The coronavirus
crisis.
Right-wing extremists may take
advantage of it to push their agenda.
It's a dream come true
for these subversives.
They can't wait
to get started.
Right-wing enemies of the
state have established
contacts with units of
German soldiers and police.
We have to look at the sum total
of all the individual cases.
Is there an
actual network?
Ammunition from special police units
has ended up with the extremists —
but official investigations of
the situation have stalled.
I believe that the public now trusts
the police less than it used to.
Reports indicate that plans
for a coup attempt against
the German government have
already been drafted.
In these documents, the start
date is called Tag X, or Day X.
The security authorities have
to take this seriously —
to maintain the public's trust
in our constitutional state.
But are they doing enough to crack
down on right-wing extremists
and their plans to
disrupt the government?
This is the village
of Banzkow,
in the eastern state of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
In the summer
of 2017,
special federal police units
searched a number of homes here.
In one house, officers
found more than
50,000 rounds of ammunition
and several weapons.
The home belonged
to Marko G.,
a former member of an
elite state-police unit.
He was charged with a number
of weapons violations,
and went on trial
in late 2019.
Marko G. told the court
that he was simply
preparing for a
possible catastrophe.
He and several acquaintances had
formed a group called Nordkreuz.
The investigations show
that the group had also
stocked up on supplies of
quicklime and body bags.
A state police report
concluded that Marko G.
represented a potential
threat to the state.
A review of his chat traffic
clearly reveals his
right-wing extremist
and xenophobic views.
And the court determined
that he had rejected the
constitutional principles
of the German state.
Marko G. was convicted, and
sentenced to 21 months' probation.
Several of his friends were in
court to hear the decision.
Among them was Jörg S. —
who received an important
e-mail from Marko in 2016.
The message said that
over the last 16 months,
a network of right-wingers had
been established across Europe,
and that nearly 2,000 potential
members had been contacted.
But does this network
actually exist?
Can the German people still trust
the police and the military?
We've come to southern
Germany to follow up a tip.
There's supposed to be an extremist
right-wing group here that
allegedly has ties to an elite
Bundeswehr unit, the KSK.
We started looking for a
member of that group,
a weapons dealer
called Volker L..
We finally found him, and
he agreed to an interview —
provided that we
didn't show his face.
Volker is a
former soldier.
He says he first met the
conspirators in 2015 —
when a member of the KSK invited him to
a meeting of like-minded individuals.
The group is said to have included
soldiers and police officers.
That was not the
meeting in Albstadt.
OK,
where?
I'm not going
to say.
At the barracks
In Calw?
You've got
good sources.
The KSK barracks in Calw
is a high-security area.
Volker identified the man who invited
him to the meeting as André S. —
also known to some group
members as Hannibal.
We were impressed that he could
organize a meeting there.
Volker claimed that
at another meeting,
someone suggested
that on Day X,
the coup participants should
take over the Calw barracks
and seize the weapons
stored there.
Later, someone associated with
the group gave us a hard-drive
that was filled with alarming
photographs and planning documents.
The data indicated
that Volker had been
organizing training
exercises since 2014.
This activity included preparations
for sabotaging bridges.
We also found an e-mail from Andre S.
to Volker,
asking him to design identification
badges for certain group leaders.
The badges featured a
skull and crossbones,
and a logo that
stood for Day X.
The group's organizational efforts
were now apparently well underway.
These activities included setting
up a Nordkreuz chat group,
assigning various tasks
to individual members,
and recruiting
new supporters.
The network spread
across Germany.
It's alleged that some
members of elite military-
and police units were
active in the organization,
and may have been preparing
for Day X operations.
Are these isolated
incidents?
Some say that the KSK military
units have a real problem
with right-wing
activity,
and that this dates back to the
founding of the organization in 1996.
We started looking into
that situation after
General Reinhard Günzel was
appointed KSK commander in 2000.
Later, he was accused of making
inappropriate public remarks,
and was removed
from his post.
But critics claim that the
government has never seriously
addressed
this problem.
We need to take a long, hard
look at the role of the KSK.
It's simply not acceptable
for them to claim that
they can't be investigated because they're
engaged in classified operations.
But is that a
valid excuse?
Sometimes, you can have
too much secrecy —
and that can
cause problems.
Our research indicates that André S.
and Marko G. were
actively planning
a coup attempt.
This is a Day X mobilization plan
that was allegedly drafted in 2016.
It includes maps that show where
the conspirators were to gather
when they got the go-ahead
from their commandeer
at a military training ground in
the state of Baden-Württemberg.
The KSK has carried out
legitimate exercises here.
The Day X headquarters was said to be
located in a small building like this one.
The plan included code-words
and radio frequencies.
Group members were to identify themselves
by rolling up their left shirt-sleeve.
Personnel will assemble
at South Alpha Grey.
This area will serve as a transfer point
for the secret operations center.
These instructions must be
carried out to the letter.
The site was said to have
been chosen by Volker L.
Some of the buildings here are used
as artillery practice targets.
The operation also called for
taking over a vehicle storage site.
We couldn't find anything about
that in our copy of the plan.
But one expert speculates on what the
conspirators might have had in mind.
Transportation would play a big
role in these sorts of situations —
especially in a
Nordkreuz operation.
They would have to move
their own troops around,
and may have also planned to
'arrest' potential opponents.
And to do that, you
need vehicles —
including
trucks.
One group member proposed that such
enemies be rounded up on Day X,
and transported in military trucks
past any police roadblocks.
The
prisoners —
said to include leftists, FDP
politicians, and refugee-aid workers —
were then to
be eliminated.
Marko G. recruited that
group member himself.
This is
Schwerin —
capital of the state of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Preparations for a military
parade are underway.
We're going to meet
Dirk Friedriszik —
a Bundeswehr veteran and Social Democrat
member of the state parliament.
He's been warning for years
that Nordkreuz extremists have
infiltrated local
military reserve units.
I can't understand why the
investigation is taking so long.
It's been dragging
on and on.
And if you take a look
at recent events,
you'll realize that we have to get
to the bottom of this right away.
We need to
clean house.
One of Marko G.'s
close contacts,
a former East German
soldier named Jörg S.,
is not facing charges
at this time.
In 2016, Marko and Jörg exchanged a
series of e-mails that indicates
that it was Jörg who set up
the meeting point in Warin,
located near a military
training area.
In fact, our research has allowed
us to establish the outline of
an entire network
of such points.
Jörg S. is also a sergeant
in the Bundeswehr reserve.
Many of the other conspirators are
also alleged to be reservists.
Jörg served for some time at the
air force base at Rostock-Laage.
A Eurofighter squadron
is stationed there.
When the squadron commander
left his job in 2019,
he invited Jörg to his official
farewell celebration —
despite the fact that Jörg was already
known to federal authorities as
a suspected
right-wing extremist.
We wanted to talk to the new
squadron commander about that —
but base officials referred
us to the Defense Ministry.
No-one there would talk
to us about the case.
We also contacted the Military
Counterintelligence Service,
and they wouldn't
talk to us either.
This is a high-security
military base,
and home to some of the Bundeswehr's
most sophisticated weapons systems.
This situation has to be
thoroughly investigated.
We've also identified another
of Marko G.'s colleagues.
Armin P. trains Eurofighter
pilots at the Rostock airbase.
How have those suspected
of supporting a right-wing
anti-government movement
managed to gain access to
high-security
military sites?
Konstantin von Notz is a member
of the Bundestag oversight panel
that's responsible for Germany's
intelligence agencies.
The possibility of
a coup attempt,
even during the pandemic,
may seem unlikely —
but we still have to take it
seriously, and react accordingly.
Our research indicates
that many of the alleged
individual cases in the police
and the military are connected.
For example,
Volker L.
— the weapons
dealer —
confirmed that the
group led by Andre S.
had contact with a Bundeswehr
officer called Franco A.
So Franco was
also involved?
He was at our
safe-house.
On one occasion,
he took me aside,
and asked how he could get his
hands on a weapon in Germany.
In 2017, Franco was
arrested after he tried to
pass himself off as
a Syrian refugee,
and had illegally
acquired a gun.
He was charged with various
crimes involving terrorism.
In its decision
on Franco's case,
the German Supreme Court
cited a number of
extremist statements
that he'd made.
People do not accept
'the greatest truth'
if it is not connected
with a 'triggering event.'
You should 'destroy
the entire system.'
I believe that from the very
beginning, these people believed —
at least to a
certain extent —
that 'Day X' could
actually take place,
and they tried to find
ways to make it happen.
In early 2017, Franco
was in Vienna.
At the airport, he hid a
weapon in a public toilet —
and then posted the location
to his WhatsApp group.
That group also included
other soldiers.
Franco was arrested when he
tried to retrieve the gun.
That evening, an annual
ball sponsored by Austria's
right-wing FPÖ party
was to be held.
The event often draws
lots of demonstrators.
Investigators believe that Franco
intended to carry out an attack there.
He believed that since he was
registered as a refugee,
many would blame the crime
on the immigrant community.
Franco A. is accused of
preparing an attack that would
then be attributed to Islamists
or leftists or whomever.
And the Nordkreuz group was
considering similar measures.
They figured that a provocation might
be the best way to get things moving.
Incidents like this have
prompted speculation about what
Marko G. actually
intended to do with
the stockpile of weapons and ammunition
that he'd kept at his house —
and where he got
all that ammo.
Marko didn't respond to our
requests for an interview,
so we went to visit
him in Bankow.
A woman who answered the
door refused to talk to us.
The Schwerin prosecutor's
office has determined that
much of the
ammunition came from
Bundeswehr and
police warehouses.
It's actually quite easy to determine
the origins of this kind of ammo,
if you know what
to look for.
We talked to
someone who does.
These were
military-grade rounds.
They have a very high
penetration capability,
and are quite effective against
a wide variety of targets.
This has nothing to do
with 'self-defense.'
These rounds can
penetrate body armor —
so we can assume that they
might be used against
police officers and
security forces.
To find out where the
ammunition came from,
you have to look for the specific
lot number on the package.
Even with containers of
500 or a thousand rounds,
you'll find individual
packages like these.
And the lot number is always stamped
on the bottom of each round.
These cartridges are shipped
to the appropriate department,
which then hands them out
to individual officers.
And the departments
keep a record,
so you can quickly determine
when the ammunition came in
and when it
went out.
Prosecutors are still
trying to figure out how
the police could lose
track of so much ammo.
Of course, we contacted
the relevant authorities,
and asked for
specific information.
The investigation
is still underway.
We tried to find out for ourselves
where the ammunition came from.
The results
were startling.
The rounds had originally
been supplied to Bundeswehr-
and elite police units
all over Germany.
For example, 1200 cartridges
were traced back to the state
of North
Rhein-Westphalia.
We found that special
police units from
Düsseldorf, Cologne, and
Dortmund often trained
in the wide open spaces of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Did any of the officers have
contact with Marko's group?
We wanted to talk to the
authorities in Duisburg who
distribute ammunition to
individual departments.
They declined to
be interviewed,
but later admitted in an
e-mail that the rounds had
indeed come from the
state's police stockpiles.
North Rhein-Westphalia has now revised
its ammunition distribution system.
But it's still not clear who
was actually responsible for
handing over the rounds to
unauthorized individuals.
The officials say
they can't comment on
an on-going criminal
investigation.
100 other cartridges that later
turned up in Marko's stockpile
were determined to have come from
an elite police unit in Bavaria —
the USK.
We went to Munich to meet Bavarian
parliament member Florian Ritter.
We wanted to find out
whether he was aware of
any contacts between the
USK and the right-wingers.
Several USK members were
recently investigated for
allegedly sharing objectionable
content on chat apps.
Officials determined that some of that
content might have been anti-Semitic.
When we told Ritter that
ammunition from Bavaria
had been submitted as evidence
in a criminal trial in Schwerin,
he filed a written
request demanding that
the authorities explain
the situation.
The answer that I got from the
Interior Ministry was astonishing.
They said that no ammunition
had gone missing.
But prosecutors in Schwerin have been
able to prove just the opposite.
Bavaria's state premier
Markus Söder apparently
has little interest in pursuing
this potentially explosive matter.
There are obvious connections between
the Nordkreuz group and Bavaria —
and that's a problem
for Bavaria.
We're dealing with a
terrorist network here.
If weapons or ammunition from
federal or Bavarian sources
are ending up in
that network,
then we have to find out
how that's happening.
The German government has to protect
itself against such threats.
You can't just close your eyes, and
hope that the problem will go away.
That would be
extremely dangerous.
We finally managed to get Bavaria's
state Criminal Police Office to
admit that prosecutors are
investigating the situation.
But they declined
to comment further,
and they certainly didn't
want to talk on camera —
citing the ongoing criminal
investigation in Schwerin.
We also have to protect
the officials who are
sworn to uphold the
German constitution,
and to protect our
democratic way of life.
If we don't
do that,
we will expose those officials
to a public debate that they
really don't deserve
to be part of.
The discovery of the ammunition
that had been stored in Mecklenburg
turned into a national scandal for
the police and the Bundeswehr.
But most of the investigative work
was left to prosecutors in Schwerin.
A private shooting range
near Güstrow in Mecklenburg
provided even
more clues.
For years, instructors
from several police and
Bundeswehr units attended
shooting competitions there —
including some of the units from which Marko G.
got his ammunition.
The events were authorized by
Mecklenburg's interior ministry,
and organized by a civilian who turned
them into a kind of weapons trade fair.
State interior minister Lorenz Caffier
was the competition's patron,
and often attended
the events himself.
We visited the shooting
range in May 2019,
and talked to the
people who run it.
Since then, we've learned
that some of them had
close ties to the Nordkreuz
group and Marko G.,
who went there for
shooting practice.
Evidence presented at the Schwerin trial
indicated that the range's owner,
Frank T., passed along Nordkreuz
instructions to Marko.
State interior minister Caffier
also met often with Frank T. at
the shooting
competitions.
Did the minister notice anything
unusual at these events?
The ministry has set up a
commission to investigate all this.
It's not yet clear how much
progress they've made.
So we contacted the ministry
for more information.
They didn't respond to our requests,
so we decided to go there in person.
Name?
Laabs,
ZDF
Mr. Laabs,
ZDF.
We've been trying to
find out more about
Nordkreuz and the
Güstrow shooting range.
We'd like to talk to Mr.
Caffier about that,
but no-one has responded to our
requests for an interview.
Really?
Maybe we could talk
to you about it.
I'll see
if I can.
OK.
A few minutes later, a
security guard arrived.
Please leave
the building.
No
interview?
No. Please
leave.
But Ms. Lemke said
she'd be back.
You have to
leave now.
But she said
she'd be back.
Please leave
the building.
She promised
to talk to us.
Please leave
the building.
The minister seems to
be stonewalling us.
The federal interior
minister, Horst Seehofer,
won't talk to us about
right-wing extremists either.
Officials at the Defense
Ministry told us that they are
pursuing a zero-tolerance policy
on right-wing extremism —
but it's the federal prosecutor's office
that should be tackling these cases.
They said that they have no
evidence that André S. or Marko G.
were members of a
terrorist organization.
Can you explain why the
investigations are going nowhere?
No, I
can't.
Why not?
I've been studying this
process for a long time,
and I still can't understand
why it's taking so long.
I think that
sometimes,
the authorities are just being
cautious because this situation
has attracted so
much attention.
They don't want
to cause trouble.
The interior ministry has
announced new measures to
fight right-wing
extremism.
We have to play an active
role in this effort,
even more so than the
rest of the government.
So is a coup attempt
really possible?
This is like a cancer that
is growing in our society —
because it undermines
the public's trust in
the people who are
supposed to protect us.
When people feel that they're
in some sort of danger,
they may now feel uncomfortable
about calling the police.
If I were in
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
I'd probably think
twice about it.
So are the authorities
doing enough?
No, they're
not.
And I think it's important to
stress that the right-wing
structures are
still in place,
as they have been for
decades in Germany.
Right-wing extremists continue to
infiltrate Germany's security apparatus —
and the government needs
to do more to stop this.
It's become a real
threat to democracy.
