Police raid homes in three states as Germany bans far-right group that wanted to re-establish Nazi dictatorship

The German interior ministry has announced the banning of right-wing extremist group Wolfsbrigade 44 as multiple raids were conducted at the homes of many of the group’s members.

German police raided the homes of prominent neo-Nazis in three states early on Tuesday morning, after the government banned the far-right group, the Federal Ministry of the Interior confirmed.

“Federal Minister of the Interior [Horst] Seehofer today banned the right-wing extremist ‘Sturmbrigade 44’, also known as ‘Wolfsbrigade 44,’” the minister’s spokesperson Steve Alter tweeted on Tuesday. The tweet also quoted Seehofer.

Anyone who combats the basic values of our liberal society will feel the decisive reaction of our constitutional state.

Seehofer also said that an “association that sows hatred and advocates the re-establishment of a National Socialist state has no place in our country.”

As a result of the ban, the authorities were able to take action against the group’s members.

The interior ministry confirmed that the homes of 11 people linked to far-right groups had been searched in Hesse, Mecklenburg West-Pomerania and North Rhine-Westphalia on Tuesday morning.

The police confiscated weapons, including one hand-knife, a crossbow, a bayonet and a machete as well as Nazi devotional objects such as swastikas and flags. Law enforcement also gathered evidence from computers and electronic devices.

The Wolfsbrigade 44 group is said to have been created in 2016 and, according to security officials, aims to re-establish a Nazi dictatorship in Germany.

In 2018, a bag of weapons and a T-shirt bearing the group's name was found on a train.

The number 44 is thought to refer to DD, an abbreviation for “Division Dirlewanger.” Oskar Dirlewanger was a Nazi commander in the SS (Schutzstaffel) paramilitary group, was well known as a sadistic war criminal and is associated with a number of atrocities during World War II. 

Last week the homes of nine German police officers were raided after an extremist right-wing chat group was exposed.

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