A vast archive of hacked emails from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) was published online on Monday, offering an unusually raw and disturbing view of the party’s internal communications. The leak contains 281 GB of data and 421,179 internal party emails. According to the reporting based on the material, the messages include widespread racist and antisemitic language, violent fantasies, and allegations of financial misconduct.
The archive was not published directly on the leak site. Instead, it is available through a series of AI-generated summaries, which have been filtered by severity — CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM and LOW — and by type. Categories include “racism_xenophobia,” “corruption_money,” “leadership_feud,” “conspiracy,” “violence_threats” and “antisemitism_extremism.” The journalists who have examined parts of the hack consider the material authentic. The AfD itself confirmed the breach to Bild, saying: “In September 2026, a hacker attack targeted one of our party’s hosting service providers, during which portions of a few email accounts – most of which had not been used for years – were apparently illicitly copied.”
The leak comes after weeks in which claims of antisemitism dominated German media coverage following the Berlin election. For the reporters examining the archive, the emails show what that antisemitism looks like in practice. In message after message, party supporters reportedly use racist slurs and share antisemitic theories of Jewish world domination. The material includes jokes about turning refugees into handbags and boots, discussions about whether refugees should be shot at the border, a Christmas card sent with a swastika and “Heil Hitler,” and an email thread signed off with “Heil und Sieg.”
Many of the summaries appear to be the party’s own internal disciplinary proceedings — emails sent to party boards to decide whether to open expulsion proceedings against members. What is shocking, though perhaps not surprising, is the depth and breadth of racist sentiment attributed to party members: slurs, fantasies of violence and antisemitic statements appear commonplace. One email from 2016 appears to show AfD co-leader Alice Weidel forwarding a member’s antisemitic material to the federal board while the party was weighing his expulsion. The email reportedly included a warning to her colleagues that the Verfassungsschutz — Germany’s domestic intelligence service — might be reading.
There are also cases that do not appear to have drawn the party’s ire. According to the report, one Bavarian official urged party leaders to chant “Merkel croak” every day. In another thread, staff at the party’s federal office apparently discussed luring a photographer to a party event and removing him by force.
The anonymous hackers said their motive was to expose the “degeneracy and hypocrisy” of the AfD. Beyond the hate speech, the archive also contains allegations of embezzlement and financial misconduct. DDoSecrets, a transparency collective that republished the archive, said its software flagged 34 documents for misuse of funds, 23 for off-the-books payments, 14 for undisclosed donations and seven for embezzlement.
The political context makes the leak especially significant. The AfD is currently polling at 29% nationally, even as it fights in court against a designation by the Verfassungsschutz as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party. Some state intelligence offices have already made that designation for state branches, including in Sachsen-Anhalt. That designation did not appear to hurt the party electorally there: in September, the AfD achieved 43.8% of the vote in the state.
It may be a criminal offence in Germany to torrent the material or distribute it online. The archive’s authenticity has been assessed by journalists who examined parts of it, and the party has confirmed that a hack occurred. But the AI summaries are not a substitute for the full documents, and the leak should be read with those limitations in mind.
