Hundreds of far-right extremists working in German police forces

Security forces in the country have been battling a growing problem of neo-Nazi sympathisers

Police in Germany are concerned about far-right entryism. Getty

Police in Germany have taken action against 350 officers suspected of sympathy with the politics of the extreme right, a domestic intelligence agency found.

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution reviewed records from across the country’s intelligence network to come up with the figure.

State intelligence offices, federal and state-level police, the foreign intelligence service and military intelligence services – comprising about 300,000 employees – were among the records reviewed in the report, which spanned 2017 to early 2020.

The findings of the federal agency were due to be released next month but were published in part in the Welt Am Sontag newspaper.

They will intensify calls for an investigation into far-right entryism in the German police.

The largest number of cases, 59 in total, was discovered in the central state of Hesse. The state’s interior ministry said it has been investigating extremism in the police for years.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, 43 disciplinary actions were recorded. Thirty were found in Bavaria and 26 in Lower Saxony.

Herbert Reul, centre, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, presents the German state’s unit responsible for arrests and securing evidence on February 4, 2019. EPA

Earlier in September, 29 officers were suspended from the police force in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia over their participation in private chat groups in which images of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and a refugee in a gas chamber were shared.

The Interior Minister of the western state, Herbert Reul, said the 126 images shared across five WhatsApp chat groups on private phones between 2013 and 2015 were “the worst” and “obnoxious”.

“Right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis have no place in the North Rhine-Westphalian police force, in our police force,” Mr Reul said at the time.

“At first I did not want to believe that there really was such a thing.”

None of the accused officers discovered in the chat groups had seemed in any way suspicious, Deutsche Welle TV reported.

Despite the growing incidence of discipline being taken against police officers over their far-right sympathies, the German Ministry of Interior has rejected the possibility of a study that will focus on neo-Nazi tendencies in the police.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has, however, indicated he could initiate a wider survey across the whole of society over the phenomenon.

The German government has already had to take action against extremism within the armed forces. In July, an elite unit of Germany’s Special Commando Forces was formally disbanded after some of its members were found to hold extremist views.

Police seized weapons, explosives and ammunition during a raid on the private property of a commando sergeant major in the eastern state of Saxony.

Investigators uncovered two kilograms of plastic explosives and an AK-47, plus an SS songbook and other Nazi memorabilia.

Military counter-intelligence in Germany has investigated about 600 troops feared to be involved in far-right extremism.