Neo-Nazis Stockpiling Weapons in Germany
The German authorities are growing increasingly concerned about the country’s right-wing extremists and their arsenals of legal and illegal weapons. But police are finding it an uphill battle to deal with the problem.
German police found some 1,000 weapons during raids this summer on the neo-Nazi scene in the country’s most populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Aside from knifes and machetes, the police found an assortment of pistols and a rifle.
This was not the first time that German neo-Nazis were caught with weapons, Rainer Wendt, chairman of the German police union, told Deutsche Welle. “In the years 2009 and 2010 alone, more than 800 guns were found in the right-wing extremist scene:”
He is particularly concerned that in NRW, 99 neo-Nazis are legally in possession of firearms. In addition, there is the unknown number of illegal weapons. Why does the neo-Nazi scene need such an arsenal? And how can they be stripped of their weapons? These are the questions that the authorities are asking themselves across Germany.
Police and critics are the targets
Neo-Nazis are increasingly willing to use violence to intimidate their opponents
The weapons found in the neo-Nazi scene have alarmed security authorities. Bavaria’s State Interior Minister, Joachim Herrmann, told Deutsche Welle that he was concerned the guns might actually be used. “In light of the horrible incidents of the past we have to assume that those are not just gun lovers who enjoy collecting weapons, but that there is a significant risk these weapons could some day be used in acts of violence against other people,” Herrmann said, refering to a string of killings by the right-wing NSU terror group.