Large scale police raids and prosecutions in Germany targeting the extremist ‘Reichsbürger’ movement are linked to international networks of nazis and Holocaust deniers that have been monitored for years by Searchlight.

Searchlight reported yesterday on this week’s raids by 800 police officers on members of the Kingdom of Germany, whose members are a prominent part of Reichsbürger movement. This is just the latest in a series of crackdowns on fanatics, some of them heavily armed, who are accused of plotting to overthrow the German government.

Organisation banned

Amongst those arrested was ‘King’ Peter Fitzek, leader of the Kingdom of Germany, and three others. The organisation has been banned.

In December 2022 a large number of Reichsbürger suspects were detained, including Heinrich ‘Prince’ Reuss and his Russian-born partner. The plotters planned the coup from Schloss Waidmannsheil, a neo-Gothic hunting lodge in East Thuringia.

The criminal cases against Reuss and his co-accused (many of whom had military training) began more than a year ago. Court hearings are scheduled to continue until next January, and probably even later.

Russian and Iranian links

One disturbing feature of these cases is a pattern of associations with Russian and Iranian propagandists.

Reuss and his ideas were heavily promoted by the Swiss nazi Bernhard Schaub, who has been monitored by Searchlight and European anti-fascists since the mid-1990s when he created a Holocaust denial magazine in Switzerland with a fellow schoolteacher Jürgen Graf.

On 9 November 2003 (the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s coup attempt known as the Beer Hall Putsch), Schaub and fellow nazis met in Vlotho, the home of veteran Holocaust denier Ursula Haverbeck, and created the VRBHV, a Holocaust denial association that included the convicted terrorists Horst Mahler and Manfred Roeder.

Schaub took over from Haverbeck’s late husband, SS veteran Werner Haverbeck, as co-organiser of her ‘Collegium Humanum’ until both it and the VRBHV were banned.

He went on to create yet another nazi network, European Action, which again was banned after several of its affiliates were accused of terrorism. EA’s British leaders were the former BNP national organiser Richard Edmonds and Lady Michèle Renouf.

KKK leader involved

Renouf has been well known to Searchlight readers since her promotion of David Irving more than twenty years ago. She and Schaub are the two surviving members of a committee founded in Tehran after a Holocaust denial conference in 2006, sponsored by Iran’s deputy minister of culture, Mohammed-Ali Ramin.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was involved behind the scenes of this committee, though not formally a member.

When the convicted terrorist Manfred Roeder became too ill to organise events, Renouf, a former model and ex-wife of banker Sir Frank Renouf, bought a large property in rural Germany and hosted conferences where Schaub and others spoke to promote the ideas of accused coup-plotter Prince Reuss.

Many of Renouf’s guests, some of them former paramilitary associates of Roeder, are active in the Reichsbürger movement which denies the constitutional legitimacy of modern Germany.

Swiss cult

Their ideas have often been promoted by a Swiss religious cult led by Ivo Sasek, many of whose members (including Sasek’s own son) have denounced him for violent and abusive methods.

Bernhard Schaub has been a guest speaker at Sasek’s conferences, and fellow Holocaust denier Sylvia Stolz was given an 18-month prison sentence after speaking at another of his events in 2012.

Schaub fell out with fellow nazis in Switzerland after having a sexual relationship with one of his teenage followers. He then moved to Germany, and appears to have seen Prince Reuss as a meal ticket.

The cult-like behaviour of these groups can easily seem a joke and the organisation targeted a few days ago by the German authorities is a good case in point. Dressing up in courtly costume and calling yourself ‘King’ Peter Fitzek or appointing ministers to a government-in-waiting, seems inherently ridiculous.

Arsenal of weapons

But there are several reasons to take such groups seriously.

They have amassed substantial funds. Their leading activists have an arsenal of weapons and in many cases are trained soldiers (sometimes in special forces units).

There is a significant overlap between Reichsbürger networks, Covid conspiracy groups, and larger right-wing parties including AfD.

Terrorism sponsors

And there is a long history of suspicious ties to two governments known to sponsor terrorism and subversion, Russia and Iran.

Many of the leading activists in these networks such as Ursula Haverbeck, Jürgen Graf, Richard Edmonds, and Manfred Roeder have died, and one of the most violent extremists at the centre of the web, Horst Mahler, is now 89 and seriously ill.

But Mahler and others remain determined to instil younger generations with their violent nazi ideology and revolutionary strategy.