Andreas M. is said to have planned a coup in Germany with his comrades. How a devoted civil servant became a radical citizen of the Reich.
“As a soldier in the reserve, it was an honor to serve my country.” Anyone who speaks like this must be a faithful and righteous citizen of this country. But the words come from a man who is said to be part of a terrorist group that hated the state and was planning a coup. Andreas M. is a soldier and, according to investigators, a member of the group of Reich citizens and conspiracy theorists whose heads were arrested in a nationwide raid on Wednesday. But he is also the author of a book; the quote above comes from a description of his book about his mission in Afghanistan.
Andreas M. has had a turbulent past. In the description of the book he states that he completed his military service after completing his training as a cook. However, he committed himself for two years and then extended it to eight years.
According to “Bild am Sonntag” he worked as a field cook for the Bundeswehr, after this time also for a logistics company and as a dog handler for the fire brigade. But his real passion seems to have been working for the troops. So he volunteered three times as a reservist for deployment in Afghanistan. Andreas M. writes: “Before that, I was a, yes, I can say: a dutiful soldier for eight years.”
And then: “Despite a lot of further training and exercises, the practical use remained purely theoretical at first. Up to 11/9. A day on which my life also changed. During my operations in Afghanistan I got to know the unfiltered reality of the war. Yes I also learned to appreciate the camaraderie of a soldier’s life, which is why I reported back to the Bundeswehr four years later. To this day, I still serve as a media production sergeant in the reserve.”
According to “Spiegel”, Andreas M. belongs to the KSK and is employed as a logistician by the Bundeswehr special unit. Although he is “more of an office warrior than a well-trained commando soldier”, he has military experience through his deployments.
After his missions in Afghanistan, he came to the KSK headquarters in Calw. Comrades would describe the now 58-year-old as a bit “odd but otherwise inconspicuous guy”, according to the “Spiegel”. In the meantime, he fell ill with prostate cancer and wrote a book about it, which was published in 2021.
And apparently Andreas M. became increasingly radicalized during this time and was also clearly visible to those around him. In his WhatsApp profile picture, by 2021 at the latest, there will be talk of the “deep state”. But it was only months later that his superiors at the KSK became suspicious. In February 2022 he refused the corona vaccination because the vaccination requirement in the Bundeswehr might not be “compatible with the Allied occupation laws that are still in force”. It is the typical language of Reich citizens who describe Germany as still occupied by the Allies. The military secret service classified M, who was on sick leave for weeks at the time, as a “lateral thinker”.
In April, the staff sergeant applied for his dismissal under the Soldiers’ Act, since remaining in service would mean particular hardship for him, reports the “BamS”. After that, the dismissal of the KSK and the unit doctor was approved, but the personnel office of the Bundeswehr rejected it. Possibly because of the lack of staff, the report says.
According to “Spiegel”, the investigators assume that M. smuggled members of the suspected terrorist group into barracks with his military ID card in October. Apparently they were supposed to find out whether the facilities would be suitable for accommodating their own troops after the overthrow.
Abstruse machinations that allow deep insight. This makes it clear that M. must have changed fundamentally in recent years. Because the description of the second edition of his book on Afghanistan speaks of a cosmopolitan man and by no means a radical. It says: “The time in Afghanistan shaped me in a deeply human way. The longer I was in this far away part of the world, the deeper my understanding of the culture of the people of the country became. New perspectives on a country that the media only sees as a crisis area. But I also saw the beauty and made friends.”
