backgrounds, although they are almost exclusively ethnically German" and blamed politicians from Alternative for Germany (AfD) for shifting the window of what it was publicly acceptable to say. Wagner has stated that he receives threats for his work and reports them to the state prosecutor. Around the same time he made four reports to police within a week because he found right-wing extremist statements in the visitor guidebook contrary to the German constitution. In 2019, both Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials banned AfD representatives from events "unless they credibly distance themselves from the anti-democratic, revisionist positions in their party". Guests who wear Thor Steinar, a brand of clothing associated with neo-Nazism, are asked to cover it up and are denied entry if they refuse to comply. In 2020, he told different German media outlets that memorials should not just focus on victims, but also explain the role of perpetrators, bystanders, and profiteers of Nazi persecution. Wagner criticized the use of Nazi comparisons in protests over COVID-19 policies in Germany, which he states are "an appalling mockery and a trivialization of the crimes committed by the Nazis." After a young corona-protestor compared herself to Nazi resistance activist Sophie Scholl, he suggested that German education focused too much on the victims of Nazi persecution without addressing the question of how these people became victims. In September 2020, there was a controversy over a speech co-written by Wagner and read by Bergen mayor Claudia Dettmar-Müller, which included the statement: "During the Second World War the SS and Wehrmacht committed unimaginable crimes on our doorstep." Local politicians from AfD as well as Social Democratic Party, Free Democratic Party and Christian Democratic Union distanced themselves from these words, despite the historical fact of war crimes of the Wehrmacht. Later in the month, he filed a complaint against the AfD in Bergen for Volksverhetzung. In November 2020, Wagner received a call from Göttingen public prosecutor informing him that he was under investigation for publishing "defamatory facts to the detriment of Wehrmacht soldiers". The complaint, filed by a retired Bundeswehr officer, focused on his book, Armament, War and Crimes: The Wehrmacht and the Bergen-Hohne Barracks, a companion to a museum exhibition about crimes of the Wehrmacht. The proceedings were discontinued, but Wagner said he fears that "it has become socially acceptable again to talk about a clean Wehrmacht", a long-disproven myth. The prosecution was criticized by Süddeutsche Zeitung