Members of the KSK, the German special forces. - Thomas Kienzle

A big sweep announced. The German army said on Tuesday the partial dissolution of its emblematic special forces, the KSK, following several scandals over their proximity to the far right. This elite unit “cannot continue to exist in its current form. It must be modified from the inside and better integrated into the Bundeswehr [the German army] ”, indicates a report from the Ministry of Defense presented to the deputies. Special forces are accused of being too emancipated from the rest of the army, promoting the establishment of "toxic leaders" and the dissemination of "extremist ideas", the report continued.

In the immediate future, the second company of the KSK, considered as the place where the extreme right-hand sides were the most important, will be dissolved without being replaced. The unit will therefore only keep three companies. An even more scathing snub: until an in-depth renewal has taken place, special forces are prohibited from participating in exercises and missions on an international level. Created in 1996 and modeled on the British Special Air Service (SAS), the secret operations unit is made up of approximately 1,400 command and support soldiers. Its tasks include repatriating Germans from war and crisis zones, gathering information or training Allied forces.

The threat of dissolution

Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, in an interview with the daily  Süddeutsche Zeitung , described the latest discoveries as "disturbing" and "alarming": 48,000 munitions and 62 kg of explosives have disappeared from the KSK. "The wall of silence is breaking," she said. Still haunted by the memory of Nazism, Germany has set itself since the end of the Second World War the objective of having an impeccable army. And recent scandals are experienced as trauma.

Several members of the special forces have been identified as close to the ultra-nationalist movement, when the authorities are concerned about a resurgence of far-right terrorism, targeting migrants, Jews and political leaders supporting them. "Anyone who turns out to be a right-wing extremist in the Bundeswehr has no place there and must leave it," the minister said on public radio. A new evaluation should take place at the end of October. And the minister warns that if the members of these special forces "did not hear this first preventive shot, the question of a" wider "reorganization of the KSK will inevitably arise". Clearly: complete dissolution.

Hitler salutes and pig heads

The KSK first attracted suspicion in April 2017, during a farewell party from one of its commanders. Pig heads were said to have been thrown and Hitler salutes carried out. During the internal investigation, weapons were later discovered in the private property of a KSK soldier in Saxony, who had previously attracted attention because of his radical positions.

Finally, last January, the German Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) announced that 20 soldiers of the elite troop were suspected of being right-wing extremists, a proportion five times higher than in the whole of the Bundeswehr. The latter is already regularly pointed out on the subject.

Wehrmacht relics

In 2017, two German soldiers, including a 28-year-old officer, Franco Albrecht, were arrested on suspicion of having planned an attack on German figures who were too favorable in their eyes to immigration. Several relics of the Wehrmacht, the army of the Nazi regime between 1935 and 1945, were at the time discovered in a common room of this barracks of the Franco-German Brigade located in Illkirch, in the suburbs of Strasbourg.

The German far right accused the government on Tuesday of "placing suspicion on all our soldiers without justification". The radical left considered the measures insufficient. "There is no alternative to the total dissolution" of the KSK, she reacted.

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