Air Force Officer School: Lecturer fired because of right-wing extremist statements

The Bundeswehr has fired a reserve lieutenant colonel who is said to have made radical right-wing statements to officer candidates. He is one of 515 reservists released from duty in 2022.

For years, the Bundeswehr has repeatedly made the headlines because of right-wing extremist incidents. And for years the Bundeswehr has been trying to take action against soldiers who express themselves as “hostile to foreigners and xenophobia” or who are even active in right-wing and neo-Nazi networks. The Bundeswehr also takes action against reservists who have doubts about their loyalty to the constitution.

According to a spokeswoman for the Bundeswehr in Cologne, a total of 515 reservists were released from service in 2022 alone. Reasons for this were, for example, criminal proceedings that threatened imprisonment or that the reputation of the Bundeswehr was seriously endangered. The Bundeswehr currently has around 900,000 reserve soldiers at its disposal.

As a lecturer at the Luftwaffe officer school

According to information from the NDR last worked as a lecturer at the officer school of the Luftwaffe in Fürstenfeldbruck. The reserve lieutenant colonel, Joachim M., was dismissed in early December 2022 because, according to the Bundeswehr, his “discriminatory, undignified and defamatory” statements and his call for rebellion and revolution would pose a serious threat to military order. This emerges from internal Bundeswehr documents that the NDR could see.

At a seminar in May last year, the man is said to have asked the course participants whether there were “gays here” and whether one of the officer candidates present was a “gay communist swine”. Days later, the soldier racially insulted a black officer cadet.

call for revolution

In addition, the lecturer is said to have claimed in the seminar that the Bundeswehr would be driven into a wall. For him, the prospective officers only have two options: “Either you start a revolution, or you can close the shop.” In addition, he described the Bundeswehr as an “association of yes-men and preventers” in which he did not want to be a soldier. The statements are said to have been independently confirmed by witnesses.

According to internal documents, there were indications at the Bundeswehr Career Center in 2022 that there were connections between Joachim M. and a Reich citizen group. Joachim M. denies any contact with Reich citizens and denies that he made homophobic statements in the seminar and called for a revolution. He just wanted to express criticism in a different choice of words. To the NDR he writes that he apologized for the racist statement.

Joachim M. was a career soldier up until 2000 and, in his capacity as teaching staff officer for internal leadership and education, was responsible, among other things, for the equal treatment of homosexual soldiers in service law. Since retiring voluntarily as a professional soldier, he has done a number of services as a reservist.

Terror proceedings of the GBA

In the internal Bundeswehr documents, an investigation by the Federal Public Prosecutor General (GBA) against Joachim M. is also listed. After that, the man is said to have planned with other suspects to set up a mercenary group to intervene in the Yemen war. The GBA was investigating the group for conspiring to commit murder, hostage-taking and crimes against humanity in conjunction with attempted formation of a terrorist organization. Two of the accused have since been sentenced to suspended prison terms. However, the proceedings against the designated lieutenant colonel in the reserve have been discontinued.

Worked for Asgaard in Iraq

The Bundeswehr also fired Joachim M. because he worked for the security company Asgaard in the past. M. held a managerial position for the company in Iraq in 2017. According to internal documents, the Asgaard company has “right-wing extremist connections” from the Bundeswehr’s point of view, and the managing director is “clearly part of the right-wing extremist spectrum”.

Dirk Gassmann, managing director of the company, speaks in his answer to a request from the NDR of unfounded and untrue allegations. The company was targeted by the authorities in 2020, among other things because of alleged plans to attack a left-wing politician. The GBA determined because planning a serious criminal offense endangering the state. The proceedings were discontinued for “reasons of fact”, as the discontinuation note states.

The Bundeswehr did not want to comment on the dismissal of the reservist, citing data protection reasons.