It’s a sign of the nation’s fraught state of mind that many seriously believe this week’s unlikely plotters could have toppled democracy.
BERLIN — Germany is on edge.
Early Wednesday, thousands of balaclava-clad German police officers fanned out across the country, arresting 25 people and seizing weapons to upend what authorities described as a diabolical plot to overthrow the country’s government and reinstate the monarchy. The group’s “military arm” was surreptitiously building “a new German army,” the lead prosecutor on the case said.
A day later, however, the case looks more like the script of a Monty Python episode than a sequel to the Day of the Jackal.
The alleged ringleader was Prince Heinrich XIII Reuß, the long-haired scion of an 800-year-old aristocratic line, who police said organized conspiratorial meetings at his hilltop Schloss in rural Thuringia.
