banned in Germany the same year. He also had a portrait of Hitler hanging over his bed. Germany had seen numerous far-right attacks in the preceding years, and in 1980 itself.

Nonetheless, Bavarian police quickly concluded that the attack was not politically motivated, and closed their investigations in 1982. They also concluded that Köhler had acted alone, despite convincing indications of others being involved in the attack. This included several witnesses testifying to having seen Köhler arguing with two men in German army parkas shortly before the explosion. Confessions by two imprisoned fascist activists about military training and weapons dumps in the forest were not followed up either.

Fortunately, demands to re-open the investigation continued. In 2009, inquiries by the Greens revealed that the domestic intelligence agencies in three German states (Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse) had been closely monitoring the neo-Nazi militia Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann only hours before the bombing. In 2010, a request from the victims' lawyers for access to the DNA evidence revealed that all of the evidence had been destroyed in 1997 - much of it never having been fully tested - including a severed hand that was never identified.

In 2011, Der Spiegel magazine reported on some 46,000 pages of previously unpublished investigation files, which revealed that authorities were already aware of Köhler at the time of the attack, and considered him to be “firmly rooted in a milieu of militant neo-Nazis” which also “maintained intensive contacts with CSU functionaries”. (The CSU - Christian Social Union - is the Bavarian sister party to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and has governed Bavaria every year bar three since 1946).

Der Spiegel reported that the files also showed Köhler was motivated by a desire to help the conservative CSU’s candidate for Chancellor, Franz Josef Strauss, win the October 1980 federal elections by carrying out a false-flag attack that could be blamed on the left. Köhler was unsuccessful, both in laying the blame on the left, and in electing Strauss. Although the CDU/CSU remained the largest party in the German Bundestag, the social democrat Helmut Schmidt remained Chancellor.

Following years of campaigning by relatives, victim representatives, lawyers, trade unions, journalists and politicians, the investigation was finally re-opened in 2014. The German government and intelligence services continued to be difficult and obstructionist. They refused to admit that there were intelligence informants in the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (a fact later established), leading Die Linke and the Greens to lodge a complaint with the German Constitutional Court.

In April 2016, in response to enquiries by the Die Linke MP Martina Renner, the Federal Government also revealed that only the Federal Intelligence Service The “Bundesnachrichtendienst”) had handed over its files on the case, while the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (“Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution” - BfV) had not done so - despite holding the majority of the relevant material.

The investigation was closed again in July this year, but not before it was determined that Köhler had been, in fact, motivated by far-right extremism and a desire to build “a Führer-state based on the model of National Socialism”. It was also found that while there “were not sufficient indications” to show that others were involved in the bombing, such a scenario “cannot be ruled out.”

Forty years after this terrible atrocity, the victims are only just now receiving proper compensation - and this only after years of campaigning. Meanwhile, the German state is reeling from revelations of extensive far-right activities in the army, police and intelligence services, death threats against politicians, and a rising rate of neo-fascist violence and killings across the country.

Unfortunately, the Oktoberfest bombing - including its botched investigation - looks less like an exception, and more like one example among many more of neo-Nazi violence tolerated and covered-up by elements of the state apparatus. This was neither the first nor the last time that German authorities obstructed and obscured investigations into right-wing terrorist attacks. At best, the investigation was an incompetent farce - more likely, there was deliberate obstruction and obfuscation, as there was in the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terror case.

The bitter reality today is that the danger of right-wing terror is an immediate threat once again, but the German state services remain unreformed, and are demonstratively compromised. The fight for democracy remains a battle of remembering against forgetting, and it is vital that decades of wilful ignorance - and worse - by German authorities of the continuing Nazi threat is exposed and undone.

Kill-lists and commandos: Germany still has a Nazi problem

SOON after the government announced dramatic steps to combat far-right extremism in the military, it emerged that a new wave of neonazi death threats have been sent to left-wing politicians and public figures. After turning a blind eye to the neo-fascist threat for years, authorities are now finding its tentacles spread throughout Germany’s security apparatus and society.

Read the full article in 2 parts at MORNING STAR here and here.

Kill-lists and Commandos: Germany has a Nazi Problem (2 parts)

The latest figures from the German government show a worrying increase in far-right violence in the country. Days after the government announced dramatic steps to combat far-right extremism in its military, far-right death threats originating in the police force were sent to a left-wing politician. After downplaying and ignoring the scale of the neo-fascist threat for years, the German government should take far more seriously the threat of far-right extremism pervading the German state and society.

Read the full article in 2 parts at BRAVE NEW EUROPE, here and here

Kill-lists and Commandos: Germany has a Nazi problem

Cross-posted at The Left Berlin. 

Seventy-five years after World War Two, far-right extremists have re-entered many parliaments across Europe in suits and ties, but their dark presence can be found in other, equally worrying places, including Germany's intelligence services and its military, the Bundeswehr. As a new global economic crisis unfolds, the neofascist threat inside and outside parliament should be taken very seriously indeed.

On June 30, mere hours before assuming the rotating presidency of the European Council, Germany announced the drastic overhaul of its elite military special forces, the Kommando Spezialkräfte (“Special Forces Command” - KSK) due to links with right-wing extremism. The KSK has been suspended from any further deployments and exercises until at least October, and one of its four battalions - the 2nd Company - is to be disbanded entirely. Making the announcement, German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that the KSK had “become partially independent” from the chain of command, creating a "wall of secrecy" around itself, and had a “toxic leadership culture”. 

A decisive move against the KSK was long overdue - the 1,400-strong commando force has been under the spotlight for years now over its links to far-right and neo-Nazi elements. In 2017, a farewell party for a KSK commander from the 2nd Company was investigated after attendees threw pig heads, and played music by far-right rock band “Sturmwehr” while giving Nazi salutes (a punishable offence). Despite credible evidence of the incident, when none of the soldiers present admitted to seeing the Nazi salutes, the Bundeswehr concluded that the charge was “not confirmed”, and no action was taken.

In May this year, a trove of Nazi memorabilia and literature, stolen ammunition and explosives was discovered on the property of a 45-year old KSK officer in Saxony with known far-right politics who attended the same farewell party. Two kilograms of explosives, several thousand rounds of ammunition, a machine gun and other firearms were found, as well as an SS song book, far-right magazines, and neo-Nazi stickers. A subsequent working group set up to investigate the special commando unit presented its findings shortly before the government made its announcement - besides the disturbing conclusions about KSK members, it also noted with concern the disappearance of some 48,000 rounds of ammunition and 62 kilograms of explosives from the KSK’s arsenal. 

The government's move also followed weeks of controversy after Der Spiegel magazine published a KSK insider’s account of the unit. The whistleblower, a captain active in the KSK since 2018, revealed an internal culture where right-wing extremism was "known about," but either "ignored or completely tolerated." He described how one of his instructors used the code "Y-88" as a "call sign" (by which soldiers identify themselves in radio communications). The numbers 88 are a commonly-used code for the Nazi salute, while the letter “Y” bears a close resemblance to the "Lebensrune" ("life-rune”), another symbol used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Despite noticing the clear reference to Hitler, the whistleblower said recruits stayed quiet for fear of punishment. 

Far-right sentiments in the KSK have been on the radar for quite some time. As early as 2003, then KSK commander, Reinhard Günzel, was dismissed for publicly expressing solidarity with the anti-Semitic statements made by Christian Democratic Union (CDU) MP Martin Hohmann. Hohmann was expelled from the CDU, but in 2017, re-entered the Bundestag (German parliament) as an MP for the far-right party Alternativ für Deutschland (“Alternative for Germany” - AfD). Günzel himself went on to become a popular speaker at far-right events, where he denied the scale of the Holocaust, attacked the Nürnberg war crimes trials, and praised the “courage and sacrifice” of German soldiers during World War Two.

A much larger problem

While the KSK has been repeatedly linked with the far-right, it is not alone in this regard, and there have been a rash of far-right incidents involving the Bundeswehr over recent years. In 2017, a German soldier, Franco Albrecht, was arrested after trying to retrieve a pistol and ammunition that he had hidden in a bathroom in Vienna airport. It soon emerged that Albrecht had lived a double life for two years, using a fake ID to register as a Syrian refugee in 2015. He was charged with planning to carry out “false flag” attacks on politicians or refugee rights advocates in an attempt to create a backlash against refugees. 

Ammunition, military equipment and Nazi-era paraphernalia were found in Albrecht's residence, accomplices were arrested, more ammunition recovered, and a larger terror network revealed. Despite Albrecht's actions, however, and the fact that his master’s thesis - completed before joining the military - contained extremist ideology and references to “race mixing” and the “dissolution of ethnic groups”, his Bundeswehr superiors only gave him a warning, and failed to alert the Militärischem Abschirmdienst (“Military Counter-Intelligence Service” - MAD). In November 2019, the Federal Court of Justice finally instructed the Frankfurt Regional Court to open a case against Albrecht for "preparing a serious, state-damaging act of violence”.

A visit to Albrecht’s barracks in Illkirch by then-Defence Minister (now President of the European Commission) Ursula von der Leyen, along with several Berlin journalists, revealed a hand-painted swastika near his weapon and a collection of Wehrmacht memorabilia. The same year, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that a network of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement has been growing for years at the Bundeswehr's university in Munich, and investigators discovered yet more memorabilia from Germany's Nazi-era army, the Wehrmacht, on display in troop barracks in Donaueschingen in the Black Forest. 

Defence Minister von der Leyen directed the German military to conduct a thorough overhaul, purging its links with the Wehrmacht, removing memorabilia from barracks and ordering some - but not all - military bases named after World War Two soldiers to be renamed, but the subsequent inquiry launched into the state of the Bundeswehr was condemned as too little, too late. Once touted as a possible successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, von der Leyen’s mishandling of the crisis - further undermined by obstruction from the military leadership - pushed her out of the political limelight until an opening appeared around the European Commission presidency. 

The Day X murder list

In 2017, Bundeskriminalamt (“Federal Criminal Police” - BKA) raids in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommen - conducted, curiously, without the knowledge of state government or intelligence officials - revealed the existence of the Nordkreuz (“Northern Cross”) network. At first believed to be a “prepper” network, "Nordkreuz" possessed significant amounts of ammunition and firearms (one member alone had 10,000 bullets taken from police stores), and had ordered some 200 body bags and a supply of quicklime to dispose of bodies. A network of some 54 neo-Nazis, including far-right police, soldiers and members of the KSK, they trained regularly at police and army reserve shooting ranges. 

It later emerged that members of  "Nordkreuz" were plotting to murder several prominent German politicians, and carry out attacks on refugees and immigrants across Germany on an unspecified “Day X”. In preparation, they had circulated "kill lists" of politicians from Germany's main political parties - the Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Greens and Die Linke - including Green Party leader Claudia Roth, Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and former German president Joachim Gauck. Several members of an elite German police commando unit were linked to the network, and a submachine gun, over 55,000 rounds of ammunition, and several explosives were found in one former commando’s home.

The group also had a longer list of names and addresses of some 25,000 left-wing “enemies”, compiled from data taken from police computers. While "Nordkreuz" had enhanced the list by conducting further research on their intended victims, the same basic list was also found in the possession of Saxony terror group “Revolution Chemnitz”. It was further distributed as an email attachment by Heiner Merz, state MP for the far-right AfD in Baden-Württemberg, who encouraged AfD members to "save, distribute and use the list" to target left wing individuals from their communities, saying “there are few limits to your imagination”. When the list turned up with "Nordkreuz", Merz claimed he had received it from an “antifa dropout”, and that he had been “deceived”. 

Fears of a "shadow army"

As the evidence piled up, fears and evidence began to grow of a secret “shadow army” within the German military - a fear that has existed ever since the Bundeswehr was formed, and reflecting concerns about the return of the kind of violent nationalist cells that developed in the German army during the 1920s. In January this year, the military counter-intelligence agency MAD reported that at least 550 serving Bundeswehr soldiers were being investigated for possible involvement in right-wing extremism, including 20 in the KSK. An additional 360 cases had been investigated in 2019, although only a small number of these managed to confirm far-right activity. 

In 2019, military counter-intelligence and Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz ("Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution" - BfV) founded a joint working group, where they have discussed more than a thousand cases of possible right-wing extremism so far. Such cooperation is made necessary because the MAD’s responsibility is limited to active soldiers, while significant far-right activity is occurring within the army reserve. According to MAD president Christof Gramm, around 800 reservists have since been excluded from military exercises in recent months because of their “anti-constitutional attitude”. 

The MAD has been sharply criticised over its surveillance and reporting of far-right infiltration however. In 2017, the agency was subjected to an investigation by the parliamentary committee that oversees German intelligence services, and in February 2019, the MAD admitted that it had been consistently under-reported the numbers of right-wing extremist soldiers "to the outside world" and had consequently misled the Bundestag. 

There are also fears that the MAD itself may be infiltrated. In June this year, a senior investigator was suspended for tipping off KSK members to the raid in May. In 2018, another senior officer, Peter W., faced charges of alerting KSK soldiers to a planned raid on their Calw barracks in connection with the Franco Albrecht case. Peter W. is believed to have warned the KSK trainer, André Schmitt - the officer responsible for the unit’s military security and himself a longterm MAD source. Nonetheless, the MAD president continued to assert that his organisation had fully researched the possibility of a “shadow army”, and that no such entity existed. Authorities spoke only of “individual cases”.

Hannibal’s secret army 

In late 2018, a year-long investigation by journalists from the newspaper Die Tageszeitung (“taz”) revealed evidence of an extensive right-wing network, connected to but larger than the already discovered “Nordkreuz”. Around the same time, Focus magazine made similar revelations of an "underground army". This enlarged group was dubbed the “Hannibal network”, after the codename of its chat group administrator - the KSK trainer André Schmitt. Like "Nordkreuz", the Hannibal network was first considered to be a far-right “prepper” network, and was divided into regional groupings across Germany (West, South, East and North) mirroring Bundeswehr structures, along with further branches in Austria and Switzerland. 

Like its northern section "Nordkreuz", other parts of the Hannibal network made preparations for an anticipated societal breakdown on “Day X”, organising weapons depots and safe-houses, and undertaking paramilitary training. Driven by a “hatred for left wingers”, however, members of the network were also preparing to carrying out a possible military coup and developed plans for the mass killings of left-wing politicians and other “enemies”. Top of the list were Dietmar Bartsch and Sahra Wagenknecht, then-leaders of the left-wing party Die Linke in the Bundestag. 

Numbering around 200 individuals, in some ways the network resembled less a “shadow army” than a “shadow state”. Members included active, retired and reserve soldiers, police officers (including commandos from the Spezialeinsatzkommandos - the “Special Operational Units” or "SEK"), lawyers, judges, firefighters, civil servants and even members of the German security, military and intelligence authorities. 

A notably high number of members of the Hannibal network were parachutists. The parachutist training center at Altenstadt Air Base had been infamous in the 1990s for celebrating Hitler’s birthday and singing Nazi songs. Then-commander Fritz Zwicknagl - who was removed as a result - later went on to work for the AfD in the Bundestag. Another instructor with far-right connections, Andreas Kalbitz, remained at the training centre until 2005. He later became a co-leader of the AfD’s extremist faction, Der Flügel (“The Wing”), and sat on the AfD national executive from 2017 until 2020.

In May this year, the AfD executive voted narrowly to expel Kalbitz from the party for “technical reasons” associated with his supposed failure to disclose prior memberships in neo-Nazi organisations. Conveniently, the party application form on which he was required to list prior associations has since gone missing and - with considerable support inside the AfD, and several appeals still ongoing - Kalbitz's membership status remains unclear.

The "Uniter" Network

The soldier (and fake refugee) Franco Albrecht, who was stationed in the Alsace, was part of the southern Hannibal network, “Südkreuz” (“Southern Cross”), and is believed to have been in direct contact with Schmitt. When his arrest in 2017 triggered terrorist investigations into far-right networks associated with the Bundeswehr, Schmitt closed his chat groups, and shifted his focus to the conspiratorial “Uniter” grouping. Schmitt had first founded “Uniter” in Halle during 2012, supposedly to provide further training and insurance support to unite former and serving members of the security forces. However, the tiny grouping soon dissolved following an internal disagreement, and Schmitt founded the Hannibal network on the social media app Telegram in 2015. 

In 2016, however, André Schmitt had re-founded "Uniter" in Stuttgart - and with such a similar structure to “Hannibal”, emphasis on building ties to the military and security services, and “prepper” world-view, that it is widely considered to be an extension of the Hannibal network and its strategy. By the end of 2019, the new “Uniter” network claimed to have up to 2,000 members across Germany, including former members of “Hannibal” and members of the Bundeswehr and intelligence agencies, although the actual numbers remain unknown. And while the organisation denies he was ever a member, a “Uniter” badge was also found among Franco Albrecht’s possessions.

The "Uniter" organisation has also been revealed to have an extensive connections and support among the more right-wing members of the CDU in the former East Germany. It has even claimed support within the military authorities themselves. When taz asked Schmitt to confirm in 2018 that he was in fact “Hannibal”, he accused the newspaper of “harassment” and threatened that “we will have no other option but to inform the MAD". Raids on houses of "Uniter" members have turned up numerous military items, while footage has been obtained of Uniter conducting illegal paramilitary exercises in southern Germany in June 2018. Schmitt has himself been charged for illegal possession of military items, including practice grenades taken from Bundeswehr reserves. 

"Uniter" was stripped of its non-profit status late 2019 and the network moved its base of operations to Switzerland. In June this year, the BfV finally confirmed that "Uniter" was in their sights, indicating that there was “sufficiently significant actual indications” for right-wing extremism in the organisation. Inaugural “Uniter” chairman and the network’s co-founder, Ringo M., was an active state intelligence officer in Baden-Württemberg when the group was set up. He resigned soon afterwards, and left the organisation in 2017, claiming it was “too militaristic”. Der Spiegel magazine revealed in May this year that Ringo M. is now assisting criminal police with their investigations.

Citizens in uniform?

Some commentators have tried to explain the apparent uptick in cases of far-right extremism in the Bundeswehr by reference to Germany’s abolition of compulsory military service in 2011, and some politicians are now calling for its reintroduction. With the elimination of compulsory service, or so the argument goes, the section of German society entering the military narrowed and became self-selecting, creating a problem with far-right recruits. The more sobering reality, however, is probably closer to the claim of Die Linke’s parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch - that far-right extremism in the armed forces is connected with “a culture in the Bundeswehr that has allowed and tolerated this for decades”.

From inception, the Bundeswehr was promoted as a "parliamentary army", made up of “citizens in uniform” to reflect Germany’s political plurality, and with a revised definition of military obedience that was meant to serve as a protective mechanism against Nazi-era excesses. However, the Bundeswehr has, from its creation in 1955, struggled with its association with the far-right and its image as a refuge for both historical and newly-minted extremists. In the late 1950s, the Bundeswehr hired 300 officers from the Waffen-SS to fill its ranks, and more than 12,000 Wehrmacht officers were soon serving in the Bundeswehr - including over 40 Nazi-era generals. 

In 2014, the release of secret papers from Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), revealed what was widely suspected or known for decades - in the years directly following World War Two, around 2,000 former officers of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS had formed a secret army - the "Schnez-Truppe" - to protect the country from external threat of the Soviet Union and the internal threat of left-wing influence. According to the documents, it could call on up to 40,000 further fighters should the need arise, and it regularly carried out surveillance of left-wing politicians. The secret army's leader, the former colonel Albert Schnez, was also heavily involved in the discussions leading to the creation of the Bundeswehr, and went on to lead it from 1968-71.

Another key architect of the Bundeswehr, Hans Speidel, was a self-confessed Mussolini-style fascist who had served as Chief-of-Staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, while the first head of the Bundeswehr, Adolf Heusinger, was another high ranking officer with continuous service since before World War One. As the Cold War reached a crescendo, their experience - and anti-communism - made these senior officers valuable assets for the foundation of NATO, while their dubious history could be explained away under the heading “career soldier”. Speidel himself became the NATO Supreme Commander of the Allied Army in Central Europe in 1957. The BND document released in 2014 indicates that both Speidel and Heusinger were also aware of the secret army's existence at the time.

When the Bundeswehr launched in 1955, it did so at a military base in Augustdorf named after Rommel - known as "Hitler's favorite general”. In fact, until the middle of the 1990s, Germany had 50 military bases named after Wehrmacht soldiers in Germany. Some of these barracks were newly built, and were given their names under the auspices of conservative Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauß in the 1960s. In 2017, a report by left-wing party Die Linke showed that between 1995 and 2016, sixteen such Bundeswehr bases had been renamed, while another nine bases were considering a change. The Augustdorf base, however, bears Rommel’s name to this day, as does another in Dornstadt.

The National Socialist Underground

The Bundeswehr's structural tolerance for the far-right also brought it into contact with the most notorious terror group in recent German history - the “Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund" (National-Socialist Underground - NSU). The NSU - a terror organisation of three extremists supported by some 100-150 far-right associates - is held responsible for multiple bombing attacks and bank robberies, 43 attempted killings and 10 murders, most of them of people of Turkish heritage, in Germany between 2000 and 2007. 

Twenty years ago, neo-Nazi extremist and key NSU supporter André Eminger had barely begun his military service when he reportedly told his supervising officer: "I identify as a National Socialist." It was hardly a shock - he wore a tattoo reading "Blut und Ehre" (“blood and honor”) - the Hitler Youth motto and name of a far-right group now banned in Germany. Despite his admission, however, Eminger continued in the military - including undergoing weapons training - for the next ten months.

The NSU had a far more concerning relationship with the intelligence services, however - in particular with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the BfV. Investigations have revealed that members of the NSU and their close circle were informers on the BfV payroll and the intelligence services have been accused of actually helping to rebuild the far-right scene in the state of Thuringia. An intelligence agent reporting to the BfV on the activities of the far-right was even a witness at one of the killings, raising serious questions about BfV knowledge of NSU activities.

The BfV has also been criticised for actively obstructing investigations into the NSU’s activities. Shortly after the existence of the group became public in 2011, many BfV files related to the NSU were destroyed - some were shredded soon after the official investigation had begun. The BfV president Heinz Fromm resigned in disgrace, but any remaining BfV files on the NSU have been redacted or remain inaccessible. During the high-profile trial, BfV agents and informants were only allowed to give limited testimony - or in some cases, none at all.

Extremism and the deep state

Fromm’s successor as BfV president, Hans-Georg Maaßen, was himself forced to resign in controversy. During the 2018 Chemnitz protests, where public footage showed an angry right-wing mob "hunting” for “foreign-looking” people, Maaßen claimed the BfV had seen no evidence of any such incidents - a spurious claim echoed only by the far-right AfD. Soon afterwards, it came to light that Maaßen had also passed sensitive information to members of the far-right party, leading to calls for his resignation across the political spectrum - except, predictably, from the AfD. To smooth things over, Maaßen was initially granted a role in the Interior Ministry, but he was placed on early retirement after he used his farewell speech as BfV president to accuse "radical left-wing" forces in the German government of conspiring to remove him because he had criticised the government's "naive" and “left-wing" security and migration policies.

Maaßen’s association with the AfD - which holds 89 seats in the German Bundestag and has now been elected into every German state parliament - is particularly concerning, not only because of the organisation’s connections to far-right groups, but also because of its own brand of far-right politics. In September 2019, a German court ruled that Björn Höcke - co-leader of the AfD's hard-line wing, Der Flügel - could legally be called a fascist as the description "rests on verifiable fact". Der Flügel has some 7,000 members - around one fifth of the AfD total membership. In March 2020, the BfV classified Der Flügel as "a right-wing extremist endeavour against the free democratic basic order”, incompatible with Germany’s Consitution, and placed the group under close intelligence surveillance. Despite demands - and promises - to dissolve, Der Flügel appears to continue to exist.

Attempts to monitor the far-right are facing political hurdles too. On June 1, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that the chief of the state intelligence service in Saxony had been replaced after refusing to delete all data collected on AfD politicians. The newly-elected conservative Prime Minister of Saxony, Dirk-Martin Christian, had demanded the move in accordance with the special protections MPs usually enjoy as a result of their mandate. The AfD, however, is under intelligence surveillance throughout Germany over to its links with the far-right, and other German states have taken legal advice supporting the continued gathering data on the party. The move is therefore unique to Saxony, and is all the more concerning as the Saxony branch of the AfD is considered one of the most extremist.

In fact, despite the AfD's associations with far-right and neo-Nazi politics, Germany’s governing CDU remains divided over whether or not it should work with the party at state, or even federal, level. The conservative CDU - currently in a federal “grand coalition” government with the centre-left SPD - is suffering an identity crisis, as many former CDU voters flock to the AfD - especially in underdeveloped and marginalised parts of the former East Germany. In order to regain lost ground, many CDU members are keen to end the "grand coalition" and return the party to a position clearly on the right wing of the spectrum. Many of these calls also urge an end to the “cordon sanitaire” that other parties have placed around working with the AfD, leading to a tense political stand-off.

Far-right attacks on the rise

Meanwhile, the numbers of violent far-right attacks in Germany continue to rise. German Interior Ministry figures, released in April this year, recorded 986 acts of attempted or perpetrated far-right violence in 2019, over 600 of them targeted at holders of political office, and revelations of the Nordkreuz "kill list" in 2019 coincided with the murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke in his home by a man with known links to the far-right, including with the neo-Nazi National Party of Germany (NPD) and the German branch of the British fascist terrorist group Combat 18. 

In October last year, a synagogue in the city of Halle was attacked on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. After killing one person but failing to enter the building, the attacker then drove to a nearby Turkish kebab shop and shot dead a customer there. The gunman, a 27 year-old neo-Nazi, had learned to handle weapons in the Bundeswehr, but no indication of his right-wing beliefs was recorded in his military file. 

In 2018, eight members of the neo-Nazi terrorist Freital Group, from near Dresden - a bastion of the far-right - were found guilty of terrorism-related crimes, including multiple attacks on refugee shelters, and in November last year the city of Dresden itself declared a "Nazi emergency”. Also in 2018, police arrested several men for carrying out racist crimes and setting up the right-wing terrorist organisation “Revolution Chemnitz”, while in February this year police arrested twelve members of a far-right terror cell “Group S” that was preparing attacks on mosques in 10 German states in order to start a race war. Members of "Group S" had also discussed making attacks on prominent Greens politicians.

Also in February, a far-right gunman killed nine people of immigrant backgrounds and injured five more at a shisha bar and a cafe in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt. While the attacker has not been linked with any extremist group, he left behind a manifesto entitled "Message to the entire German people", in which he expressed his racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Islam and misogynistic views plainly.

According to Interior Ministry figures from 2019, Germany has at least 24,000 far-right extremists, more than half of them prone to violence, but this figure is likely - again - to be an underestimate. In June this year, Focus magazine revealed that many German neo-Nazis - including members of the NPD and The Third Way - have been travelling to Russia to carry out paramilitary training in camps run by the right-wing white-supremacist Russian Imperial Movement near St Petersburg.

On July 3, magazine Der Spiegel reported that a reservist from Lower Saxony had been suspended after being found with a list of the telephone numbers and private addresses of 17 top politicians and celebrities, including federal Ministers, state Prime Ministers, and current and former leaders of the Greens and Die Linke. The reservist was a participant in two right-wing extremist chat groups on WhatsApp. The list of names came from the larger “Orbit” leak of politician data in January 2019, and has been circulated among far-right chat groups ever since 2019, although the BKA is unsure who created the refined list. A similar Facebook chat group of reservists called "Zuflucht" (“Refuge”) has also been exposed, where participants discussed private armament and, again, fighting a possible "racial war".

On June 27, a district councillor for Die Linke in Bavaria, Stefanie Kirchner, was attacked from behind by a man with a knife. The attacker tried to strangle her, and hurled anti-left abuse. Kirchner was able to free herself, but the attacker escaped. Several days later, on July 3, Janine Wißler - head of Die Linke’s state parliamentary delegation in Hesse - revealed that she had received multiple death threats in February, signed “NSU 2.0", targeting both her and her family. Only days after making this revelation public, Wißler received further death threats. 

The threatening messages bore similarities to several death threats sent to lawyer Basay-Yildiz, who had represented families of the victims in the NSU trial. In both cases, the messages included sensitive personal information taken from police databases, and were signed “NSU 2.0”. In the case of Basay-Yildiz, a chat group of officials with right-wing content was discovered, and several civil servants lost their jobs, but no one was charged. According to evidence obtained by Frankfurter Rundschau, it looks likely the death threats against Wißler also originated from within the police force.

The dangers of "business as usual"

As the spate of incidents has grown - including a surge in fire and bomb attacks on refugee shelters - so has the political pressure on the government and authorities to respond. Konstantin von Notz, deputy president of the Bundestag’s intelligence oversight committee, has described the situation in the Bundeswehr as a “structural problem”, while BfV president Thomas Haldenwang, has called far-right extremism and terrorism the "biggest danger to German democracy today." After promising a strengthened security response, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer banned the neo-Nazi group Nordadler (“Northern Eagles”) on June 5, following raids across the country. Nordadler is the third far-right group to be banned in Germany this year, after Combat 18 in January and the United German Peoples and Tribes group in March.

The recent surge in extremism in Germany also coincides with the political growth of the AfD over the last decade, their far-right rhetoric emboldening many extremist elements, with often deadly consequences. This problem is not limited to Germany either - a report last September from the European Union (EU) police agency, Europol, warned that far-right groups across the bloc were actively recruiting from the police and military to increase their capacity for violence.

The successes of far-right parties in countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain, alongside the rightward shift of governments in Poland and Hungary, is a sobering reminder that extremist ideas are growing in broader support and acceptance across the EU. Nor can this growth in far-right political forces over the past decade be dissociated from the politics of austerity enforced by the EU institutions and other agents of neoliberal “business as usual” over the past decade. The current economic crisis is likely to result in another, deeper, recession - characterised by unemployment, social cuts and the further privatisation of public assets - and will once again produce a fertile breeding ground for the far-right.

The numbers of armed extremists remain relatively small - despite the plots of various “prepper” networks there is certainly no threat of a mass insurgency or military coup - although ongoing investigatons are likely to lay bare deeper tentacles in the Bundeswehr and German state. Clearly, however, Germany’s problem with the far-right runs both long and deep - both within and outside the state, including inside the very state agencies meant to monitor it - and, despite recent revelations, the size and extent of extremist networks remains unclear. 

These networks and their many connections with politicians, the military and state agencies pose a unique series of challenges as we head into a new economic crisis, and the social turmoil that this will almost inevitably bring. Should far-right parties like the AfD successfully exploit the social turmoil arising from the downturn, it will only further encourage violent extremists to take matters into their own hands. Worse yet, it also raises the spectre of the far-right parties entering government in a number of EU member states unless credible political alternatives can be found to keep them out.

As a German-led EU begins the task of papering over the cracks of the latest economic crisis while preparing a new round of brutal austerity, it is incumbent on political forces of the left - and all forces that cherish democracy and social justice - to present such an alternative to the neoliberal model that is impoverishing and excluding working class communities across the continent. Such an alternative - denying oxygen to the far-right, empowering working class communities, and instilling sustainability at the centre of our social model - is urgent and long overdue. If we fail to build a new world of solidarity out of this deepening crisis, there are others waiting in the shadows to take their own, much darker, turn.