Some 30 German soldiers are being recalled from service in Lithuania, with ringleaders facing immediate dismissal, after they were accused of making racist and antisemitic remarks and of sexual violence, a German military spokesperson said Wednesday.
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The soldiers were in Lithuania as part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence mission providing protection to the republic as well as to Latvia and Estonia by deterring Russia.
German weekly Der Spiegel reported that some German soldiers had got so drunk in a hotel that military police had to be called. Further investigations found that soldiers had sung a birthday song for Adolf Hitler at an earlier gathering.
Beyond violating their oaths, the soldiers were accused of "giving offense with racist and antisemitic overtones and showing extremist behavior," the spokesperson said. They would be back in Germany on Thursday.
"Such behavior is not only inexcusable but brings shame on us all," she added.
Much of Germany's post-war foreign policy has been focused on showing atonement for the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich, which murdered many millions of Europe's Jews in the Holocaust, one of the worst crimes in human history.
Numerous instances where some members of the police and the military were found showing Nazi sympathies have garnered enormous attention from authorities and the media.
Germany's deployment in the eastern Baltic has added sensitivity since its soldiers last served there in World War II, where they and members of the German SS committed some of the war's bloodiest crimes.
The investigation had also found that 569 rounds of ammunition were missing from inventories, though this could have been due to soldiers miscounting at the end of a firing exercise.
The German military's general inspector had apologized to his Lithuanian counterpart, the spokesperson said.
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