Frederick Reese
Germany has — since the end of World War II — found itself at sometimes conflicting ends concerning its past with Nazism. On one hand, Nazism is banned in Germany; symbols of the Third Reich are outlawed, the party is forbidden to hold public office and even public denial of the Holocaust is an imprisonable offense. But at the same time, Germans have held the right to assemble as a sacred right, and neo-Nazi groups have been allowed to form in Germany, as long as the group is not explicitly linked to Nazism.
Recently, this duality has been tested as a German neo-Nazi group has been discovered to be communicating with imprisoned group leaders; inmates would hide messages in letters and in magazine advertisements. Prison searches in Hesse in central Germany found clues that suggested that the neo-Nazis are attempting to form a national coalition to support their activism.
Prison authorities discovered a list during a cell search that includes the name of Beate Zschaepe, who is scheduled to go on trial in Munich on April 17, along with four other suspects, for links to race-based killings. Zschaepe is thought to have helped form the National Socialist Underground (NSU). The group has been blamed for the killings of nine men from Turkey or Greece, as well as a German policewoman, Michéle Kiesewetter.
“Prisons must not become a breeding ground for far-right extremists,” said Joerg-Uwe Hahn, justice minister for Hasse.
A concern in this investigation was the lack of communication between different authorities and a refusal to take this situation seriously. “People should not think that simply because they [activists] are in jail then they are out of the picture,” said Eva Hoegl, a Social Democratic politician who has been following the NSU investigation, warning that, even from prison, the neo-Nazis could play an active role.
The NSU
The NSU was completely off German law enforcement’s radar until Beate Zschaepe blew up her flat in eastern Germany in 2011 and then surrendered to the police. Zschaepe’s two accomplices, Uwe Mundlos, 38, and Uwe Boenhardt, 34, were discovered in a caravan in an apparent double suicide.
Despite the fact that these three are widely considered to be the whole of the NSU, they have been charged with 10 murders, two bomb attacks and a host of bank robberies.
“The members of the NSU planned their indiscriminate and insidious deeds together,” prosecutor Wolfgang Range said in a statement. “Uwe Boenhardt and Uwe Mundlos carried out the murder attacks and the robberies. The accused [Beate] Zschaepe gave the NSU the appearance of legality and normalcy towards the outside.”
Prosecutors believe that the NSU — who targeted immigrants primarily — committed execution-style killings designed to spread fear and aimed to convince foreigners to leave Germany. The NSU sparked a crisis among Germany’s intelligence community, who incorrectly blamed the NSU’s activities on clashes between rival immigrant gangs.
German authorities have announced the establishment of a neo-Nazi registry, after the lack of coordination between the 32 law enforcement agencies involved in the NSU case allowed the cell to go unnoticed for so long. Throughout Germany, in small towns and villages outside of the public glare, and in hidden cells and conclaves, Nazism still exists. While extreme right-wing membership in Germany is less of that in France, Italy or the Netherlands, an upswing in racist and anti-Muslim voter sentiment suggest that while the party doesn’t have power, it does have influence.
Nazism in Germany today
In a recent report from the German domestic intelligence agency, right-wing extremist membership in Germany has dropped from 31,000 in 2007 to 22,400 in 2011. However, according to the study, Germany is no less racist and anti-Muslim than the rest of continental Western Europe. What this means is that, for Germans, racial identity is more deeply ingrained than it would be in France or England.
Politically, Nazism in Germany is represented by the National Democratic Party (NPD). The party, established in 1964, promotes a racially-justified form of nationalism that seeks the restoration of Germany’s 1937 borders. The German government attempted to ban the NPD in 2003, to no avail. The NPD is joined by the Cologne-based anti-Muslim Pro Germany Citizens’ Movement and the Republikaner — which held state-based power in the 1990s but is no longer considered to be significant in the political arena.
The NPD currently hold seats for two German states: Saxony, where it won 5.6 percent of the vote in 2009 and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where it won 6 percent of the vote in 2011. The combined far-right vote in the 2009 federal election was 2 percent, with the majority of the votes coming from the former East Germany.
“We are seeing a decrease of right-wing extremists in general but at the same time there is an increase of neo-Nazis and organised right-wing extremists,” said Bernd Wagner, the CEO of EXIT-Germany, an organization that helps right-wing extremists leave the movement. “Plus there is a tendency in the population of sympathising with their ideas and ideology which is also increasing.”
In Jamel, a small village in Mecklenburg, signs of Nazism can easily be seen. A mural at the entrance of the village reads, “Jamel village community — free, social, national.” Here, there are summer parties in honor of Adolf Hitler and where “heil” is chanted by bonfire. These types of small villages are becoming more common in eastern Europe.
Nazism, or National Socialism, is a form of fascism based on assumed biological “superiority.” Nazism claims that there is an Aryan master race that is superior to all other races, and that political and military actions to protect the purity of the race and to provide for the race’s continual prosperity is justified. To those ends, the Nazis — during the Third Reich — killed millions of Jews and Romani and socially-excluded homosexuals, Blacks, Jehovah’s Witnesses, as well as members of other political parties.
“We stirred up discontent and unrest,” said a former neo-Nazi. “Violence was part of the scene, the whole ideology of the movement is based on violence, and it is seen as a legitimate means to reach political targets.”
“I still cannot say to this day if I would have killed, but I realised later that just by punching someone in the face, or hitting them with brass knuckles, I could have killed them,” he said.