On Sunday night, September 9, the waxing moon had just formed its first quarter over Lake Starnberg, some twenty kilometers southwest of Munich. Was this enough for the fish to discern the thick smoke coming from the wind farm that has been standing for ten years in the forest above the village of Berg, on the right bank of the lake? In any case, they won’t breathe a word to the investigators from the Upper Bavarian Criminal Investigation Department, tasked with solving the arson attack on one of the giants planted there at around 3am. Firstly, as a matter of dignity. Secondly, as a matter of principle, the limpid waters of the Ice Age have seen many others, such as the lifeless body of King Ludwig II, or the first summers of his cousin “Sissi”, before she was lightened of her burden on the shores of another lake by the sharpened blade of an anarchist.

What happened on that cold autumn night in the forest between a freeway and the eastern shore of Lake Starnberg? According to Bürgerwind Berg GmbH, the engineering office in charge of technical support for the Alpine wind farm operator, a first warning message was sent to them by the safety sensors on a wind turbine, followed by a second at around 3:59 a.m., which recited in code: “smoke in the nacelle”. In other words, in the machine room, some 150 meters up on the rotor side. The facts became much simpler as soon as the sleuths were able to get to the scene. According to the police report, unknown persons attacked the massive door of the wind tower with an angle grinder, cutting an opening of “40 by 60 centimetres”, before introducing “previously ignited objects” inside the structure.

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Around 3 a.m. on Sunday night, September 2, employees of a small company called the fire department to report a fire at their neighbor’s premises. Their neighbor, in the Detmoldstraße industrial park to the north of Munich, is none other than a huge factory: the Max Bögl Concrete Plant, which has been covering the world in its filth since 1929 and, according to its own figures, employs 6,500 people at 40 sites worldwide.

On site, the firefighters were quickly dismayed. The flames were engulfing the production site in various places. On one side, six concrete transport trucks were ablaze, on the other an excavator, and finally, high in the sky, the company’s conveyor belt lit up the night. Despite the general alarm sounded by the first firefighters, who were joined by some fifty colleagues, the fire continued to spread, and the conveyor belt fire eventually reached the top of the mixing silo, starting to eat away at it, at the same time as several blocks of compressed cardboard from a nearby waste disposal site began to smell a bit scorched. It wasn’t until 6.30 a.m. that the sabotage against the concrete plant, which caused millions of euros worth of damage, was finally extinguished.

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