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Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
The National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party, was a far-right political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945, that created and supported the ideology of National Socialism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party, existed from 1919 to 1920.
The National Democratic Party of Germany is a far-right and ultranationalist political party in Germany.
"Far-right" is synonymous with the term "extreme right", or literally "right-extremist" (the German term used by the German intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz), according to which neo-Nazism is a subclass, with its historical orientation at Nazism.[1]
Neo-Nazism consists of post-World War II militant social or political movements seeking to revive and implement the ideology of Nazism. Neo-Nazis seek to employ their ideology to promote hatred and attack minorities, or in some cases to create a fascist political state. It is a global phenomenon, with organized representation in many countries and international networks. It borrows elements from Nazi doctrine, including ultranationalism, racism, xenophobia, ableism, homophobia, anti-Romanyism, antisemitism, anti-communism and initiating the Fourth Reich. Holocaust denial is a common feature, as is the incorporation of Nazi symbols and admiration of Adolf Hitler.
The German Right Party was a far-right political party that emerged in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany after the Second World War.
The Deutsche Reichspartei was a nationalist political party in West Germany. It was founded in 1950 from the German Right Party, which had been set up in Lower Saxony in 1946 and had five members in the first Bundestag.
Upon defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the victorious Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty over 'Germany as a whole', defined as all territories of the former German Reich west of the Oder–Neisse line, having declared the destruction of Nazi Germany at the death of Adolf Hitler. The four powers divided 'Germany as a whole' into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, under the United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union respectively; creating what became collectively known as Allied-occupied Germany. This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference. The four zones were as agreed in February 1945 by the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union meeting at the Yalta Conference; setting aside an earlier division into three zones proposed by the London Protocol.
The German National People's Party was a national-conservative party in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the Nazi Party, it was the major conservative and nationalist party in Weimar Germany. It was an alliance of nationalists, reactionary monarchists, völkisch and antisemitic elements supported by the Pan-German League.
The German Workers' Party was a short-lived political party established in Weimar Germany after World War I. It was the precursor of the Nazi Party, which was officially known as the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The DAP only lasted from 5 January 1919 until 24 February 1920.
The Greater German People's Party was a German nationalist and national liberal political party during the First Republic of Austria, established in 1920.
East Germany (1945–1990)
East Germany was founded under a pretext different from West Germany. As a socialist state it was based on the idea that fascism was an extreme form of imperialism. Thus, it understood itself as an anti-fascist state (Art. 6 of the GDR constitution) and anti-fascist and anti-colonialist education played an important role in schools and in ideological training at universities. In contrast to West Germany, organizations of the Nazi regime had always been condemned and their crimes openly discussed as part of the official state doctrine in the GDR. Thus, in the GDR, there was no room for a movement similar to the 1968 movement in West Germany, and GDR opposition groups did not see the topic as a major issue. Open right-wing radicalism was relatively weak until the 1980s. Later, smaller extremist groups formed (e.g. those associated with football violence). The government attempted to address the issue, but at the same time had ideological reasons not to do so openly as it conflicted with the self-image of a socialist society.
German statistics show that in 1991, there were 849 hate crimes, and in 1992 there were 1,485 concentrated in the eastern Bundesländer. After 1992, the numbers decreased, although they rose sharply in subsequent years. In four decades of the former East Germany, 17 people were murdered by far right groups.[3]
A 1993 arson attack by far-right skinheads on the house of a Turkish family in Solingen resulted in the deaths of two women and three girls, as well as in severe injuries for seven other people.[4] In the aftermath, anti-racist protests precipitated massive neo-Nazi counter-demonstrations and violent clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists.[citation needed]
In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the Bombing of Dresden in World War II, a radical left group, the Anti-Germans (political current) started an annual rally praising the bombing on the grounds that so many of the city's civilians had supported Nazism.[5] Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Neo-Nazis started holding demonstrations on the same date.[citation needed] In 2009, the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland youth group of the NPD organised a march but surrounded by policemen, the 6,000 neo-Nazis were not allowed to leave their meeting point. At the same time, some 15,000 people with white roses assembled in the streets holding hands to demonstrate against Nazism, and to create an alternative “memorial day” of war victims.[6]
In 2004, the National Democratic Party of Germany won 9.2% in the Saxony state election, 2004, and 1.6% of the nationwide vote in the German federal election, 2005. In the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election, 2006 the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and thus also state representation.[7] In 2004, the NPD had 5,300 registered party members.[8] Over the course of 2006, the NPD processed roughly 1,000 party applications which put the total membership at 7,000. The DVU has 8,500 members.[9]
In 2007, the Verfassungsschutz (Federal German intelligence) estimated the number of potentially right extremist individuals in Germany was 31,000 of which about 10,000 were classified as potentially violent (gewaltbereit).[10]
In 2008, unknown perpetrators smashed cars with Polish registrations, breaking windows in L18 kilometers from Szczecin, about 200 Poles settledcknitz, 18 kilometers from Szczecin, about 200 Poles live. Supporters of the NPD party were suspected to be behind anti-Polish incidents, per Gazeta Wyborcza.[11]
In 2011, eleven years after the first of 10 murders on Turkish-rooted people between 2000 and 2007 a hitherto unknown Neo-nazi group, the National Socialist Underground could finally be linked to it.[12]
In 2011, Federal German intelligence reported 25,000 right-wing extremists, including 5,600 neo-Nazis.[13] In the same report, 15,905 crimes committed in 2010 were classified as far-right motivated, compared to 18,750 in 2009; these crimes included 762 acts of violence in 2010 compared to 891 in 2009.[13] While the overall numbers had declined, the Verfassungsschutz indicated that both the number of neo-Nazis and the potential for violent acts have increased, especially among the growing number of Autonome Nationalisten ("Independent Nationalists") who gradually replace the declining number of Nazi Skinheads.[13]
According to interior ministry figures reported in May 2019, of an estimated 24,000 far-right extremists in the country, 12,700 Germans are inclined towards violence. Extremists belonging to Der Dritte Weg marched in through a town in Saxony on 1 May, the day before the Jewish remembrance of the Holocaust, carrying flags and a banner saying "Social justice instead of criminal foreigners".[15]
Some German neo-Nazis use early symbols of the Reichskriegsflagge predating the introduction of the Nazi swastika, which therefore are legal in Germany
German law forbids the production and exhibitionist movement of pro-Nazi materials. However, Nazi paraphernalia has been smuggled into the country for decades.[16]Neo-Nazi rock bands such as Landser have been outlawed in Germany, yet bootleg copies of their albums printed in the United States and other countries are still sold in the country. German neo-Nazi websites mostly depend on Internet servers in the US and Canada. They often use symbols that are reminiscent of the swastika, and adopt other symbols used by the Nazis, such as the sun cross, wolf's hook and black sun.
Historian Walter Laqueur wrote in 1996 that the far right NPD cannot be classified as neo-Nazi.[18] In 2004, NPD received 9.1% of the vote in the parliamentary elections for Saxony, thus earning the right to seat state parliament members.[19] The other parties refused to enter discussions with the NPD. In the 2006 parliamentary elections for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the NPD received 7.3% of the vote and six seats in the state parliament. On March 13, 2008, NPD leader Udo Voigt was charged with Volksverhetzung ("incitement to hatred", a crime under the German criminal law), for distributing racially charged pamphlets referring to German footballer Patrick Owomoyela, whose father is Nigerian. In 2009, Voigt was given a seven-month suspended sentence and ordered to donate 2,000 euros to UNICEF.[20]
The Socialist Reich Party was a West German Strasserist political party founded in the aftermath of World War II in 1949 as an openly neo-Nazi oriented split-off from the national conservative German Right Party (DKP-DRP). The SRP was the first party to be banned by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1952.
Strasserism is a strand of Nazism that calls for a more radical, mass-action and worker-based form of Nazism—hostile to Jews not from a racial, cultural or religious perspective, but from an economic basis—to achieve a national rebirth. It derives its name from Gregor and Otto Strasser, two brothers initially associated with this position.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is the Federal Republic of Germany's domestic security agency. Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (LfV) at the state level, it is tasked with intelligence-gathering on threats concerning the democratic order, the existence and security of the federation or one of its states, and the peaceful coexistence of peoples; with counter-intelligence; and with protective security and counter-sabotage. The BfV reports to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. The current President Thomas Haldenwang was appointed in 2018.
The German People's Union was a political party in Germany. It was founded by publisher Gerhard Frey as an informal association in 1971 and established as a party in 1987. Financially, it was largely dependent on Frey. In 2011, it merged with the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).
Adolf von Thadden was a leading far-right German politician. Born into a leading Pomeranian landowning family – he was born at the noble estate of Gut Trieglaff near Greifenberg in Pomerania – he was the half-brother of Elisabeth von Thadden, a prominent critic of the Nazis who was executed by the Nazi government in September 1944.
The new federal states of Germany are the five re-established states in the former East Germany that acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany with its 10 states upon German reunification on 3 October 1990.
The Left, also commonly referred to as the Left Party, is a democratic socialist political party in Germany. It is considered to be left-wing populist by some researchers. The party was founded in 2007 as the result of the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG). Through the PDS, the party is the direct descendant of the ruling party of the former East Germany (GDR), the Marxist-Leninist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED).
Friedhelm Busse was a German neo-Nazi politician and activist. In a career taking in some six decades Busse established himself as a leading voice of German neo-Nazism.
The German Alternative was a minor neo-Nazi group set up in Germany by Michael Kühnen in 1989.
The National Offensive was a German neo-Nazi party, which existed from 3 July 1990 to 22 December 1992.
The far right in Switzerland was established in the course of the rise of fascism in Europe in the interwar period. It was a mostly marginal phenomenon in the Cold War period, excepting a surge of radical right-wing populism during the early 1970s, and has again attracted some media attention since 2000.
Jürgen Rieger was a Hamburg lawyer, avowed anti-semite, and deputy chairman of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), known for his Holocaust denial. Rieger represented Arpad Wigand former SS Police Leader of the Warsaw district in Occupied Poland, in his trial for war crimes in Hamburg District Court. Wigand was subsequently found guilty in December 1981, and sentenced to 12.5 years.
Fritz Rössler was a low-level official in the Nazi Party who went on to become a leading figure in German neo-Nazi politics. In his later life he was more commonly known as Dr. Franz Richter.
Herbert Böhme was a German poet who wrote poems and battle hymns for the National Socialist German Workers Party. After the Second World War he became involved with neo-fascism.
The III. Path or The Third Path is a minor far-right and neo-Nazi political party in Germany.
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