Right-wing extremist attitudes in state authorities such as the federal and state police,
the Armed Forces, the
judiciary and the
Office for the Protection of the Constitution are not recorded statistically or systematically in Germany. Since around 2015, more incidents with right-wing extremist references and the beginnings of right-wing extremist networks in state authorities have become known. Since 2016, a number of criminologists, social scientists and journalists have been investigating this phenomenon more intensively. They criticise the lack of profession-specific surveys, which allowed the responsible supervisory bodies and ministries to adopt stereotypical defensive reaction patterns, such as "the same standard phrase about regrettable individual cases".
Police Bavaria In November 2018, a female student filed a complaint of rape against a
Bavarian police officer. In January 2019, investigators found a WhatsApp group of 42 former and active members of the Munich police support squad (USK) on his and other mobile phones. In it, they had shared a video showing the brutal use of a Taser and another that denigrated Jews in an anti-Semitic way. In addition, one USK officer had saved pictures of swastika smearings on his mobile phone that were not supposed to appear in the chat. Furthermore, two USK officers are said to have deliberately injured two colleagues with a stun gun during Taser training. The USK had been known since the 1980s for its often brutal operations at demonstrations organised by the
anti-nuclear movement. Some cases of police violence from the USK had been reported and punished. In May 2014, a USK officer stuck two stickers with neo-Nazi slogans ("Good Night Left Side" and "Anti-Antifa organizing ...") on his police bus. The USK has often had to protect neo-Nazi marches. In 2016, USK officers subjected protesters against a Nazi rally to a strip search, during which they had to strip naked and be humiliated. The
European Court of Human Rights later ruled in favour of one of those affected. The current case only became known in March 2019. The Ministry of the Interior stated that four USK officers were suspended immediately and a further eight were transferred. The supervisory authorities did not announce any specific follow-up measures.
Berlin In 2015, the far-right blog "Halle Leaks" published excerpts from Berlin police investigation files containing the names and addresses of visitors and residents of a squat in the
Rigaer Straße. At the time, they also investigated whether police officers could have leaked the data. The perpetrators were not found and the investigation was closed. At the end of December 2017, six left-wing organisations in Berlin, including the house on Rigaer Straße, received a letter containing the private data of 42 people from that part of the city: personal photos, names, addresses, nicknames, favourite travel destinations, pets and illnesses. The photos came from police files, the official population register, identity card applications and arrests. They were all stored in the Berlin police database. The anonymous author or authors threatened to pass the data on to the far-right
Identitarian Movement,
autonomous nationalists or the police. They accused the recipients, who did not know each other, of belonging to a tightly organised radical left-wing group and referred to a poster with portrait photos of Berlin police officers that the left-wing portal
Indymedia had published four days earlier after the eviction of the house in Rigaer Straße. It was therefore suspected that police officers had illegally passed the material on to third parties or sent the letters themselves. Following a criminal complaint by the Berlin data protection commissioner, the police handed over the internal investigation to the Berlin public prosecutor's office. The latter found out that a female detective inspector, responsible for
politically motivated crime - left-wing in the State Office of Criminal Investigation, had searched the police system for data that appeared shortly afterwards in the threatening letters. Her partner, a police commissioner, had a USB stick with the photos and personal data of the recipients. He had collected them privately for years and then, according to his own statements, used them as revenge for Indymedia's "manhunt" for the threatening letters. As he had previously worked as an undercover investigator in Berlin's left-wing scene and had been exposed by left-wing activists, it is also suspected that he was seeking revenge. In 2019, he received a fine for a data protection offence and was transferred to
Berlin-Friedrichshain, where many of the recipients of his letters live.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania In January 2016, police inspector Marco G. founded a prepper group in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania called
Nordkreuz, whose 60 to 70 members prepared for an expected collapse of the state order on "Day X" with weapons, ammunition and food depots as well as shooting exercises. Among them were many members of the police and Bundeswehr. Some leaders kept lists of enemies with tens of thousands of names. The group also procured body bags and slaked lime. In 2019, Marco G. received a suspended sentence for his collection of weapons and ammunition.
Lower Saxony In 2016, a former member of the
far-right political party
Alternative for Germany federal executive board passed on information from a classified report by the Federal Criminal Police Office, including on refugee numbers, to party friends by email. The man wrote the email as an administrative officer in the Osnabrück police headquarters. It remains unclear how he obtained the data.
North Rhine-Westphalia In
North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), investigators discovered a chat group in the
Aachen-West police station in January 2020 whose members were exchanging racist images, such as a black man with wide open eyes and the sentence "The social welfare office is broke, starting today we will work" or a photo of an
imperial eagle with a swastika. Investigation proceedings were initiated against three police officers. In February 2020, the Federal Public Prosecutor General's Office found a right-wing extremist chat group during its investigation into the right-wing terrorist
Group S. In it, Chief Superintendent Thorsten W. (member of the S. group and informant on their terror plans), another police officer at
Hamm police headquarters and an administrative officer had been exchanging far-right messages for years, such as swastikas, SS runes, skulls, information on where to order bed linen with Nazi symbols without being observed, racist slogans and Nazi propaganda. They joked about wanting to shoot foreigners. As media research showed, Thorsten W. had clearly demonstrated his far-right views at his police station in Bockum-Hövel and gathered official information about the Reichsbürger scene, to which he himself belonged. State Interior Minister
Herbert Reul then appointed external extremism officers in all police headquarters in North Rhine-Westphalia to make it easier for police officers to report anti-constitutional statements or attitudes of their colleagues. In
Essen, the wife of the local police chief was appointed to this position. On 16 September 2020, around 200 police officers then searched 34 police stations and private homes of police officers involved in
Duisburg,
Essen,
Mülheim an der Ruhr,
Oberhausen,
Moers and
Selm. They confiscated 43 telephones and numerous storage media. 29 suspected officers and one female officer were suspended from duty. Disciplinary proceedings were opened against them. Almost all of them belonged to a service group at Mülheim police station, including the group leader. The squad was disbanded. Eleven members are said to have actively posted and sent criminally relevant content in the chat groups. They were investigated for incitement of the people and use of symbols of anti-constitutional organisations. The remaining 18 are said to have received the right-wing extremist messages but not reported them. According to the NRW Ministry of the Interior, North Rhine-Westphalian police authorities reported a total of 275 cases of suspected right-wing extremism among their officers between 2017 and the end of September 2021. By October 2021, suspicions had been confirmed in 53 of these cases and not in 84 cases. 138 other cases were still being investigated. The confirmed cases have already been penalised under criminal and disciplinary law. Six trainee inspectors were dismissed by mid-September 2021, two were dismissed and three warned. In many other cases, however, the judiciary categorised the chats in question as private communication, meaning that the perpetrators could at best be punished under disciplinary law, but not for disseminating unconstitutional material. These included saved data with the banned
Horst Wessel song, photos of Christmas tree baubles with
SS runes and "
Sieg Heil" inscriptions, with a swastika made from service ammunition and the photo of an officer in uniform giving the "Hitler salute" while standing on two patrol cars.
Saxony In May 2015, leftists found a mobile phone with logs of chats that police officer Fernando V. had had with neo-Nazis. In these chats, he had informed a violent offender with a criminal record about upcoming police operations against other neo-Nazis and exchanged
anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. After it became known, he was transferred to a police academy to train police officers. In September 2015,
Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann published police investigation files, including the address of a suspect in a rape case. He claimed that he regularly received internal police information labelled as classified. The data was true, but the source was not found. In December 2015, a main suspect of the
Freital group testified that he had received information from the local riot police. This may have been one of the reasons why the eight perpetrators were able to plan and carry out their terrorist attacks unhindered for six months. Investigations into this were only initiated after a victims' lawyer filed a complaint, but were closed without results until 2017 because the three suspected police officers remained silent and their mobile phones with the alleged chats were not found. In January 2016, the NPD in Leipzig used
Twitter to disseminate the protocol and photo of a police check on demonstrators against
Legida, during which weapons were confiscated. The photo was taken from a police computer. How it reached the NPD remained unclear. In the summer of 2018, Lutz Bachmann and the small right-wing extremist party
Pro Chemnitz published the police arrest warrant for an Iraqi who was on the run at the time and was accused of murdering a man from Chemnitz. The Saxon justice official Daniel Zabel revealed himself as the source and claimed that he had wanted to counter media lies by copying and passing on the arrest warrant. He was suspended and then ran for Dresden city council as an AfD member. Another police officer disseminated the arrest warrant on Facebook and was fined for doing so.
party, a far-right
regionalist and
separatist organization operating in Saxony. In 2024, the police conducted an investigated of the neo-Nazi group the
Saxon Separatists . The
Federal Criminal Police Office BKA, the
Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution BfV and the Saxony State Criminal Police Office were involved in the investigation. Austrian and Polish secret services were also involved. The Federal Prosecutor's Office finally came to the conclusion that
Saxon Separatists made active preparations for a violent coup in Germany. The Federal Prosecutor's Office then found eight men or young people in various places in Saxony in the early morning of November 5, 2024 in Germany and Poland and arrested the suspects. The arrests took place in and around Leipzig, in Dresden, in the Meißen district. The alleged leader Jörg S. was arrested in
Zgorzelec, Poland, in the neighboring town of
Görlitz. The police searched 20 properties including in
Vienna,
Austria, and the
Krems-Land district. More than 450 emergency services were involved in the operations.
Figures and causes According to media reports, right-wing extremist incidents involving the German police have risen sharply in recent years. In response to enquiries from police authorities in all federal states,
Deutschlandfunk received information on around 200 such cases across Germany in 2018 and 2019, including racist and inciting statements, contacts or affiliation with the "Reichsbürger", the use of symbols of unconstitutional organisations and others. The enquiries were prompted by the faxes and emails signed "
NSU 2.0" containing death threats and private data from Hesse police registers, which a victims' lawyer in the
National Socialist Underground trial has been receiving since August 2018. The Frankfurt public prosecutor's office investigated its own colleagues internally for four months before the case became public. As a result of this scandal, dozens of cases were discovered where police officers had made far-right comments in chat groups or at parties, collected Nazi memorabilia, chatted with neo-Nazis or sent swastikas. Hessian Interior Minister
Peter Beuth, who had been aware of the suspicions against Frankfurt police officers for months but had concealed them, denied that it was an extreme right-wing network. Police researchers and criminologists explain the findings by saying that the police profession attracts people with authoritarian and right-wing to far-right attitudes more than many other professions and that the cohesion required for their work in the service groups means that incidents are rarely reported. After the "NSU 2.0" letters became known in December 2018, NSU victim advocate and police trainer Mehmet Daimagüler demanded the following measures from the federal and state governments: • to screen applicants more closely, not only for previous convictions, but also for possible contacts with right-wing extremists being monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution; • increase the proportion of women in the police force in order to reduce excessive police violence; • regularly teach human rights training during training and on duty; • to continue to regularly monitor the trained officers in personal interviews and through enquiries with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution; • withdraw their access to sensitive data if they are observed to be close to anti-democratic groups; • to discipline officers who have attracted the attention of right-wing extremists more consistently and quickly. Jörn Badendick, a staff representative in the Berlin police force, added: "Every police officer has to stand up in such cases and say: I'm not going along with this." Offices for internal investigations should no longer be under the control of the police themselves, but should report directly to the public prosecutor's offices. Representatives of
the Green Party called for the appointment of independent police commissioners at federal and state level, modelled on the military commissioner, who could also accept and investigate anonymous reports of shortcomings and misconduct by police officers. Political scientist
Christoph Kopke and criminologist
Tobias Singelnstein blame the following factors for the increase in right-wing extremist incidents in the German police force: • The development in the police force reflects the development of society towards the right "like in a burning glass", whereby regional differences are to be expected. • In Saxony, the
CDU-led state government had claimed for decades that there was no problem with right-wing extremism in the state, thereby influencing the administration and police. • Nationwide, no research commissions were awarded on changing attitudes among German police officers or on institutional racism. The authorities were mostly dismissive of critical enquiries. • Applicants with a migration background are too rarely trained and employed by the police. • The established parties had allowed themselves to be influenced by the AfD's propaganda against refugees in election campaigns and in their deportation policy, so that analogue attitude patterns were increasingly found in the police force. Officers have been given more room for manoeuvre, including for deporting well-integrated foreign families, and are increasingly exploiting this. • The problem of
racial profiling during entry checks without suspicion is not yet sufficiently addressed in police training. • Despite clearly distancing themselves from right-wing extremism, police leaders and supervisory bodies still do not recognise the problem of structural and institutional racism, but instead usually misinterpret it as an accusation of guilt against all officers and reject it. In March 2020, the
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) presented a new study on institutional racism in Germany. The authors found a significant increase in racism, Islamophobia, unresolved far-right attacks and the trivialisation of the AfD by the authorities between 2014 and June 2019. They called for Germany to include mandatory courses on racism and discrimination, human rights and equal treatment in education laws and curricula in schools, universities and especially in police training. Police racial profiling has been sufficiently proven, but continues to be denied, ignored or dismissed as isolated cases by German police authorities. Victims of discriminatory and racist violence therefore largely lack trust in the German police. The police and the Office for the Defence of the Constitution must specifically campaign for people to leave extreme circles. The Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency must be given more funding and the right to support victims and bring legal action. Political scientist
Hajo Funke sees the right-wing extremist incidents in German police authorities as a "structural problem" of right-wing networks in state institutions. The security authorities "systematically allow such tendencies to spread". The "respective leadership", independent investigations, a functioning judiciary and public pressure are crucial for successful clarification. There is a "lack of political will to investigate" in the Hessian authorities "at all levels, from the police chief to the Minister of the Interior to the Minister President". This is why the author or authors of the "NSU 2.0" threatening emails have still not been caught after more than two years. He was consequently lectured and retained his access to weapons. • A first sergeant rejected a comrade because he was "not of the same race" and "the races should not mix". He described a training course provided by the
Military Counterintelligence service (MAD) on right-wing extremism as lying propaganda. He was not dismissed. • For decades, Air Force Squadron 74 at
Neuburg Air Base glorified Wehrmacht Colonel
Werner Mölders, who had been involved in the mass extermination of civilians in the
Condor Legion since 1936. His name was on aeroplanes and air force uniforms. A tradition room in the barracks displayed his personal paraphernalia, including a
Knight's Cross with diamonds, which Adolf Hitler had only awarded to a few Wehrmacht officers. The anniversary of Mölders' death was celebrated annually with a formation of honour and eulogies at his grave. It was not until 2005 that the then Defence Minister
Peter Struck had the barracks renamed. However, Mölders was still stubbornly honoured locally. A Mölders association with the magazine Der Mölderianer and a Mölders memorial stone continued to commemorate the Luftwaffe pilot until 2018. Then defence Minister
Ursula von der Leyen only intervened after renewed reports about this. • Following her order in 2017 to ban Wehrmacht memorabilia from barracks and rename barracks named after Wehrmacht soldiers, most town councillors and soldiers in
Rotenburg (Wümme) voted in favour of retaining the namesake of the Lent barracks,
Helmut Lent. They regarded the Nazi perpetrator as a war hero and patriot who carried out his orders, just "on the wrong side". • Members of the
Special Forces Command (KSK) allegedly played right-wing extremist music and gave the Hitler salute at the farewell ceremony for a company commander in 2017. Anti-Semitic and xenophobic statements were repeatedly reported in the KSK. However, the MAD military intelligence agency did not investigate these suspected cases. • At the Special Operations Training Centre in
Pullendorf, there were repeated instances of degrading admission rituals. When these became known, KSK soldiers reported numerous anti-Semitic and racist statements by their comrades in an anonymous letter. One of them had sent a photomontage by email showing the entrance gate of the
Auschwitz concentration camp through which refugees were streaming. Above it was the sentence: "There is room for every one of you here." The company commander knew about this but did nothing about it. It is common in the KSK for such service offences to be covered up. They wrote anonymously because otherwise they were threatened with harassment and the perpetrators would get away unpunished. • Non-commissioned officer Patrick J. frequently reported right-wing extremist comments made by KSK soldiers on social media, even outside of the troop. One of them constantly spoke of a "Jewish gene" and repeatedly insulted fellow soldiers as "Jews". The MAD ensured that the Bundeswehr Personnel Office dismissed the reporter because he lacked "character suitability": From 2017 onwards, he had pretended with many reports "to want to point out possible right-wing extremist tendencies and undemocratic behaviour in the entire armed forces". == Legal issues ==