Attacks on critical infrastructure in Germany are on the rise, according to a report in “Welt am Sonntag” based on a survey of all 16 states. In Hamburg, the number of attacks on power plants and military sites has doubled over the past year, according to the local interior authority. Brandenburg and Lower Saxony also report increasing figures. From 2019 to 2024 Lower Saxony recorded 208 incidents against businesses, infrastructure, the judiciary and the armed forces; in 2025 alone a “high double‑digit” number of cases was added.
When clear traces are available, investigations frequently point at the far‑left milieu. In North Rhine‑Westphalia, 425 of 445 attacks on the electricity grid between 2019 and 2024 were attributed to politically left‑motivated perpetrators-about 95 %. A similar picture emerged in Hesse, where a medium double‑digit number of sabotage acts were registered from 2015 to 2024. The majority of suspects in these incidents are linked to far‑left extremist circles. The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) recorded 321 sabotage‑suspected cases nationwide last year, with a concentration in North Rhine‑Westphalia and Lower Saxony.
The Brandenburg interior ministry noted that the threat from ideologically driven sabotage has changed qualitatively. Earlier, symbolic property damage was the norm; today the attacks increasingly aim to disrupt supply chains. Within the far‑left spectrum, there is a growing technical knowledge of vulnerabilities in technical networks.
Analyses of manifestos reveal a deliberate focus on hubs with low redundancy to maximise outages. “This also concerns rail networks, in addition to the power grid” the report states. Security agencies observe an expanding willingness among actors to accept severe consequences for crippling critical infrastructure.
Information on critical infrastructure is therefore advised to be handled more restrictively. “We cannot build a digital glasshouse while people outside throw stones” warned former Brandenburg interior minister René Wilke (SPD). Hessian interior defences minister Roman Poseck (CDU) called for a review of transparency rules so that open information does not become a security risk.
In political commentary, CDU/CSU parliamentary spokesperson Alexander Throm declared that the trivialisation of left‑terrorism must come to an end. SPD colleague Sebastian Fiedler described the threat as “very serious” and demanded a unified nationwide threat assessment. Green parliamentary spokesman Marcel Emmerich described the protection of critical infrastructure as “still riddled with holes like Swiss cheese”.