German leaders are preparing to deny the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) access to the country’s secret war plan, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, September 22.

The roughly 1,000-page document, known as OPLAN Deutschland, was drafted in 2024 to set out how the German military would respond to another Russian attack in Eastern Europe, and the full version is held by the heads of Germany’s 16 states. Defence Minister Boris Pistorius raised on September 8, in a closed-door meeting with defence policy experts from the governing coalition’s parliamentary groups, the option of withdrawing the OPLAN from the Saxony-Anhalt state chancellery if the AfD takes power there, to prevent the plan from reaching Moscow, according to the German network RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) and Bloomberg. The AfD won Saxony-Anhalt’s state election on September 6 with 43.8% of the vote, and Germany’s domestic intelligence service classifies the party’s branches in Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony as confirmed right-wing extremist organizations.