(Bloomberg) -- In December 2022, Germans were shocked to learn that 25 members of a right-wing extremist group had been arrested in a series of nationwide raids. They were accused of plotting to overthrow the government and replace democracy with a political regime inspired by the country’s imperial past. 

On Monday, the trial of nine people targeted in the probe started in Stuttgart. Ten more of the accused will face trial in Frankfurt on May 21 and an additional eight will go to court in Munich on June 18. Out of the 27 accused, two were arrested later in 2023. While all defendants belonged to the same group, federal prosecutors decided to charge them in three separate venues. 

Among the accused are several former high-ranking members of the armed forces, including one who belonged to an elite unit. One woman charged in the Frankfurt case was a judge and a former lawmaker with the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party.

The cases have come to be known as the Reichsbürger — or “citizens of the empire” — trials as the group’s ideology is linked to a broader far-right movement that rejects the legitimacy of Germany’s post-World War II order, drawing instead on the country’s pre-World War I imperial rule.

The movement believes that the “Reich” – referring to the German empire — never ceased to exist and the nation’s constitution wasn’t properly adopted in 1949. Consequently, proponents claim that the current government is illegitimate. Some even establish “borders” around their land and issue their own passports and stamps.

The public laughed them off for years as ridiculous figures — until the 2022 raids showed that they were far more dangerous than they had been given credit for. 

Federal prosecutors say the accused belonged to a terrorist organization that subscribed to conspiracy theories which overlapped with those of the QAnon movement in the US. Followers of both the Reichsbürger movement and QAnon – which helped galvanize support for the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol – are convinced that their respective countries are in reality being ruled by members of a so-called “deep state.”

In Germany, the group began planning for the phase after their coup by setting up a council that, like a real government, included departments overseeing justice, health and interior and military matters. Members also planned to appoint one of the accused, Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuss, as head of state. His name indicates that his ancestors belonged to the nobility, a class that lost its status and privileges in Germany in 1919. Members of such families were allowed to keep their former titles as part of their civic names.

Reuss’s lawyer, Roman von Alvensleben, doesn’t believe his client ever wanted to overthrow the government. But because the media have already judged him as guilty, von Alvensleben said, he’s concerned about whether Reuss will get a fair hearing in court.

The “Reuss Group,” as the organization has come to be called by prosecutors, firmly believed that they would get foreign help in toppling Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government. Members were counting on military and intelligence support from a secret “alliance” of countries including Russia and the U.S. to carry out a coup, which they referred to as “day X.” No such alliance ever existed, according to the indictment.

Had the coup succeeded, the plan was to set up an interim government and begin negotiations with the countries that prevailed in World War II, namely Russia. According to the Frankfurt indictment, the group contacted Russian consulates in Leipzig, Frankfurt and Baden-Baden. 

Reuss and Rüdiger von Pescatore, a former lieutenant colonel and a paratrooper commander accused in the case, also tried to meet with Russian representatives in Bratislava in 2022.

“It has not yet been possible to clarify how the Russian Federation reacted to the request,” federal prosecutors said when they charged the group a year after the raids.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry and Giuseppe Olivo, von Pescatore’s lawyer, did not reply to e-mails seeking comment.

Prosecutors allege that Pescatore led the military arm of the Reuss Group, which included several former members of the German armed forces. In addition to trying to recruit soldiers and policemen, the arm also developed a structure of 286 military units and arranged shooting training for members.

At the time of the arrest, the group had collected €500,000 ($446,200) in cash from members and donors. Reuss had personally donated €50,000, and another defendant received €150,000 from a family member. With that money, they purchased 380 firearms, slashing and stabbing weapons and 148,000 ammunition parts, according to the charges.

The Stuttgart trial is mainly concerned with the people who were allegedly involved with the group’s military arm. One of them, who can be identified only as Marco van H., claimed that he had already fought for the secret “alliance” and had inside knowledge about when its forces would intervene to topple the government, prosecutor Michael Klemm told the court on Monday. 

At some point in September 2022, van H. said “day x” was only 48 hours away. When that period elapsed and nothing happened, discontent spread among members about the group’s set-up and where things were headed, Klemm said. 

Lawyers for the defense argued in Stuttgart on Monday that prosecutors had robbed their clients of a fair trial by arbitrarily splitting the probe into three cases. While federal prosecutors will be present at all three trials, the accused aren’t able to dispatch lawyers to all the trial days of the parallel cases. 

The court said it will rule on this at a later stage. In the meantime, the hearings will continue.

(Updates with trial start in second paragraph.)

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