The arrest of six suspected far-right terrorists in Germany on Monday speaks to the federal republic's growing security challenge: It is caught between a weak chancellor and two terrorist extremes.

Aged between 20 and 30, the detained men are accused of planning attacks against immigrants and others they blame for supposedly diluting Germany's identity. The authorities assert that the men were seeking semi-automatic weapons and believed they could spark a revolution.

But while this detention might have prevented attacks, Germany continues to face a serious terrorist threat from far-right individuals and groups. The growth of these groups is primarily sourced in the far-right's cultivation of a perception that Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policy has fundamentally endangered Germany's traditional identity. With her decision to accept hundreds of thousands of Syrian (and other) refugees into Germany, many Germans believe Merkel put her own humanitarianism before the national interest.

In the context of high-profile incidents of criminality by immigrants or refugees, a rising tide of far-right populism has found its mobilization in a mix of neo-Nazi and post-Nazi far-right organizations. More broadly, opinion polls suggest that Germany's right-wing AfD party is now the second-most popular in the nation.

Germany also faces a continuing challenge from Sunni Islamist extremists. Partly flowing from the refugee movements that have entered Europe and partly from homegrown extremists, this threat is both diverse and dangerous. While the German domestic intelligence service BfV maintains a close watch on the most dangerous extremists, like many intelligence services in Western Europe, it lacks the means to monitor everyone of concern.

Although they despise each other, these two otherwise divergent threats inevitably flow together. After all, where the far-right agitators point to Islamist influence and immigration as evidence of a Germany under siege, the Islamist extremists point to the far-right as evidence of a Germany that has no tolerance for Islam.

Making matters worse here is Merkel. Her CDU party leads a weak coalition government that is caught between a conservative CSU party, that is trying to avoid the further hemorrhaging of its base to the AfD, and a center-left SPD party, that is trying to consolidate itself against the far-left. But with populism being the order of the day, neither the CSU nor the SPD want to compromise in favor of reforms that might bring greater security and stability. On the contrary, each side is lobbying hard for its their own ideological interests in the belief that Merkel will inevitably lose a parliamentary confidence motion in the next few months and will thus have to call an election.

Ultimately, Germany faces continuing period of political doubt and a growing environment of insecurity.