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The scene is a German town called Gleiwitz close to the Polish border. Here, on the night of August 31, 1939, a small group of Nazi intelligence agents, dressed in Polish uniforms, burst into a German radio station. There they broadcast anti-German messages in Polish before dumping the bodies of prisoners they had just hauled out of the Dachau concentration camp, who had been made up to resemble Polish saboteurs then shot and mutilated to make identification impossible. A few hours later, Adolf Hitler rose in the Reichstag and announced that the Gleiwitz incident — which he, entirely deceitfully, blamed...

The European Court of Human Rights on Wednesday blocked Germany’s planned deportation of a Russian 18-year-old, who had been deemed a potentially “dangerous” Islamist. The young man had already been on the way to Frankfurt airport on Tuesday when the court decision was made, forcing the driver to turn around, according to media reports. The European court’s ruling to block the deportation was not a final decision on the case itself, but rather was a way to ensure that the procedure would run properly as the court begins to consider the case, explained a court spokeswoman. Germany’s own Constitutional Court...

Are you worried about the Russian influence on the presidential election? If so, there's a chance you are at least eight years too late. Consider the curious case of Rainer Baake, born in 1955 in the West German town of Witten. From his German Wikipedia entry (translated): After the Abitur (final high school examinations), Rainer Baake worked as a Community Organizer in Chicago from 1974 to 1978. So a 19 year old German went from a small town in Germany to be a community organiser in Chicago for four years. This is as strange as a 19-year-old African-American would be...

From August, a train station in Berlin will be the testing ground for surveillance cameras with biometric face recognition capability. Here is an overview of the most important information and a look at the controversy. The test phase will take place at Berlin’s Südkreuz train station. It will include only selected participants and be conducted by the German federal police, Federal Criminal Police Office and the Interior Ministry in conjunction with Deutsche Bahn, the station operator. […] For the test phase, three specialized cameras have been installed that will film a particular entrance and an escalator leading to the station...

The number of people in Germany who come from immigrant parents or are immigrants themselves has reached a new high of 18.6 million. The Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) released a report on Tuesday showing that the number of people in Germany coming from an immigrant background increased by 8.5 percent between 2015 and 2016, reaching about 18.6 million people. The increase of nearly 9 percent was a record high itself since 2005 when such figures were first recorded, as was the size of the population. And that means more than one in five (22.5 percent) people in Germany are either...

A new survey ahead of the national election in September shows Germans are more concerned about the future state of the environment than they are about more headline-grabbing topics like terrorism or the refugee crisis. The survey released on Tuesday, conducted by research group Kantar Emnid Institute on behalf of publishing group Funke Mediengruppe, found that 71 percent of respondents said they were most personally concerned about climate change. This worry ranked higher than the possibility of new wars, listed by 65 percent of survey participants, and also above terror attacks, listed by 63 percent. Crime was noted as a...

BERLIN - German monthly retail sales rose far more than expected in June, data showed on Monday, boosting expectations that private consumption will make a significant contribution to growth in Europe's largest economy this year.

It wasn’t a bad week for the eurozone. Greece was able to borrow money from the bond market for the first time in two years, securing €3 billion ($3.5 billion). The International Monetary Fund increased its growth forecast for the eurozone as a whole, especially for southern European members, which were hard hit by the financial crisis. But despite the positive signals, the eurozone is hardly crisis-proof and much work remains to shore up the currency union. This was made clear by German Chancellor Angela Merkel two weeks ago, when she visited French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. “We will...

BERLIN (Reuters) - New sanctions against Russia proposed by U.S. lawmakers and which could harm European firms violate international law and the European Commission should consider counter-measures, the German economy minister was quoted on Monday as saying. "We consider this as being against international law, plain and simple," Brigitte Zypries told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain. "Of course we don't want a trade war. But it is important the European Commission now looks into countermeasures." The German government and business leaders have said the new sanctions passed this month by the U.S. House of Representatives could prevent German companies from...

The German Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries on Monday slammed the latest round of US sanctions against Russia as being “against international law.” The planned new US sanctions are set to hit German and European companies which have business interests in Russia. “We see that as being against international law, plain and simple,” Zypries, of the Social Democrats (SPD), told the Funke Mediengruppe. “The Americans can’t punish German companies because they have business interests in another country.” The Economy Minister said that she did not want this to be the start of a trade war with the US, but emphasized that...

The new US bill on anti-Russian sanctions will affect European countries cooperating with Russia in the energy sector, and, therefore, these restrictive measures can ultimately run counter to international law, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Brigitte Zypries, said in an interview with the newspapers, which are part of Germany’s Funke media group, published on Monday. "We believe this is a violation of international law," the minister said referring to the fact that the fresh sanctions may restrict companies’ activities in the EU. "America cannot fine German companies for doing business in another country," she said. "According to Zypries,...

European Union states are considering measures which would allow them to temporarily stop people withdrawing money from their accounts to prevent bank runs ... The move is aimed at helping rescue lenders that are deemed failing or likely to fail, but critics say it could hit confidence and might even hasten withdrawals at the first rumors of a bank being in trouble. The proposal, which has been in the works since the beginning of this year, comes less than two months after a run on deposits at Banco Popular contributed to the collapse of the Spanish lender. It also come...

A gunman has been shot dead by German police after opening fire at a nightclub in the city of Konstanz. One person was killed and three seriously injured in the attack at about 04:30 (02:30 GMT) on Sunday. The shooter targeted the Grey club in an industrial part of the city, on Max-Stromeyer-Strasse. Police have ruled out a terrorist motive. A spokesperson told N-TV that the gunman was a 34-year-old Iraqi citizen, but not an asylum seeker. He is believed to have lived in Germany for a long time.

One person was killed and three others injured in a shooting at the Grey nightclub in the German city of Konstanz in the early hours of Sunday, the German police said in a statement. The gunman was shot dead by police in an exchange of fire that has also wounded a policeman. . "Many guests had left the building panic stricken or were hiding when the shots were fired," the statement said. The gunman was a 34-year-old Iraqi who has lived in Germany for a long time, Fritz Bezikofer from the Konstanz police told CNN. "According to our investigations this...

One person was killed and four wounded in a knife attack in a supermarket in the northern German city of Hamburg on Friday, the city's police said. The man ran into a supermarket in the Barmbek neighbourhood and attacked customers with a knife at around 3pm local time (2pm). "He struck out at customers without warning. There are one dead and several injured," Heike Uhde, a police spokeswoman said. The perpetrator escaped from the scene but was found half an hour later by police and arrested. he was seen covered in blood being driven away in a police car. German...

A person has been stabbed to death, and four more injured, in a knife attack at a German supermarket. Police arrested one man after the stabbing, which took place on Friday afternoon at a branch of the Edeka supermarket on the outskirts on Hamburg. German tabloid Bild published a photograph of a bloodied figure in the back of a car whom they said was the suspect: The Hamburg police department said members of the public subdued the man, who was then arrested. He is the only suspect. Police do not yet have a motive for the killing. Bild also reported...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's defense ministry on Thursday defended the performance of its Tiger helicopters as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali amid indications that Wednesday's deadly crash of one of the aircraft was due to technical factors. Two crew members were killed when one of Germany's four Tiger helicopters crashed in the West African nation's desert north on Wednesday, but there were no signs that it was downed by an attack, German officials said. It was the first deadly accident involving Germany's Tiger helicopters. Two crew members escaped with minor injuries during an earlier crash in 2013...

A video of a German town meeting in which the new German reality dawns on desperate citizens has been revealed by conservative commentator Amy Mek via social media. In it, one may discern the watershed moment when the bureaucratic leadership breaks news to the incensed constituency that the familiar concepts of German sovereignty, borders, and culture no longer form the stabilizing center of government priority that had kept them safe in the past. From the video it is apparent that until this town meeting, the citizens in it still believed, perhaps logically, that their government exists to protect them, their...

Video of the situation of refugees in Germany.

A Muslim police officer from Rhineland-Pfalz has refused to shake the hand of his female colleague for religious reasons. The woman wanted to congratulate him for his promotion. Now he’s facing disciplinary actions. As the Koblenz Rhein Zeitung reported on Friday, the woman wanted to congratulate him for his promotion at a party at the end of May at the Montabaur police station, which he rejected: “The police officer explained his behavior by way of his religious belief,” said Steffen Wehner, the press spokesman for the Ministry of the Interior, on Friday. Violation of principle of neutrality The man has...