In recent years, far-left, far-right and Islamist extremist violence have resurged, and groups have been suspected of terrorism or terrorist plans. The country has experienced several attacks and plots linked to Islamist extremists, prompting increased security measures and counterterrorism efforts. High-profile incidents, such as the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack, point to the persistent danger of radicalization and violent extremism within Germany's borders.
Since the 2000s, jihadism in Germany has emerged as one of Europe's most dynamic scenes. This phenomenon is characterized by strong anti-American sentiment and extensive international networks. German-born jihadists, often radicalized in German cities, frequently travel to regions such as Turkey, Chechnya, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. In these locations, they exchange ideologies and form alliances with various extremist organizations.[3]
Weimar Republic
Germany's loss in the First World War resulted in a chaotic situation, with multiple far-left and far-right organisations attempting to seize power. Both the far left and the far right organised their own militias, and carried out assassinations. For example, the Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was assassinated in 1922 by a far-right group. Members of the Communist Party of Germanyassassinated police captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck in Berlin in 1931.
Turkish and Kurdish Islamist groups are also active in Germany.[4] Political scientist Guido Steinberg stated that many top leaders of Islamist organizations in Turkey fled to Germany in the 2000s, and that the Turkish (Kurdish) Hezbollah has also "left an imprint on Turkish Kurds in Germany."[4] Also many Kurds from Iraq (there are about 50,000 to 80,000 Iraqi Kurds in Germany) financially supported Kurdish-Islamist groups like Ansar al-Islam.[4] Many Islamists in Germany are ethnic Kurds (Iraqi and Turkish Kurds) or Turks. Before 2006, the German Islamist scene was dominated by Iraqi Kurds and Palestinians, but since 2006 Kurds from Turkey and Turks are dominant.[4]
According to a research conducted by the Abba Eban Institute as part of an initiative called Janus Initiative, Shiite clans in Germany are involved in organized crime and are specifically supporting Hezbollah.[5]
In 2015, 11 verdicts concerning jihadist terrorism related offences were issued by German courts.[6] In 2016, 28 verdicts for jihadist terrorism related offences were delivered.[7] In 2017 there were 27 verdicts.[8]
Almost all known terrorist networks and individuals in Germany have links to Salafism,[9] an ultra-conservative Islamic ideology.[10]
Terrorism in (or involving) West Germany and reunified Germany
During the Cold War, especially in the 1970s, West Germany experienced severe terrorism, mostly perpetrated by far-left terrorist groups and culminating in the German Autumn of 1977, the country's most serious national crisis in postwar history. Terrorist incidents also took place in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of the terrorist groups had connections to international terrorism, notably Palestinian militant groups, and were aided and abetted by the communist regime of East Germany.
Known terrorist groups in Germany (both active and in-active)
Two founding fathers of the RAF, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, set fire to a shopping mall in Frankfurt as a political statement against capitalism.[13]
-- Rudi Dutschke, prominent figure of the left-wing students movement
23 year old worker Josef Bachmann tried to assassinate the prominent left-wing figure Rudi Dutschke by firing multiple shots at him. The victim was seriously wounded and scarred for life.[14]
Three terrorists attacked El Al passengers in a bus at the Munich-Riem Airport with guns and grenades; one passenger was killed and 23 injured.[15] All three terrorists were captured by airport police. The Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Action Organization for the Liberation of Palestine claim responsibility for the attack.[16]
A Jewish cultural center was burned to the ground in Munich. Arab nationalist and German far-right organisations were initially suspected. Further evidence surfaced in 2012 involving a local anarchist group.[17][18]
Shortly after 9:00 CET, a motorcycle pulled up next to the car of Germany's chief federal prosecutor, Siegfried Buback, a stoplight on the outskirts of Karlsruhe in western Germany. The motorcycle passenger proceeded to fire at least 15 bullets into the car. Buback and his 30-year-old driver Wolfgang Göbel died at the scene; the head of the chauffeur service Georg Wurster, 33, succumbed to his injuries six days later.[27]
Jürgen Ponto, the head of Dresdner Bank, is shot and killed in his house in Oberursel. It is thought that three assailants attempted to kidnap Ponto, and after he resisted they shot him. He was shot five times and later died of his serious wounds. Susanne Albrecht, the daughter of a good friend of the Pontos, was later identified as one of the attackers.[28]
A group of armed terrorists attacked the car carrying Hanns Martin Schleyer, then president of the German employers' association, in Cologne. Four masked RAF members sprayed bullets into the two vehicles, killing Marcisz and a police officer, Roland Pieler. The driver of the police escort vehicle, Reinhold Brändle, and a third police officer, Helmut Ulmer, were also killed.
Schleyer was abducted and held prisoner in an apartment in a residential neighborhood near Cologne. He was forced to appeal to the West German government under Helmut Schmidt for several RAF members -- then imprisoned -- to be exchanged for him. On 18 October 1977, three of the imprisoned RAF members were found dead in their cells. In response, Schleyer was shot dead en route to Mulhouse, France, where his body was left in an Audi 100.[29]
A bomb detonates at the Oktoberfest fairgrounds in Theresienwiese, Munich, killing twelve and injuring over two hundred more. The dead include the alleged bomber Gundolf Kohler, a member of the neo-Nazi Military Sport Group Hoffman.[31][32]
German Politician and Ministry of the economy of Hesse was murdered in his house by the Revolutionary Cells for supporting further construction of Frankfurt's Airport as well as further construction of the nuclear power plant Biblis.[33][34]
An explosion at the Mifgash-Israel, a Jewish owned restaurant in West Berlin, injures 46 people. An infant girl, who was in critical condition after the blast, later dies of her injuries.[35][36]
A bomb detonates on the fifth floor of the six-story French consulate building in West Berlin, causing extensive damage on the floor below, in which the consulate offices and a visitor's lounge were situated. The 11:20am explosion collapsed sections of the front facade and attic and catapulted parts of interior walls to the street below, although all dead and injured had all been inside the building.[37]
Head of the Federal Union of German Aerospace and Heavy Industries (BDLI), Ernst Zimmermann, is shot once in the head by a man with a sub-machine gun. The assailant forced his way into the industrialist's home in suburban Munich after his wife opened the door for a woman allegedly claiming to have a letter for Mr. Zimmermann.[38]
A powerful bomb rips through an international departure lounge of the Frankfurt Airport, killing three people and wounding 42. The dead include a man and two children, and of the many injured, 18 were hospitalized. The explosive device, which the police said appeared to have been placed among seated passengers waiting for their flights, blasted a large hole in the cement floor of the airport terminal, then one of the busiest in Europe.[39][40] German investigators concluded the perpetrator to be the Abu Nidal Organization.[41]
A car bomb explodes outside the headquarters building at the Rhein-Main Air Base, where members of the United States Armed Forces are stationed, killing two Americans and wounding about 20 people.
The dead were Airman Frank H. Scarton, 19, who was serving with the 437th Military Airlift Wing, and Becky Jo Bristol, the wife of Senior Airman John Bristol, who was with the Medical Airlift Squadron at the base.[19][42]
A bomb placed on the dance-floor of the La Belle Discotheque, popular with United States military personnel, explodes, killing 3 and injuring hundreds more. Two of the dead were members of the United States military.[43]
The physicist Karl-Heinz Beckurts, director of research and technology at the Siemens electronic company, and a driver are killed by a remote controlled bomb planted in his car in a Munich suburb.[44][45]
-- Government institutions (Foreign: British Army)
An IRA cell around Donna Maguire planted five explosive devices at the Quebec Barracks in Osnabrück. Of the five devices, only one exploded causing damage to a building. No casualties.[46][47][48]
Banker Alfred Herrhausen dies instantly and his driver is seriously wounded in a blast caused by a remote controlled bomb under his vehicle. Mr. Herrhausen, who headed Deutsche Bank A.G., was described as the most powerful person in the West German economy and a dominant figure in European banking.[49]
A neonazi stabbed the 36 years old, Angolan man Agostinho C. to death out of racial hatred. He was called the hero of Friedrichshafen by neo nazis after the incident.[50]
Action Group for the Destruction of the Police State
--Police officers
The officers Joerg Lorkowski and Andreas Wilkending were ambushed after heading towards a distress call, near the parking lot in a wooded area in Holzminden. The attackers were captured four days later.[51][52]
Andy Johann H. shot an entire magazine of a semi-automatic weapon into a crowd of homeless people and punks at the central plazza in Koblenz. He was charged with 1 count of murder and seven counts of attempted murder.[50]
A molotov cocktail is thrown into the house of a Turkish migrant family, destroying the property and killing three occupants. Two known neo-Nazis were convicted of murder a year later.[53][54]
Four young German men (aged between 16 and 23) belonging to the far rightskinhead scene, the oldest with known neo-Nazi ties, set fire to the house of a large Turkish family in Solingen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Three girls and two women died; fourteen other family members, including several children, were injured, some of them severely.[55][56]
Kay Diesner, a prominent figure in Berlin's Neo-Nazi scnene, opened fire at two policemen at a highway pull-in in Rosenburg. In the attack, one policemen was killed, the other wounded.[50]
The left-wing extremist group militante gruppe (mg) firebombed a Bundeswehr vehicle. The arson attack was officially their last attack out of at least 25.[59]
An immigrant from Kosovo fires upon a United States Air Force bus, killing two and wounding two. At the time of the attack, the vehicle was parked outside the terminal building waiting to transport 15 U.S. airmen to Ramstein Air Base. The attacker first shoots an airman outside the vehicle, and then enters the bus, shooting and killing the driver and firing three shots at two other airmen, wounding them.[63] Perpetrator had done it to avenge U.S. military operations in Afghanistan[64]
Assailants set fire to the car and vandalized the house of Horst Reichenbach (an important European Union (EU) official) in Potsdam city, Brandenburg state, leaving important material damage. The group Friends of Loukanikos claimed the attack for to protest austerity measures imposed on Greece.[66][67]
44 year old Frank S. seriously injured Henriette Reker with a knife in an assassination attempt. He then injured 4 additional people who tried to disarm him.[68]
Members of the right-wing terrorist group Gruppe Freital detonate an illegal explosive in front of a window of a refugee housing. One refugee gets injured in the face.[70][71]
The at the time of the attack 17-year old Saleh S. threw two Molotov Cocktails at the entrance of a shopping-mall in Hanover. He was later charged with 7 counts of attempted murder after admitting that he wanted to kill as many people as possible. Just 3 weeks later his sister Safia S. attacked a Police officer with a knife.[72][73]
Around 7 pm, the two radicalized youths threw an improvised explosive device onto the grounds of a Sikh-temple in Essen. Three people were injured by the bombing.[76]
In the late evening of 26 September 2016, Nino K. set up two bombs in Dresden, one targeting a Mosque and the other targeting the International Congress Center Dresden. He pledged guilty in February 2018.[77]
As part of a wave of attacks and acts of violence against Turks and Turkish organizations as a response to the Turkish-kurdish conflict, Kurdish and left-wing extremists committed numerous arson attacks and non-violent operations in all of Germany.[78][79][80][81]
After an arson attack on part of Berlins power supply system, roughly 6.500 households were left without electricity for numerous hours. A left-wing extremist group, calling itself Vulkangruppe NetzHerrschaft zerreißen claimed responsibility for the attack.[82]
Anarchist communist extremist group Action Cell Haukur Hilmarsson
--Power supply system
Militants burn three vehicles in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia. The Action Cell Haukur Hilmarsson claimed responsibility for the incident and stated that the attack was carried out in retaliation for Turkish military operations in Afrin.[83]
On Monday, the 22nd of July, the unnamed perpetrator set off to randomly kill a person, the only requirement he had for his target was dark skin. After seriously wounding a man from Eritrea in a drive-by-shooting, the perpetrator went to a bar, where he boasted about his crime. Later on, the perpetrator killed himself.[87]
A powerful explosion destroyed multiple windows of the home of the targeted left-wing politician. Right-wing extremists, possibly Combat 18, are the susptected perpetrators.[88]
A left-wing group has claimed responsibility for an arson attack on the Pankow court in Berlin. The arson attack was part of the left-wing campaign Tu Mal Wat days.[89]
A man who was armed with multiple firearms and home-made bombs unsuccessfully attempted to force his way into a synagogue during Yom Kippur prayers, shooting and killing one passer-by. He subsequently fired into a nearby kebabrestaurant, killing one customer. Pursued by police, he shot and wounded another man in an attempted carjacking, before being captured. Video and text material which the suspect posted online expressed his extremist anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and anti-feminist views as well as his admiration for perpetrators of earlier acts of right-wing terrorism.[90]
On 19 February 2020, two mass shootings occurred, targeting two shisha bars/hookah lounges in Hanau, Hesse, Germany. Eleven people, including the perpetrator, were killed and five others injured in the shootings, sparking a police manhunt. The gunman, identified as Tobias Rathjen, was eventually found dead in his apartment alongside his mother, who had also been killed.[91]
On 18 August 2020, a 30-year-old Iraqi man rammed his car into other motorists on the Bundesautobahn 100 in Berlin injuring six people. The man expressed support for Islamic extremist views.[92]
On 4 October 2020, a 20-year-old Syrian asylum seeker stabbed two tourists at random killing one and injuring another in Dresden. The man was known by authorities to be an Islamist extremist.[93]
In the 2015–2020 time span, there were 9 Islamic terrorist attacks and thwarted terrorist plots where at least one of the perpetrators had entered Germany as an asylum seeker during the European migrant crisis. The Islamic terrorists entered Germany either without identity documents or with falsified documents. The number of discovered plots began to decline in 2017. In 2020 German authorities noted that the majority of the asylum seekers entered Germany without identification papers during the crisis and security agencies considered unregulated immigration as problematic from a security aspect.[95]
Thwarted islamist terror attacks
In December 2019, German authorities reported to have thwarted ten Islamic terrorist plots since the 2016 Berlin truck attack.[96][97] Among these:
The terrorism of the 1970s has formed Germany's political culture and its policy of not negotiating with terrorists. It also led to the formation of the GSG9 counter-terrorism unit. In 1972, a law was passed, the Extremist Act (Radikalenerlass), which banned radicals or those with a 'questionable' political persuasion from public sector jobs.
Traditionally counter-terrorist organisations in Germany have been slower to respond to extreme right-wing groups than extreme left-wing ones. It has been suggested that this is due to the extreme right being seen as corrigible (fighting for attainable, tangible goals that can be negotiated) while the extreme left are regarded as incorrigible (fighting for ideological goals that are "pure" and cannot be negotiated). Thus because the extreme left are seen as targeting the heart of the German political system while the extreme right is not, this tends to result in a reduced response to extreme right-wing terrorism. In addition, far-right terrorism was at times dubiously regarded as a form of terrorism by the security services, as it did not seem to have self-explanatory political statements nor were any official announcements made by far-right groups explaining the act; for example, a house burning of Turkish immigrants was initially blamed on organised crime and was only later determined to have been perpetrated by extreme right-wing groups, leading officials to doubt it was a form of terrorism as it did not seem to have any broader political goals beyond the killing itself.[101]
In the United States, domestic terrorism is defined as terrorist acts that were carried out within the United States by U.S. citizens and/or U.S. permanent residents. As of 2021, the United States government considers white supremacists to be the top domestic terrorism threat.
Right-wing terrorism, hard right terrorism, extreme right terrorism or far-right terrorism is terrorism that is motivated by a variety of different right-wing and far-right ideologies. It can be motivated by Ultranationalism, neo-Nazism, anti-communism, neo-fascism, ecofascism, ethnonationalism, religious nationalism, anti-immigration, anti-semitism, anti-government sentiment, patriot movements, sovereign citizen beliefs, and occasionally, it can be motivated by opposition to abortion, and homophobia. Modern right-wing terrorism largely emerged in Western Europe in the 1970s, and after the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it emerged in Eastern Europe and Russia.
Gundolf Köhler was a German far-right terrorist who planted a bomb at the 1980 Oktoberfest in Munich, killing 13 people and injuring more than 200 in what is known as the Oktoberfest bombing.
Rote Zora was a West German radical left feminist urban guerrilla organization active from 1974 to 1995. The group committed a series of bombing and arson attacks against ideological enemies, including individuals and organizations thought to be involved with sexism, the exploitation of women, genetic engineering, enforcing patriarchal society, nuclear power, and anti-abortionism. Rote Zora were particularly opposed to Section 218 of the German Penal Law limiting abortion, which they referred to as the "Terrorism Paragraph". The organization never officially dissolved, but was completely inactive by 1996.
Until the late 2000s, terrorism in Sweden was not seen as a serious threat to the security of the state. However, there has been a rise in far right and Islamist terrorist activity in the 21st century.
Terrorism in the United Kingdom, according to the Home Office, poses a significant threat to the state. There have been various causes of terrorism in the UK. Before the 2000s, most attacks were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict. In the late 20th century there were also attacks by Islamic terrorist groups. Since 1970, there have been at least 3,395 terrorist-related deaths in the UK, the highest in western Europe. The vast majority of the deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict and happened in Northern Ireland. In mainland Great Britain, there were 430 terrorist-related deaths between 1971 and 2001. Of these, 125 deaths were linked to the Northern Ireland conflict, and 305 deaths were linked to other causes, including 270 in the Lockerbie bombing. Since 2001, there have been almost 100 terrorist-related deaths in Great Britain.
There is a long history of terrorism in Europe. This has often been linked to nationalist and separatist movements, while other acts have been related to politics, religious extremism, or organized crime. Terrorism in the European sections of the intercontinental countries of Turkey and Russia are not included in this list.
Terrorism in France refers to the terrorist attacks that have targeted the country and its population during the 20th and 21st centuries. Terrorism, in this case is much related to the country's history, international affairs and political approach. Legislation has been set up by lawmakers to fight terrorism in France.
Islamic terrorism has been carried out in Europe by the jihadist groups Islamic State (ISIL) or Al-Qaeda as well as Islamist lone wolves since the late 20th century. Europol, which releases the annual EU Terrorism Situation and Trend report (TE-SAT), used the term "Islamist terrorism" in reports for the years 2006–2010, "religiously inspired terrorism" for the years 2011–2014, and has used "jihadist terrorism" since then. Europol defines jihadism as "a violent ideology exploiting traditional Islamic concepts".
On 19 December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. One of the victims was the truck's original driver, Łukasz Urban, who was found shot dead in the passenger seat. The truck was eventually stopped by its automatic brakes. The perpetrator was Anis Amri, an unsuccessful asylum seeker from Tunisia. Four days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy. An initial suspect was arrested and later released due to lack of evidence. Nearly five years after the attack, a man who was critically injured during the attack died from complications related to his wounds, becoming the 13th victim. As of December 2023, this attack remains the worst Islamist terrorist attack by number of casualties in German history.
On 11 April 2017, the tour bus of the German football team Borussia Dortmund was attacked with roadside bombs in Dortmund, Germany. Three bombs exploded as the bus ferried the team to the Westfalenstadion for the first leg of their quarter-final against Monaco in the UEFA Champions League. One of the team's players, Marc Bartra, and a policeman were wounded, but the strengthened windows of the bus prevented casualties.
The Atomwaffen Division, also known as the National Socialist Resistance Front, was an international far-right extremist and neo-Nazi terrorist network. Formed in 2013 and based in the Southern United States, it expanded across the United States and it had also expanded into the United Kingdom, Argentina, Canada, Germany, the Baltic states, and other European countries. The group was described as a part of the alt-right by some journalists, but it rejected the label and it was considered extreme even within that movement. Atomwaffen was described as "one of the most violent neo-Nazi movements in the 21st century". It was listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and it was also designated as a terrorist group by multiple governments, including the United Kingdom and Canada.
The True Blue Crew (TBC) is an Australian far-right extremist group. Members and supporters have been linked to right-wing terrorism and vigilantism, and members have been arrested with weapons and on terrorism-related charges. Experts who have studied the group say it appears to be "committed to violence".
The 2018 Cologne attack was an attack and subsequent hostage-taking that occurred at the central railway station of Cologne, Germany, on 15 October 2018.
The 2016 German terror plot was a plot by ISIL to commit a terror attack in Germany in 2016. Three teams of attackers planned travel to Germany, to prepare and execute a large-scale attack on a music festival, the name of which hasn't been published yet. The plot was made public only in October 2018, when NDR, WDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung led an interview with a German ISIL supporter. Bundeskriminalamt and Bundesanwaltschaft led the investigations. The German Public Prosecutor General, Peter Frank, confirmed the plot, saying: "For us, the facts in this case were very concrete and resilient."
The Halle synagogue shooting occurred on 9 October 2019 in Halle, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and continued in nearby Landsberg. After unsuccessfully trying to enter the synagogue in Halle during the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the attacker, 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, fatally shot two people nearby and later injured two others. Federal investigators called the attack far-right and antisemitic terrorism.
The Hanau shootings occurred on 19 February 2020, when nine people were killed and five others wounded in a terrorist shooting spree by a far-right extremist targeting three bars and a kiosk in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. After the attacks, the gunman, identified as Tobias Rathjen, returned to his apartment, where he killed his mother and then committed suicide. The massacre was called an act of terrorism by the German Minister of Internal Affairs.
The 2020 Vienna attack was a series of shootings that occurred on 2 November 2020 in Vienna, Austria. A few hours before the city was to enter a lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a lone gunman started shooting in the busy city centre. Four civilians were killed in the attack and 23 others were injured, seven critically, including a police officer. The attacker was killed by police and was later identified as an ISIL sympathizer. Officials said that the attack was an incident of Islamist terrorism.
References
German Jihad: On the Internationalisation of Islamist Terrorism by Guido Steinberg. Columbia University Press, 2013
↑ "Salafistische Bestrebungen". Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (in German). 15 January 2018. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 13 January 2019. Die Mehrzahl der Salafisten in Deutschland sind keine Terroristen, sondern politische Salafisten. Andererseits sind fast alle in Deutschland bisher identifizierten terroristischen Netzwerkstrukturen und Einzelpersonen salafistisch geprägt bzw. haben sich im salafistischen Milieu entwickelt. [The majority of Salafists in Germany are not terrorists, but political Salafists. On the other hand, almost all hitherto identified terrorist networks and individuals in Germany are influenced by Salafism, for instance having developed in a Salafist environment.]
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