4.1 German neo-National Socialists (neo-Nazis)

4.1.1. The third RWE wave that started in the second half of the 1980s and continüd through the early 1990s, had fundamental repercussions on the development of RWE organizations and their organizational networks. The significant factors were:

* the co-operation between DVU and the more extreme NPD.

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<116> `... aus einer Reihe von Notwendigkeiten ein Programm mit anderen Rednern zusammengestellt haben ....' Bruno Wetzel to Irving, 8 July 1993. See also Irving to Bruno Wetzel, 21 June 1993; Irving to Bruno Wetzel, 8 July 1993.

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* the creation of a new party, the Republicans, a splinter group of the Bavarian CSU. Their leader Franz Sch”nhuber presenting it as a modernised version of RWE

* in the early 1990s a lurch in the NPD youth organization the JN, towards neoNazism. Günter Deckert, with whom Irving had many contacts in the 1990s, oversaw this process as leader of the NPD from 1991 to 1995.<117>

* the emergence of committed and militant neo-Nazis groups around Michael Kühnen, Christian Worch, and others, who succeeded in developing new organizations with roots in a violent neo-Nazi youth movement and linked to a prolonged spate of attacks on foreigners in eastern Germany that shocked Germany and the world.

4.1.2. In the following sections we will first deal with these movements and then, in a chronology of Irving's activities in Germany from 1989 to 1993, demonstrate Irving's close and enduring connection to these neo-Nazi groups. In the process it will be demonstrated that the rejuvenated international revisionist movement (following the Leuchter Report), of which Irving was a main pillar, and German RWE in general and the German neo-Nazi movement in particular, were firm and mutual allies.

4.1.3. One of the most inflüntial and notorious neo-Nazi leaders was Michael Kühnen (and with him later Christian Worch, Ewald Althans, Arnulf Priem, and the Austrian Gottfried Küssel).

4.1.4. In 1977 Kühnen founded the National Socialists Action Front [Aktionsfront Nationale Sozialisten - ANS, later to become the ANS/NA, NA for National Activists] with amongst others, former NPD cadres. This overtly neo-Nazi group was banned in 1983. However a sizeable number of its activists moved into the neo-Nazi scene through the more traditional Free German Workers' Party [Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei -FAP].

4.1.5. The FAP had been founded by Martin Pape in 1979, who had started off as more of a national-conservative with neo-Nazi leanings. Pape was not strictly averse to

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<117> Correspondence exists between Irving and Deckert from 1982 onwards. Deckert (then GfP) was Irving's corresponding partner in arranging meetings in 1982. See Irving to Günter Deckert, 22 September 1982; Günter Deckert to Irving, 2 October 1982; Ginter Deckert to Irving, 10 October 1982.

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`infiltration' by the neo-Nazis around Michael Kühnen which swelled the FAP's membership figures to about 500 in the mid 1980s. They created a series of sub-organizations like `Gaü' [the NS term for administrative geographical units during the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich], as well as local community and county-based organizations. At the same time specific political splinter organizations were created like the German Women's Front [Deutsche Fraün Front - DFF], and the Preparation Committee. for the Celebrations of Adolf Hitler's 100" Birthday [Komitee zur Vorbereitung der Feierlichkeiten zum 100. Geburstag Adolf Hitlers - KAH]. Kilhnen's homosexuality sparked a bitter conflict amongst the `comrades' within the FAP. The faction around the FAP leaders Friedhelm Busse and Jürgen Mosler distanced themselves from Kühnen and it was not until. his death in 1991 that a reconciliation took place.

4.1.5. The FAP explicitly strived for a Germany along NS lines and towards recreating a Greater Germany within the Reich's 1939 boundaries (which would include Austria and Czechtislovakiƒ). The patty platform was extremely nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic, and embraced violence as an instrument to achieve their aims. The degree of racism and hatred directed at foreigners is illustrated by the following phrases that were used internally: `We won't put up with the niggerization of Germany', `The people's wrath is on the rise! Asylum seekers will be repeatedly set on fire. We as National Socialists are the only ones who foresee the civil and racial war.'<118>

4.1.6. Even prior to reunification, the FAP had good connections with right-wing oriented skinheads and hooligans in the former GDR. One of these activists was Christian Wendt. FAP rallies often resulted in violent attacks against foreigners, as was the case in Rostock in August 1992. The party co-operated with the Danish National Socialist Movement [Dansk Nasjonal Sosjalitisk Bevaegelse - DNSB] that published propaganda leaflets against liberals and leftists calling for personal retaliation (`Einblick').<119> In September 1993 the federal government announced that it would put in a request that the party be banned, which duly occurred in 1995.

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<118> Wagner, p. 69.
<119> The DNSB in turn had good connections to the NSDAP/AO and the German Holocaust denier attd former SS man Thies Christophersen. DNSB leader Rijs-Knudsen occassionally spoke at the meetings of Christophersen's paper Die Baürnschajt. Wagner, p. 226. For Irving's connections to Christophersen see below.