German police arrest two dozen alleged conspirators in a hare-brained plot to overthrow the government
Investigators say a coup d’état was being planned
IT COULD HAVE been an episode of “Babylon Berlin”, a TV drama in which the Schwarze Reichswehr, a cabal of far-right military officers, plots a coup against the Weimar Republic to bring back the monarchy. At the crack of dawn on December 7th some 3,000 police and special-forces officers carried out raids in 11 states across Germany to arrest 25 suspected members of a group that was allegedly planning to topple the “deep state” the plotters believe is ruling the country. Even some of the characters involved resembled “Babylon Berlin” ones: there is a prince, a judge and a former commander of a special unit of the armed forces.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The unhappy prince”
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