The chairman of the ultra right-wing National Democratic Party (NPD) accused the West German Ministry of Interior today of encouraging Jewish organizations abroad to send in resolutions condemning his party. He alleged that the ministry was also soliciting reports from German Embassies abroad pointing to apprehension in foreign countries over the prospects of possible NPD entrance into the Bundestag after next fall’s elections. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry denied the charges leveled by Adolf von Thadden. He said, “It is not necessary to alarm people abroad about the NPD because they are alarmed already.” The spokesman said Mr. von Thadden was looking for excuses in case his party fails in the elections.
But the leader of the party, which has been widely condemned as neo-Nazi, was optimistic over the NPD’s election prospects. At a press conference today, he predicted it would get eight to 12 percent of the vote which would give it 40-60 seats in the Bundestag. He disclosed that eight military officers and four soldiers from the ranks would run for election on the NPD list.
Mr. von Thadden claimed that the NPD has 40,000 members, recruited 1,200 new ones during the month of May alone and was exerting sufficient influence in West German politics to force Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian affiliate, the Christian Social Union, headed by Finance Minister Franz Josef Strauss, to lean further to the right.
The right-wing party leader outlined plans for a massive election campaign that will include a personal “Whistle stop” tour from Aug. 23 to Sept. 27, the day before the elections. He said the party would produce three election newspapers of 15 million copies each, huge posters with photographs of himself and would hold 92 election rallies all over West Germany. “If the cities will not lend us their town halls, we will hold our meetings out of doors. We are prepared for everything,” Mr. von Thadden said. He said the NPD’s election strategy would include appeals to the peasants and those Germans thrown out of East Germany by the Russians.
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