By Theodore Shoebat
Thirty German soldiers in Lithuania were caught singing a song in praise of Adolf Hitler, yet another indication of the growing extremism within the the Bundeswehr. As we read in Al-Jazeera:
Some 30 German soldiers are being recalled from service in Lithuania, with ringleaders facing immediate dismissal, after they were accused of making racist and anti-Semitic remarks and of sexual violence, a German military spokesperson said.
The soldiers were in Lithuania as part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence mission providing protection to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia by deterring Russia.
Der Spiegel earlier reported that some German soldiers had got so drunk in a hotel that military police had to be called.
Further investigations found that soldiers had sung a birthday song for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at an earlier gathering.
Beyond violating their oaths, the soldiers were accused of “giving offence with racist and anti-Semitic overtones and showing extremist behaviour”, the spokesperson said. They would be back in Germany on Thursday.
“Such behaviour is not only inexcusable but brings shame on us all,” she added.
In Germany, there has been a serious problem with police officers who are Nazis. This is not an understatement. In fact, Herbert Reul, the interior minister of North-Rhine Westphalia, stated: “I always hoped that it was individual cases, but there are too many of them now”. In Reul’s own state of North-Rhine Westphalia, thirty-one officers were exposed sharing Nazi propaganda. “It was almost an entire unit of officers — and we found out by chance,” Mr. Reul said in an interview. “That floored me. This is not trivial. … We have a problem with far-right extremism … I don’t know how far it reaches inside the institutions. But if we don’t deal with it, it will grow.”
The thirty-one officers were suspended in September. Even the unit’s superior was involved. They were (according to the New York Times) “sharing images of Hitler, memes of a refugee in a gas chamber and the shooting of a Black man.”
In October of 2020 twenty-five Berlin police officers were discovered to be involved in a racist chat group. This was revealed only after one officer, frustrated that his superiors never bothered to do anything about this, exposed the officers who were participating in a neo-Nazi group chat. In another situation, six cadets were removed from Berlin’s police academy after they were found downplaying the Holocaust and sharing swastikas in a chat group that had twenty-six other members.
In November, a police station in the western city of Essen was raided after images of ammunition and benches arranged to form swastikas were discovered in a WhatsApp chat. This past week, a violent far-right chat with four police officers in the northern cities of Kiel and Neumünster was discovered. Ammunition and Nazi memorabilia were found in raids of the homes of two officers.
In December of 2020, it was revealed that 15 people — 13 active officers and two retired ones — arranged some benches and ammunition to form swastikas and took photos of them. The photos were posted on a Whatsapp chat. After this was discovered, the police department in Essen, where many of these officers were active, was raided by authorities. Ten officers were suspended.
This past week, a violent far-right chat with four police officers in the northern cities of Kiel and Neumünster was discovered. Ammunition and Nazi memorabilia were found in raids of the homes of two officers. Also just in the same month four officers in the northern cities of Kiel and Neumunster were found to be in a violent Right-wing chat group. According to Sabine Sütterlin-Waack, who serves as State Minister of the Interior, Rural Areas, and Integration:
“So that you can get an idea of the chats, let me say that a picture of Adolf Hitler was sent with a Hitler salute, on which it says: ‘Due to Corona: instead of shaking hands, greetings are normal again’”.
The officers’ homes were raided and Nazi memorabilia were found in both.
What is also disturbing is how these neo-Nazi officers have been using police technology to find and intimidate those they deem as enemies. For example, they used police computers to target Idil Baydar, a Turkish-German comedian. They began to send her threats signed as “NSU 2.0”, a reference to the National Socialist Underground (NSU), a neo-Nazi terrorist network who murdered numerous immigrants and was heavily connected with (and their crimes were covered up by) German intelligence.
They also called up the information of Seda Basay-Yildiz, a lawyer who represented the family of the first victim of the NSU. She also represents those who have deemed by the authorities as “Islamist threats”. Now, it is obvious that a lawyer for terrorists (or ISIS sympathizers) is someone who is morally bankrupt, but the Nazis who are threatening her are obviously dangerous and the actions of the lawyer cannot excuse them nor in anyway exempt the dangerous nature of these Nazis. Fascists will point to evils to justify their own evils, and hence justify their own existence. We also must take into account that such a substantial number of police officers getting involved in neo-Nazi intimidation indicates a dangerous trend: neo-Nazism is becoming popular enough that even significant amounts of officers are involved, which means that that the most elemental institution of authority in society — the police — is being subverted.
Whoever at the police department looked up Basay’Yildez’s info found out her address, the names and birthdays of her daughter, husband, mother and father. In one letter to Basay-Yildez it reads: “we will slaughter your daughter”. These words are followed by the daughter’s first name, the correct street and house number of the family and some vitriolic language: “Lousy Turkish pig! You’re not killing Germany. Better piss off while you get out of here alive, you pig!”
On December 20th of 2018 she received another threat signed as “NSU 2.0”. This time it had the full name of her father, her mother, her husband and her daughter again. This information could have only been found from the population register in police computers. The letter expressed anger at how officers in Frankfurt had been suspended because of their Nazi activities: “You brain-dead shit kebab is obviously not aware of what you did to our police colleagues! However, it is getting really thick for you now, you turkish pig! Your shit (daughter’s name) we’ll tear the head off … and the rest of your kebab crew will too be looked after competently. “
It just so happens that the officer who was logged into the work station to find Basay’Yildez’s information was also a member of a neo-Nazi WhatsApp group which also had a half a dozen other officers who were sharing Nazi content. One image shared on the WhatsApp group showed Hitler on a rainbow with the caption “Good night, you Jews.” According to the New York Times: “There were images of concentration camp inmates and images mocking drowned refugees and people with Down syndrome.” The officers were suspended and interrogated. The threats to Basay-Yildez continued. She moved to a new home, and the threats, regardless, continued, the Nazis finding out her new address. In November 11th, Basay-Yildez received a new threat which began with “Heil Hitler!” and closed with “Say hi to your daughter from me.”
This story has been taking place in the midst of a bizarre phenomena. Signing the threat with “NSU 2.0” is part of a consistent pattern. From August 0f 2018 to December of 2020, at least 96 threatening letters have been sent signed with the acronym “NSU” to twenty-eight different addresses. The first of these letters were sent to Basay-Yildez and other lawyers who represented the families of the victims of the NSU murders. The threats then began to move against anti-racism activists and people representing refugees in Germany. These letters would contain threats, and then to instill further fear, the addresses and personal date that was not made available to the public. In at least three cases, this data was accessed in computers belonging to the Hessian police, three times from the Berlin police, and twice from the Hamburg police. During the investigation of these threatening letters, seventy suspected Nazi police officers were discovered in the Hessian police alone, leading to the realization that there is indeed a fanatically Right-wing network within Germany’s police infrastructure. Also during the course of the investigation it was found out that thousands of illegal inquiries were made in these police computer systems.
One of the senders of these letters who we do know about is one “Andre M.” He sent threatening letters signed as the “National Socialist Offensive”. A psychological evaluation of Andre concluded that he suffers from “paranoid, antisocial and emotionally unstable parts”. A look into his room revealed that his sickness lied in his soul, as it had swastikas and other Nazi imagery. After doing four years in prison for dangerous assault and arson, Andre resided himself in the internet’s darkest parts — the dark web. He joined a forum called “Germany on the Deep Web 2” where he went by the username, “Stahlgewitter”, a reference to the neo-Nazi band of the same name. One of their popular songs “Das Wahre Deutschland” (“the Real Germany) speaks of turning to a new age of heroism, blood and iron (terminology typical in neo-Nazi jargon):
“We despise them, all their lies and reports,
behind us is Germany’s millennial history.
We will never forget it, so let’s travel today,
To the time of bravery, heroic struggle, steel, blood and iron”
People who work in the judicial system and in the government have also been the receivers of such threats. Between October of 2018 and April of 2019, 107 threatening emails and 87 bomb threats were sent to German judicial and administrative authorities and to members of the media, signed with various names such as the typical “NSU 2.0”, and also “NationalSozialistischeOffensive”, Wehrmacht “ and “Elysium”. The last title denotes a very visceral aspect of the neo-Nazi or ultra-nationalist scene, and that is the obsession with pagan mythology. Elysium was the heaven or afterlife of the Greco-Roman religion, and that neo-Nazis would give themselves this label is consistent with the Eruo-nationalist paradigm which fixates on the pre-Christian past. Another label these neo-Nazis would sign themselves as is “Staatsstreichorchester” or “orchestra for the overthrow of the state”, an expression of their own envisage for revolution. But a revolution for what? For a social-Darwinian dystopia in which a modern, technocratic society would encapsulate a new age of pagandom.
By September of 2020 the Hesse State Criminal Police Office (LKA) attributed 108 threatening letters to the NSU syndicate, and 88 of these had the NSU signature. Many of these letters were sent as threats to politicians from the parties Die Linke and Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen. According to Suddeutsche Zeitung the creator (or creators) of these letters had “a conspicuously skillful manner in order to remain undetected.” The same report states that the originator of the letters “could have long been a group, networked somewhere in the depths of the Internet.” Hessian Interior Minister Peter Beuth (CDU) believes it is possible that there is a right-wing network within the police. It is quite that there is a radical Right-wing network that is within the police, and it is a sign of the growing Hitlerian atmosphere that is growing in the world.