Germany’s Defense Ministry dissolved a military unit within the German Special Forces on Wednesday after an investigation found that the members were affiliated with extreme right-wing extremist groups.
As of January, some 500 members of the German service were under investigation for far-right ties, according to a report by the country’s Military Counterintelligence Service. Twenty of the investigation’s targets were part of the country’s elite military command Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), NPR reported.
Investigators reportedly discovered that the members made Nazi salutes at a party in 2017, and in May 2020 they found Nazi weapons, explosives and souvenirs on property owned by a KSK sergeant major. They were also reportedly investigating 48,000 rounds of ammunition and more than 130 pounds of explosives that had disappeared from a KSK arsenal.
Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said Wednesday that the KSK “cannot continue to exist in its current form,” citing a “wall of secrecy” and a “toxic leadership culture” that would make it impossible to eradicate extremist elements, according to NPR, citing Germany Süddeutsche Zeitung Newspaper.
She said that some of the 70 soldiers from the dissolved company will be reassigned to one of the three remaining command companies, and said: “We will give the KSK time to press the reset button.”
Germany “needs[s] the KSK, “he said, adding:” The vast majority of men and women in the KSK and in the Bundeswehr as a whole are loyal to our constitution, without buts or buts, “according to NPR.
The announcement comes about a month after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer reported that anti-Semitic crime was at its highest level in Germany since 2001, saying most involved extreme right-wing extremists.
“Politically motivated far-right cases account for more than half of all these recorded crimes: it is an order of magnitude that concerns us, we are very concerned,” Seehofer said in May.
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