This is the suspicion of senior counterintelligence and police experts, plus longtime observers of the radical Szene, or scene. The pattern of attacks in terms of precision targeting, good reconnaissance and all-round skill in covering tracks betrays a disquieting step-up in professionalism compared to the spontaneous hooliganism of the early 1990s.
Beginning two years ago and peaking since this summer, right radical violence notched upward from low-tech but horrific brutality to planned demolition attacks in the manner of a guerrilla war. At least 93 lives have been cut short by right-wing savagery since the two Germanys became one in 1990.
Just before Christmas 1998 a bomb planted in the working-class suburb of Wedding in Berlin blew a 700-pound headstone from a prominent German Jew's grave 40 yards. The explosive and detonator were military issue. In October of this year village skinheads planted a booby-trap bomb in a garden gate invisible to the naked eye that was set to go off when the gate opened.
Worst of all, in July a powerful blast detonated at a subway entrance in Dusseldorf, precisely timed to coincide with the passing of immigrants taking German language classes. It snuffed out the life of an unborn baby and injured nine. Most of the injured were Russian Jews new to Germany.
The official 1999 report of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German equivalent of the FBI, notes more than a little defensively that "there is no evidence at this time of a Brown Army Faction," referring to Hitler's brown uniforms and the disciplined Leninist cell tactics of the left-wing Red Army Faction.
RAF rocked Germany in the two decades before the Wall fell. But a source close to the office's staff devoted to right-wing terror observes, "When you look at these new bombs that are not all basement jobs, you have to wonder …"
Right-wing violence has plagued the former East Germany more than the West. With less than a fifth of the country's population, it racks up half of all violent skinhead attacks.
And bombings are not the usual fare; instead it is Molotov cocktails or alcohol-powered beatings of helpless victims. This summer four homeless men in as many weeks were kicked and punched to death by young thugs who gave unrepentant – one laughing – interviews to TV cameras. The slaying of a working immigrant and father of three from Mozambique in the grimy industrial town of Dessau made headlines throughout the world in June.
A kaleidoscope of reasons made the New Lands, as the former east is called, a flashpoint for the right. Unemployment, lack of republican tradition and bitterness at the consequences of unification with the west festered since 1991. In regional elections in Saxony in 1998, a staggering 10 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the east cast extreme-right ballots.
Few had better reason to be bitter than former employees of the Stasi. Professional employees of "The Firm" were barred from public-sector jobs. This is a ticket to starvation in a socialized economy such as Germany's.
The Stasi, short for Ministry for State Security, had maintained an entire department devoted to the care and feeding of left-wing terror groups in the then West Germany from the mid-1950s to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This support embraced instruction in clandestine procedure – "tradecraft" since LeCarre – small arms firing practice, logistical help in arranging transport of people and illicit material like explosives, breakproof radio communication links and deluxe courier service via diplomatic pouch.
Department XXII of the ministry's overseas intelligence arm was the typically gray cover name for a unit wrapped in fog even by the standards of the Stasi. Its members and operations were tightly firewalled from all but the most senior staff of the ministry.
Always army veterans – like every GDR male – officers of Department XXII had a swashbuckling, can-do aura, on account of their work in remote places such as Yemen. Thinly disguised stories and films by the government film company imparted a T.E. Lawrence mystique to GDR clandestine foreign policy.
Guerrilla organizations are organized in five- to eight-man units, always controlled from the center. They separate functionally into command cells protected like a queen bee in a hive, support cells of foot soldiers who do the legwork of scouting, maintaining safe houses and playing the role of cut-outs. A cut-out is an intermediary in a spy operation akin to a maitre de without a guest list. His arrest is meaningless, as he knows nothing of consequence for interrogation.
Fighting cells carry out the actual attacks and immediately disperse. Hints of newly oiled machinery of the right radicals at the fighting cell level are what intrigue German investigators.
Parties of the German far right fall in two groups. Always visible are above-ground, legal ones like the Republican Party or the National Party of Germany, whose roots are in postwar, neo-Nazi dreams portrayed in the film "The Boys from Brazil." Down the chain come looser gangs as small as a dozen, with names such as "Viking Youth."
For both legal and tactical reasons the leaders have encouraged local clubs that gather for "comradeship" jamborees. Pounding music and free beer are crowd pleasers. Publishing houses, skinhead music labels and Internet Web sites make for a hard-to-nail-down but very real unity.
Police can watch a Szene bar. They cannot be everywhere on the Internet, but the government founded this week an interactive Web site to counsel disaffected skins and make informing more anonymous.
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