Rightwing Neo-nazi Party Scores Stunning Victory in German State Elections

West Germany’s neo-Nazi National Democratic Party emerged from the Baden-Wurttemburg state elections yesterday with 9.8 percent of the total vote cast assuring it of 12 seats out of 120 in the next state Parliament. It was the most impressive display of electoral strength to date by the party whose extreme rightwing nationalism and frequent advocacy of Hitlerian tenets have caused widespread concern inside and outside of Germany.

Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger expressed fear today that the Baden-Wurttemburg election results would damage West Germany’s image abroad. Several hundred persons were reported to have demonstrated in front of the Baden-Wurttemburg Parliament in Stuttgart with placards proclaiming “10 percent Nazi, our shame!”

The NPD, which espouses such nationalistic causes as restoration of Germany’s pre-war borders and the removal of foreign troops from German soil, has been steadily gaining political strength in state elections. It has carefully avoided the appearance of overt anti-Semitism. It polled 8.8 percent of the vote in the Bremen elections last October, 7.9 percent in Hesse, 7.4 percent in Bavaria, 6.9 percent on the Rhineland Palatinate, 5.8 percent in Schieswig Holstein and 7 percent in Lower Saxony. Sunday’s election results are regarded with particular dismay because Wurttemburg-Baden, Germany’s third largest state with a population of 5.5 million, is regarded as one of the most politically liberal areas in the nation. Political leaders said that a success there by the NPD would constitute a danger signal. A television commentator recalled last night that Wurttemburg-Baden gave the Nazi Party 10 percent of its vote in 1930, three years before Hitler took power.