BLOODY SOIL - The Holocaust and Neo-Nazism
With a contemporary story about a neo-Nazi attempted coup providing background information on the events of the Holocaust, Bloody Soil offers a teaching opportunity. Readers will be able to identify with sympathetic characters who exist in a fictional present-day world, will find themselves caught up in the tension of the story, but afterwards will have the chance to think about what they've just read and to broaden their understanding not just of the history but of the real threat that far-right extremists pose today.
To help with that process, this study guide provides questions that the book raises - with cites to the pages that mention those issues - and then answers. Most answers go beyond what is in the text of the novel to provide a full factual background and because some of the questions may not have an answer in the text. Bloody Soil was not intended to cover the entire Holocaust or be a documentary on the rise of neo-Nazis in Germany (or here in the US by analogy), but the intention was to capture readers' imaginations and inspire them to investigate deeper.
PART I- The Holocaust and references in Bloody Soil
The title Bloody Soil - what is the double meaning in the book?
The title refers to the bloody history of Germany that is referenced through the novel, the violent events that occur in the book, but also to the term, "Blood and Soil." (pages 105, 123, 295)
The term "Blood and Soil" in the 1930s propagated the idea that the purity of the German "race" resulted from a unity between the people of Germany and the land. It celebrated farmers and the agrarian life. "Blood and Soil" was adopted by the Nazis as one of their central slogans and themes.
"Blood and Soil" was also intended by the Nazis to show a superiority of the German people over Jewish people - because Jews, forbidden through much of European history from owning land, were more urban than rural, more educated professionals than famers.
"Blood and Soil" was also chanted by the neo-Nazi marchers at Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
What were the Nuremberg Laws? Further question for thought- why would the Nuremberg laws be a necessary predicate to the Holocaust?
The Nuremberg Laws were a series of race-based laws aimed at anyone of Jewish ancestry, based in large part on the Jim Crow laws of the American south. p. 71
The Nuremberg Laws placed limits on Jews, barring them from professions, forbidding intermarriage, and were the first step towards genocide.
The first step in any genocide is to begin to dehumanize the group that is the target.
What was the Holocaust by Bullets?
The novel never uses the term, but it describes the events. Approximately 1.5 million Jews in areas in Eastern Europe conquered by the Nazis were shot in ravines and pits, beginning in the summer of 1941 and continuing through the war. Almost 80 percent of Ukrainian Jews were killed in the Holocaust by Bullets.
Gas chambers replaced killing by bullet because it was felt to be more efficient and easier on the killers. p. 106
What happened at Babi Yar? p. 106
Babi Yar is a ravine outside Kyiv where over a period of two days, almost 40,000 Jews were murdered. Victims were forced to undress and enter the pit, where they were shot.
There is a memorial now to the victims. It was damaged by a Russian bomb during the current war.
Who were the SS (Schutzstaffel) and the Einsatzgruppen? pgs. 35, 83, 105
The SS was an elite group inside Germany. They were originally established as Hitler's personal guard, but they became the elite force, responsible for maintaining security and racial purity. The SS ran the concentration camps and had responsibility for the "Jewish Question" - its leaders planning, directing, and coordinating the "Final Solution" - the extermination of all Jewish people in Europe.
Waffen SS, p. 35
The Waffen SS was a division of the SS that was designated as fighting troops. They went into Eastern Europe and participated in rounding up Jews and anyone else deemed undesirable, although the group mainly responsible for the Holocaust by Bullet was the Einsatzgruppen.
Einsatzgruppen, pgs. 105, 106
The Einsatzgruppen were a special force within the SS tasked with rounding up Jews in Eastern Europe and with the help of collaborators in the conquered territories, formed execution squads to shoot Jewish men, women, and children. Of the three thousand members of the Einsatzgruppen who committed mass murder, only around 200 were ever punished.
What was the Kindertransport? p. 46
In 1938, after the pogrom in Germany known as Kristallnacht, Britain eased immigration rules to allow Jewish children under the age of 17 to be brought to the UK to be placed with private families as a temporary measure. Ten thousand children were brought to the United
Kingdom, most of whom never saw their parents again.
In contrast, in the same time period, in the United States, which had strict immigration limits in the 1930s, Congress didn't even bring up a bill that would have offered refuge to 12,000 German children.
1.5 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.
What was Auschwitz? p. 46
The Nazis established a series of extermination centers in order to achieve the goal of a Jew-Free Europe. Auschwitz was the largest and best known of the killing centers, located in a town in Poland where a museum now exists. Those sent to Auschwitz were either gassed on arrival or put to work. New arrivals destined for the gas chambers would be informed that they would be taking a shower. They would be forced to strip and forced into a large chamber where Zyklon B, a poisonous gas, would be used to kill. Those who were not gassed immediately were sent to work camps where most died of starvation, disease, mistreatment or were murdered when they could no longer work. At its peak of operation, six thousand people would be gassed in one day. Estimates are that one million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
What was the number of Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust - p. 301
The number six million is used, but the estimates from Vad Yashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust, are that between five and six million Jewish people died during the Shoah. The Nazis kept partial lists of the victims sent to the death camps from 1941-1943 - but in the last two years of the war, when it became clear that Germany would lose, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of their crimes. The main source for the numbers is a comparison of prewar census to postwar census of population. Yad Yashem has compiled a list of the names of almost five million victims from two and a half million Pages of Testimony - the statements compiled at Vad Yashem from survivors. Vad Yashem also has thousands of pages of other documents with names of victims that have yet to be researched and computerized.
What is the Holocaust symbolism of the burning barn scene in Bloody Soil? p. 289
In Riga, Latvia, on July 4, 1941, Nazis rounded up Jews and locked them in synagogues and set them on fire. Anyone who tried to escape the flames by breaking the windows was shot. Nineteen synagogues were set on fire with men, women, and children inside who burned to death.
In Jedwabne, Poland, 300 Jewish people were locked inside a barn which was then set on fire. The massacre was carried out by 40 ethnic Poles at the direction of the Gestapo and SS. The role of Poles in killing their neighbors was brought to light in the period from 1999-2003 through work by journalists, filmmakers, and academics, and prompted an apology in 2001 by the then Polish president. That apology has since become controversial with the rise of the Law and Justice party which denies any Polish involvement in the genocide of the Jewish people.
On another level, the word "holocaust" historically meant a burned offering as a sacrifice. The bodies of many of the Jewish victims of Nazis were literally burned regardless of how they were killed- which may be why the term was chosen to refer to the mass murder of the Jewish population of Europe.
Who were some of the other victims of the Nazis?
The Roma and Sinti, p. 319
The Roma and Sinti people were also designated as racially inferior by the Nazis. Estimates are inexact, because of a lack of knowledge of the prewar population of Roma, but between 300,000 and 500,000 Roma are believed to have been murdered by the Nazis.
Nazis also killed those with mental and physical disabilities, Polish prisoners, Soviet prisoners, members of the LGBTQ community, and political opponents.
Did any Germans resist the Nazis?
White Rose pgs. 300, 320
White Rose was the name of a resistance group to the Nazis formed by German college students, Sophie and Hans Scholl and their friends. Horrified by the crimes being committed by the Nazis, they printed and circulated leaflets calling for resistance - for sabotage of armament plants and for disruptions at gatherings and rallies. The members of White Rose were eventually caught and executed.
Although not described in Bloody Soil, some Germans also risked their lives to hide Jewish people from deportation and death. Vad Yashem designated non-Jews who helped rescue Jewish people as "Righteous Among Nations" - and the list, as of 2019, included 627 people from Germany, including Oskar Schindler, whose effort to save Jews became well-known thanks to Spielberg's film, Schindler List.
PART II Contemporary Neo-Nazis and the Holocaust
How does present day Germany commemorate the victims of Nazi Germany?
Germany has created numerous memorials to the people murdered by the Nazis, especially the Jewish people.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, pgs. 25, 27-28
The Memorial, located in Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate, stretches for four acres and consists of 2,711 concrete slabs of different heights - that have the feel of a graveyard, according to some visitors. Underneath is a museum with information on the Holocaust. There are no names on the slabs and no clear indication that it is a Holocaust Memorial. Some people act irreverently in the Memorial, taking selfies, doing handstands. A neo-Nazi website called it the "hoax memorial."
Track 17 Memorial at Gruenwald train station, p. 47
From this site, thousands of Jews were deported from Berlin to concentration camps. Few survived. The train station is now a memorial.
Stolperstein or stumbling stones, p. 54
A German artist has laid 70,000 bricks in Germany and the rest of Europe to commemorate some of those who were murdered. The bricks are laid in front of the person's last known address, with their name, date of birth, and their fate - all too often deported and murdered. The bricks honor Jewish and other victims of the Nazis.
How do present day Germans feel about the Holocaust?
Some Germans have tried to atone for the past, p. 2. Other examples are throughout the book.
Some Germans are tired of the guilt and feel they have atoned enough, p. 72.
Others have engaged in Holocaust denial and moved to the far right, pgs. 33-34.
Holocaust denial or distortion is not described in depth in Bloody Soil, but it ranges from denying that the Nazis engaged in a systematic effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe to downplaying the number of Jewish people murdered to blaming the Jewish people for their own murders. The purpose of the denials is to excuse the Nazis and their allies for the crime of genocide by those who embrace the same or a similar ideology.
What is the connection between the rise of neo-Nazis in contemporary Germany (and America) and immigration?
Discussed in Bloody Soil, pgs.33-34 and elsewhere.
Resentment over immigration has helped fuel the rise of the far right in Germany. Immigrants flooded into Germany from Turkey in the 1960s and from Syria in 2016, with the recent wars in the Middle East.
Far-right extremists blamed the immigration on The Replacement Theory: the idea that Jews are bringing immigrants into a country to replace the white citizens and take their jobs.
This is also a theory circulating in the United States. The Replacement Theory played a role in the Charlottesville March and in the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg where 11 Jewish people were murdered.
Have Neo-Nazis actually targeted immigrants and those who supported immigrants?
Yes. The incidents described in Bloody Soil were based on actual events.
1. The killing of Lisette's father, p. 4.
The murder of the German grandson of a Nazi war criminal who was helping immigrants is a fictionalized version of a real killing. Walter Lubcke, a pro-immigrant member of the Christian Democratic Union, was shot in the head by a neo-Nazi while smoking on his terrace in 2019.
2. Karl as a member of Der Dritte Weg, pgs 8 -9.
Der Dritte Weg, the Third Way, is a far-right and a neo-Nazi political party.
3. Murders committed by Christian, pgs. 134-135.
In 1990, after the reunification of Germany, neo-Nazis/far-right extremists beat Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, an African immigrant, to death. An organization to fight far-right extremism, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, was named in his memory. The Equality Institute in Bloody Soil is loosely based on the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
In 1991, in the towns of Hoyerswerda, Leipzig, and Saarlouis, neo-Nazis firebombed houses where immigrants were living. An immigrant from Ghana was burned to death. In Chemnitz, there were violent clashes between the far right and immigrant groups.
How do Neo-Nazi supporters avoid being arrested or detained by the police or the military?
Bloody Soil depicts members of the military, members of the intelligence services, and police as being members of the far-right organization, Germany Now, pgs. 151,173, and numerous other examples.
In Germany (and in the United States), police and military have become members of far right or neo-Nazi organizations.
In 2021, an elite German police unit in Frankfort was disbanded after authorities dug up an illegal weapons cache in the back yard of a member of the unit. Eighteen officers were suspended for being members of extremist groups.
In 2020, the German defense minister disbanded a special forces unit after discovering Nazi memorabilia along with stolen weapons and explosives in the possession of a sergeant major.
In the US, a neo-Nazi organization - Atomwaffen Division - was actively recruiting in the US military, according to a Frontline report in 2018 .
News organizations have reported that hundreds of law enforcement officials in the United States are members of far-right extremist groups.
What is the BfV and what are its limits?
The BfV is an intelligence organization that focuses on internal threats rather than external threats, similar to the FBI, only it has no authority to arrest, pgs. 67, 70-71
The powers of the BfV are restricted because of the history of the terror spread by the Gestapo and the SS during the Nazi years - and to prevent an organization focused on internal security from going down that road.
Why is the attack on the Reichstag in Bloody Soil important and could it really happen? pgs. 312-345
The Reichstag is the German legislature, similar to the Congress of the United States. An attack on the Reichstag would be an attack on the democracy of Germany.
In 1933, Hitler used a fire at the Reichstag as an excuse to seize absolute power, thus starting down the road to World War II and genocide.
In 2020, several hundred far-right extremists attempted to force their way into the Reichstag. In November 2022, German police arrested twenty-five far-right extremists who were planning for a "Day X" - to attack the Reichstag, kill the chancellor, and install their leader Heinrich XII as head of the German government.
With a contemporary story about a neo-Nazi attempted coup providing background information on the events of the Holocaust, Bloody Soil offers a teaching opportunity. Readers will be able to identify with sympathetic characters who exist in a fictional present-day world, will find themselves caught up in the tension of the story, but afterwards will have the chance to think about what they've just read and to broaden their understanding not just of the history but of the real threat that far-right extremists pose today.
To help with that process, this study guide provides questions that the book raises - with cites to the pages that mention those issues - and then answers. Most answers go beyond what is in the text of the novel to provide a full factual background and because some of the questions may not have an answer in the text. Bloody Soil was not intended to cover the entire Holocaust or be a documentary on the rise of neo-Nazis in Germany (or here in the US by analogy), but the intention was to capture readers' imaginations and inspire them to investigate deeper.
PART I- The Holocaust and references in Bloody Soil
The title Bloody Soil - what is the double meaning in the book?
The title refers to the bloody history of Germany that is referenced through the novel, the violent events that occur in the book, but also to the term, "Blood and Soil." (pages 105, 123, 295)
The term "Blood and Soil" in the 1930s propagated the idea that the purity of the German "race" resulted from a unity between the people of Germany and the land. It celebrated farmers and the agrarian life. "Blood and Soil" was adopted by the Nazis as one of their central slogans and themes.
"Blood and Soil" was also intended by the Nazis to show a superiority of the German people over Jewish people - because Jews, forbidden through much of European history from owning land, were more urban than rural, more educated professionals than famers.
"Blood and Soil" was also chanted by the neo-Nazi marchers at Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
What were the Nuremberg Laws? Further question for thought- why would the Nuremberg laws be a necessary predicate to the Holocaust?
The Nuremberg Laws were a series of race-based laws aimed at anyone of Jewish ancestry, based in large part on the Jim Crow laws of the American south. p. 71
The Nuremberg Laws placed limits on Jews, barring them from professions, forbidding intermarriage, and were the first step towards genocide.
The first step in any genocide is to begin to dehumanize the group that is the target.
What was the Holocaust by Bullets?
The novel never uses the term, but it describes the events. Approximately 1.5 million Jews in areas in Eastern Europe conquered by the Nazis were shot in ravines and pits, beginning in the summer of 1941 and continuing through the war. Almost 80 percent of Ukrainian Jews were killed in the Holocaust by Bullets.
Gas chambers replaced killing by bullet because it was felt to be more efficient and easier on the killers. p. 106
What happened at Babi Yar? p. 106
Babi Yar is a ravine outside Kyiv where over a period of two days, almost 40,000 Jews were murdered. Victims were forced to undress and enter the pit, where they were shot.
There is a memorial now to the victims. It was damaged by a Russian bomb during the current war.
Who were the SS (Schutzstaffel) and the Einsatzgruppen? pgs. 35, 83, 105
The SS was an elite group inside Germany. They were originally established as Hitler's personal guard, but they became the elite force, responsible for maintaining security and racial purity. The SS ran the concentration camps and had responsibility for the "Jewish Question" - its leaders planning, directing, and coordinating the "Final Solution" - the extermination of all Jewish people in Europe.
Waffen SS, p. 35
The Waffen SS was a division of the SS that was designated as fighting troops. They went into Eastern Europe and participated in rounding up Jews and anyone else deemed undesirable, although the group mainly responsible for the Holocaust by Bullet was the Einsatzgruppen.
Einsatzgruppen, pgs. 105, 106
The Einsatzgruppen were a special force within the SS tasked with rounding up Jews in Eastern Europe and with the help of collaborators in the conquered territories, formed execution squads to shoot Jewish men, women, and children. Of the three thousand members of the Einsatzgruppen who committed mass murder, only around 200 were ever punished.
What was the Kindertransport? p. 46
In 1938, after the pogrom in Germany known as Kristallnacht, Britain eased immigration rules to allow Jewish children under the age of 17 to be brought to the UK to be placed with private families as a temporary measure. Ten thousand children were brought to the United
Kingdom, most of whom never saw their parents again.
In contrast, in the same time period, in the United States, which had strict immigration limits in the 1930s, Congress didn't even bring up a bill that would have offered refuge to 12,000 German children.
1.5 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.
What was Auschwitz? p. 46
The Nazis established a series of extermination centers in order to achieve the goal of a Jew-Free Europe. Auschwitz was the largest and best known of the killing centers, located in a town in Poland where a museum now exists. Those sent to Auschwitz were either gassed on arrival or put to work. New arrivals destined for the gas chambers would be informed that they would be taking a shower. They would be forced to strip and forced into a large chamber where Zyklon B, a poisonous gas, would be used to kill. Those who were not gassed immediately were sent to work camps where most died of starvation, disease, mistreatment or were murdered when they could no longer work. At its peak of operation, six thousand people would be gassed in one day. Estimates are that one million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is commemorated on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
What was the number of Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust - p. 301
The number six million is used, but the estimates from Vad Yashem, the Israeli memorial to the Holocaust, are that between five and six million Jewish people died during the Shoah. The Nazis kept partial lists of the victims sent to the death camps from 1941-1943 - but in the last two years of the war, when it became clear that Germany would lose, the Nazis tried to destroy the evidence of their crimes. The main source for the numbers is a comparison of prewar census to postwar census of population. Yad Yashem has compiled a list of the names of almost five million victims from two and a half million Pages of Testimony - the statements compiled at Vad Yashem from survivors. Vad Yashem also has thousands of pages of other documents with names of victims that have yet to be researched and computerized.
What is the Holocaust symbolism of the burning barn scene in Bloody Soil? p. 289
In Riga, Latvia, on July 4, 1941, Nazis rounded up Jews and locked them in synagogues and set them on fire. Anyone who tried to escape the flames by breaking the windows was shot. Nineteen synagogues were set on fire with men, women, and children inside who burned to death.
In Jedwabne, Poland, 300 Jewish people were locked inside a barn which was then set on fire. The massacre was carried out by 40 ethnic Poles at the direction of the Gestapo and SS. The role of Poles in killing their neighbors was brought to light in the period from 1999-2003 through work by journalists, filmmakers, and academics, and prompted an apology in 2001 by the then Polish president. That apology has since become controversial with the rise of the Law and Justice party which denies any Polish involvement in the genocide of the Jewish people.
On another level, the word "holocaust" historically meant a burned offering as a sacrifice. The bodies of many of the Jewish victims of Nazis were literally burned regardless of how they were killed- which may be why the term was chosen to refer to the mass murder of the Jewish population of Europe.
Who were some of the other victims of the Nazis?
The Roma and Sinti, p. 319
The Roma and Sinti people were also designated as racially inferior by the Nazis. Estimates are inexact, because of a lack of knowledge of the prewar population of Roma, but between 300,000 and 500,000 Roma are believed to have been murdered by the Nazis.
Nazis also killed those with mental and physical disabilities, Polish prisoners, Soviet prisoners, members of the LGBTQ community, and political opponents.
Did any Germans resist the Nazis?
White Rose pgs. 300, 320
White Rose was the name of a resistance group to the Nazis formed by German college students, Sophie and Hans Scholl and their friends. Horrified by the crimes being committed by the Nazis, they printed and circulated leaflets calling for resistance - for sabotage of armament plants and for disruptions at gatherings and rallies. The members of White Rose were eventually caught and executed.
Although not described in Bloody Soil, some Germans also risked their lives to hide Jewish people from deportation and death. Vad Yashem designated non-Jews who helped rescue Jewish people as "Righteous Among Nations" - and the list, as of 2019, included 627 people from Germany, including Oskar Schindler, whose effort to save Jews became well-known thanks to Spielberg's film, Schindler List.
PART II Contemporary Neo-Nazis and the Holocaust
How does present day Germany commemorate the victims of Nazi Germany?
Germany has created numerous memorials to the people murdered by the Nazis, especially the Jewish people.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, pgs. 25, 27-28
The Memorial, located in Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate, stretches for four acres and consists of 2,711 concrete slabs of different heights - that have the feel of a graveyard, according to some visitors. Underneath is a museum with information on the Holocaust. There are no names on the slabs and no clear indication that it is a Holocaust Memorial. Some people act irreverently in the Memorial, taking selfies, doing handstands. A neo-Nazi website called it the "hoax memorial."
Track 17 Memorial at Gruenwald train station, p. 47
From this site, thousands of Jews were deported from Berlin to concentration camps. Few survived. The train station is now a memorial.
Stolperstein or stumbling stones, p. 54
A German artist has laid 70,000 bricks in Germany and the rest of Europe to commemorate some of those who were murdered. The bricks are laid in front of the person's last known address, with their name, date of birth, and their fate - all too often deported and murdered. The bricks honor Jewish and other victims of the Nazis.
How do present day Germans feel about the Holocaust?
Some Germans have tried to atone for the past, p. 2. Other examples are throughout the book.
Some Germans are tired of the guilt and feel they have atoned enough, p. 72.
Others have engaged in Holocaust denial and moved to the far right, pgs. 33-34.
Holocaust denial or distortion is not described in depth in Bloody Soil, but it ranges from denying that the Nazis engaged in a systematic effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe to downplaying the number of Jewish people murdered to blaming the Jewish people for their own murders. The purpose of the denials is to excuse the Nazis and their allies for the crime of genocide by those who embrace the same or a similar ideology.
What is the connection between the rise of neo-Nazis in contemporary Germany (and America) and immigration?
Discussed in Bloody Soil, pgs.33-34 and elsewhere.
Resentment over immigration has helped fuel the rise of the far right in Germany. Immigrants flooded into Germany from Turkey in the 1960s and from Syria in 2016, with the recent wars in the Middle East.
Far-right extremists blamed the immigration on The Replacement Theory: the idea that Jews are bringing immigrants into a country to replace the white citizens and take their jobs.
This is also a theory circulating in the United States. The Replacement Theory played a role in the Charlottesville March and in the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg where 11 Jewish people were murdered.
Have Neo-Nazis actually targeted immigrants and those who supported immigrants?
Yes. The incidents described in Bloody Soil were based on actual events.
1. The killing of Lisette's father, p. 4.
The murder of the German grandson of a Nazi war criminal who was helping immigrants is a fictionalized version of a real killing. Walter Lubcke, a pro-immigrant member of the Christian Democratic Union, was shot in the head by a neo-Nazi while smoking on his terrace in 2019.
2. Karl as a member of Der Dritte Weg, pgs 8 -9.
Der Dritte Weg, the Third Way, is a far-right and a neo-Nazi political party.
3. Murders committed by Christian, pgs. 134-135.
In 1990, after the reunification of Germany, neo-Nazis/far-right extremists beat Amadeu Antonio Kiowa, an African immigrant, to death. An organization to fight far-right extremism, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, was named in his memory. The Equality Institute in Bloody Soil is loosely based on the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
In 1991, in the towns of Hoyerswerda, Leipzig, and Saarlouis, neo-Nazis firebombed houses where immigrants were living. An immigrant from Ghana was burned to death. In Chemnitz, there were violent clashes between the far right and immigrant groups.
How do Neo-Nazi supporters avoid being arrested or detained by the police or the military?
Bloody Soil depicts members of the military, members of the intelligence services, and police as being members of the far-right organization, Germany Now, pgs. 151,173, and numerous other examples.
In Germany (and in the United States), police and military have become members of far right or neo-Nazi organizations.
In 2021, an elite German police unit in Frankfort was disbanded after authorities dug up an illegal weapons cache in the back yard of a member of the unit. Eighteen officers were suspended for being members of extremist groups.
In 2020, the German defense minister disbanded a special forces unit after discovering Nazi memorabilia along with stolen weapons and explosives in the possession of a sergeant major.
In the US, a neo-Nazi organization - Atomwaffen Division - was actively recruiting in the US military, according to a Frontline report in 2018 .
News organizations have reported that hundreds of law enforcement officials in the United States are members of far-right extremist groups.
What is the BfV and what are its limits?
The BfV is an intelligence organization that focuses on internal threats rather than external threats, similar to the FBI, only it has no authority to arrest, pgs. 67, 70-71
The powers of the BfV are restricted because of the history of the terror spread by the Gestapo and the SS during the Nazi years - and to prevent an organization focused on internal security from going down that road.
Why is the attack on the Reichstag in Bloody Soil important and could it really happen? pgs. 312-345
The Reichstag is the German legislature, similar to the Congress of the United States. An attack on the Reichstag would be an attack on the democracy of Germany.
In 1933, Hitler used a fire at the Reichstag as an excuse to seize absolute power, thus starting down the road to World War II and genocide.
In 2020, several hundred far-right extremists attempted to force their way into the Reichstag. In November 2022, German police arrested twenty-five far-right extremists who were planning for a "Day X" - to attack the Reichstag, kill the chancellor, and install their leader Heinrich XII as head of the German government.