Sharp Rise of Rightwing Groups Reported in West Germany

Internal security services have reported a sharp rise last year in the number of extreme rightwing organizations operating in West Germany and in their membership which was placed at 10,300. According to security sources 1981 was the first year since 1969 that the far right has managed to increase its membership.

Officially, only 19 groups with a membership of about 1150 are classified as “neo-Nazi.” But that number does not include about 600 members of the outlawed Wehrsportsgruppe Hoffmann and the Peoples Socialist Movement. The security services do not classify the rightwing National Democratic Party (NDP) as neo-Nazi but most West German political leaders do and the NDP is referred to as neo-Nazi by most newspapers.

The security services are most concerned by the growing propensity for violence among neo-Nazis and rightwing extremists. About 250 known neo-Nazis have been classified as violent and are officially considered as much a danger to the public as the leftwing urban guerrillas.

LEFT AND RIGHT EXTREMISTS DIFFER

The difference, according to security sources is that while extremists on the left operate on the basis of long-term planning, rightwing terrorist activities appear to be “spontaneous.” The neo-Nazis, moreover, have developed contacts in recent years with like-minded groups elsewhere in Europe and overseas. They have resorted to bank robberies to finance their activities, the security sources said.

The Defense Ministry, meanwhile, has opened an investigation of what it described as “fascist incidents” among officers at an army training school in Hamburg. According to the Ministry, groups of officers at the school have spent evenings listening to tapes of speeches by Hitler and Goering. On one such occasion, June 14, several officers fired blank pistols and shouted Nazi slogans.

The Ministry has assigned Gen. Walter Windisch, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, to investigate the alleged behavior of the officers and take disciplinary measures where indicated. Officers at military training schools in Munich faced disciplinary action several years ago for allegedly burning Jews in effigy and shouting Nazi slogans. They were acquitted on grounds that they had been drunk at the time.

Hundreds of demonstrators marched through the center of Nuremberg last week to protest rightwing extremism. The marchers gathered at the site where a young neo-Nazi killed three people in a shooting rampage last month and then committed suicide.

Police said the killer, Helmut Oxner, 26, apparently acted on his own although he was a member of several neo-Nazi organizations and of the NDP. Two days earlier, a close friend of Oxner was sentenced to 15 month’s imprisonment for making threatened night telephone calls to Jewish residents of Nuremberg.