German intelligence warned Tuesday that the number of Islamic extremists in the country had increased sharply in recent months and expressed serious concern that they were recruiting among refugees.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic security watchdog, said the number of radical Salafists had surged to 7,900 in September from 7,500 in June, and that many were trying to lure asylum-seekers into their ranks.
“We are very concerned that Islamists in Germany are trying, under the cover of humanitarian assistance, to exploit the situation of the refugees for their own ends and to proselytise and recruit among asylum-seekers,” BfV president Hans-Georg Maassen said in a statement.
Germany expects to receive up to one million asylum-seekers this year, five times more than last year. Syrians, who are fleeing their war-ravaged country, form the largest group.
Maassen said that a total of 740 radical Muslims had left Germany to join jihadists in Syria and Iraq, 20 percent of them female. Around one-third of those who went to the region have returned to Germany, while about 120 of them have been killed.
He said the BfV was keeping close watch on such activities given their “significant radicalisation potential” in the migrant community.
“We are keeping a particularly close eye on unaccompanied minors among the refugees, who could be easy targets for Islamists,” he said.
German police carried out dawn raids in Berlin Tuesday targeting individuals suspected of inciting people to go and fight for the Islamic State group in Syria.
The raids began at 6:30 am (0430 GMT) and targeted, among others, a 51-year-old Moroccan suspected of recruiting for the jihadists, police said in a statement.
A 19-year-old Macedonian thought to be currently in Syria is also suspected of involvement in the recruitment drive, it said.
“We are looking for evidence to see whether these allegations are true,” a police spokesman said. No arrests were made.
One raid was conducted at an association linked to a mosque in Berlin’s central Tempelhof district, the spokesman said. Seven homes were also searched.
Queen Elizabeth II again made political comments when she cautioned British and German politicians over the ‘dangers of division’ at a state banquet in Berlin. Buckingham Palace has denied the statement was political.
The British monarch espoused the benefits of cooperation between European nations as she remembered the “worst” events of the continent’s history during her speech on Wednesday night.
Her comments have been interpreted as endorsing the UK’s membership of the EU, but also as a warning to Germany not to entertain Russia. However, Palace officials denied that the Queen was expressing a political stance.
The Queen’s unusual intervention into European politics coincided with the publication of a report suggesting a British exit from the EU could take a decade to negotiate and be fraught with economics risk.
The monarch was hosted by 75-year-old German President Joachim Gauck, who was once an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.
From the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron and the Euroskeptic Foreign Minister Philip Hammond were in attendance at the banquet.
Speaking directly to Gauck, the Queen said: “In our lives, Mr. President, we have seen the worst, but also the best of our continent. We have witnessed how quickly things can change for the better. But we know that we must work hard to maintain the benefits of the post-war world.
“We know that division in Europe is dangerous and that we must guard against it in the west as well as in the east of our continent.”
In a show of agreement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is reported to have nodded vigorously during the Queen’s speech.
The monarch’s comments in Berlin follow a carefully scripted intervention in British politics in the run up to the Scottish independence referendum, in which she asked voters to “think very carefully.”
Gauck emphasized the importance of Britain’s role in building democracy in Germany after the war, expressing his country’s enduring gratitude.
Research by former UK Foreign Office chief economist Gregor Irwin indicates a ‘Brexit’ would damage business in the UK and further afield, impacting on the Netherlands, Ireland and Cyprus particularly hard.
Irwin’s report concludes a Brexit would damage Britain’s regulatory influence, dampen the attractiveness of the City of London, deter inward investment and hobble business activity through protracted uncertainty.
The UK stands to lose the most from Brexit in economic terms, he added.
Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany with his public statements about the Ukraine crisis.
Hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach of finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, and bellicose statements from NATO’s top commander in Europe has been helping.
It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn’t holding perfectly, but it was holding.
On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine — with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” having been sent to the Donbass. “What is clear,” Breedlove said, “is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.”
German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).
The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove’s numbers have been fake, playing into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.
The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove’s comments as “dangerous propaganda.” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove’s comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.
But Breedlove hasn’t been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.
Breedlove’s announcements are making Berlin very uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO — and by extension, the entire West — in danger of losing its credibility.
The fact that NATO has no intelligence agency of its own plays into Breedlove’s hands. The alliance relies on intelligence gathered by agents from the US and Britain.
“I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis,” he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be expected that assessments of NATO’s intelligence center, which receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to partner states, doesn’t always match assessments made by individual nations.
Berlin has the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. “We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations,” said one Berlin official.
Nuland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year’s presidential election, is unfortunately an important voice in US policy.
A massive troop training range is located in Yavoriv in western Ukraine near the Polish border. According to the Pentagon’s plans, American officers are going to train troops on how to use American artillery-locating radar devices.
The US Army in Europe commander Lt. Gen. Hodges announced in January that the training would start at the beginning of March, but on Tuesday, Hodges said during an appearance in Berlin that he expects the training will still begin at some point this month.
Protesters marched in several German cities again on Monday against higher levels of immigration and what they see as the growing influence of Islam, in defiance of an appeal from Chancellor Angela Merkel to spurn rallies she views as racist.
The rallies, organized by a new grassroots movement known as PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, have become an almost weekly event in the east German city of Dresden in recent months.
Some 18,000 people, the biggest number so far, turned out in Dresden on Monday but similar rallies in Berlin and the western city of Cologne were heavily outnumbered by counter-protesters who accuse PEGIDA of fanning racism and intolerance.
The PEGIDA protesters waved Germany’s black, red and gold flag and brandished posters bearing slogans such as “Against religious fanaticism and every kind of radicalism”.
One poster in Cologne called for “potatoes rather than doner kebabs”, a swipe at ethnic Turks who at around three million represent Germany’s largest immigrant community.
Germany has some of the world’s most liberal asylum rules, partly due to its Nazi past. The number of asylum seekers arriving in Germany, many from the Middle East, jumped to around 200,000 last year — four times as many as in 2012.
In her New Year address last week, Merkel urged Germans to shun the anti-Muslim protesters, saying their hearts were full of hatred.
“We need to … say that right-wing extremism, hostility towards foreigners and anti-Semitism should not be allowed any place in our society,” Merkel said on Monday in the eastern town of Neustrelitz.
In Cologne, home to a large Muslim population, there were 10 times as many counter-demonstrators as PEGIDA protesters. In similarly multi-ethnic Berlin, some 5,000 counter-demonstrators swamped around 400 anti-Muslim protesters, local police said.
“Germany is a country where refugees are welcome and the silent majority must not remain silent but rather go out onto the streets and show itself,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said at the Berlin counter-demonstration.
Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks, switched its lights off to protest against the anti-Muslim rallies. Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate turned off its floodlights in a similar gesture of solidarity.
PEGIDA has unsettled Germany’s political establishment and at first looked likely to help the Euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the party, already suffering an internal power struggle, is split over how to deal with the movement.
Chancellor Angela Merkel led a rally against anti-Semitism in Berlin on Sunday.
Germany’s Jewish community organized the rally at the capital’s Brandenburg Gate after tensions over the Gaza conflict spilled over into demonstrations in Europe with anti-Jewish slogans.
President Joachim Gauck joined ministers and Germany’s top Protestant and Catholic clerics at the event along with Muslim community leaders.
Jewish leader Dieter Graumann said the summer saw “the worst anti-Semitic slogans on German streets for many, many decades.”
“We won’t let ourselves be intimidated,” he said. “But we would have liked a bit more empathy in the last few weeks. Many of us still come from Holocaust families … how do you think we feel when we hear on German streets today, `Jews to the gas?'”
Merkel said it is “verging on a miracle that well above 100,000 Jews live in Germany today,” seven decades after the Nazi Holocaust. After the end of World War II, only around 15,000 remained in Germany.
“It is a monstrous scandal that people in Germany today are being abused if they are somehow recognizable as Jews or if they stand up for the state of Israel,” she said. “I will not accept that and we will not accept that.”
The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, pointed to the danger from Islamic extremist and other anti-Semitic propaganda.
“Let us not allow this group of agitators to tear down 70 years of good work,” he said.
MOSCOW, August 18 (RIA Novosti) – The foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France have made some progress during Sunday’s talks on the settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
The sides discussed international efforts towards the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, the ministry reminded.
“Some progress was made in all issues. It was agreed to continue the dialogue in this format, which could find concrete proposals for consideration of Russian, German, France and Ukraine leaders,” the ministry wrote on its Facebook page.
Negotiations between Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Pavlo Klimkin of Ukraine seeking to end fighting in eastern Ukraine were held Sunday night at the Villa Borsig hotel in Berlin, Germany. They were also attended by German foreign chief Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his counterpart in France, Laurent Fabius. According to Steinmeier, the talks were difficult, but the sides made progress on certain points.
The foreign chief are expected to report back to their respective heads of government and decide on Monday or Tuesday on the format of follow-up negotiations.
This is the second four-party meeting of the kind. During the previous talks on July 2, also in Berlin, the four foreign ministers agreed on a declaration that called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict in Ukraine’s southeast.
The German government has indicated that NATO electronic warfare (EW) training exercises were responsible for civilian ATC radar display blackouts in central Europe on 5 June and 10 June 2014.
IHS Jane’s has obtained the government’s answer to a parliamentary question on 17 July, in which it noted that: “In the relevant time period two separate exercises by NATO forces with EW assets were conducted, in the first case by the Hungarian Air Force and in the second by the Italian Army and [undisclosed] partners.”
Both exercises involved ground-based air defence radar assets and were held under the NATO Electronic Warfare Integration Period programme. The German government statement said this is “especially dedicated to test and train EW in the airspace. Further details at the moment cannot be given, as investigations by EASA and NATO are ongoing”.
Informed by IHS Jane’s about the German information, an Austrian Air Force official would not disclose if Austria was informed about NATO EW activities in its airspace. The official emphasised that during the June incidents, the Air Force retained full coverage of Austrian airspace with its Kreidfeuer situational awareness picture, which is provided by three fixed Selex ES RAT-31L primary radars.
Politicians in Germany have devised an ingenious solution to combat the threat of eavesdropping by American spies: playing classical music during their meetings.
MPs who sit on the spying committee had become so concerned that US agents might listen in to their discussions that they had ordered classical music to be played, to drown out the discussions.
On arrival at the meeting, The Suddetusche Zeitung reported that for “security reasons” MPs had to put their mobile phones and computers into a large metal box to ensure that they were not subjected to outside surveillance. “Then the committee chairman, Patrick Sensburg switched the music on,” a source told the paper.
Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported at the weekend that German intelligence suspected that a further 10 CIA agents were working undercover in various Berlin government ministries.
Patririck Sensburg, head of a parliamentary inquiry investigating US National Security Agency spying in Germany, said MPs were seriously thinking about ending the use of computers.
Under orders from Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, a federal police helicopter conducted a flyover of the US Consulate in Frankfurt, the government in Berlin has confirmed. Officials were apparently searching for surveillance equipment.
The German government on Monday confirmed that a previously reported operation targeting potential American eavesdropping facilities located on German soil took place at the end of August. Both a spokesperson for Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Interior Ministry admitted on Monday that a Federal Police helicopter had conducted a low-altitude flyover of the United States Consulate in Frankfurt in order to take high-resolution photographs. The apparent aim of the mission was to identify suspected listening posts on the roof of the consulate.
According to the newsmagazine Focus, the Eurocopter circled over the US representation at an altitude of just 60 meters (200 feet). The magazine quoted an unnamed government official stating that Germany wanted to send a message to the Americans that it would not tolerate eavesdropping technologies on German soil. “The message to the American friends was meant to be: Stop. Germany strikes back!” The flyover was first reported last week by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
On Monday, the government in Berlin sought to play down the incident. The Interior Ministry said merely that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which had ordered the helicopter flyover, is responsible for the security of foreign installations in Germany, but also for defending the country from the spying activities of foreign countries. The spokeswoman refused to answer dozens of follow-up questions on whether the surveillance flight over the consulate had been a routine operation or whether it was a targeted search for hidden antennas. “I neither can nor want to provide any response,” the spokeswoman said.
But it doesn’t appear there was anything routine about the Eurocopter mission — if there had been, police would have almost surely notified the Americans beforehand. Instead, security personnel at the consulate appear to have been surprised by the flyover. They even took pictures as it happened during the morning of August 28. A short time afterwards, the deputy US ambassador telephoned with the German Foreign Ministry to discuss the issue. But what the ministry is now describing as an “information exchange,” was apparently a complaint.
The flight appears to be connected to the revelations of vast US surveillance made by former intelligence service contractor Edward Snowden. According to the American whistleblower, the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance service has established secret eavesdropping posts at 80 US embassies and consulates around the world. In the internal documents exposed by Snowden, these are referred to as the “Special Collection Service”. The papers also state that the bugging units should be kept secret from partner countries. If it were leaked, a document reads, this would “cause serious harm to relations between the US and a foreign government.”
The response by domestic intelligence would seem to belie German government attempts to play down the surveillance affair. The report in Focus claims that the Frankfurt operation was ordered by Ronald Pofalla, Merkel’s chief of staff and the German government point man for intelligence services. The politician, a member of Merkel’s conservative CDU party, has made extensive public comments suggesting that the NSA affair has passed. But the report suggested he was furious at reports of spying technology at US diplomatic outposts in Germany.
The German government left open on Monday the question of whether the flyover had provided any clarity about the suspected eavesdropping technology. The spokesperson said that only relevant committees in the national parliament would be informed. Still, experts believe the move was intended more as a symbolic gesture that as a serious effort to try to find surveillance equipment. They believe that the Germans just want to show that if push comes to shove, they can also get more aggressive. One official spoke of a symbolic “shot across the bow.” – Der Spiegel
Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday hosts EU talks on felling sky-high youth unemployment less than three months before German elections after coming under fire for championing austere spending cuts and helping to create a “lost generation”.
Days after EU leaders okayed up to eight billion euros ($10.4 billion) for initiatives to help get the region’s 5.6 million jobless under 25-year-olds into work, Merkel will gather leaders and labour ministers in Berlin to thrash out the ways and means.
Merkel, whose conservatives have been cruising high in the polls, has shifted tone on fighting Europe’s financial woes in recent months, tempering her earlier insistence on budgetary rigour with an emphasis on growth.
And while she began co-opting major social policies from the main opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) years ago, she has hardly missed a chance of late to warn that if Europe fails to foster more growth, it faces losing a whole generation.
Hard on the heels of a warning by US President Barack Obama on his Berlin visit this month that a change of tack was needed to avoid just that, Merkel said last week that Europe’s young people were “owed” chances for the future.
“And we particularly owe them it because they, the youth, are in no way to blame for the failures which have arisen in recent years,” she said in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.
French President Francois Hollande and EU Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso are due at the talks, which, according to a German government spokesman, will focus on “concrete measures” and “an exchange of best practices”.
“We want to share particular national experiences with each other — and Germany has broad experience from the time of German reunification — on advancing youth employment, and identify the most promising measures,” Merkel said.
Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark have experience to share on their systems of offering youngsters an apprenticeship at a company that combines vocational education, she added.
EU leaders agreed in Brussels Friday that the funding could be used from January to promote work placement programmes and help job seekers find work in other parts of the EU, although critics have called the amount a mere “drop in the ocean”.
The EU executive had announced in February its seven-year plan to ensure that young people are guaranteed either training, further education or employment within four months of leaving school.
Twice bailed-out Greece leads the way, with youth unemployment having reached more than 62 percent in April, but young adults in Spain, Portugal and Italy are also badly affected, while Germany struggles with a skilled labour shortage.
In Germany, some 34,000 apprenticeships in industry and trade were still unfilled shortly before programmes were due to begin, the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK), announced earlier this month.
DIHK Vice President Achim Drecks warned against too-high expectations. “When you speak of a ‘guarantee’ (of training, jobs or education), you hamper the acceptance of Europe” if it is not met, he told reporters.
But he said the jobs conference showed concern, after Germany and in particular Merkel have been skewered over their anti-crisis policies by angry protesters in the likes of Greece and Spain.
Gero Neugebauer, political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, said the conference had no bearing on the campaign for September 22 elections in which Merkel is seeking a third term — but also did her no harm.
“Germans are basically interested in what is happening here. They would like to be protected from the effects of the crisis.
“When Mrs Merkel then says ‘we’re giving money to fight youth unemployment in poor or economically weak countries…’ then they’ll say ‘as long as I don’t pay individually, that’s OK’ and Mrs Merkel is seen as a woman who only wants to do good.
“And who can have anything against that?” he said.
Her chief SPD rival Peer Steinbrueck heaped some of the blame for Europe’s high youth unemployment on what he called Merkel’s “one-sided” focus on austerity, criticising a “vicious circle of savings and growth setbacks”.
But labour market expert Karl Brenke, of the German Institute for Economic Research, cautioned against “disproportionately high” expectations over the migration of jobless youngsters to regions where labour is needed.
“The first thing to do isn’t to carry out action at the European level but to think about how at national level one can organise more solid training,” he said. – AFP
What a difference 5 years make: Obama braves blistering Berlin heat to make speech before invite-only crowd of 4,500 (that’s 195,500 FEWER than last time he was in Germany)
It was a more muted affair for President Obama in Berlin today as he spoke at Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate before an invite-only crowd of 4,500 guests – a remarkable difference from the rock-star welcome he received five years ago in front of 195,500 cheering supporters.
Then, Obama had it all to play for – the glowing presidential candidate symbolizing America’s revived hope for the future. This time, he arrived back in Berlin under the cloud of NSA surveillance programs which have outraged many Europeans and the ever-growing crisis in Syria.
The President removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves as he battled the 86F temperature on Wednesday, quipping: ‘People of Berlin, your welcome is so warm I’m going to take off my jacket.’
What a difference five years makes: 200,000 people came out to see then presidential candidate Barack Obama speak in 2008 at the Victory Column, around a mile from his speech today
At times wiping away beads of sweat, the President read from paper because the teleprompter wasn’t working.
He used the bulk of his speech to call for a reduction in the world’s nuclear stockpiles – as he stood behind high walls of bullet-proof glass in the public square. The two-inch thick sheets are routinely used when the President appears before large crowds in public spaces.
Appealing for a new citizen activism, Obama renewed his call for the world to confront climate change, a danger he called ‘the global threat of our time’.
In a wide-ranging speech that enumerated a litany of challenges facing the world, Obama said he wanted to reignite the spirit that Berlin displayed when it fought to reunite itself during the Cold War.
Obama’s Kenyan half-sister made a rare public appearance as she joined Michelle and her daughters for emotional visit to Berlin’s Holocaust memorial
‘Today’s threats are not as stark as they were half a century ago, but the struggle for freedom and security and human dignity, that struggle goes on,’ Obama said at the city’s historic Brandenburg Gate under a bright, hot sun.
‘”And I come here to this city of hope because the test of our time demands the same fighting spirit that defined Berlin a half-century ago.’
The German press had mixed reviews for Obama on Wednesday, a marked difference from five years ago when ‘Obama-mania’ greeted him in the streets.
National newspaper Die Zeit published an article online on the Berlin speech, saying that Obama appeared to be the ‘young, fresh, uninhibited’ political force he was five years ago – but that the time between his speeches has been marked by ‘bitter disappointment’.
The article said Obama’s battles over gun control and equality for same-sex marriage must be remembered, otherwise his speech in Berlin could be seen as just ‘nice words’ in light of his decisions on Guantanamo and the NSA surveillance.
Other than his landmark speech, the President spent Wednesday in talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel and other top politicians including president Joachim Gauck.
He touched down with his family in the German capital on Tuesday night, waving to the crowds gathered at Tegel Airport.
His wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha visited the city’s Holocaust memorial on Wednesday, accompanied by the President’s half-sister Auma, who studied in Germany.
Five years ago, when he was still seeking election as President, Obama received a rapturous reception on a brief tour of Europe where he was greeted as a leader who could give the world a fresh start after the controversial presidency of George W. Bush.
Now he is a much more divisive figure – although his re-election last year was welcomed by most Europeans, recent revelations about his administration’s spying on internet communications have tarnished his record in the eyes of many.
Mr Obama’s speech tomorrow will inevitably be compared with JFK’s, which took place on June 26, 1963 at the Rathaus Schöneberg, a few miles away from the Berlin Wall which had been under construction over the previous two years.
Kennedy’s speech, considered one of his best, held up West Germany as a symbol of freedom on the front line of the battle against communism.
It featured the famous line: ‘All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, “Ich bin ein Berliner!”‘ – Daily Mail
Eighty years after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, a novel that imagines his return to modern-day Berlin has become a bestseller in Germany, though a comedy about the Fuehrer is not to everyone’s taste.
Instead of committing suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945, in “He’s Back” (Er Ist Wieder Da), Hitler wakes up in 2011 without the slightest idea what has happened in the intervening 66 years.
He stumbles through Berlin, dazed by the fact that Germany is now ruled by a woman and is home to millions of Turks.
The nearly 400-page novel is by Timur Vermes, a 45-year-old journalist.
In one scene, the Nazi leader asks a group of boys for directions, addressing them as “Ronaldo Hitler youth”. He has mistaken their football shirts bearing the name of the soccer star as some kind of military uniform.
“Who’s the old guy?” the boys ask each other.
In a celebrity obsessed society where success is often gauged by follower numbers on social networks or YouTube views, Hitler soon becomes the star of an entertainment show with a Turkish host.
“You’re golden my dear! This is just the beginning, believe me,” his producer says.
Bild, Europe’s widest circulation newspaper, complains: “He killed millions of people. Today, millions cheer him on YouTube.”
In the book, Hitler discovers jeans, tries to create an email address (“Hitler 89” referring to the year of his birth is already taken) and discovers cooking shows.
A farce in poor taste to some, a political satire to others, “He’s Back” has done well in bookstores. With a print run of 360,000, the book recently made Germany’s bestseller list and is set to be published in English and more than a dozen other languages.
The author says he wanted to present Hitler in a new light.
“We too often harbour the negative attitude of those who see Hitler only as a monster to make themselves feel better,” Vermes says. “I thought it was important to show how he would operate and how he would act in today’s world.”
Unthinkable even 10 years ago, Hitler is today increasingly the subject of comedians and artists — including a comic film directed by a Jew and a burlesque musical comedy. – AFP
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