Available Formats
Paperback
Published: 15th May 2024
Hardback
Published: 4th September 2024
Paperback
Published: 4th June 2025
White Terror: A True Story of Murders, Bombings and a Far-Right Campaign to Rid Germany of Immigrants
By (Author) Jacob Kushner
HarperCollins Publishers
Mudlark
15th May 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
Terrorism, armed struggle
True crime
Racism and racial discrimination / Anti-racism
Ethnic groups and multicultural studies
Reportage, journalism or collected columns
Violent crimes
Nationalism
324.27338
Paperback
320
Width 153mm, Height 234mm, Spine 33mm
472g
In a tour de force of investigative journalism, White Terror tells for the first time the story of the National Socialist Underground in Germany in an engrossing global story that examines violence, modern racism and national trauma.
Before the storming of the U.S. Capitol; before the mass shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Walmart in El Paso, or the mosque in Christchurch; before the mass-murders perpetrated by Dylann Roof in 2015 or Anders Breivik in 2011; before any of that, there was the National Socialist Underground in Germany, where the global rise of white terrorism began. Between 2000 and 2011, the NSU, a Neo-Nazi terrorist trioone woman, two menserially killed immigrants, funding their spree through robbing banks and aided by a vast network of like-minded extremists. Anders Breivik, whose writings are widely circulated among hate groups today, hailed the sole surviving member of the NSU as a martyr.
In a tour de force of investigative journalism and novelistic storytelling in the vein of Say Nothing and Killers of the Flower Moon, White Terror tells the story of the NSU, taking readers back to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of East and West Germany, and the rise of Neo-Nazism. White Terror tells the story of the NSU trio, their radicalization from skinhead youths selling Nazi-themed Monopoly games and trading blows with left-wing punks to full-fledged on-the-run terrorists carrying out bombings and assassinations. But its also about something almost as terrifying: the German police and intelligence services that missed clues and overlooked leads, mishandled far-right informants, repeatedly tried to paint the Turkish and Greek murder victims as mafiosos, and, once the terror plot was revealed, covered-up their mistakes and refused to acknowledge their failings.
Excellently put together and deeply researched, White Terror is an engrossing story first and foremost about Germany and its difficult history of racism, but also an international story that examines modern racism, an issue every country has to deal with in some form.
Jacob Kushner writes narrative nonfiction and features for publications such as The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, the BBC, The Economist, The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Guardian, WIRED, Newsweek and others.