"The plan was to storm the German Capitol, arrest lawmakers and execute the chancellor. A prince descended from German nobility would take over as the new head of state, and a former far-right member of Parliament would be put in charge of a national purge....
"That is what German prosecutors and intelligence officials say a nationwide far-right terrorist network was plotting before 3,000 police officers and Special Forces fanned out across the country on Wednesday to raid 150 homes and arrest 25 suspected co-conspirators."
It seems that members of the "Reich Citizens" movement — the organization behind the attempted coup — learned nothing from Hitler's staged putsch of 1923.
The adepts of such pathetic little movements possess such small minds, they evidently begin believing that the full force of a powerful federal government is just as benightedly feebleminded and thus can be dispatched by some vastly undersized, harebrained insurrection. The Trumpers of 6 Jan. 2021 conspicuously believed this, and they got an education.
Yet not even that quite recent, extrarodinarily pitiable failure at a governmental overthrow enlightened the Reich Citizens. And it was too much to ask, I suppose, that they read a bit of older history — that of Hitler's boneheaded attempt at a coup.
The Times: "It is not clear how capable the plotters would have been at executing such an attack, nor how close they were to attempting to carry out their plan: According to some intelligence officials, the group had twice missed dates when they had aimed to trigger their attack."
Not to make too much light of violent morons, but past occasions such as "missed dates" really should have tipped off the Reich Citizens that perhaps they weren't ready for the big leagues.
"Prosecutors said the group was formed in the past year," reports the Times, "influenced by the ideologies of the conspircy group QAnon and a right-wing German conspiracy group called the Reichbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, which believes that Germany’s post-World War II Republic is not a sovereign country but a corporation set up by the victorious Allies."
Imagine that. A group influenced by QAnon didn't quite have its ducks in line. Even Adolf Hitler realized that he'd have to go the electoral route, were he ever to achieve power. But the little Hitlers never appreciate history and its lessons — which is a good thing for the rest of us. Because they go down fast and hard.