--- title: "The German Army Is Battling Stolen Guns, False Flag Plots, And Nazi Extremism Within Its Ranks" date: "2017-05-12" modified: "2017-05-12" authors: - name: "James Clark" job_title: "Editor-in-Chief" link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/james-clark.md" url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/news/german-army-battling-stolen-guns-false-flag-plots-nazi-extremism-ranks/" categories: - "Army" - "Around the World" - "Europe" - "Military Branches" - "News" tags: - "European Command" - "nazi" --- # The German Army Is Battling Stolen Guns, False Flag Plots, And Nazi Extremism Within Its Ranks ![]() Gear accountability: There’s a reason it’s pounded into a service member’s head from day one at boot camp. You're being handed a perfect killing tool, its destructive power utterly dependent on whoever squeezes the trigger. And that’s the thing about your weapon: when someone jacks it from, let’s say an armored vehicle at a German Army base, it stops being *yours.* That’s precisely what happened in February when a cache of military weapons and gear were stolen from a facility in northern Germany, [according to the Associated Press.]() The theft only came to light on May 11 when the German Defense Ministry announced that two G36 assault rifles, one P8 pistol, a flare gun, two mags (sans ammo) a pair of radios and one set of binoculars were stolen from inside an armored vehicle on [a military training facility near Münster, Germany earlier this year.]() Related: Someone Stole A Humvee From An Ohio National Guard Armory » This would be concerning on its own, but this incident comes as the German military [investigates]() a far-right assassination plot by a civilian and two soldiers in which one perpetrator posed as a Syrian refugee with the intent of carrying out a “false flag” attack to cast suspicion and blame on refugees flowing into the country. [From the BBC](): *“The soldier was first detained by Austrian police in February after he tried to retrieve a handgun he had hidden in a toilet at Vienna airport.* *He was released but police subsequently discovered the suspect had registered as a Syrian refugee at a shelter in central Germany in December 2015 and later officially requested political asylum in Bavaria, prosecutors said.* *No concerns were raised at the time, despite the man speaking no Arabic. German media report that he even received monthly payments and accommodation.”* As part of the planned attack, which targeted pro-refugee politicians, the two soldiers appear to have stolen ammunition from a military depot, according to information uncovered in a series of recent raids [after the plot was discovered in April.]() That’s not even all of it. After the Tom Clancy-esque plot surfaced, military investigators incidentally turned up Nazi-era military memorabilia that revealed a broader presence of far-right extremists within the German military, a source of major anxiety given the country’s legal prohibitions against Nazi symbolism. There are currently 275 cases involving accusations of far-right extremism within the last six years, according to [a New York Times report:]() “*The number represents a small minority in a force of nearly 180,000. But nearly 70 percent of cases have emerged in the last year and a half, pointing to an accelerating problem that German military authorities are only now scrambling to address.* *The revelations, in the middle of an election year, have set off sniping between the civilian and military authorities bordering on scandal. They have also added a disturbing new dimension to Germany’s effort to address a surge of extremist activity since the country took in nearly one million refugees in 2015.”* It’s unclear at this time whether or not the most recent theft is at all tangled up in all the other Nazi-false-flag-assassination craziness, but one thing is certain: If you’re stationed on a German military base, you need to keep your shit locked up tight. ## Author James Clark is the editor-in-chief of Task & Purpose. He is a former Marine and a veteran of the War in Afghanistan. ### Author social links [Twitter]() [LinkedIn]()