Berlin: Numerous people were detained by German police on Wednesday, including a self-styled prince, a retired paratrooper, and a former judge. The suspects were allegedly talking about violently overthrowing the government, though it is not clear how specific their plans were.

Investigators may have found actual plotting, inebriated fantasising, or both, according to a German official and lawmaker. However, Germany takes any threat from the right seriously, and throughout much of the country, dawn raids were conducted by thousands of police officers.

Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit stated, "We're talking about a group that, according to what we know so far, planned to violently abolish our democratic state of law and an armed attack" on the German parliament building.

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The German government's Green party lawmaker Sara Nanni suggested the group might not have been competent.

Nanni wrote on the social media platform Mastodon, "More details keep coming to light that raise doubts about whether these people were even clever enough to plan and carry out such a coup." The truth is that even making an attempt is risky, regardless of how naive their concepts or hopeless their plans may be.

The group is said to have subscribed to a "conglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as QAnon ideology," according to federal prosecutors. The Reich Citizens movement has called for overthrowing the government, and QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with American origins. Both groups disagree with the post-World War II constitution of Germany.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency has been monitoring the situation with the Reich Citizens since 2016. Authorities calculate that there are about 21,000 members of the loosely organised movement.

According to the prosecution, the suspects also think that a "deep state" controls Germany.

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Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, a 71-year-old member of the House of Reuss, was one of the alleged ringleaders detained on Wednesday. Germany abolished all formal roles for royalty more than a century ago, but Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss continues to use the title.

Reuss, who the group intended to install as Germany's new leader, allegedly made contact with Russian officials with the intention of imposing a new order on the nation after the German government was overthrown, according to federal prosecutors. There is no evidence that the Russians gave a favourable response.

Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, was also detained by police.

Security agencies are paying closer attention to Alternative for Germany, also known by the abbreviation AfD, as a result of its connections to extremists.

Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, the co-leaders of the AfD, claimed they were only made aware of the purported coup plans through the media and denounced them.

They issued a statement that read, "We have full confidence in the authorities involved and demand a prompt and thorough investigation."

According to Peter Frank, the chief federal prosecutor, 3,000 officers took part in the raids that were conducted at 150 locations across 11 of Germany's 16 states.

22 German citizens were detained by police on suspicion of "membership in a terrorist organisation," according to the prosecution. According to them, three additional people, among them a Russian national, were detained on suspicion of aiding the group. 27 more people were the subject of an investigation.

One of those detained was a soldier who was stationed in the southwest German town of Calw as support personnel for the KSK special forces unit. Over what officials described as some soldiers' far-right beliefs, the unit has come under fire.

Prosecutors claimed that in addition to detentions in Germany, one person was held in the Austrian town of Kitzbuehel and another in Italy.

The second suspect, a 64-year-old German national who formerly served as an officer in the German army special forces, is charged with being a member of a criminal organisation that sought to "subvert the German democratic order by any means, including criminal," according to police, who also announced that extradition proceedings were in progress.

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann stated that "of course, there are many people who grandstand and tell confused tales stories after drinking alcohol." But in this instance, "the investigating judge at the Federal Supreme Court ordered the investigative measures to be taken because there were such strong suspicions that the group intended to take violent action."

Prosecutors claim that some of the group's members had made "concrete preparations" to storm the federal parliament of Germany with a small armed group.

The raids on Wednesday proved, in the words of interior minister Nancy Faeser, "that we know how to defend ourselves with full force against the enemies of democracy."

According to Faeser, "the investigation offers an insight into the depths of the terrorist threat within the milieu of the Reich Citizens." Only a thorough investigation will show just how far along the coup plans were.

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Far-right extremists are the biggest threat to Germany's domestic security, officials have repeatedly warned. The 2019 murder of a local politician and deadly synagogue attack served as a reminder of this threat. A year later, far-right extremists protesting against the nation's pandemic restrictions attempted to storm the Berlin Bundestag building but were unsuccessful.

As part of a broader campaign against the far right, Faeser announced this year that the government intended to disarm approximately 1,500 suspected extremists and tighten background checks for those wishing to purchase guns.