Leader of Defeated Npd Vows to Challenge West German Election in Court

The leader of the ultra right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD) said today that he would go to court to challenge yesterday’s national election in which West German voters virtually buried the reputedly neo-Nazi faction. The NPD polled 4.3 percent of the vote — double its showing four years ago but short of the five percent minimum required to win seats in the Bundestag, West Germany’s lower house.

Adolf von Thadden conceded defeat but contended that his party was shackled by police bans on some of his rallies, refusals of newspapers to publish his advertisements and cancellation of his hall rental contracts. Blaming “propaganda that made us into devils” he said, “I have firmly decided to challenge the election in the Constitutional Court.”

The outcome of the election was close, with the Christian Democratic Union of Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger winning 46.1 percent of the vote and the rival Social Democrats headed by Foreign Minister Willy Brandt 42.7 percent. The CDU ran 1.4 percentage points behind its 1965 vote while the Social Democrats were ahead of their last voting record by 3.4 points. The liberal Free Democrats dropped sharply from 9.5 percent four years ago to 5.8 percent. Nevertheless their vote coupled with that of the Social Democrats is sufficient to form a new coalition Government.

The Free Democrats are being wooed strenuously by both major parties, an enviable position which Von Thadden expected to fall to the NPD when he predicted before the election that it would poll eight-12 percent of the vote.

Both Chancellor Kiesinger and Foreign Minister Brandt hailed the failure of von Thadden’s party to win Bundestag seats. The outcome appeared to vindicate the Chancellor’s strategy of not seeking a constitutional ban against the NPD. That course had been urged on him by many who feared that the NPD represented a resurgence of Nazism and that West Germany’s image abroad would suffer badly if it entered parliament. The Chancellor contended however that the best way to fight the NPD was at the polls. His own party’s campaign took a conservative turn nevertheless to offset the right-wingers’ appeal for “law and order.”

Von Thadden denied yesterday that his supporters were “right-wing radicals” much less neo-Nazis. His campaign, frankly aimed at discontented elements of the blue collar and lower middle classes, was a stormy one. Most of his rallies sparked bitter demonstrations by anti-Nazis and trade unionists and many ended in violence.

(The American Jewish Congress said in New York today that the failure of the NPD to win seats was “a reassuring demonstration of the common sense and political grasp of this generation of West Germans.” However, AJ Congress executive director Will Maslow warned against “complacency” over the election results. “The NPD cannot be expected to disappear or give up its fight to revive the spirit of Nazism,” he said. The New York Times interpreted the election outcome as a vote for “continuity.” It remarked editorially that Chancellor Kiesinger’s apparent shift to the right succeeded in keeping von Thadden’s “motley collection of old and new Nazis” out of parliament.)