Germany's right-wing extremists in disarray

Germany's far-right National Democratic Party is in turmoil, according to internal party documents obtained by SPIEGEL. It is beset by financial problems and a deeply divided leadership. Leaders are also unsure what to do about the skinhead problem.

The old two-story building on Seelenbinderstrasse in Berlin's Köpenick neighborhood is like a fortress. To enter the building, through its reinforced-steel door, one has to pass through a beefed up security system. Monitors inside record every movement transmitted by cameras in the courtyard and on the roof.

When the master of the house drives up, burly men jump out of his mid-range sedan to secure the area. The man is a party leader who describes himself as both "enthusiastic" and "dogged." Some would describe him as the most dangerous man in Germany today. For more than 10 years Udo Voigt, a former aviation engineer and captain in the German army, has been the chairman of the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), a position that makes him the leader of about 7,000 right-wing extremists.

Voigt, who has also been an elected member of a district council in Berlin for more than a year, has good reason to be taking security precautions. In addition to militant anarchists, the entire German state, including its intelligence apparatus, has set its sights on Voigt and his followers. All parties represented in the German parliament, the Bundestag, are constantly looking for ways to fight his right-wing realm -- either by attacking his party outright or investigating its finances.

Voigt and his followers have repeatedly, and deliberately, provoked the country's democrats, sometimes by referring to the Allied forces' bombing of Dresden in World War II as a "Holocaust of bombs" and sometimes by staging rallies at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. The NPD has also surrounded itself with an aura of violence. The boundaries are all too often unclear between the party and extremist right-wing thugs who target and assault foreigners, weaker members of society, leftists and gays.

Nevertheless, Germany still hasn't quite figured out how to respond to these erratic, right wing extremists. An attempt to ban the NPD failed miserably when it was brought before Germany's Federal Constitutional Court in 2003.

To Ban or Not to Ban

In the late summer of 2007, Kurt Beck, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), launched a new debate about banning the party. (more...) Beck wants to see German lawmakers "take on the brown demagogues with the full force of the law". The SPD even turned Beck's call to ban Voigt's party into an official resolution at its party convention. The interior ministers of the German states have also placed the NPD issue on the agenda, once again, for their next meeting.

Germany's domestic intelligence agency plans to complete an investigation of the NPD's internal affairs by late March. The report will be used to determine whether there is enough evidence to make a new legal attempt to ban the NPD.

Despite these official efforts, the public knows very little about what really happens behind the walls of the NPD headquarters building at Seelenbinderstrasse 42 in Berlin. Until now, that is.

SPIEGEL has obtained thousands of internal NPD documents, including copies of e-mails, concept papers and top-secret dossiers on the party's leaders, as well as lists of its members and donors. The documents provide a rare insight into the innermost workings of the extremist right-wing party.

Although this collection of information about the NPD leaves many questions unanswered, it does prove one thing beyond a doubt: This feared opponent of the German republic and its democratic ideals is a deeply divided group wracked by virulent infighting among its leaders. The party's financial affairs are in a shambles, and even its top leaders fear that it could fall apart. One of the most divisive issues within the NPD is its stance toward "free forces," radical right wing thugs prone to violence.

Just in time for a slew of parliamentary and municipal elections in 2008, a dispute over the NPD's direction has erupted within Voigt's entourage. With state elections in Lower Saxony and Hesse just a week away, little remains of the Berlin NPD leadership's hopes that an "offensive in the West" would produce a "turning point" in state parliamentary elections. While some within the extreme right-wing party seek to project an image of the NPD as a "clean" German nationalist party of law and order, others are apparently unwilling to do without the support of violent neo-Nazis.

A dispute between Voigt and his second-in-command, Holger Apfel, illustrates this schism. Apfel, a trained publishing executive who heads the NPD's group of eight deputies in the regional assembly of the eastern state of Saxony, has gained a reputation for his bluntly provocative rhetoric, but the so-called free forces are no longer acceptable even to him. In December 2007, he issued an unmistakable warning to Voigt that "a few hundred idiots nationwide are destroying the work of the last few years" and are "driving the biggest possible nail into our coffin regarding possible proceedings to ban the party."

The party, Apfel added, is on a "sectarian course," while the NPD party leadership's financial situation is "shit." The NPD politician has declined to comment on his e-mail correspondence with Voigt.

"Elephant in a China Shop"

Apfel is not Voigt's only critic from Saxony, an NPD stronghold. Referring to the party's public image, Jens Pühse, a member of the party's executive committee, recently wrote, in a letter to the NPD chairman: "We appear to have chosen the proverbial elephant in a china shop as our role model." Pühse added that efforts within the leadership to develop the NPD's position are being "torn apart" at grass roots level. Voigt was apparently annoyed by this "condescending advice," especially coming from Saxony, where the parliamentary leadership "can't handle its own affairs and hardly leaves the office anymore." Pühse promptly responded: "If you are serious about the things you write, the breakup of the party will be only a matter of time."

These internal party exchanges, on which both the party leader and Pühse declined to comment when contacted by SPIEGEL, hardly correspond to the image Voigt and his associates seek to project to their own supporters during the current election campaigns. They portray themselves as squeaky-clean politicians fighting against the supposedly decrepit "establishment parties." Voigt, at any rate, describes himself and his supposed national mission with these words: "I am proud to be the chairman of such a united community of action."

That seems a bit of an overstatement. In the Hesse state election campaign, for instance, the NPD put forward Marcel Wöll as its candidate, a man with a criminal record who appears to specialize in friendly fire.

Too Little Money, Too Much War Propaganda

Wöll recently snubbed many of his fellow party members with an amateurishly produced campaign ad. The ad depicts three gnomes with false beards digging for gold in the forest. An amateur actor made up to look like a foreigner, who is apparently supposed to represent a politician, promptly shows up and deprives the Hesse gnomes of their treasure. Suddenly candidate Wöll appears on the scene -- on horseback and carrying the NPD flag -- to put a stop to the supposed exploitation of the gnomes, and chases away the suit-wearing politician. According to Wöll, the bizarre ad is the "best the NPD has ever had".

If Wöll had had his way, a shovel would also have figured prominently in the ad. In another version, the politician was not just chased away by the NPD but was also beaten with a shovel. But party Chairman Voigt apparently felt that the alternate version was "not funny anymore". The "beating with the shovel," he warned, was a "clear depiction of attempted murder," which would only help the state interior ministers build their case to outlaw the party.

"War Propaganda"

The campaign ad wasn't the only instance in which Hesse candidate Wöll went a little too far. The man who likes to begin his e-mails to Voigt with the salutation "Heil to You!" has a history of putting his foot in his mouth. He ended a press release from his regional Hesse NPD organization, which according to the most recent opinion polls will garner a barely measurable share of the state vote in the January 27 election, with military rhetoric: "There will be victory in the end." Once again, Voigt felt compelled to censure the candidate. "Given these kinds of ambitious slogans," he wrote to Wöll a few weeks ago, "you must end up getting into the state parliament." Otherwise, he said, Wöll would merely be inviting ridicule and evoking memories of the "propaganda during the last days in the big war." Wöll has told SPIEGEL that his campaign is going well, although he declined to comment on the content of his e-mail correspondence.

A number of party officials apparently sensed early on that a right wing band of hooligans stand little chance of succeeding in a state governed by conservative agitator Roland Koch, a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and would have preferred to abandon the campaign in Hesse altogether. In an e-mail to Voigt in early December, Sascha Rossmüller, the NPD's deputy chairman, wrote that the party should "seriously consider how much additional benefit" even the modest sum of "€5,000 in the low-budget Hesse campaign" would in fact deliver.

NPD strategist Pühse described the party's dismal situation in a top-secret concept document. According to Pühse, the NPD has

"not enough membership revenue and only a few financial backers;"

"too few members and officials to be capable of conducting large-scale election campaigns;"

"and not enough support within the 'nationalist environment.'"

Pühse's last point must have been a particular source of debate at the NPD's Berlin headquarters. Even in other states, like Lower Saxony and Bavaria, motivation among party members and supporters doesn't appear to be very high. In a December memo titled "Emergency Report from Munich," deputy party chairman Rossmüller wrote to his fellow party members in Berlin that "hardly anything has been going well" during the preparations for municipal elections in Bavaria. The local organization in Munich, Rossmüller wrote, is "too weak" to perform its own duties -- so much so that "legionnaires" are needed to distribute flyers.

Hired Helpers

In Lower Saxony, where state parliamentary elections are likewise scheduled for Jan. 27, these hired hands should more aptly be referred to as "mercenaries." To prevent the campaign of the top NPD candidate in the state, Andreas Molau, from turning into a fiasco, the party's state organization apparently tried to recruit outside -- and paid -- campaign workers from within the neo-Nazi community. The party has been hiring people on a part-time basis to put up posters and hand out flyers, and has been paying them handsomely. In addition to a flat payment of €5,000, the party leadership agreed to pay a bonus of up to €20,000, depending on the outcome of the election. Employment contracts like these have only helped the cause of Voigt's adversaries. In a confidential e-mail to Voigt, Pühse lambasted the party organization in Lower Saxony for "cozying up to the free forces," adding that he found it inconceivable that Molau, the party's leading candidate in the state, "now has to shop for his campaign workers." Molau's actions, he wrote, are "serious mistakes that other state organizations will have to pay for in the next election campaigns."

Admitting that his own party lacks the clout to run an election campaign must be a bitter pill to swallow for any right-wing extremist. But the party has been ailing financially ever since state interior ministers did everything within their power to cut off its government funding. In the wake of the scandal (more...) in the eastern state of Thuringia over fabricated donations to the NPD, as well as the Bundestag administration's demands that the party repay roughly €870,000, money is scarcer than ever in Voigt's outfit -- and internal divisions have only made matters worse.

With the loss of government funding sources, the right-wing extremists are now dependent on a handful of financial backers, especially Jürgen Rieger, a neo-Nazi lawyer with an extensive criminal record who has been a member of the NPD's executive committee since 2006. Rieger was the executor of the estate of Wilhelm Tietjen, a former Nazi from the northern city of Bremen who had left his fortune to an obscure group, headed by Rieger, called the "Society for Biological Anthropology, Eugenics and Behavioral Research."

According to the will, Rieger was to use Tietjen's estate - apparently worth more than €1 million - in part to "establish a suitable sperm bank" for the purpose of propagating elite genetic material. But in addition to the intended breeding of a new Aryan race, Rieger apparently became involved in the money-lending business. According to German domestic intelligence, the NPD lawyer used the money from the Tietjen estate to issue loans totaling about €500,000. And when it comes to money, it appears that even far-right solidarity has its limits. "I'm working my ass off," party Chairman Voigt complained last spring to his deputy Apfel, to "get Rieger to give me an extension to repay the loans."

Other members of the executive committee are apparently eager to put the party's controversial benefactor out to pasture. In an e-mail, NPD ideologue Jürgen Gansel described Rieger as a "sperm banker and skull measurer" living "in his Aryan world." Gansel has also declined to comment on his e-mail correspondence.

Bad News from the Provinces

The current state of the NPD is characterized by provincial troubles and minor quarrels that could very well jeopardize its survival. Indeed, Voigt has recently been the recipient of bad news from all across the party:

In the NPD's local organization in Kelheim-Landshut, located in southern Germany, for instance, officials were desperately trying to figure out what happened to €1,100 that had disappeared from the party's bank account. Axel Michaelis, who manages the NPD's affairs in Bavaria, was incensed over this example of shoddy bookkeeping. "The books have to be cleaned up," he wrote to the organization. "The Bundestag is breathing down our necks; they're just waiting for us to make these kinds of mistakes." The Bavarian official, who has declined to comment on his e-mails, insists that the local organization's accounts have since been cleaned up with a cash deposit.

Strange things are also happening in the NPD's local organization in another Bavarian district, Altötting. The local officials, an irritated Michaelis wrote in an e-mail to Altötting on June 29, "must have been out of their minds" to "post a donation form on the Internet," especially with "home telephone numbers and addresses." If anyone hits upon the idea to print out the form, he added, "and engage in donation fraud, we might as well close up shop." According to Michaelis, "any fool" can have a treasurer's stamp made.

In the southern Bavarian city of Passau, party officials accused one of their own of attempting to misappropriate donations with the help of supposedly fabricated travel expense reports. The affair escalated to the point where the offending party member was even threatened with criminal prosecution. In an e-mail under the heading "Urgent, action needed!," the horrified Voigt wrote to his Bavarian state chairman: "We make ourselves look like fools when we air our party's dirty laundry in full view of the police. NPD comrades threatening other NPD comrades with legal action -- those are probably the worst possible headlines we can produce!"

The comrades, it appears, are more involved with themselves than with the reviled "democratic pigs." A story that aired last year on "Panorama," a program broadcast by the NDR television network, triggered a war of words within the party. Norman Bordin, a member of the NPD's Bavarian state executive committee, was caught on hidden camera giving banned Hitler salute during a skinhead concert in Hungary. NPD General Secretary Peter Marx was the first to react, when he distanced himself from what he described as "anti-Semitic excesses" and called for disciplinary action against Bordin.

Marx's press release, however, met with derision from Uwe Meenen, another party official in Bavaria. "If the state executive committee were to offer the Star of David as a reward for the slimy achievements of philosemitism," Meenen wrote in a venomous e-mail, "NPD General Secretary Peter Marx would certainly be at the front of the line." Deputy Chairman Rossmüller became involved in the exchange and noted: "Citizens don't want to vote for a skinhead party or a Nazi party." After Bordin's performance, he added, it would be advisable for "the NPD to no longer associate itself with skinhead concerts."

These words came as a shock to many a party worker. Meenen, who declined to speak with SPIEGEL, said he was distressed over the "devastating impact" of the Marx statement, and warned that it could lead to "young and revolutionary forces refusing to become involved in the state leadership in the future," and that the party "might as well forget about the state parliamentary elections."

"Foolish Amateurs"

Despite the NPD leadership's color-conscious resolution ("Our flags are black -- but our units are not"), the tiresome quarrel over how to handle "free forces" dragged on throughout the year. Shortly before Christmas, the discussion over masked, so-called autonomous nationalists appearing at NPD rallies injected even more controversy into the party dynamic.

In December, Deputy Chairman Rossmüller announced harsh measures to deal with these "foolish amateurs" who, in his words, "behave like crazy Coca-Cola Americans." As the official in charge of party rallies, he told Voigt, he would "have no qualms" about ordering the removal of these "enemies of the movement in response to even the slightest provocation" -- "even with the help of the police." Rossmüller has also refused to comment on the contents of his e-mails.

The NPD having neo-Nazis arrested -- this is a paradox that would hardly fit into the party leadership's PR strategy of producing headlines at all costs. This craving for public attention appears to have triggered desperate measures in some cases, as evidenced by a strategy Andreas Molau, the previously unknown NPD candidate in Lower Saxony, proposed to Chairman Voigt last summer to raise his profile in the media. According to the plan, Molau would publicly announce that he was looking for property in Lower Saxony. Under the assumption that potential sellers could be found, the NPD candidate would "visit properties in the state, announcing his visits in advance, once every two or three weeks."

The strategists apparently expected protests from local people opposed to having the NPD set up shop in their communities. As a result, Molau writes, "we would be guaranteed regular local media coverage of the top candidate." Chairman Voigt apparently thought the deceptive maneuver was an excellent idea. In an e-mail, he promptly instructed Molau to hold off on the plan until the fall, "otherwise its effect will have disappeared completely by the time the election rolls around." When SPIEGEL confronted him with the contents of the e-mails, Molau declined to comment. Chairman Voigt, however, noted that he has "no way of verifying the authenticity, completeness and general context" of the "quotes."

Whatever the right-wing extremists quarrel about internally, and whatever they happen to be planning, it always seems more ridiculous than threatening. This raises the question of whether they should in fact be treated as political adversaries worth taking seriously -- and whether proceedings to outlaw the party are even necessary. Perhaps the best way to deal with the NPD is to emulate the pope's approach.

On April 16, 2007, the NPD chairman sent a birthday e-mail to the Holy Father in Rome. Voigt wrote in his obsequious message that he admires Benedict XVI for his "argumentative disposition, respectability and intrepidness," ending the e-mail with the words: "May your pontificate lead to a revival of moral and cultural values."

The pope simply didn't respond.

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