Reichsbürger: the German conspiracy theorists at heart of alleged coup plot

Despite description of alleged plotters by prosecutors as a motley crew', the threat was considered very real

At 6am on Wednesday, German special forces stormed a house in the Berlin lakeside villa quarter of Wannsee and arrested a former MP of the far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD), Birgit Malsack-Winkemann. Three minutes later, they entered the Waidmannsheil hunting lodge in Bad Lobenstein in Thuringia. Simultaneous raids took place in 30 other locations, including a car repair shop and a carpenters' studio, as well as in the Austrian ski resort of Kitzbuhel and the Italian city of Perugia.

Twenty-five people were arrested, and by lunchtime eight of them were in police custody, among them a serving soldier of the elite KSK unit, a lawyer, a pilot, a gourmet chef and a prince, the alleged ringleader who had led the plans to overthrow the German state and replace it with a monarchistic order".