Prosecutors say the Saxon separatist group sought to target “unwanted groups of people through ethnic cleansing.”

Eight alleged members of a far-right group have been arrested in Germany and Poland on charges of promoting conspiracy theories and military training for the collapse of state order, prosecutors said.

More than 450 police and security officers carried out raids at 20 locations linked to the so-called Saxon separatist group in eastern Germany and neighboring Poland, and locations in Austria were also searched, German federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

“Our security authorities have thus frustrated at an early stage the coup plans of right-wing terrorists, who longed for a Day release.

In anticipation of that day, the group had planned to take control of parts of its federal state of Saxony and potentially other regions of eastern Germany, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.

Those arrested belong to the Saxon separatists, or Sachsische Separatisten, a domestic “terrorist organization” founded in November 2020 with between 15 and 20 members. The group’s ideology is based on “racist, anti-Semitic and, in some cases, apocalyptic ideas,” according to the statement.

The group aims to conquer areas of the former communist East Germany to prevent what it believes is the inevitable collapse of German society and, therefore, establish “by force of arms” a state based on “national socialism”, the ideology Far-right totalitarian group associated with the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler, it said.

“If necessary, undesirable groups of people will be expelled from the area through ethnic cleansing,” he added.

The group members, mostly young men, completed paramilitary training in combat gear and purchased military equipment such as camouflage uniforms, combat helmets, gas masks and bulletproof vests, prosecutors said.

The suspects will be brought before an investigating judge on Tuesday. Some will be prosecuted as minors and adolescents.

Seven suspects were arrested in and around the eastern cities of Leipzig, Dresden and Meissen, while another was detained in the Polish border town of Zgorzelec.

This is the second coup plot discovered in Germany in recent years. The so-called Reichsburger movement, led by Henry