Their plans are considered a “particularly serious case,” the sources said, also because the men – who allegedly got to know each other in a Telegram chat group and only met twice – were ready to act quickly.

One of the men was allegedly assigned the job of procuring weapons. Axes, swords and firearms were among the weapons that were found during raids on Friday, security sources said.

Following the raids in six German state, arrest warrants were issued against 12 men – four suspected of being part of the main group and eight suspected of providing support. They remain in custody.

The meetings were coordinated by a man identified under German privacy laws only as Werner S, 32, from the Bavarian city of Augsburg.

The group, called “Group S” by investigators, is believed to have planned attacks on politicians, asylum seekers and Muslims to cause “civil war-like conditions” and thus destabilize the social order.

Germany’s intelligence services believes there are currently around 12,700 violent right-wing extremists in the country.

Fifty-three of them are classified as posing a threat to public safety. The police believes they are capable of carrying out anything from serious acts of violence to terrorist attacks.

The plans of “Group S” have similarities with those of the far-right terrorist organization “Revolution Chemnitz,” whose members were arrested in October 2018 for planning to subvert the German state by carrying out violent, armed attacks.