Englishman Sentenced in Germany for Disseminating Nazi Propaganda

The Karlsruhe criminal court sentenced a 22-year-old London bookkeeper to 12 months’ imprisonment today for having disseminated Nazi propaganda material within the territory of West Germany. The actual term will be eight months because the defendant, John Henry Passmore, was held in preventive detention for four months a waiting trial.

Passmore was charged with having supplied last year a West German neo-Nazi group with tape recordings of Nazi songs and slogans, of having mailed the same organization pro-Nazi propaganda material and with having brought with him to West Germany last March 260 stickers bearing Hitler’s picture and the inscription, “He was right.”

The bearded defendant admitted the charges and said he had committed the acts to show Germany that “National Socialism is not dead in England.” He said he regretted Germany had lost the war and had not been able to set up a Nazi regime in Britain.

He told the court that, as early as April, 1962, he joined Colin Jordan’s British National Socialist movement. He testified he left the movement last year because he felt that the British “fuehrer” was not “atavistic” enough. He then joined the British neo-Nazi group led by John Tyndall, who had split with Jordan. He said he then stepped up his own activities to further the National Socialist movement.

VISITED GERMANY EVERY YEAR WITH NAZI PROPAGANDA MATERIAL

He also told the court that, since 1958, he had visited West Germany almost every year. “I love Germany and the Germans,” he said. The prosecution charged that he brought with him on every trip tape recordings, printed material and other documents praising National Socialism, and that he tried to disseminate its ideology consistently.

Evidence at the trial showed that, in March this year, he met with a number of German neo-Nazis and also apparently with the daughter of former Gestapo Chief Heinrich Himmler.