Gesinnungsgemeinschaft der Neuen Front

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Gesinnungsgemeinschaft der Neuen Front (GdNF) is a German organisation that was the main group for neo-Nazi activity during the 1990s. It translates into English as the Community of Like-Minded People of the New Front [1] or the Covenant of the New Front. [2]

The GdNF was formed in 1985 by Michael Kühnen, Thomas Brehl and Christian Worch after the banning of the Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists. [3] Initially a loose group associated with the magazine Die Neue Front, the GdNF was soon formalised into an organisation, taking in most of the membership of the ANS/NA.[ citation needed ] The group placed itself within the more radical Sturmabteilung tradition of Nazism rather than simple devotion to Adolf Hitler.[ citation needed ] It also placed importance on opposing the influence of the United States, the destruction of the environment and the weakening of German racial purity. [3] The group was also active in Austria, which it referred to as "Ostmark", and called for the formation of an Austrian SA in a December 1990 edition of its paper Neuen Front. [4]

When Kühnen came out as a homosexual in 1986 the GdNF remained loyal to him in the resulting split, although the group lost control of the Free German Workers' Party. [5] However the group continued to improve its organisational basis despite this set-back, staging marches, paramilitary training and setting up cells in the German Democratic Republic. [5] It also sought to build up a portfolio of international contacts with which it co-operated on military drilling, propaganda dissemination and arms dispersal. [4]

After the death of Kühnen in 1991, the leadership of the GdNF, which had about 400 fully active members, passed to Worch, Winfried Arnulf Priem and Austrian neo-Nazi leader Gottfried Küssel. [6] In Austria the GdNF worked in tandem with Küssel's Volkstreue Außerparlamentarische Opposition (VAPO), a like-minded group. [4] However without Kühnen the group went into terminal decline and became lost in a sea of similar groups that were formed in the 1990s due to ever closer government scrutiny of neo-Nazi activities. The group continued to publish Neuen Front although increasingly this became an international magazine of neo-Nazism with close links to the NSDAP/AO with the GdNF doing little beyond publishing this work. [2] With Worch jailed in 1996 and other important figures such as Thomas Brehl starting up their own groups the GdNF gradually passed out of existence.[ citation needed ]

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References

  1. ↑ Peter James, Modern Germany: Politics, Society and Culture, Routledge, 1998, p. 134
  2. 1 2 Hermann Kurthen, Werner Bergmann, Rainer Erb, Antisemitism and Xenophobia in Germany after Unification, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 166
  3. 1 2 "Irving v. Lipstadt Defence Documents". Archived from the original on 2015-01-05. Retrieved 2009-11-19.
  4. 1 2 3 Bernd Baumgartl, Adrian Favell, New Xenophobia in Europe, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1995, p. 23
  5. 1 2 Cyprian Blamires, World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1, p. 369
  6. ↑ Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens , 1997, p. 253
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