Echoes of Hitler’s old cry for unification of Austria with Germany sounded here today as 1,500 delegates to the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) Congress cheered their newly elected chairman, Adolf von Thadden, who vowed that the NPD would be “the seeding ground for the rebirth of the German nation.”
The opening of the NPD conclave was greeted by some 5,000 demonstrators carrying banners which demanded, “Nazis get out of our city.” A group of trade unionists telegraphed the Bonn Government to urge legal steps against the NPD which, they asserted, was violating the West German constitution. Later, the number of demonstrators dwindled to 80. Nevertheless, von Thadden, conscious of the party’s image, threatened to expel any speaker who might damage it by a display of anti-Semitism or extreme radicalism.
This did not prevent von Thadden himself from issuing what amounted to a new call for “anschluss.” Castigating the West for “atomizing” the German people, he demanded to know how can an Austrian nation exist “when we leave the (German-speaking) South Tyrolese to their fate.” Von Thadden claimed that the NPD is the “only opposition party” in West Germany, now that the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party have formed a coalition government.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
