Nazi racoons run riot in German city but hunters refuse to lay down their arms (2025)

The German city has all but surrendered but one crack team is not as willing as everyone else to lay down their arms and call it a day - enticing them instead with cat food, or gummy bears and Nutella

A city in Germany plagued by what locals are calling 'Nazi' raccoons has all but surrendered to the pests running riot through its streets.

The critters have been up to no good in Kassel, central Germany, where officials have been trying to exterminate them in efforts that are proving feeble with the bandits spreading out across the place - but are buckling up to have them around for the long haul.

While the city has pretty much surrendered to defeat, with their resistance proving useless, a small team is not giving up hope just yet. Hoards of the animals have been found across the country but also in other places including France and Belgium.

It's now believed there may be a population of more than two million of them with a public official from Kassel saying it would be "extremely difficult" to completely eradicate them from urban areas.

Heiko Lehmkuhl, 55, told The Sun: "Completely eradicating raccoons from urban areas is extremely difficult. "Our goal can, therefore, only be to keep conflicts with the animals as low as possible."

He said the raccoons can cause significant damage to homes and it's highly recommended that residents of the city make their homes raccoon-proof, appearing to hint that people should get used to having them around.

DJV President Helmut Dammann-Tamke, 63, also told German media: "The little bear from North America is a real threat to the native wildlife because, unlike the native fox, the raccoon is a good climber and swimmer, and therefore has a much wider range of prey."

One, named only as Peter, who terminates 70 of the creatures per year, explained: "The only thing that helps is trap hunting.

"The raccoon is a gourmet and what it finds seasonally in nature, it doesn't like." Peter, who uses cat food for bait, added: "Even better are gummy bears or Nutella bread."

Among the chaos caused by them, in 2018 a shocked Berlin crane operator called the police after he found a huge raccoon waiting for him in his operator's booth more than 130 feet up.

That same year a woman found a raccoon perched on top of her sitting room clock in Remscheid, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, after it trashed her home. In 2024, officers were called to a report of a raccoon ransacking a bedroom.

The already uninhibited animals have been seen breaking into local buildings and fueling up on food and booze and destroying property with homeowners having reported thousands of euros worth of damage to their properties. In some of the worst cases, raccoons have eaten their pets.

They get their name from the origin story with it believed that they were introduced to the country by Hermann Goering, founder of the Nazi's secret police, the Gestapo, during the 1930s. They escaped during the collapse of Germany after World War II though and have spread far and wide.

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