There are uncomfortable echoes of the past in Germany’s failed far-right plot

The attempted putsch in Germany never had much chance of overthrowing the Federal Republic, its constitution and its government.

The plot was uncovered at a very early stage by the authorities, which suggests it was prone to infiltration, and in any case, the German people remain committed to the peaceful and democratic road to prosperity that has served them so well since the war. That trauma, and its lessons, was not about to be swept away by a gang of cranks.

Indeed, the putsch, such as it was, had almost comical elements to it, such as the involvement of the Ruritanian-sounding Heinrich XIII, Prince of Reuss, a scion of ancient, but minor, nobility.

Nevertheless, the incident has uncomfortable echoes of the past; and is evidence that the far right can all too easily graduate from frothing online to real-world violence and terror, just as the far left inflicted on Germany in the 1970s.

Despite recent hardships and worries caused by Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Germany’s air of bourgeois prosperity and willingness to atone for its past, symbolised in the generous welcome extended to one million Syrian refugees, has been sustained. But underneath, there are obvious tensions, as evidenced in the persistent presence of the right-wing AfD party in federal and state parliaments.

The federal republic celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2024, the longest continuous run of liberal democratic government in German history. But genocides, revolutions, wars and occupations have also been part of Germany’s story – and are still within living memory.

Democracy, extended to the East after the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification in 1990, cannot be taken for granted, even in the new Germany. The would-be revolutionaries may well have been emboldened, if not inspired, by what they saw happening in Washington DC on 6 January 2021. The idea that the seat of power and crucial organs of the state can be seized by just a few armed activists must be a tempting as well as an exhilarating one.

It may have put them in mind of the way the Nazis also used direct action in the 1920s to attract attention, create martyrs and destabilise the state. Our contemporary “Reich citizens” probably didn’t intend to launch their putsch from a beer hall but their intentions were just as malign as those of Hitler, Ludendorff, Goering, Rohm and their cronies in the days of Weimar.

What is very modern – and disturbing – about this affair is how traditional far-right ideas and mythologies seem to have melded online with the cranks and conspiracy theorists that infest social media, including the hoax QAnon cult – again, as happened in the run-up to the 6 January attempted insurrection at the Capitol. Nor should governments ignore the way that paranoia about “them” and “the globalists” can degenerate further into antisemitism. That is especially painful for Germany.

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According to reports, these real-life conspirators of the nationalist right may also have been motivated by the way the German government has supported Ukraine in its war of defence with Russia. A striking aspect of current German politics is how the far left and far right are united in their hostility to the German and Nato policy of arming Ukraine and sanctioning Russia. The conspirators are rumoured to have tried to contact the Kremlin but with little success.

At any rate, it is a salutary episode that highlights once again just how social media and the online sphere can now be used to foment discontent and organise terror. It has happened in America, with loss of life, and in Germany, and by the likes of Isis.

The world’s democratic governments have still not caught up with the capacity of the internet, once such a force for free debate and information, to harm freedom and democracy itself.