German federal prosecutors launched a sweeping operation on Wednesday, deploying more than 600 police officers to search around 50 homes and other locations across 12 of Germany's 16 states. The raids targeted suspected members of two far-right criminal youth organisations: "Jung & Stark" (Young and Strong) and "Deutsche Jugend Voran" (Forwards German Youth), also known as Neue Deutsche Welle. A total of 36 individuals — the youngest just 16 years old — are under investigation on suspicion of forming and leading criminal associations. No arrests were made; the operation was focused on gathering evidence ahead of potential charges and prosecutions.
Both groups emerged in the summer of 2024, first establishing themselves online before appearing at street demonstrations and protests. They are explicitly militant organisations, operating openly on Telegram, Instagram and other social media platforms, where they have incited violence against political opponents, migrants, LGBT people and individuals they suspected of being paedophiles. Security services estimate membership in the low hundreds for each group. Raids were concentrated in North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin, Brandenburg and Saxony, with further searches in Bavaria, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein. Eight of the 36 suspects face specific charges of grievous bodily harm, including so-called "paedo-hunting" attacks and assaults on people perceived as left-wing. Among those implicated is Julian M., a mid-twenties Berliner who was sentenced to more than three years in prison in early 2025 after leading a series of violent attacks on people wearing left-wing insignia.
Researchers and analysts note that both groups favour an aesthetic drawn from 1990s neo-Nazi skinhead culture — shaved heads, bomber jackets — and have disrupted Christopher Street Day (Pride) parades in several German cities. Jakob Guhl of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue describes them as "explicitly militant" and "not secretive", distinct from broader far-right movements in their focus on martial arts training, street demonstrations and targeted violence. According to far-right extremism expert André Aden of Recherche Nord, the groups' organisational influence has been in "freefall" for months, partly due to earlier law enforcement actions, including the arrest of DJV leader Julian M. Still, prosecutors allege that both organisations remained active with calls for violence and new criminal acts.
Wednesday's operation comes amid growing concern in Germany about youth radicalisation on the far right. In May 2025, federal authorities arrested the leaders of another neo-Nazi youth group, "Letzte Verteidigungswelle" (Last Defence Wave), which was classified as a terrorist organisation after its members burned down a cultural centre in Brandenburg and attacked a refugee shelter. Several of that group's ringleaders were as young as 15. Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig of the centre-left SPD warned that Germany must now speak of a nationwide threat from violence-oriented right-wing extremism. The raids signal that federal authorities are determined to disrupt these networks before they can reorganise — even as some analysts question whether the crackdown is timely or whether investigators have been slow to act on intelligence they already held.