A German court found seven members and one supporter of the far-right group “Letzte Verteidigungswelle” (Last Wave of Defense) guilty of crimes aimed at overthrowing the country’s political system through attacks on migrants and “political opponents.”
The judge at the Hamburg Higher Regional Court stated that the group’s name reflects their deeply racist and violent worldview. The group members, who were aged 14 to 21 at the time of the crimes, were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one and a half to five years under juvenile criminal law. The sentence of the youngest defendant — one and a half years in prison — was suspended.
They were charged with membership or support of a terrorist organization. The sentences also pertained to crimes such as attempted murder, arson, and causing grievous bodily harm. In their leaflets, the group wrote: “We are the wave that washes the dirt away from our country.”
According to the court’s decision, in October 2024, the youths committed arson at a public cultural center in Altdöbern, a town in the eastern state of Brandenburg. Investigators believe that the far-right group mistakenly identified the building, located in a town with only 2,300 inhabitants, as a meeting place for left-wing activists. The building burned down completely, causing material damage amounting to several hundred thousand euros.
The mayor of Altdöbern, Peter Winzer of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), told public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk (DLF) that he is still shocked by the attack: “An absolute catastrophe. Because it was a community center — a place for culture and gatherings. Every local event took place there.”
Two of the defendants were found to have unsuccessfully attempted to set fire to a refugee shelter in Schmölln in the eastern state of Thuringia in January 2025. They also painted swastikas and slogans such as “foreigners out” on the facade of the building. According to the indictment, three members of the group also planned to set fire to a shelter for asylum seekers in Senftenberg in Brandenburg.
Connection to events after German reunification
The Interior Minister of Brandenburg, Jan Redmann of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), told DLF that he is particularly concerned about the speed of radicalization and the online unification of very young people. He noted that there are “some remarkable patterns — in particular, that the young offenders have relatives who had already come to the attention of the authorities as right-wing extremists in the 1990s — in the era of the so-called ‘baseball bat years.'”
The term “baseball bat years” refers to a period of mass attacks, mainly on refugees, that took place in the territory of the former East Germany in the years immediately following reunification.
A few days after the start of the trial in Hamburg, federal prosecutors ordered raids on premises in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt, as well as in the western states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. This was part of an operation targeting 10 additional suspects. At the end of June, another two young people were arrested in the eastern state of Thuringia as suspected members of the “Letzte Verteidigungswelle.” In total, authorities estimate the group’s membership across Germany to be in the “tens.”
Source: Deutsche Welle
