Germany is shocked by the murders committed by the so-called “National-Socialist Underground” and German security agencies’ complete ignorance of the network’s existence. These deeds are more than criminal acts based on political motives. The fact that people are being murdered because of their faith or ethnic origin sixty or so years after the Holocaust is an attack on democracy itself. Chancellor Merkel was right when she called it “a shame for Germany.” It is also a shame that Germany’s domestic intelligence, the Offices for the Protection of the Constitution, failed, and because of this they are now in the throes of an existential crisis. Merkel’s government is also in trouble now, because it has consistently underestimated the threat of neo-Nazi movements and has made it even more difficult to take action against right-wing extremism.

These right-wing terrorists escaped police apprehension for thirteen years. German security agencies were negligent, and therefore made it possible for this gang to draw a trail of blood across Germany. The group murdered ten people, nine of them immigrants, and many of them kebab shop owners. The group blasted a bomb in a Turkish neighborhood in Cologne and wounded twenty-two; and they committed a number of bank robberies. The fact that a terror-group that called itself the “National-Socialist Underground” was behind this came to light only when two of its members committed suicide in November. Until then, the police had always denied there could be any political basis for the murders, and they assumed it was a series of mafia killings, giving the false impression that the victims themselves were connected with nefarious circles. The police are now intensively investigating the extreme-right milieu and have identified a number of people who had helped the now-dead killers with funds, false identities and logistical support. Connections between the murderers and the extreme right National Democratic Party (NPD) came to light as well. Rumors that one of the murderers or one of their supporters was paid as an informant of the domestic intelligence are deeply dismaying.

One lesson that Germany learned from the failure of the Weimar democracy, and the rise of Nazi tyranny, was the installation of a so-called militant democracy. Never again should liberties be abused to destroy democracy and freedom and to erect a tyrannical order. For that reason, the framers of the West German democracy established a domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This office was designed to collect information about political extremists who could become a threat to democracy, and it was allowed to operate with intelligence methods. In the United States, with its nearly unlimited understanding of the freedom of speech, this is hard to understand. The U.S. Department for Homeland Security received harsh criticism when it published a report a couple years ago about the risk of homegrown right-wing extremism. In Germany, in comparison, the dogma of ”no liberties for the enemies of the liberty“ is an important lesson from our national history and it justifies our domestic intelligence.