Right-wing extremists in the KSK: “The wall of silence is crumbling”

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Soldiers of the special forces command during an exercise (archive photo from 2017)

Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa

White headphones in the ears, a flower vase with butterflies in the background - the defense minister speaks from her home office on Monday afternoon.

A few hours earlier, the ministry announced that Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had gone into quarantine as a precaution.

Your Corona app had displayed a red warning signal, now it has to announce the good news via video.

It's - once again - about the Special Forces Command (KSK) in Calw, Baden-Württemberg, that legendary and notorious elite unit of the Bundeswehr, which repeatedly makes headlines with right-wing extremist incidents.

The inspector general had submitted the promised KSK interim report, the minister announced this afternoon, and it made it clear that "the wall of silence is crumbling" and that the events can now be better clarified.

This is followed by a good deal of self-praise: The report also shows, says Kramp-Karrenbauer, "that we have set the right course in a whole series of measures".

It was only at the end of June that the minister decided to fundamentally restructure the elite force and dissolve one of the four command companies.

Soldiers of this unit had received negative attention in April 2017 when they held a pig's head throwing competition at the farewell ceremony for a company commander - this was supposed to include right-wing rock and the Hitler salute.

Then, in the early summer of 2020, investigators unearthed a well-stocked arsenal with lots of ammunition, two kilograms of Bundeswehr explosives and Hitler devotional items from a KSK soldier in Saxony.

Since then, at the latest, the KSK has been considered a problem, because the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD) has a good two dozen other commandos as possible right-wing extremists in their sights.

Consequently, Kramp-Karrenbauer ordered the "Iron Broom" operation.

She disbanded the second of six combat companies because the cases of right-wing extremist soldiers had piled up there and ordered her inspector general to clean up the KSK thoroughly.

The top soldier in the Bundeswehr has now summarized the current status of the KSK conversion work on 21 pages.

In it, Eberhard Zorn cautiously reports the all-clear on a central point.

A large part of the ammunition and explosives that were reported missing by the KSK were probably just incorrectly booked.

"As an interim result, it can be said that a high proportion of the deviations could be traced," says page 14 of the report.

The 62 kilograms of explosives that supposedly disappeared also seem to have been counted incorrectly.

Four instead of three level system

Zorn announced that the previous three-stage system would be expanded by a fourth stage for the security check of the commando soldiers, in which the activities in chat groups should also be checked in the future.

The general promised that there would be the next intermediate result in the spring, and a final report in the summer.

Until then, it remains to be seen whether the association will be retained in its current form.

The fact that the ministry does not want to hastily complete the reform of the KSK has a lot to do with a handful of unpopular permanent guests in the Calw Zeppelin barracks.

Investigators from the MAD and several defense disciplinary attorneys, i.e. the internal prosecutors of the Bundeswehr, have been billeted there for many weeks.

Every day they would summon soldiers for interrogation, according to the unit. 

The investigators are investigating delicate questions: Is there a right-wing extremist network within the elite unit that may even be planning acts of violence?

Or are the right-wing elite fighters of the second company, of whom just under a dozen have already been transferred or removed from the troops, just a few stray soldiers who have never been blackened out of a misunderstood corps spirit? 

Even those responsible in the ministry are not yet confident of a final answer.

They avoid the term "network" and prefer to speak of the "characteristics" of right-wing KSK soldiers.

The head of the legal department and the responsible State Secretary Gerd Hoofe have the intermediate status of the reports presented to them on a regular basis.

Both at least agree that the unit looked the other way too long when it came to right-wing extremist soldiers. 

The "pig's head party" is still at the center of the internal investigations.

At first, all the soldiers involved had said in a surprisingly identical manner that nothing bad had happened there.

Meanwhile, some have corrected their statements.

About two dozen of the participants are officially investigated. 

Investigators have discovered chats from participants in recent months that seem unambiguous.

If only because some of the chat entries are ended with the phrase "GruSS".

Or in a nutshell with "SH!", The abbreviation for "Sieg Heil". 

On the weekend, the "Welt" reported on other relevant chats and short messages between soldiers that the MAD had discovered.

Here too, anti-constitutional organizations are said to have been shown, and the ministry has now confirmed the investigation.

The MAD only says that the research is far from over, there are always new hints and questions that the investigators are investigating. 

Forbearance has not been exercised for a long time.

For a short time in the summer, a temporary soldier who had been privately in Africa for a few years was not allowed to return to the KSK, as he was also in one of the questionable chat groups years ago.

Like several other soldiers who have been kicked out of the force in the past few months, this man will probably also sue against the punitive measure. 

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