'Anonymous' declares 'Blitzkrieg' on neo-Nazis

“Anonymous” hackers have declared “Blitzkrieg” on neo-Nazis for the New Year, disabling a number of their websites and publishing lists of extreme-right supporters.

A “Nazi-Leaks” portal has appeared on the internet listing hundreds of names of people subscribed to various shops selling far-right clothing, as well as writers for the Junge Freiheit newspaper which carries contributions from far-right commentators. The hackers say they have managed to close down 15 websites associated with the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), the Frankfurter Rundschau reported on Monday. They have reportedly called their campaign "Operation Blitzkrieg".

The paper said that the German version of the neo-Nazi internet platform “Altermedia” was at times offline. A Twitter message addressed to those trying to get into the site wished “all Nazis and in particular Altermedia a good start to the New Year.”

This was greeted by a message reported by left-wing websites as coming from Altermedia calling for information about the hackers, and offering to reward useful tips with the hackers' “amputated fingers.” The Frankfurter Rundschau said it could not check whether the comment was really from Altermedia as the site was offline.

Long lists of names, some with addresses, purporting to be customer registers of firms such as the infamous Thor Steinar clothing firm were posted on the “Nazi-Leaks” portal.

People listed on the portal as having written for the Junge Freiheit newspaper included Peter Scholl-Latour, according to the Frankfurter Rundschau. He is a respected journalist and Afghanistan expert who has written for, among other publications, the Stern magazines.

The Local

Thanks to Anon for the heads-up

Germany kicks out US nazi David Duke

David Duke poses in his Klan robes in front of the House of
Parliament in London in March 1978. Photo: Associated Press

David Duke, the ex-Ku Klux Klan leader, former US nazi boss and still close associate of British National Party boss, Nick Griffin, has been kicked out of Germany after being arrested in Cologne last week ahead of speaking at a nazi gathering in the city.

The arrest of the 61-year-old embezzler and fraudster – aka Dorothy Vanderbilt – came at a time of mounting public concern in Germany over the brutal murders, over an eleven-year period, of nine immigrant traders and a female police officer by members of the terrorist National Socialist Underground (NSU). Other NSU violence included bombings in Cologne in 2001 and 2004.

On his release, Duke who, like his pal Griffin, has been closely connected with Germany’s biggest nazi organisation, the National Democratic Party (NPD) – which, in turn, has been linked with the NSU killers – pledged to fight his deportation, begging supporters to send him money. Urgently. “While most of you will be getting ready for the warmth and love and friendship and family of Christmas, I will be far from home fighting the good fight,” he wrote.

Any would-be donors should exercise caution: Duke has form in this regard having served a year in US federal prison for filing a false tax return and mail fraud in 2003-2004 after it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars-worth of donations he had solicited from his followers were actually used to pay off his gambling debts.

Police in Cologne branded Duke an “undesirable foreigner” who was “obliged to leave German territory without delay”. The police statement added that Duke “was not entitled to stay in Germany” because of a travel ban against him in another, unspecified, European country. It was later disclosed that the group he was scheduled to address was the hardcore nazi Freies Netz Köln, in cooperation with the violent Kameradschaft Sturm Rhein-Sieg.

Press reports have compared Duke’s latest escapade to his 2009 expulsion from Czech Republic, following his arrest in Prague on suspicion of “denying or approving of the Nazi genocide and other Nazi crimes” and “promotion of movements seeking suppression of human rights,” which are crimes in the Czech Republic punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment. At the time of his arrest, Duke was being protected by thugs from the nazi group Národní Odpor.

Duke habitually describes the Nazi murder of six million Jews during WW2 as a “myth” and his antics have made him one of world’s most infamous racist extremists. In recent years Duke, who claims he intends to run in the next US presidential elections, has been active in Russia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Middle Eastern states of Syria and Iran.

He was a keynote speaker at the Iranian Holocaust denial conference in December 2006 telling the audience that: “The Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel... This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world... The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder.” Duke is also the author of several books including My Awakening (1998) and Jewish Supremacism (2002).

After being expelled to Austria where he now lives, the cosmetically altered racist was, incredibly not questioned by the Austrian police on his return.

Hope not hate

Germany to compensate 'neo-Nazi' murder victims

One alleged member of the neo-Nazi group,
Beate Zschaepe, blew up her flat before handing herself in

Germany has agreed to compensate families of victims of an alleged neo-Nazi cell accused of killing 10 people over a decade.

The parliament, chancellery and presidency also agreed to hold a national memorial service for the dead. The killings have long been known as the "kebab murders" because many of those killed ran snack shops. Detectives have charged a woman and arrested another person in connection with the case.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has called it a national disgrace, and questioned how the group could have slipped under the radar when it was known to the authorities. Among the alleged victims were nine immigrants - eight from Turkey and one from Greece - and a police officer.

Promising compensation, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told reporters: "I fear that at the end of the investigation, we will uncover more victims of xenophobia than we are aware of today. Even if financial help cannot undo the suffering, I will attempt to give the victims' families a sign of our solidarity with compensation from my budget."

The existence of the cell, linked to the National Socialist Underground group, emerged when two alleged members of the group killed themselves. The two men, Uwe Mundlos, 38, and Uwe Boenhardt, 34, were found dead earlier this month in a caravan in Eisenach in eastern Germany. They had left behind a DVD in which they admitted to the 10 killings.

Beate Zschaepe, 36, who had shared a house with the two men, has since been charged with membership of a terrorist organisation. She had handed herself in.

Germany's top prosecutor Harald Range said two other people are suspected of helping the group.

Detectives are reopening all unsolved cases stretching back to 1998 in which possible racist motives could have been involved. The alleged neo-Nazi cell is also suspected of carrying out a bomb attack in Cologne, in which 23 people were wounded, and a number of bank robberies.

The killings have reheated the debate in Germany as to whether to ban the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). A previous attempt was rejected by the country's constitutional court in 2003.

BBC

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

'Neo-Nazi' arrested over bomb attacks

German police yesterday arrested a suspected member of a neo-Nazi terrorist gang held responsible for a hitherto unexplained series of murders and bomb attacks in which a policewoman and nine immigrant kebab stall owners were killed.

Intelligence officials have described the string of murders and bomb blasts, which had baffled police for 11 years, as Germany's "worst case of right-wing violence in decades" and there were renewed calls yesterday for the government to ban the country's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party.

The suspect, a 37-year-old man named only as Holger G, was arrested early yesterday near Hanover. Police said he was thought to be a member of the "National Socialist Underground" terror group and was believed to have supplied three other gang members with a driving licence and passport. The arrest followed a police raid last week in the east German city of Zwickau, where the bodies of gang members Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, both in their thirties, were discovered in a caravan. Police say they probably committed suicide.

A third suspect, a 36-year-old woman identified as Beate Zschäpe, surrendered to police after blowing up the flat where she had been living in an attempt to destroy incriminating evidence. However, investigators found a Ceska pistol in the ruins, which ballistics experts linked to the murders of one Greek and eight Turkish kebab sellers in incidents throughout Germany from 2000.

The gang is also thought to have been behind a bomb blast at Düsseldorf railway station in 2000, in which several Jews from the former Soviet Union were hurt.

Independent

Neo-Nazi boss to appeal to top court for hotel ban

Udo Voigt, chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party, is preparing to appeal to the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) in Karlsruhe, after he was allegedly barred from a hotel for his political views.

Voigt's wife booked four days in the Hotel Esplanade in the eastern German spa town of Bad Saarow in December 2009, but the hotel refused to accept the booking, saying that Voigt's "political beliefs" meant that the hotel could not fulfil its aim of "providing every single guest with an excellent wellness experience."

Voigt's legal complaints have been unsuccessful so far, and according to a report on news magazine Der Spiegel's website on Sunday, he is planning to appeal to the BGH next Friday.

His lawyer countered the hotel's decision by saying that other guests could be disturbed by the presence of "black Africans, Muslims and severely disabled people."

But, Voigt's lawyer said, "in a free democracy, our citizens are expected to show tolerance that some people might consider an imposition." Otherwise a democratic society cannot function, "because there would be too many moves towards discrimination, and at the end we have a fractured society without solidarity."

The hotel's lawyer argued that Voigt was demanding "tolerance that neither he nor the NPD extend to others."

The Local

Far-Right Humor? Neo-Nazi Village Features 'Happy Holocaust' BBQ

"A place for people to gather," is how far-right NPD
politician Stefan Köster describes the garden behind his office.

Jamel, a tiny German village, is well-known for its connections to right-wing radicals. On the eve of elections in the state where the community is located, a journalist ran across a BBQ brandishing the phrase "Happy Holocaust." Was it a tasteless joke or a further symbol of a town that has lost its way?

Much has been written about the village of Jamel near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Hitler salutes in the streets, firing practice in local forests and outsiders chased away. The small run-down settlement has become a dark symbol of the growing reach of neo-Nazi ideology.

In the run-up to Sunday's local ballot in the state, a journalist from the website VBS TV arrived in Jamel. Although she was familiar with the village's larger-than-life reputation, she was shocked to see a large rusty barbeque inscribed with the phrase "happy holocaust."

The grill was in the barbed-wire encircled garden of the office of the far-right extremist National Democratic Party (NPD). The backyard was overlooked by a watchtower and a red, black and white old German Reich flag of the type used by the far-right scene.

'Stupid or Provocative?'

"I was shocked and I just couldn't believe what I saw. It felt really surreal," VBS TV journalist Barbara Dabrowska told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It was like in a bad American movie that tries to come up with the most ridiculous idea for how to make Nazis look really terrible. ... They probably meant it as a joke, but I was annoyed by their either stupid or incredibly provocative approach."

In her news report, Dabrowska interviewed Stefan Köster a politician for the NPD, a party dubbed "racist, anti-Semitic, revisionist" by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Köster stressed his party's social outreach, explaining how his party distributes CDs in school yards and promotes German folk dancing. Asked about the happy holocaust barbeque in the garden behind his office, he said he hadn't noticed it before.

"Maybe someone is making fun of the political class because of how they repress open discussion," he said. "After all, if someone has an opinion about the holocaust, they should be able to express it," he stated, adding that he didn't find it to be funny.

"It must belong to someone in the building, but to me that matter is unimportant," he said.

The NPD party won seats in the state parliament for the second time in Sunday's state election.

Spiegel Online

The stork sticking its beak into the German far right

Armed with a copy of Mein Krampf (My Cramp),
Heinar tours Germany to lampoon its neo-Nazis

He wrote a book called Mein Krampf (My Cramp), sports a toothbrush moustache and a rigid side parting and infuriates members of Germany's main neo-Nazi party with his satirical take on the Teutonic far-right.

The character in question is Storch Heinar, an anti-Nazi cartoon stork, whose image has appeared more than 5,000 times on anti far-right campaign posters in north-eastern Germany where state elections will be held on Sunday. The stork posters proclaiming "Stork Power instead of Nazis" have been deliberately placed beside the campaign placards of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD).

The lampooned NPD is furious. Party workers have made frenzied efforts to rid the region's big cities of stork posters to avoid further ridicule. Hundreds of Stork Power placards have been ripped from lampposts in the port of Rostock. "We are on the home stretch. The stork is giving his all to keep out the extremist idiots," says creator and Social Democrat politician, Matthias Brodkorb.

Storch Heinar began life as a satirical anti-Nazi figure whose aim was to debunk the "Thor Steiner" clothing frequently worn as a status symbol by members of far-right and skinhead groups. Heinar's Hitler moustache and Mein Krampf biography is complemented by his penchant for steel helmets and egg nogs and a rabid intolerance of frogs.

Mediatex, the company which owns the "Thor Steiner" label, tried to get "Storch Heinar" banned for belittling its products. But last year a court in Bavaria threw out the case after a judge ruled that he could see no reasonable grounds for the complaint. Aping the language of Adolf Hitler, Storch Heinar boasted afterwards: "The enemy has been destructively defeated."

Storch Heinar has since gone from strength to strength. The cartoon character has toured Germany with his own rock band: "Storchkraft" (Stork Power). T-shirts and badges bearing his image are best-sellers. He has even travelled the country promoting Mein Krampf.

The Social Democrats' decision to use the stork for their election campaign in the north east is a new development, but has gained popular local support. Benjamin Weiss, a Rostock hotel owner, grew so irritated by the NPD's xenophobic propaganda in a region that depends heavily on tourism that he joined the "Storch Heinar Division" and organised his own team to put up some 300 stork posters around his hotel. "I am fed up with seeing my guests welcomed to Rostock with slogan such as: 'Tourists welcome – foreigners out,'" he said.

The NPD has parliamentary seats in the east German states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Pomerania. The government's bid to ban the openly racist organisation was rejected by Germany's constitutional court in 2003 after it emerged that intelligence service moles were the source of incriminating evidence against the party.

The NPD's chances of retaining its north-east seats are considered so narrow it is toughto make an accurate prediction. "The far right gets particularly annoyed by humorous initiatives," said Gudrun Heinrich, a political scientist at Rostock university. "Because it doesn't know how to deal with them."

Independent

Hiding in plain sight: Germany's Neo-Nazis ditch skinhead look

Far-right groups are hoping to win votes by blending in with mainstream society – but they are still clinging to the hate crimes.

The summer fete was well under way in the normally sleepy village of Lübtheen in the Mecklenburg region of eastern Germany. Locals tending stalls outside low red brick houses offered home-baked bread and smoke-cured sausage. They hardly noticed the group of well-groomed young men in orangeT-shirts mingling with the crowd and distributing balloons and leaflets.

"The shirts they were wearing were exactly the same colour as those usually worn by Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives at campaign rallies," Ute Lindenau, Lübtheen's mayor, told The Independent. "Nobody had the slightest idea that the men were all neo-Nazis until after they had left and people had time to study their vile propaganda."

The new and almost covert style of canvassing was being practised by Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), which is fighting to retain parliamentary seats in key elections in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern this autumn. The party first won seats there in 2006 after mounting a virulent campaign against foreigners. It also has seats in the east German state of Saxony

For Mrs Lindenau, the tactic was not much of a surprise. As a committed anti-Nazi and the mayor of a town known as a far-right stronghold of the east, she has watched the NPD gradually shed its skinhead image in an attempt to appeal to more voters. "These days the neo-Nazis are almost invariably polite and they make an effort to look respectable. They seem to have realised that the skinhead look is a vote loser," she said.

Mrs Lindenau's observations have now been borne out by Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BVS), the equivalent of Britain's MI5. In a report published last week, the domestic intelligence agency concluded that the country's far right had all but completely shed the aggressive skinhead image it was renowned for in the 1990s. "Members of the far right scene prefer to wear clothing or brands that orient themselves more towards general trends in youth fashion," the report noted. "The more noticeable skinhead culture is becoming increasingly less interesting for far right extremist youths."

But the less aggressive image adopted by the German far right has not resulted in a corresponding drop in violence. On the contrary, the BVS found that the number of neo-Nazis prepared to use extreme violence to convey their political message had increased dramatically, from 5,000 in 2009 to 5,600 last year. The report put the total number of far right extremists at 25,000 and noted that the number of far right crimes in the former communist east had risen by an alarming 40 per cent.

The kind of violence meted out by Germany's growing "autonomous nationalist" groups was graphically illustrated in March this year at the trial of members of a banned neo-Nazi group called Sturm 34. In a style reminiscent of the campaign mounted by Hitler's Nazis to make German towns and villages "Jew-free", Sturm 34 set about trying to make the east German town of Mittweida "insect-free and brown".

"Brown" is a German byword for Nazi. By "insect-free", the group signalled that it was out to rid the town of anyone who held a different opinion to its own. The court heard how the gang patrolled Mittweida and set about "insects" – mostly punk rockers and vagrants – with baseball bats and boxing gloves filled with sand to double the effect of face punches.

Sturm 34 persecuted the town's inhabitants for months before police finally intervened. In one particularly brutal incident the gang appears to have practised a favourite form of neo-Nazi assault called "kerb biting" in which the victim's lower jaw is smashed against a kerbstone with a kick from a steel-capped boot.

Experts on the far right say that in public the NPD's political core goes out of its way to distance itself from such behaviour in public. Many of its members have exchanged skinhead haircuts and boots for an almost preppy look.

Michael Weiss, the author of a new study on neo-Nazi dress codes entitled Hide and Seek, says the increasingly ordinary appearance of far-right extremists means they can often blend in at left-wing demonstrations or in sports stadiums. "These people no longer stand out," he said.

To recognise each other, neo-Nazis now resort increasingly to an array of about 150 secret codes, according to Mr Weiss. These include the number 88 on T-shirts or other garments. The eight represents the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 corresponds to HH, for Heil Hitler, a phrase banned in Germany along with the swastika.

Neo-Nazis have also started to wear the black and white Palestinian Kaffiyeh scarf – a garment once the preserve of the far left at demonstrations – in an attempt to signal that they are against Israel. "Their style incorporates elements from rock and pop culture. Neo-Nazis now have piercings," Mr Weiss said.

In Mecklenburg, where the NPD's popularity may be just enough to enable it to stay in parliament after this autumn's state election, the party's attempts to garner support have not been confined to a new dress code. The Social Democrat-run state government recently became so concerned about the party's attempts to infiltrate schools and youth groups that it insisted teachers sign a declaration pledging their commitment to democracy.

However some of the far-right party's politicians have not managed to hide behind the new guise of respectability. Sven Kruger, a building contractor who is also an NPD politician, has been exposed for using a sign to advertise his company which shows a sledgehammer smashing what looks like a Star of David. His premises were searched last year and prosecutors discovered photographs of German Jewish community leaders which were suspected of having been used as targets for pistol shooting practice.

Finding new support

* Germany banned Hitler's National Socialist Party in 1945, but the neo-Nazi NPD was allowed to form in West Germany in 1964 and made some short-lived political gains during that decade, although it has never entered a national government.

The party found new support in east Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and has since won seats in eastern state parliaments.

The government tried to ban the NPD in 2001, but the constitutional court overruled it. The NPD merged with another far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU) last year. It is estimated to have 6,600 members and 25,000 supporters, many of whom belong to other neo-Nazi groups.

Independent

'Nazi Leaks' And The NPD - Leak Of 60,000 Far-Right E-Mails Reveals Extremist Chaos

A massive leak of internal communications, dubbed "NaziLeaks," has embarrassed Germany's far-right NPD. The roughly 60,000 e-mails which have been obtained by SPIEGEL reveal blatant racism, internal strife and shady financial dealings within the party.

Udo Voigt, the chairman of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), had hoped that 2011 would see the radical right make an important step forward in Germany. On Jan. 1, a merger with its rival far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU), went into effect, thereby combining their numbers just in time for a year that will see parliamentary elections in seven of Germany's 16 federal states. In a New Year's speech, Voigt confidently told his supporters that 2011 would be a "small super-election year."

"State elections, municipal elections -- Germans will finally get a chance to punish those at the top," Voigt said, looking straight into the camera. "We have a chance. We have a program for the future."

Now, less than six weeks later, Voigt's cockiness has given way to disillusionment. For the second time since 2008, tens of thousands of internal party e-mails have been leaked. SPIEGEL, along with other publications, has been given access to more than 60,000 e-mail messages from the accounts of NPD politicians. The party has labeled the people behind the leaks "criminal suppliers." It remains unclear whether the digital information came from a disgruntled individual within the party's headquarters or was obtained by a hacker.

The e-mails lay bare the chaotic internal life of the far-right party. They testify to the problems encountered during the merger with the DVU, shady finances related to state election campaigns and internal wrangling that often degenerated into hateful words and insults toward other party members.

The e-mails also document blatant racism. One senior Bavarian NPD official writes about "Kanacken," a racist term of abuse directed against people of immigrant descent, while a well-known neo-Nazi from the southwestern city of Aschaffenburg reflects on the "National Socialist movement." One NPD official from Hamburg complains about another party member having a "Negress" as a Facebook friend.

Sensitive Details about the NPD-DVU Merger

Still, the most awkward details from the data leak regard Voigt's prestige project, the NPD's merger with its former rival, the DVU. They disclose that there was massive resistance to the move within the DVU. One DVU member wrote in an e-mail sent ahead of Dec. 12, the day of the party convention where the merger was voted on, that DVU chairman Matthias Faust would get to experience his own "Waterloo" -- in other words, a total defeat. In order to help the merger go through, one NPD official from the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg offered the support of a "Kampfgruppe" (a term associated with the Nazi era, referring to a combat unit) from the city of Schwabisch Hall. The unit, the official wrote, could be transported in a rental van to the DVU convention, which was being held in Kirchheim, a small town in the eastern state of Thuringia. "Nine men cost €524 ($710)," he wrote. The fee included €45 for meals, he explained, "as an incentive."

However, it would appear that not all of the van's passengers would be eligible to vote. The NPD official asked Faust to supply him with a "back-dated DVU membership card and a back-dated invitation" for his girlfriend, who would be coming along. When approached by SPIEGEL, Faust denied having supplied a back-dated membership card or invitation. Talk of the "Kampfgruppe" could only have been "a joke," he added, saying that "absolutely no combat units were present" at the convention. What's more, he said, guests wouldn't have been allowed to vote.

A majority of people attending the Dec. 12 convention voted for the merger. Since then, the right-wing extremists have been calling their common party "NPD -- The People's Union." Still, the merger is far from being a done deal. After the vote was held, senior officials representing DVU associations in four states complained of voting improprieties, such as not having been given enough time to properly review and respond to certain documents in the run-up to the vote. In January, a state court in Munich sided with the complaining officials, declaring that the vote did not meet democratic requirements and that a new vote would have to be held before a merger agreement could be signed.

Money Problems and Inflated Ambitions

In addition to such legal troubles, the NPD continues to struggle with financial shortfalls. The NPD is hoping that it will clear the 5 percent hurdle in the March 20 election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and secure seats in the state parliament. But, to support its campaign, the party has apparently been forced to meet its financial needs with the help of private loans.

According to one of the internal emails, the family of Udo Pastors, the deputy head of the NPD in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, extended a €25,000 loan to the Saxony-Anhalt campaign organization under his wife's name. Ironically, Pastors, an avowed critic of capitalism, is charging the Saxony-Anhalt brethren 3.5 percent interest on the loan and only appears to trust his notoriously cash-strapped party to a certain degree: As collateral for the loan, Pastors demanded a guarantee from the NPD's national organization, which had to be personally signed by the NPD's national leader Udo Voigt.

This, in turn, does not seem to have entirely conformed to Voigt's understanding of loyal camaraderie. In an e-mail to Matthias Heyder, the NPD's lead candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state elections, Voigt grumbled that it was "a joke that, of all people, a man as well-off as Udo (Pastors) still wants a guarantee in this case." Pastors has confirmed the existence of the loan but refuses to provide any additional details. Voigt opted to not respond to questions regarding the loan.

The financial shortages also have something to do with the costly campaign in Saxony-Anhalt as well as with Heyder himself and his at times ambitious campaign plans. For example, although he is just a regional politician, Heyder wanted to have a "documentary" filmed about him in which he flies "from appointment to appointment" in an airplane and is welcomed upon arrival at airports. What's more, as Heyder wrote to the NPD's media relations officer, he wanted to have members of the press accompany him on his flights, who would get to see "real rallies" whenever he landed. The point of all these staged events would be to portray the NPD as a serious party -- despite the fact that recent polls put its support at a meager 3 percent -- and to help it secure the votes it needs to win seats in the state parliament. Heyder has also declined to respond to inquiries.

NPD Struggling to Mobilize Supporters

While the NPD in Saxony-Anhalt have their heads in the clouds, their colleagues in Baden-Wurttemberg are having a hard time mustering enough people on the ground. The NPD in the state is suffering from mobilization problems: The far-right party has to collect 150 valid signatures in each election district in order to be allowed to field their own candidates in the state parliamentary election on March 27.

In December, Janus Nowak, a local party official from the town of Boblingen, wrote an e-mail with "ALARM" in its subject line. In the e-mail, he reported that, despite months of trying, party members were "apparently incapable" of even "getting merely a single signature per day." In order to increase the yield, the NPD official provided the would-be signature-gatherers with detailed suggestions on how they "could address people on the street and be successful." For example, he suggested that every pitch should begin with the words: "Hello, I'm not trying to sell anything. No vacuum cleaners or washing machines or anything."

Once they had gotten that far, campaign workers were instructed to make sure "to look people in the eye," rather than looking at their clipboards, and to avoid saying anything too "complicated." The most important piece of advice regarded what came last: "Say 'Thank you' and don't talk too much." The idea of deploying professional signature collectors, such as an "NPD organizational wizard" from the town of Volklingen, was even considered. But the man in question appeared to lack selfless dedication to the party. Instead, as Nowak complained in an e-mail, he asked for "€1,000 a week" in addition to "meals + additional helpers + information kiosks + accommodation." Nowak also declined to comment on the e-mail exchanges.

'Capitalist' Scheme

Rudolf Schützinger, a member of the NPD's executive committee in Baden-Wurttemberg, also gave some thought to how to increase the number of signatures being collected. He suggested paying €1 to "each collector who turns in an acceptable, unauthenticated signature" and €2 for every authenticated signature.

Schutzinger also had another idea up his sleeve: attracting campaign donors with a sort of "profit-sharing" scheme. He suggested that, if the party succeeded in winning more than 1 percent of the vote, donors would get their "entire donation back within a set time frame + 30 percent." But, if the NPD could "not master" the 1 percent hurdle, donors would get back half of their contribution, while still being able to write the donation off against their taxes. In doing so, they would "have a loss of only 25%." According to Schutzinger, this scenario offered the advantage that the party would not have to assume any "financial risk," while at the same time motivating "the gamblers among our sympathizers" to make donations.

In an e-mail, the NPD official admitted that the scheme had "a capitalist aftertaste" and noted that it would need "legal validation" as far as party finance laws were concerned. In the end, the idea was apparently rejected. Schutzinger also chose not to respond to SPIEGEL's inquiries.

Threat of Legal Action

NPD spokesman Klaus Beier has threatened legal action in response to the publication of the emails. According to Beier, the "e-mail traffic between both party officials and party members, which used encryption technology (was) copied in breach of (Germany's) communication secrecy law" and that "the texts, whose content was probably manipulated" were "provided to the compliant journalists." On Saturday, the news agency DPA reported that the NPD had filed a criminal complaint over the publication of the e-mails.

In any case, Beier refused to say anything about who was behind the data leak or how it came about. He did say, however, that one had to assume that "the system has far-reaching means at its disposal for reading all of the NPD's e-mail communication."

Beier's remarks are reminiscent of the stance that the party took back in 2008, when SPIEGEL published an earlier collection of internal NPD e-mails.

Free Internet Press

The Village Where the Neo-Nazis Rule

Hitler salutes in the street and firing practice in the forest: Neo-Nazis have taken over an entire village in Germany, and authorities appear to have given up efforts to combat the problem. The place has come to symbolize the far right's growing influence in parts of the former communist east.

Horst and Birgit Lohmeyer have been working on their life's dream for six years, renovating a house in the woods near Jamel, a tiny village near Wismar in the far northeastern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Birgit Lohmeyer writes crime novels, her husband is a musician, and both try to pretend everything is normal here in Jamel.

It wasn't easy to find their new home. The Lohmeyers spent months driving out to the countryside every weekend, heading east from where they lived in Hamburg, but most of the houses they saw were too expensive. Then they came across the inexpensive red brick farmhouse in Jamel. Slightly run-down, but not far from the Baltic Sea, the house sits surrounded by lime and maple trees, near a lake.

The Lohmeyers knew that a notorious neo-Nazi lived nearby -- Sven Krüger, a demolition contractor and high-level member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD). What the Lohmeyers didn't know was that other neighbors felt terrorized by Krüger. He and his associates were in the process of buying up the entire village.

Jamel is an example of the far-right problem that has plagued Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for years. The rural region, once part of communist East Germany, has a poor reputation in this regard -- the NPD, which glorifies the Third Reich, has been in the state parliament since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of daily life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politicians from all the democratic parties has shaken the state. Sometimes hardly a week goes by without an attack on another electoral district office, with paint bombs, right-wing graffiti and broken windows.

Norbert Nieszery, leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the state parliament, calls it an "early form of terror." Nieszery's own office windows have been smashed twice. State Interior Minister Lorenz Caffier of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) says he has registered a "new level" of right-wing extremist violence. He believes the NPD is trying to raise its profile through aggressive behavior ahead of the state parliament election in September. One local mayor requested police protection after receiving repeated right-wing threats. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, has warned that the NPD is becoming increasingly influential in local municipalities and that the neo-Nazis are trying to entrench themselves in daily life.

Mounting Concern About Far-Right Influence

Nowhere have they succeeded as well as in Jamel. If the right-wing extremists left, the village would be empty. Jamel is no longer just a problem at the regional or federal state level -- even Berlin is growing concerned about the situation.

SPD member Wolfgang Thierse, vice president of Germany's federal parliament, the Bundestag, visited the village a few months ago. He spent half an hour in the Lohmeyers' living room and promised to support them in their fight against the neo-Nazis. So far, nothing has changed. Jamel has come to symbolize the fact that there are places in Germany where right-wing extremists can do virtually whatever they want.

When the Lohmeyers moved here in 2004, they started to fix up their country house and to make contact with the neighbors -- although not with the neo-Nazi Krüger. They were sure right-wing extremists wouldn't be the only people in Jamel.

Only gradually did they realize just where they had ended up. Plaster crumbled from many of the houses in the village and one roof had collapsed completely. Beer bottles, car tires and gas canisters were littered behind the bus stop. There were metal fences surrounding some properties and attack dogs strained against their chains in the front yards. No one bothered to remove the swastika scribbled on the sign at the entrance to the village.

Children Giving Hitler Salute

There were young men with shaved heads and army trousers in the village and Nazi rock music could be heard from across the fields on the weekends. Shots sounded from the woods, where the neo-Nazis practiced their shooting -- police later found bullet casings in trenches there. When the Lohmeyers walked through the village, children raised their hands in the Nazi salute.

Krüger has shaped the village. He grew up here, with a father who was known as a right-wing radical and who used to make his son salute each morning in the snow. Young Krüger was an outsider at school, an acquaintance remembers, and didn't find friends until he joined the skinhead scene. As a young man, he incited right-wing thugs to attack a campsite and spent time in pre-trial detention on suspicion of burglary. Still, for a long time, the Krügers were the only neo-Nazis in the village.

"Now," says Horst Lohmeyer, "they see Jamel as a 'nationally liberated zone'" -- a neo-Nazi term for places foreigners and those of foreign descent must fear to tread. The extremists took over the village in just a few years. They now own seven of the 10 houses and have driven out anyone who couldn't come to terms with them. They battered down doors and broke windows, slashed tires, flew the German imperial war flag and celebrated Hitler's birthday. In the 1990s, they stuck dead chickens on one family's garden fence with the warning, "We'll smoke you out."

The village emptied and Krüger encouraged his right-wing friends to buy the available houses. Few others dared to venture into Jamel anymore. Neo-Nazis greeted one couple that wanted to move there with "Piss off" -- and the couple's house burned down shortly before they planned to move in. One new property owner dared to set foot in the village only accompanied by police.

The Lohmeyers have made it their life's work not to let themselves be driven out of Jamel. Each year, they host a rock festival on a field behind their house. Governor Erwin Sellering of the SPD has been patron of the festival since 2009. Police fence in the area and guard the entrance, and in past years, things remained largely calm.

Help is Far Away

This summer, though, neo-Nazis jumped over the fence, yelling slurs and attacking concertgoers. Police stepped in and stopped the troublemakers. But police can't always protect the Lohmeyers -- the nearest station is 12 kilometers away.

Horst Lohmeyer sits in his kitchen, bent over a map, and runs his finger along the roads and through the towns -- Gressow, Neu Degtow, Grevesmühlen. It takes a quarter of an hour to reach the nearest police station. When Krüger got married this summer, the village was inundated with several hundred right-wing extremists from Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, including a number of high-ranking NPD politicians such as Stefan Köster, NPD party head for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Jamel has become a right-wing pilgrimage site -- they come from all over Europe to see the village where neo-Nazis call the shots. They celebrated Krüger's wedding until late in the night, with nationalist rock music and fireworks. The Lohmeyers lay awake in bed, frozen with fear.

Mayor Uwe Wandel is helpless in the face of the right-wing movement in his community. He sounds bitter when he talks about Jamel. "The police, the authorities, no one dares to intervene," he says. "The Nazis are laughing in our faces." Wandel says he has repeatedly asked the state government for help. The interior minister and a parliamentary delegation came by one time, he adds. "They stayed for 20 minutes, expressed concern -- then they left again."

No One Responsible

Jamel has become a lawless place, Wandel complains, and the authorities don't take decisive enough action against the right-wing extremists. He says Krüger is allowed to dump demolition waste and burn trash in the village with impunity. The head of the department of public order in nearby Grevesmühlen says higher-level officials at the district level need to tackle the problem. They in turn say the local authority is responsible for Jamel.

Krüger, meanwhile, has much bigger plans. He has been a member of the district council for the NPD since 2009 and has bought parts of a concrete factory in Grevesmühlen, which he uses for his NPD office and his demolition company. The company logo shows the outline of a Star of David being smashed; the slogan is, "We do the dirty work." Barbed wire encloses the factory premises and dogs bark. A sign above the entrance reads, "Better dead than a slave." Krüger prefers not to comment on the accusations against him. All he says is, "Nothing that's written about me is true. I don't stand a chance against the system."

Krüger has hired new employees in the last few months. He gets contracts from fellow members of the far-right scene, but also from local businesses. Mayor Wandel says he's appalled by how far these right-wing structures now extend. "I'm afraid of a second, third, fourth Jamel," he says.

Neo-Nazis placed a boulder at the entrance to the village. A plaque attached to the rock reads, "Village of Jamel - free, social, national." Signs next to it point the way to Hitler's birthplace ("Braunau am Inn 855 km") and to the formerly German cities of Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland) and Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia). No one has removed the rock. "We've given up on Jamel," Wandel says.

Only the Lohmeyers are left.

Spiegel Online

Germany's far-right flops

Support for the National Democratic Party of Germany is sliding, and it's resorting to premium-rate phone lines to stay afloat

When the Berlin wall fell apart, back in November 1989, fears that Germany's forthcoming reunification would lead to the revival of violent nationalism and bitter revisionism were looming all over Europe. Were those anticipating the Third Reich spirit's renaissance right? Looking at the reunified Germany 20 years on, they surely were not.

Ever since the wall came down, Germany's political establishment has made efforts to ease the anxieties of its neighbours to the east, namely Poland and the Czech Republic. Critics of Germany's détente with both countries have been marginalised and deprived of any tangible influence on German politics.

Evidence of this tendency was visible this week, when foreign minister Guido Westerwelle intervened to stop a figure unpopular with Poles being appointment to a museum post. The Federation of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen) had been trying to place its chairwoman, Erika Steinbach, on the board of a planned museum about the ethnic Germans expelled from countries in central Europe after the second world war. Steinbach's candidature was unacceptable to many Poles, as back in 1991, she was one of the Bundestag members who voted against the recognition of the German-Polish border. By blocking her bid, Germany's incumbent government has once again proved its commitment to the reconciliation process.

Still, German nationalism is not quite dead, and if it has a face, it is that of the BNP's sister organisation, the NPD (National Democratic party of Germany). There was a time when the neo-Nazi party was on the ascendancy. In 2004, the NPD managed to break into Saxony's state parliament with a 9.2% share of the vote, followed by its success in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two years later. Prior to 1989, both states were part of East Germany, and since the reunification they have suffered from soaring unemployment, deindustrialisation and migration to the west. The NPD has managed to spin political capital from the eastern Germans' dissatisfaction, just like the BNP has seduced a section of British society.

But the similarities end right there. While the BNP's leader rejoices in his Question Time debut, and his party benefits from two recently gained seats at the European parliament, his fellow travellers in Germany are making desperate attempts to save their own party from imminent bankruptcy. The NPD has found itself in financial dire straits owing to a series of accounting irregularities, for which it was fined a total of €2.5m in April. Last year the party's treasurer was arrested on suspicion of transferring €627,000 from the party's accounts to his own company. Perhaps the best measure of the NPD's desperation is that it launched a 0900 prefix phone line, mostly employed by German sex-line operators, through which its supporters can donate much-needed euros. "Every phone call counts!", encourages the NPD's website.

In the most recent Bundestag elections, the nationalists pulled a meagre 1.5% share of the vote, overtaken by the German Pirate party, who received 2%. In the light of all these setbacks, it seems that, after years of rising fortunes, the BNP's German allies have found themselves at the edge of a steep political slope. This rise-and-fall scenario could very well repeat itself in the UK.

UTV

English Nazi Slogans Are Legal, German Court Rules

This 2006 police photo shows propaganda
material seized from the banned Blood and Honour group

Using Nazi symbols and slogans is a punishable crime in Germany. But now neo-Nazis may have more leeway after a federal German court ruled that slogans are not illegal if they are translated into another language.

Is a Nazi slogan still a Nazi slogan if it is uttered in English instead of German? Not necessarily -- at least according to Germany's Federal Court of Justice. In a landmark decision Thursday, the Karlsruhe-based court ruled that using Nazi slogans translated into a language other than German would not, in general, be a punishable crime.

The ruling is linked to a case in which a neo-Nazi was prosecuted and fined €4,200 ($6,000) in 2005 for distributing clothing and merchandising bearing the slogan "Blood and Honour," written in English. With the ruling, the court overturned the verdict against the neo-Nazi, who was not named, but said it could still be possible to prosecute him under other laws relating to right-wing extremism.

Although "Blood and Honour," which is also the name of a banned far-right organization, alludes to the Hitler Youth motto "Blut und Ehre," the court ruled that translating the words represented a "fundamental change" in the slogan, meaning its use was no longer punishable under German law. The judges said that Nazi slogans were characterized not only by their actual meaning but also by the fact that they were in German.

Senior judge Jörg-Peter Becker said that the court "is aware that its decision gives neo-Nazis a degree of leeway to translate their chants and slogans." However, he added that legislation by itself is not enough to eliminate Nazi ideas from public discourse.

Giving the Hitler salute or using symbols or slogans associated with "unconstitutional" organizations such as the Nazi party is a serious crime in Germany, punishable by up to three years in prison. In 2008, police launched an investigation after a senior member of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) draped a banned swastika flag across a coffin at a funeral.

Spiegel

Germany's major neo-Nazi party faces ruin after €2.2m fine

Germany's largest neo-Nazi party is facing financial ruin after the Bundestag imposed a €2.2 million fine yesterday for filing fraudulent accounts. Leaders of the National Democratic Party (NPD) vowed yesterday to launch a legal challenge to the fine, due for payment in a month.

“Of course we are going to challenge it,” said Peter Marx, NPD general secretary. The party has little choice: long-running financial difficulties have left the NPD almost bankrupt. Last year, the former treasurer was imprisoned for two years and eight months for embezzling €750,000 in party funds.

Yesterday’s fine arises from falsely declared assets and funds in its 2007 accounts, a Bundestag statement said.

Although the NPD has no MPs in the Bundestag, it has representatives in two state parliaments, qualifying it for public funding although the party questions Germany’s democratic order. A Bundestag committee that audits party accounts said it found significant irregularities in the NPD’s 2007 figures.

The total fine imposed was €2.5 million, but NPD officials had already agreed to the withholding of €300,000 in state funds due this year.

Starved of funds, the party has let go over half its staff members in the Berlin headquarters. The financial difficulties will frustrate party ambitions in a series of state elections later this year. Yesterday’s fine is likely to cause further divisions between the NPD’s so-called “modern” and “Hitlerite” camps at this weekend’s party conference in Berlin.

Since entering the Saxon state parliament in 2004, the “modern” wing has pushed for the party to concentrate on a far-right social conservatism. They argue that bomber jackets and swastika flags scare away potential voters frustrated with the mainstream political handling of the financial crisis, social welfare cuts and bank bailouts. But the “Hitlerite” wing, drawn from extreme-right groupings, accuses the “modern” politicians of pursuing their careers at the expense of the party’s neo-Nazi, racist and anti-Semitic principles.

Party leader Udo Voigt has his own problems: he faces a challenge to his leadership at the weekend party conference. Then, later this month, he is likely to be convicted of defamation and inciting racial hatred over a party pamphlet published during the 2006 World Cup that ridiculed the German side’s only black player.

Earlier this week, the federal government banned a far-right youth movement for spreading Nazi propaganda.

Irish Times

German Boys Join Anti-Immigrant, Neo-Nazi Groups, Study Shows

A study funded by Germany’s Interior Ministry showed that more than twice as many German boys belong to anti-immigrant or neo-Nazi groups than claim membership of the major political parties’ youth organizations.

Out of more than 26,000 youths surveyed in 2007 and 2008, 4.9 percent of boys said they belonged to a “right-wing group or ‘Kamaradschaft’,” the study by Hanover-based research institute KFN showed. That compares with as many as 2 percent that belong to youth organizations for established parties.

“It’s shocking that these right-wing groups can be more successful at mobilizing our youth than the established parties,” KFN Director Christian Pfeiffer told reporters today in Berlin. While a comparison between such groups is inexact, since many established party youth clubs charge membership fees, Pfeiffer said it was instructive.

Last month, about 6,000 German skinhead and neo-Nazi groups in the eastern city of Dresden staged one of their biggest demonstrations since German reunification in 1990. The groups, mostly made up of youths tied to the anti-immigrant National Democratic Party, used the 64th anniversary of the 1945 firebombing of Dresden on Feb. 14 to hold a “mourning march.”

Speaking alongside German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble at a press conference, Pfeiffer said he didn’t know whether the 4.9 percent figure had increased, since a comparable number wasn’t available from previous studies. Some 2.6 percent of girls said they belonged to anti-immigrant and neo-Nazi organizations.

Kamaradschaften are clubs that offer a forum for symbols and songs that often recall Germany’s Nazi past. The display of Nazi symbols is prohibited in Germany.

The study also revealed that 29.7 percent of youths agreed with the statement that there are “too many foreigners in Germany;” another 34.8 percent tended toward that position, according to the study, Youth in Germany as Victims and Perpetrators of Violence.

Bloomberg

On Dresden Anniversary, Massive Protest Against Neo-Nazi March

Thousands turned out in central Dresden to protest a march by far-right supporters on the 64th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of the city. Police clashed with left-wing protestors, who threw stones and bottles.

Organizers of the alliance that formed as a counterweight to the neo-Nazi march through the eastern German city said around 11,000 people participated at several demonstrations. Police put that number at just under 10,000.

They were protesting a "mourning march" held by members of the extreme-right in the capital of the state of Saxony. For a decade, anti-immigrant and skinhead groups have marked the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden by Allied air raids, which took place Feb. 13-15, 1945, at the end of World War Two.

Many of the groups marching were affiliated with the National Democratic Party (NPD), a far-right political party which entered the Saxony state assembly in 2004.

This year’s event was organized by a group known as the Junge Landsmannschaft Ostdeutschland, supported by the NPD. The far-right marchers totaled around 6,000, according to police, about a thousand more than gathered in 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing.

Many in the far-right scene call the widespread destruction in Dresden a "Holocaust," and attempt to paint Germany as a victim of the war. The firebombing killed an estimated 25,000 people, mostly civilians, and wiped out the city center.

Eyewitnesses on Saturday said several hundred leftists who objected to the far-right procession tried to attack neo-Nazi participants, hurling bottles at the police cordon and damaging parked cars. Witnesses said several people were injured, although police have not confirmed this.

Clashes between left-wing and far-right groups are common on the anniversary. This year, police forces numbered around 4,000, some brought in from neighboring states.

Commemoration

Separately, thousands of pacifists took part in processions to both denounce the neo-Nazi threat and remember the city's dead.

On Saturday morning, peace services were held in churches and a synagogue. Afterwards, thousands of Dresden residents went to a central square, the site where numerous victims of the bombing were burned to death. Also participating in the commemorations were politicians from Dresden and Saxony as well as representatives from the United States and Great Britain.

Many mainstream Germans say that the huge loss of life must be remembered as a warning against war.

On Friday, the bell of the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, rang out in their memory. The church, one of the symbols of Dresden, collapsed two days after the raids. It remained a pile of rubble for decades until US and British donors helped pay to rebuild it in a gesture of reconciliation. It reopened in 2006.

Deutsche Welle

'The Feeling that the Führer Was my Uncle'

She spent 20 years as a leading member of Germany's neo-Nazi scene, but then decided to quit and changed her identity. Katja Wolf [not her real name] tells SPIEGEL ONLINE about how she grew into a world of far-right ideology, and how she now fears revenge for turning her back on it.

The woman is sitting on a bench in the park. There's hardly anyone about. She's wearing the white woollen hat and sunglasses to hide her identity. She feels like she is being pursued. "If my former comrades get hold of me my life might be in danger. My children would probably get kidnapped."

Katja Wolf spent 20 years in the uppermost echelons of Germany's neo-Nazi scene. She agreed to talk to us on condition that we don't reveal her true name or describe what she looks like. The meeting was arranged by an intermediary.

She can remember every detail about the day she escaped. It was a warm morning in early May 2005. The sky above her farm was cloudless and blue, she had sold the horses and had the pigs slaughtered a few days earlier. Now everything was quiet.

"I was getting more nervous with every passing minute," Katja recalls. "The moving truck was hours late. While my children and I waited for it, police were searching the house of my ex-husband." Katja had filed a police complaint against her former husband, the former regional chairman of the far-right Free German Workers' Party (FAP), and now time was running out. "I wondered who would arrive first at the farm," she says. "The moving van or neo-Nazis seeking revenge."

'The Feeling that the Führer Was my Uncle'

She speaks softly and exudes calm. "You could say I was born a neo-Nazi," she says. She was brought up mainly by her grandfather who had fought in the German army in World War II. "As an old veteran of the Wehrmacht he described the war to me in bright colors. He spent hours telling me why the Jews are evil and how to recognize them."

But her grandfather didn't just talk. "Sometimes I had to go on hill walks with him with a heavy rucksack. He drove me on until my feet bled." And he kept telling her about the war. "After I while I had the feeling that the Führer was my uncle."

At 13 she was wearing Doc Martens boots and a bomber jacket. The back of her head was shaved and she distributed swastika stickers in her school. And she was a member of the neo-Nazi youth group "Viking youth," which was later banned. When she was 16 she shouted at her female religion teacher in class: "You Jew, I'm not going to let you teach me!"

"An endless anger was burning in me," she remembers. "I felt I had to carry on my grandfather's fight."

After he classroom outburst Katja was expelled from the school. Her mother put her in a children's home but she ran away from it. "I climbed over the high wall of the home at dusk." Her comrades were waiting for her in a car. "As we drove off I knew there was no going back."

"I kept changing apartments every few day. People I'd never met before would put me up. Sometimes it was pensioners, sometimes it was young couples who walked around in Nazi uniforms all day long."

Plans for the Fourth Reich

She entered a secluded far-right existence removed from the outside world. On Hitler's birthday she and her comrades would celebrate by reading out passages from "Mein Kampf" and toast the Führer with sparkling wine. She married her husband, the man she fled from in 2005, on Hitler's birthday. They had several children together, and received money from their neo-Nazi group for each child they bore. They called it "litter premiums", says Katja.

Katja quickly ascended through the ranks of various organisations in the far right scene including the FAP and the National Democratic Party. She knew Holger Apfel, deputy chairman of the NPD and Udo Pastörs, head of the NPD's parliamentary group in the parliament of the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. "I would coordinate stunts with them, organize demonstrations, forge plans for the Fourth Reich," says Katja.

But the higher she rose, the more she started to have doubts. Cracks started to appear in her hermetically sealed off world. Ideology and reality started to drift ever further apart.

"On the one hand I didn't like the violence. On the other, I thought that many of my comrades weren't politically consistent enough. They would mouth off in front of the cameras and then quietly go to the office the next day." She said she never understood that approach. "I lived according to the motto: If you're bothering to do it, then do it right. Even if that sounds wrong today."

There was something else that drove Katja out of the neo-Nazi scene. The violence of her husband, who had a criminal record. "He beat me black and blue," she says. "He also injured the children. Once he even burned our daughter's skin."

Fanaticism, Violence and Schizophrenia

When he wasn't beating her or the children he would increasingly shut himself off. "He would speak to no one for weeks, not even to his comrades. He would just sit there watching films about the Third Reich and TV reports about suicide attacks."

Bernd Wagner, who helps people quit the far-right scene, says this behaviour is typical. "Many neo-Nazis realize that something's wrong about their view of the world. To get rid of this feeling they close themselves off from the rest of the world." They blank out everything that doesn't fit in with their ideology. The constant suppressions of feelings and thought often lead to "fanaticism, violence and schizophrenia," says Wagner.

He says many right-wing extremists sooner or later reach a point at which they want to quit. "But many don't do it because they're afraid of being pursued or punished." To help them overcome that fear Wagner and former neo-Nazi leader Ingo Hasselbach formed an organisation called Exit Deutschland which helps neo-Nazis get out of the scene.

They say they have helped more than 300 right-wing extremists to abandon neo-Nazism and start new lives over the last eight years. Katja Wolf is their most prominent dropout.

It was almost midday when the moving van finally arrived. "I knew I would lose everything by dropping out. Friends. Family. My ideology." She fled to a town in eastern Germany located between Dresden and Pirna, a region with an above-average proportion of neo-Nazis. "I thought my pursuers would least expect me to be living among them," she says. But the plan didn't work and she soon realized that her family was in danger. "I found out that my former comrades were looking for me," she says. "They called all kinds of government offices to try to find me."

Even though she was being hunted she held a news conference six months after she fled to explain why she had dropped out. The state-run organisation that was helping her at the time, called AussteigerhilfeRechts, criticized her move. "Frau Wolf didn't heed advice or stick to agreements," Georg Wessling, spokesman for the organisation, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "She sought publicity even though that put the measures taken to protect her at risk."

'You'll Only Die Exhausted'

Katja says the authorities weren't doing enough to hide her identity. While she argued with them, the neo-Nazis continued their hunt and eventually found out where she lived. Her ex-husband was the first to let her know she'd been found. He wrote her a letter.

Katja doesn't want to say what the letter said. But she said the contents largely match an article he published in the Internet shortly afterwards, and which SPIEGEL ONLINE has seen. In that article he indirectly refers to Katja as a "treacherous pig" who was now helping the domestic intelligence which "criminalizes, provokes, sows discord, buys and sells people, misinforms, corrupts, harasses and destroys families."

He indirectly threatened Katja in the article. He wrote that he wasn't interested in "physical attacks against his wife" because they would hit his children. But he said that he hoped the "traitors will one day be brought before a Reich court and get their deserved punishment."

Her husband's message had an effect. "People watched our house, photographed me and followed me," she says. No one ever assaulted her though. "They knew that I'm in touch with the authorities and the media." But she described the stalking as "intolerable psychological terror."

New threats kept appearing in the Internet. One read: "Don't try to run away, you'll only die exhausted."

The family moved again, and Katja again appealed to the media. "The work I did to help Nazi dropout programs and other initiatives against the far right didn't make our flight any easier," she says. "But there was no other way. It was may way of dealing with the past."

She kept on running for three years before her pursuers lost the trail. Today the family is relatively safe. "As safe as a 'treacherous pig' can ever be," she says.

Her children are gradually adjusting to normal life. "The older ones are preparing for jobs. With the smaller ones I'm happy that they can go grow up without pressure, duress or violence." They have the chance to shake off the dark past of their family.

Spiegel Online

Thousands protest in German town against neo-Nazi party meeting

Up to 4,000 demonstrators on Saturday protested against a congress of the minority neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD), saying there was no place in this Bavarian town for Nazis. A large police turnout prevented incidents after it was feared there could be clashes with left-wing extremists. A police spokesman said only 10 people were briefly detained Saturday.

Various local associations and several mainstream political parties had called for a major demonstration against the NPD congress with the slogan: "Bamberg is multi-colored, not brown." Under Nazism in Germany, brown was the color of Nazi stormtroopers' uniforms, and the color is still associated in German minds with the Nazis.

Shops in the historic centre of this ancient town carried placards in their windows with slogans such as: "Defend democracy, there is no place here for Nazis." Meanwhile some 300 NPD delegates assembled in a concert hall for their two-day meeting.

After the failure of attempts to get the courts to ban the congress, the civic authorities were obliged to permit the rental of the hall by the NPD. A fringe group with only 7,300 members, the NPD is the most radical of the extreme right-wing parties in Germany with a policy which is openly anti-foreigner, racist and anti-Semitic.

It has no deputies in the Bundestag, Germany's federal lower house in Berlin. But it does have deputies in two regional parliaments, in Saxony and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, both in former East Germany, where there is a high unemployment rate.

Although the media were officially allowed for the first time to attend all debates at an NPD congress, several German journalists were refused any access at all to the hall Saturday. They included a team from the main television channel ARD.

ABS/CBN

German police search youth headquarters of far-right group

Police searched the headquarters of a far right group's youth wing Monday as part of an investigation into members allegedly circulating banned material, officials said.

The federal and state office of the Young National Democrats — the youth wing of the National Democratic Party known by its German initials NPD — were searched in a morning raid in the eastern city of Bernburg, in Saxony Anhalt, police said in a statement. At the same time, police also searched an apartment in the city that was shared by the three suspects in the case.

Two of the suspects — identified only as a 26- and 31-year-old — are being investigated on suspicion they posted the lyrics of a banned song on the group's Internet site, police said. The third suspect, a 29-year-old, is alleged to have run a mail-order business selling items with banned symbols on them, as well as CDs with banned songs.

In Germany it is illegal to display Nazi symbols like the swastika, or to distribute songs praising the era or inciting racial hatred. The police statement, however, gave no indication what the songs or items linked to the case were, and nobody was available for clarification at the police office involved.

The statement also did not mention whether any of the suspects were arrested.

In 2003, Germany's highest court blocked an attempt to ban the NPD by the government, which argued that the party incited hate crimes against foreigners and Jews. The court refused to hear the case because the government cited statements by party members who turned out to be paid informers for state authorities.

International Herald Tribune

Police seize discs from far-right party in Germany

Berlin police who searched the national office of Germany's main far-right group, the National Democratic Party (NPD), said Friday they seized digital music suspected of breaking German laws against Nazis. The 50 recordings appeared to be seditious, and a separate inquiry had been opened into distributing anti-democratic propaganda.

Police also seized an unauthorized electro-shock weapon during the nine-hour hunt Thursday of the suburban Berlin offices, which have been violently attacked by leftist groups in the past.

German authorities have sought various ways to close down the party, which has no seats in the federal parliament but has seats in two eastern German states.

The national treasurer, Erwin Kemna, 57, was remanded in custody Friday in his home town, Muenster. He is accused of misappropriating funds from the party, which receives automatic government subsidies based on its voter support.

A prosecutions spokesman, Wolfgang Schweer, said Kemna confirmed payments to himself but asserted these were repayments of money he had earlier lent to the party or of cash loans by supporters. He is alleged to have taken 627,000 euros (909,000 dollars) to bolster the balance sheet of his fitted-kitchens company.

An NPD spokesman voiced concern Friday that the party might be penalized for accounting irregularities by the treasurer. He said, "Our financial position has been perilous since the start of 2007."

The NDP denies it is Nazi, but its nationalist, anti-foreigner message and its outreach to overtly neo-Nazi groups have made it a pariah for Germany's mainstream parties.

Earth Times

Treasurer of far-right NPD detained in Germany

Police detained the treasurer of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) Thursday after a raid on the party's headquarters in Berlin. The detention of Erwin Kemna was related to an investigation into corruption within the party, police sources told the Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

The NPD, which campaigns against foreigners in Germany, does not have any seats in the federal parliament but is represented in two state assembles in the former communist east of the country.

The NPD leader in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, Udo Pastoers, was ejected from the state assembly last week after he railed against Jews immigrating to Germany.

The NDP denies it is Nazi, but its nationalist, anti-foreigner message and its outreach to overtly neo-Nazi groups have made it a pariah for Germany's mainstream parties.

Earth Times