THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY: AN ANALYSIS OF

A RADICAL RIGHT WING POLITICAL PARTY

A Thesis

Presented to

the Faculty of the Department of Political Science

University of Houston

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

by Lee O. Andresen April, 1971

584028 THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF GERMANY: AN ANALYSIS OF

A RADICAL RIGHT WING POLITICAL PARTY

An Abstract of A Thesis

Presented to

the Faculty of the Department of Political Science

University of Houston

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

by Lee O. Andresen April, 1971 ABSTRACT

Is Nazism destined to become a potent political force in West Ger­ many? Many observers feel the longevity of a flamboyant party of the

Radical Right, the National Democratic Party of Germany, is sufficient reason to answer this question in the affirmative. They conclude the par­ ty, which has had moderate successes in state and local elections, is neo-Nazi in orientation with the objective of resurrecting the political structure and style of the Third Reich. Just how sound is their hypoth­ esis? Is the neo-Nazi appellation accurate or is the NPD really a con­ servative democratic party content to work within the boundaries of

Bonn's parliamentary democracy.

The conclusion of this study is that the National Democrats can not be described in terms of any such "categorical absolute" as National

Socialism. The NPD's anti-democratic proclivities are plain but to as­ sert an identity with National Socialism because of similarities in the composition of voter reservoirs, patterns of membership recruitment, and ideology is an exaggeration. For Instance, although the NPD draws considerable support from former NSDAP regional strongholds, secondary analyses indicate the party has managed to attract Catholics and work­ ers, most of whom have generally been cool in the past to the overtures of Radical Right parties, including the Nazi party. Both the NSDAP in the past and the NPD more recently have drawn significant membership support from the lower middle class; yet so too have political movements such as

Poujadism and McCarthyism. Similarly, the frequently heard argument con­ cerning the prior Nazi affiliation of some NPD members diminishes in sig­

nificance when one notes the number of erstwhile Nazis to be found in the ranks of the "respectable" Christian Democratic Union and Free Democratic

Party. The NPD ideology, as drawn from the party program (Politisches Lex- ikon) and party newspaper (Deutschen Nachrichten), shows significant over­ lap with National Socialism doctrine. However, it should be noted the two parties are products of significantly different political and social milieus.

Today, the National Democrats seem to be just one of a number of political parties in various political contexts whose Weltanshauunq manifests itself in anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and cultural pessimism. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION...... 1

Chapter I. Political Parties of the Radical Right in .

Postwar German Politics: An Overview ...... 5

Chapter II. Sources of the NPD’s Electoral Sup­

port, 1964-1970 ...... 16

Chapter III. Party Membership...... 31

Chapter IV. The National Democratic Ideology...... 48

CONCLUSION ...... 77

BIBLIOGRAPHY 84 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION

In 1918 Germany "tried democracy" and failed. What followedon

the heels of this failure needs no elaboration here. The more relevant

point is how well German democracy has fared in the postwar world. The

answer is that Bonn Germany has made significant progress toward rees­

tablishing and maintaining a viable democratic political system. How­

ever, many observers feel Germans are perpetual "fair weather" demo­

crats and that the reoccurence of Nazism or its equivalent is inevitable.

In many cases the slightest swing toward the Right in German politics

has been accepted as prima facie evidence that Bonn has become Weimar.

Happily, commentaries offering this thesis have grossly exaggerated the

importance of the Radical Right as a political force in the Bundesrepublik.

As a leading student of Right Wing politics in postwar Germany observes:

"they mistake distant rumblings for the thundering horsement of the Apoc- 2 alypse, when it is only the shuffling of their former stableboys."

^This is a reference to the ill-fated Weimar Republic, Germany's first attempt at a democratic political system. One of the best of many treatments of this period is S. William Halperin's Germany Tried Demo­ cracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918-1933. (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1946). 2 Kurt P. Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika: German Nationalism Since 1945. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), Vol. 1, p. 981. 2

In 1969 the Federal Republic of West Germany was at a watershed of major proportions when It achieved its twentieth anniversary as apoli­ tical unit.The event was brought to the attention of an international audience through a number of media, including that of a lengthy supple- 4 ment to the New York Times. However, at the same time that this was an opportunity for the political elites of Bonn Germany to feel a valid

sense of pride in its positive political development, this sense of accomp­ lishment was blunted by the knowledge that 1969 was also the year of a

Federal election in which a new party of the Radical Right was making an

unprecedented bid to enter the Bundestag, the lower house of the West

German Parliament.

This party is the National Democratic Party of Germany (Nation- aldemokratische Partel Deutschlands).^ Today, over a year after its

3 The German Federal Republic was created in 1949. However, it did not achieve formal sovereignty until 1955. Even then, the West Berlin enclave was excluded from the scope of its legal sovereignty.

4 "Germany, an Old Country Growing Young," published as a supplement to the New York Times. (June 29, 1969), 32 pp. SThe NPD is not the first postwar party to use the magic word "national" in its name. For a discussion of earlier National Democratic Parties in West German politics see Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika. pp. 72-79. 3 g unexpected failure to attain representation in the Bundestag, it contin­ ues to be a source of embarrassment and concern to the leadership of the

Bonn political system. Predictably a number of commentators, including 7 R heads of government and professional political analysts, have described the NPD as "neo-Nazi," implying that this most recent party of the Radical

Right is the vehicle for a super-annuated version of National Socialism.

The primary objective of this study is to determine, through a

c There were a number of sophisticated projections to the effect that the NPD would achieve 8-10% of the vote (40-50 seats in the Bund­ estag). See Lowell Dittmer, "The German NPD: A Psycho-Sociological Analysis of Neo-Nazism." Comparative Politics. (October, 1969), p.110. and the Christian Science Monitor. (September 19, 1969), p. 1. The prestigious West German Ellensbach public opinion survey was more ac­ curate in predicting just prior to the 1969 Bundestagwahl that the NPD would fall short of the amount needed for representation. See Per Spiegel. (September 22, 1969), pp. 27-30. The party garnered 4.3% of the aggregate vote in the instant election. According to a provision of the Basic Law, a political party must win 5% of the vote on the land lists or at least 3 personal list seats in order to share in the distribution of land list seats. The "five per cent clause" is aimed at preventing the overabundance of splinter parties which did so much to undermine the stability of the Weimar Republic. Gerhard Lowenberg, Parliament in the West German Political System. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 66.

^The Policy of the Renunciation of Force: Documents on German and Soviet Declarations on the Renunciation of Force. (Bonn: The Press and Information Office of the German Federal Government, 1968), p. 22.

Q See Peter Merkl, "Coalition Politics in West Germany," in Sven Groennings et. al., (Editors), The Study of Coalition Behavior. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1970), p. 13, and Elmer Plischke, Contemporary Governments of Germany. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1969), p. 153. 4 comparative analysis of voter reservoirs, membership recruitment, and ideology, the accuracy of the many attempts to describe the NPD in terms of the earlier National Socialist Party. CHAPTER I CHAPTER I

Political Parties of the Radical Right in

Postwar German Politics: An Overview.

A serious treatment of the political phenomenon that Is frequently labeled the "Radical Right" faces immediately a definitional problem that has plagued social scientists for years. Just as the terms "liberal" and

"conservative" can be grossly misleading in describing the nature of a political movement, so too the concepts of "Left, Right, and Middle" are often more confusing than illuminating in classifying the ideology of a specific group of political actors. This terminology, derived from the seating arrangement in the first French National Assembly, is obviously

"cracking" under the strain of adjusting to the analysis of new and more intricate political ideologies. To compound the problem, much of the re­ search toward clarifying and expanding the analytical breadth of these concepts has been normative in approach, making the question of whether a political party is "Right" or "Left" less a matter of fact than a matter 2 of opinion, a matter more of taste than of definition.

^Seymour M. Lipset, Political Man. (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1960), pp. 127-128. 2 Eugen Weber, "Introduction," in Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber, The European Right: A Historical Profile. (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1965), pp. 1-8. 6

Although it is beyond the scope of this study to attempt to resolve

this definitional problem one can identify the bulk of the parties discus­

sed in this chapter and succeeding chapters as "Radical Right." This

classification is reasonable in that the parties share a number of ideolog­

ical common denominators. Including (1) extreme nationalism, (2) a bit­

teropposition to Communism, (3) a denial of the ability of parliamentary

government to serve the legitimate needs of the state, and (4) a corres­

pondingly positive attitude toward extensive executive powers exercised

without the normal restraints of a pluralistic or parliamentary dispersion 3 of authority.

Although parties of this ideological bent have failed to take deep

root in the West German political system, this failure Is not due to a

lack of effort or their past. Walter Laquer's observation, "extremist poli­

tical movements are as common to democracies as crabgrass to suburban 4 lawns" is also applicable to the postwar German political scene.

Volumes would be needed to describe the myriad modes of political

activity utilized since 1947 by elements of the Extreme Right in West

Germany in an effort to see their ideologies converted into political real­ ity.

3paula Sutter Fichtner, "Protest on the Right: The NPD in Recent German Politics," Orbis. (Winter, 1968), p. 186. ^Walter Laquer, "Bonn is Not Weimar," Reflections on the Radical Right in Germany," Commentary. (March, 1967), p. 4. 7

Accordingly, the scope of this study will be confined to the politi­ cal party, as a specific, but by no means the sole, institutional expres­ sion adopted by the Radical Right in an effort to develop a broad base of support among certain segments of the West German electorate.®

An analysis of party activity among the Rightist fringe of the politi­ cal spectrum must necessarily include a description of the activities of the Socialist Reich Party (Sozialistische Reich Partei, SRP), which prior to the NPD was the most successful venture by the Radical Right into the party politics of Bonn Germany. The SRP achieved an unrivaled position, among extreme rightist parties, in terms of the calibre of its leadership and electoral performance, but it also did not suffer from the lack of cog­ nate organizations. Most of these Extreme Rightist parties, including the German Conservative Party-German Rightist Party (DKP-DRP) and an early National Democratic Party (NDP), remained electorally insignifi­ cant, having fallen victim to the "centrifugal forces of egotism and per­ sonal.Inadequacy, coupled with a divergence between tactics and ideol- g ogy" that worked to fragment them into splinter parties hardly credible as contestants for political office alongside the larger system

5Use of the political party to generate support for radical and mod­ erate nationalist causes assumed a variety of strategic forms. For de­ tails, see Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika, pp. 763-766.

6Ibid., p. 731. 8

. 7 parties.'

The SRP was not immune to these disruptive forces, but at the heart of its problems was the singular unwillingness or inability of the party leadership to adjust its tactics to fit the realities of the constitu­ tional structure of the Bonn Republic. The tenuous legal status held by the SRP and its genre with the Bonn constitutional structure symbolized Q this tactical dilemma.

The SRP was formed by Fritz Doris, Gerhard Krueger, and Count von

Westharp almost immediately after the allies in 1949 relaxed party li­ censing requirements. Less than three years later the Bonn government was able to provide the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungs- gericht) acting under Article 21, Section 2 of the Basic Law with evidence

7 In noting this proclivity toward fragmentation within the ranks of the West German Radical Right it is instructive to remember Lipset's observation that "an ideology of the Right can have a moderate as well as extremist tendency, the one parliamentary and the other extraparlia­ mentary in its orientation. Lipset,. pages 176-177. Bonn Ger­ many has experienced both of these tendencies ranging from the moder­ ate nationalism of Hermann Klingspor and the DKP/DRP to Fritz Doris and the SRP. Richard Cromwell, "Rightist Extremism in Postwar West Germany," The Western Political Quarterly. (June, 1964), p. 287. g Tauber remarks that the SRP was "mindful" of the limits set on Right-extremist politics in postwar Germany. Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika, p. 707. See Wellington Long, The New Nazis of Germany. (Philadelphia: The Chilton Press, 1969) for the view that the party might not have been outlawed by the Federal Constitutional Court had it been more circumspect in its public statements. 9 to have the party declared unconstitutional and dissolved. Between

1949 and 1952 the party itself had provided much of this evidence through 10 its own actions and pronouncements.

The SRP was unmistakably neo-Nazi, both in the composition of its membership and philosophical orientation. Party leader Doris could trace his political lineage back almost thirty years to the time when he had been one of the "Alte Kampfer or Old Fighers" of the National Socialist elite. He made it clear after 1949 that his political philosophy had

^Under the Basic Law (the Constitituion of the Federal Republic of Germany) the Federal Constitutional Court may actually invalidate and or- . der the dissolution of a political party. But such a case may only be brought before the Court by the Bundestag, the Bundsrat or the Federal Government. The relevant provision reads as follows: "Parties which, by reason of their aims or the behavior of their adherents, seek to impair or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany, shall be uncon­ stitutional. The Federal Constitutional Court shall decide on the question of unconstitutionality." The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. (May 23, 1949), Article 21, Section 2. ^For a discussion of the ethical implications of this provision of the Basic Law see Otto Kircheimer, Political Justice. (Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1961). Also, Donald Kommers, "The Federal Con­ stitutional Court in the West German Political System," in Joel B. Gross­ man and Joseph Tannenhaus, (Editors), Frontiers of Judicial Research, (NewYork: John Wiley & Sons, 1969), pp. 73-133. Also, Karl Jaspers, The Future of Germany. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967) Passim. Hit is important to be aware of the chronological gradations involved in NSDAP membership. Some significance can be attached to the year an individual joined the NSDAP. An Alte Kampfer or "old fighter" is one who took up membership in the party before it was generally recognized as the 10 not changed in the Intervening years and he viewed both the SRP as little more than a successor organization to the National Socialist Party (NSDAF) and himself as the new Fuhrer. The Nazi coloration of the Socialist Reich leadership was deepened by the addition of Otto Ernst Remer as party dep­ uty chairman. The inclusion of Remer was the capstone to the party's

strategy to increase its attractiveness with old line Nazis and former

soldiers who would be impressed with the role he had played in putting 12 down the famous "July 20" conspiracy against the life of Adolf Hitler.

A further clue to the party's sympathies came with the disclosure that its recruitment policy for local branch organizers and speakers stipulated that a National Socialist background was a sufficient credential for ap- 13 pointment to either of these positions.

On another level of activity, the public statements of SRP func­ tionaries left little to the imagination as to where the party stood with re­ gard to such controversial Issues as the dialogue over German guilt in the expedient thing to do. Doris hl self became a member in 1929. Those who joined before 1933 can be described as "intense" in their commit­ ment to the National Socialist Ideology. Those who were recorded on the membership rolls after 1933 were not necessarily less zealous in their party loyalty but there is the possibility that they joined the Nazi party out of more pragmatic, instrumental (e.g., occupational) opportunistic motivations. Long, p. 56.

12 Ibid., pp. 58-59.

13 10Tauber, pp. 703-710. 11

World War II. In fact, the rhetoric of party spokesmen was remarkably unrestrained on these and other questions which were sure to be used as a measurement of the party's anti-democratic tendencies. In most in­ stances, the derivation of the substance of party speeches was unmis­ takable. Former Nazi shibboleths were retained, altered only slightly to fit the contemporary political setting as with the conversion of such verbal brickbats as "fulfillment politicians" into "politicians of exhaus­ tion" and "system parties" to "licensed parties." The Jew served as a painfully familiar target of polemics in blatantly anti-Semitic pamphlets and newspapers reminiscent of Julius Streicher's virulently racist

Stunner.

These verbal manifestations of the SRP ideological position, com­ bined with such actions as the establishment of paramilitary organizations like the Reichsfront, served to reinforce the suspicions of the already sen­ sitive Bonn government. However, the real impetus to government action came with SRP electoral successes in various Landtage elections, es­ pecially in Lower Saxony where the party collected over ten per cent of the aggregate vote. A few months later, in June of 1952, the Bonn gov­ ernment brought its evidence on the Socialist Reich Party's "anti­ democratic tendencies" before the Federal Constitutional Court. In Oct­ ober of 1952, before the party had a chance to test its burgeoning

14 Long, p. 62. 12 strength in another election, the Court did as expected and ordered the SRP dissolved. 15

At least one source attributes the SRP's short lived participation in parliamentary politics directly to the SRP's leadership:

Doris had adopted the wrong tactics. By making a blatant attempt to revive the NSDAP under another name so soon after the birth of the new Republic, he had provoked official reaction and, inevitably, the party's prohibition while he was too weak to prevent it. Lacking subtlety, impatient, unable to bridle his ambition, he had botched the job, playing into the hands of what the Nazis lumped together as the "Morgenthau Crowd, "jg

After the proscription of the Socialist Reich party, that portion of its membership that was not forced into foreign exile or into the "cata­ combs" joined the Deutsche Reich Partei (DRP), apprently hoping it would be able to take up where the SRP had left off. However, this was little more than wishful thinking. The DRP was but a shadow of its

l^Long, p. 73.

16 The "Morgenthau Crowd" is a reference to Henry J. Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Secretary's proposal that the world protect itself against a resurgence of German mil­ itarism by reducing the country to an agricultural economy made him many enemies in Germany regardless of political ideology. Many Germans in­ terpreted the aim of Morgenthau*s plan as "sheer revenge" and not an at­ tempt to understand the realities of postwar politics. Understandably, the name had its advantages for parties such as the SRP for use in their propaganda. See Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Germany is Our Problem,(New York: Harp er & Bro s., 194 5). Also, Politisches Lexikon der NPD. " Mor- genthau," (Hannover: Deutsche Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft, 1968). 13 predecessor,in both structure and function. The party was weakly organ­ ized at the grassroots level and its policy statements were unnecessarily vague, often astonishingly irrelevant to bread and butter issues which might be expected to excite the interest of the electorate. The most dra­ matic example of this DRP penchant for misreading the importance of im­ mediately relevant issues was the party's insistence on discussing tech­

nical questions of social and economic policy at the same time that a prominent issue like West Germany's integration into a West European

Economic and Defense Community was uppermost in the minds of most 17 voters.

It is therefore not surprising that outside of traditional bases of

support in Rhineland-Palatinate and Lower Saxony, the DRP did poorly in

all areas of electoral competition, including the Bundestagwahl of 1957

and 1961 where it failed to capture more than two per cent of the vote. 18

The difficulties experienced by the DRP were shared generally by the Radical Right following the elimination of the Socialist Reich Party.

As a competitor in parliamentary politics, the movement had reached its

17 I/Tauber, p. 816.

18 » Egon Klepsch, et. al., Die Bundestagwahl: 1965. (Munchen- Wien: Gunter Olzog Verlag, 1965), pp. 146-147. 14 nadir. Accordingly, the DRP and other parties of its kind received little publicity on their status as "power factors" but were noticed only in a pejorative sense, as when internal squabbles and scandals placed them on the front pages, or when it was revealed that one faction of the DRP accepted considerable sums of money from Communist sources, while another faction was receiving funds from the Nasser Regime in Egypt.

Still another case of this type of unwelcome attention came with the dese­ cration of the Jewish synagogues in Cologne during Christmas Eve of 1959 when it was discovered that certain of the culprits were members of the 19 DRP.

Another group of Radical Rights that campaigned for political office was the GB/BHE (The All German Bloc of Refugees and Expellees). It 20 achieved as much as 23% of the vote in the Landtage elections. That the Refugees and Expellees campaigned under a specific label qualifies their organization for the definition of political party although their rais­ on d' etre was not the aggregation of diverse demands but rather the arti­ culation of the interests of a specific group of people. As the governing parties (especially the Christian Democratic Union under Konrad Adenaier) met the GB/^HE's grievances the latter's political activity proportionally

1319Long, pp. 192-193.

2®The election was Schleswig-Holstein on July 9, 1950. Klepsch, et. al., p. 150. 15 lessened.

For over a decade, these were the more "prominent" political par­

ties of the German Right, from the liquidation of the Socialist Reich Party- in October of 1952 until their fusion into the National Democratic Party of

Germany in November of 1964.

2 1 H Klaus Bolling, Republic in Suspense. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964), pp. 149-150. CHAPTER II CHAPTER II

Sources of the NPD's Electoral Support, 1964-1970

Remnants of the SRP leadership, certain members of the DRP, and representatives of other, more obscure splinter parties took part in a

November, 1964 meeting at Hannover to determine a strategy which would bring the Radical Right out of the state of atrophy into which it had grad­ ually drifted. Those in attendance decided that the creation of a new political party incorporating all the disenchanted elements of the far

Right would be the most effective method of mobilizing support for their policy alternatives. To what degree has the National Democratic Party fulfilled the mission prescribed for it? Since the party's rather lack­ lustre showing (2.8% of the aggregate vote) in the 1965 Bundestagwahl it has had an uneven, yet generally impressive showing in various state and local elections.1

From 1966 through 1968 the National Democrats contested eight

Landtag elections. The poorest showing occurred in the Hamburg Senat election of March, 1966, when the NPD's 3.9% of the vote was short of

^Reinhard Kuhnl, et. al.. Die NPD: Struktur, Ideologie, und Funk- tion, einer Neofaschistischen Partei, (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1969, pp. 27-28, 70-74. 17 the 5% minimum needed to win representation under the proportional electoral system. However, in November of the same year the party gained representation in the Land parliaments in Hesse and Bavaria with

7.9% and 7.4% of the vote respectively. The NPD's performance in the

Bavarian election is particularly noteworthy since as a result of the ex- elusion of one of the major “system" parties, the National Democrats became the third largest party in representation behind the ruling Chris­ tian Social Union and the Social Democratic Party.

In the spring of 1967 the NPD managed to survive a power struggle between the conservative Fritz Thielen and his second in command, the radical Adolf von Thadden, who ultimately wrested control of the party from Thielen:

Since NPD beginnings in November, 1964, some analysts had predicted that sooner or later the DRP clique under Adolf von Thadden would clash with the DP faction led by Fritz Thielen. . . the

2 The Free Democratic Party was left with 5.1% of the vote but no mandates. The Bavarian Electoral Law requires that a party must win at least 10% of the vote in at least one election district to win representa­ tion in the legislature. John D. Nagle, The National Democratic Party, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 52.

3 The Bonner Almanach: 1969. (Bonn: Herausgeben vom Press und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung, 1969), p. 294. 18

DRP apparatus had been working slowly but surely to win old DP functionaries over to von Thadden's side and, by early 1967, von Thadden felt sure enough of his hegemony to begin squeezing out the remaining top figures still loyal to Thielen.

Although the ouster of Thielen gave the party a more sophisticated, pragmatic leadership, von Thadden’s was a pyrrhic victory as far as im­ mediate electoral results are concerned. Thielen left the party and formed a splinter group (Nationale Volkspartei—NVP) which siphoned off some of the National Democrat’s membership and electoral support. It is possible that had the schism not occurred the party's efforts in Rhineland-

Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein might have been more productive than the 6.9% and 5.8% of the vote they did collect.

In April, 1968 the National Democrats achieved its high water mark as an electorally competitive party at the Land level, obtaining almost u 10% of the total vote in Baden-Wurtemberg, long considered a Christian

Democratic stronghold where the governing party would easily co-opt the g support normally expected to gravitate to a party such as the NPD.

Sfagle, p. 52.

^The New York Times, (May 9, 1967), p. 6. c A similar case is Bavaria, where the NPD achieved its portion of the vote despite the efforts of Franz Josef Strauss and his party to counter the anticipated NPD appeal to nationalist sentiment by riding their own version of the "national wave." In regard to the 1969 Bundestagwahl, Strauss' efforts in this direction met with more success. His methodi­ cal "staking out" of conservative positions is given substantial credit for the NPD's defeat. See Harry B. Ellis, "Strauss: A Man to Watch in Bonn," The Christian Science Monitor (October 24, 1969), p. 2. 19

However, whatever jubilation this result may have generated among NPD partisans was shortlived, since in the local elections later that year in

Baden-Wurtemberg Hesse, and the Saar party's share of the vote began to . . .. 7 dwindle.

While the importance of the National Democratic Party's participa- Q tion in subnational electoral competition should not be discounted, it is

safe to surmise that the party leadership was looking to the 1969 Federal

election and admission to the Bundestag as an opportunity for the penul­

timate achievement. In fact, both critics and partisans of the NPD were

anxiously viewing the election as a key indication of the future role the

Radical party would play in the politics of the Bonn Republic. In the

eyes of the Bonn government the Bundestag election would hopefully

bring about the repudiation of the party and obviate the necessity of "ex­

plaining" to foreign audiences why such a party got into parliament.

At the same time, in the words of Adolf von Thadden, the election would provide an opportunity for the NPD to move into parliament and prove

7 Almanach, p. 295. g In West Germany, state and local elections often have genuine significance as a "proving ground" for the popularity of national leaders and their policies. Thie phenomenon has been especially advantageious for the NPD, which has deliberately emphasized the unpopularity of cer­ tain policy outputs of the Bonn government in its campaigns. For a dis­ cussion of the significance of state and local elections in West German politics see Lewis Edinger, Politics in Germany, (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1968), pp. 167-168. 20 9 itself as "an ordinary conservative party."

The failure of the NPD to achieve the requisite five per cent of the vote spawned myriad commentaries. A common theme was the one exemp­ lified in the cover of a German periodical, which congratulated Bonn on

its "triumph in a major general election challenge with ultra-right Radi­

cals."* 10 *12

The most visionary party ideologue was hard pressed to find any­

thing but discouragement in the Bundestag election results, yet certain postelection analyses suggest that the vote does not constitute as deci­

sive a rejection of the NPD as its opponents believed. There is cause to

argue that, "the 1969 election meant neither a swing toward the Right nor

a clear rejection of the NPD."11

Indeed, the party actually doubled its share of the vote from the previous general election, in every Land there was also a net increase in

the number of ballots cast for the NPD between the 1965 and 1969 elec­

tions. In addition, the NPD increased its share of first votes in every 12 electoral district, doubling or tripling its vote in the majority of districts.

^Harry B. Ellis, "Can the NPD Secure a Foothold?" The Christian Science Monitor (September 13, 1969), p. 7. 10The German International (October, 1969), p. 9.

^Steven Warnecke, "The Future of Rightist Extremism in West Ger­ many," Comparative Politics (July, 1970),pp. 629-652, at p. 632. The entire issue is devoted exclusively to the 1969 Bundestagwahl. 12Ibid., p. 629. 21 Finally, although the party received no mandates in either of the two

Bundestag elections, it did receive, in the 1969 Bundestag election, more 13 than 5% of the vote in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bavaria and the Saar.

The cumulative result of the NPD’s electoral activity at all levels of competition was this: By January of 1970 it had become the most potent political party of the Radical Right in postwar German history. In less than five years the National Democrats had succeeded in gaining repre­ sentation in seven of eleven state legislatures and reached the threshold 14 of the Bundestag. The relatively favorable results of the NPD's parti­ cipation in state elections (compared with its poor showing in the 1965

Bundestagwahl) are presented in Table I.

Analyzing a party's electoral status is a more complex undertaking than the mere presentation of the number of mandates it has achieved in various legislative units. More subtle questions about the demography and "depth" of the voting support that provided these mandates need to be answered. In short, who votes for the NPD?

Much of the literature devoted to the National Democratic Party seems conditioned in its emphasis and conclusions by a predlspositign.

For example, certain of the studies employ historical parallels in

13 ^Warnecke, p. 629. 14 « Kuhnl, pp. 70-75. 22

TABLE I

BT-Federal LT-State Elec­ Election 1965 tions 1966-1968

Land Votes % Date Votes %

Hamburg 20,398 1.8 3/27/66 36,643 3.9

Hessen 74,081 2.5 11/6/66 224,534 7.9

Bayern 149,750 2.7 11/20/66 780,572 7.4

Rheinland- Palatinate 51,237 2.5 4/23/67 127,743 6.9

Schleswig- Holstein 34,064 2.4 4/23/67 72,059 5.8

Niedersachen 102,470 2.5 4/6/66 249,061 7.0

Bremen 12,118 2.7 10/1/67 35,894 8.8

Baden- Wurttemberg 92,787 2.2 4/28/68 381,393 9.8

Source: Kuhnl, Die NPD. . P. 71. 23

comparisons between the NPD and NSDAP that are of questionable val- .. _ 15 idity.

The most conspicuous and frequently cited similarity between the

two parties Is the NPD's ability to attract large amounts of votes in for­

mer National Socialist geographical strongholds such as Schleswig-Hol­

stein and Lower Saxony than elsewhere. However, at the same time there

are significant differences arising from the "breadth" of these voter reservoirs throughout the Bonn Republic. To be specific, the NPD has

expanded into reservoirs previously closed to Right extremism:

Both voter reservoirs and the socio-economic profile of NPD supporters are considerably broader and more diverse than in the Nazi party or the other Rightist parties established in the Federal Republic, j5

A psychological dimension of politics partially explains this de­ velopment. Certain social scientists, noting an "end of ideology," have cited the increasing industrialization of society and concomitant distri­ bution of goods and services to all levels of the social stratum as fost­

ering in the postwar world a generally more pragmatic orientation toward 17 politics and life styles. However, this has been a two-edged sword.

l^For an extensive survey of the scholarly commentary on the NPD see Reinhard Kxihnl, "Der Rechtsextremismus in Der Bundesrepublik: Ein Literaturbericht," Politische Vlerteljahreschrift (September, 1968), p. 19. ^Warnecke, pp. 642-643. 17 See Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1960), Passim. 24

Industrialization has also made society Increasingly complex and be­ wildering for many persons, leading them to seek the security of an all encompassing belief system as a source of simple, comfortable answers to the complexities of modem living. Thus contemporary society posses­ ses a seemingly irreducible minimum of malcontents not unlike a cadre of romantics or "true believers" who find the content of the ideology ir­ relevant so long as they have some vague notion of belonging to a cause that (as unrealistic as it may seem) promises to return them, in this case, to the social and political patterns of preindustrial Germany. 1 Q

Translating this ideological bent into specific social categories re­ veals that two groups. Catholics^ and workers—collectivities which

18 Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), Passim. 19 Charles E. Frye, "The Third Reich and the Second Republic: National Socialism's Impact upon German Democracy," The Western Pol­ itical Quarterly (December. 1968), p. 671.

90 As far as the tabulation of "second votes" is concerned in comp­ arison with the Federal Election of 1965, the National Democratic party gained in all districts in the 1969 Bundestagwahl. An ecological analysis of the election results indicates this added support was most striking in Catholic regions of the country. In Catholic rural constituencies the "change index" amounted to 246, while in Catholic cities it was some­ what lower at 236. In contrast to this, its Increases in support were be­ low average in the Protestant urban and Protestant rural constituencies, compared to the results for the Federal Republic as a whole. See Hans D. Klingemann and Franz Urban Pappi, "The 1969 Bundestag Election in the Federal Republic of Germany: An Analysis of Voting Behavior, " Com­ parative Politics (July. 1970), p. 528. 25 formerly gave only limited support to parties of the Radical Right—are 21 now a significant part of the NPD electorate.

Alongside this ideological phenomenon which has given the Na­ tional Democratic vote a broader socio-economic profile than its prede­ cessors, the traditional sources of support have remained constant for the

NPD. Representative is the small farmer, one component of the strata of 22 German society known as the Mittelstand. This agricultural vote swings into the column of Right extremist parties as a protest against govern­ ment attempts to decrease farm subsidies. The government's recent ten­ dency to allocate expenditures in favor of non-agricultural interests seems to make Right Radicalism in the form of the NPD an attractive alternative

21 The greater share of the literature devoted to "the end of ideology" concentrates on the attenuation in Ideological differences between social­ ist working class parties and their conservative counterparts. With the socialist parties in Western Europe becoming less doctrinaire (especially the Social Democratic Party of West Germany) after the 1959 Bodsvdes- berg Convention many workers are left "socially and psychologically adrift, and, therefore, more vulnerable to nationalistic and fascistic ap­ peals." Warnecke, p. 643. 22 Mittelstand means literally "middle estate." It includes such disparate activities as small-scale farming, shop-keeping, artisan crafts, teaching, the professions, and clerical work. As a social unit which feels threatened by the progress of democracy and industrial capitalism it has in the past voted for parties like the National Socialists who have pledged to "protect its interests." It has continued this practice in the Bonn Republic for the NPD and its predecessors. See Herman Lebovics, Social Conservatism and the Middle Classes in Germany 1914-1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 4-12 and 216-220. 26 23 for the West German farm vote.

A considerable portion of the National Democrat's electoral support

is based on a special appeal to nationalistic sentiment in German society.

In recognition of the fact that nationalism still has significant weight in

German politics the NPD has carefully cultivated the image of itself as

Germany's only genuinely "national" party:

The NPD makes no effort to mask the particularly vociferous brand of German nationalism which serves as the heart of its doctrine . . . the party paints nationalism as a fertile source of intellectual and creative energy in all European peoples and wishes to encourage this force by upholding the principles of self-determination where it feels that ethnic and national concerns are not receiving due considera­ tion .24

Confirming the above description are the findings of recent survey research that NPD supporters are strong proponents of such "all German" policies as removal of foreign troops from German soil. They are also in general agreement that National Socialism, including its virulently anti­ democratic nationalistic component, "had many good sides to it."^^

23 ^Edinger, pp. 218-219. 24 Paula Sutter Fichtner, "The NPD-NDP: Europe's New National­ ism," The Review of Politics (July, 1968), pp. 308-315, 309, and 311.

^^Klaus Liepelt, "Anhanger Der Neuen Rechtspartei: ein Beitrag zur Diskussion 'Uber das Wahlerreservoir der NPD'," Politische Viert- eljahresschrift (February, 1967), p. 264. 27

The NPD refers to itself as "the youngest party in Germany. in terms of voting support this claim has no basis in fact, yet neither is it accurate to describe the party as a gerontocracy deriving its sole support from aging former Nazis. Although the younger segment of the West Ger­ man electorate is still underrepresented (23% in comparison with 28% of A * 27 the total population), the results of the last Bundestag election suggest these figures are becoming more balanced. In the meantime, the NPD con­ tinues to glean the greater share of its vote from the 45 through 60 age groups (33% of the vote for the NPD as compared to 27% of the total electorate). The over 60 age group, which would reveal the inevitable overlap between NPD and NSDAP voter reservoirs,constitutes approximately 2A 25% of the party's vote.

Whatever penetrations the NPD has made into voter reservoirs pre­ viously closed to parties of its political genre, it has been unsuccess­ ful in generating much enthusiasm for its policies among West German females. The latter remain unchanged in their traditional aversion to ex­ tremist political parties. Although comprising 54% of the aggregate elec­ torate, women provided only 40% of the NPD vote. The males make up

60% of the party electoral base in comparison to 46% of electorate as a whole.u i 29

26,,Pie NPD Aber Lebt," NPD Kurier, I (Hannover, 1969), p. 1. 27Laquer, p. 7 2®Llepelt, p. 245 ^9^^^p> 241. 28

The preceding discussion brings out certain similarities between the

National Democratic Party and the National Socialists, in the geographi­ cal location and socio-economic character of their voter reservoirs. At the same time there is evidence showing the National Democrats have ex­ panded their appeal beyond some of the traditional sources of support for

"right radicalism," suggesting the description of the NPD as a Volkspar- 30 tel or Sammelpartei might be more applicable than the familiar neo-

Nazi appellation. However, there is a major drawback here in that these terms tell only the present heterogeneous character of the party's vote, what of the future? What is the party's capability in sustaining or ex­ panding its present level of support? In the context of these questions, the National Democratic Party is best described as a "protest party," which beyond a certain hard core element receives votes only as a result of discontent with government policy outputs which cause the groups ad- 31 versely affected to deviate from their traditional voting patterns. For example, the NPD did well in the Hesse and Bavaria elections which were concurrent 11 with the first leadership crisis in the Federal Republic's *

^^Warnecke, p. 643. 31 Paula Sutter Fichtner, "Protest on the Right," p. 185.

32 For the chronology of these elections see the Table on p. 22. 29 history under Chancellor Ludwig Erhard. In addition, the Hesse, Bavar­ ian, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Schleswig-Holstein elections were con­ ducted during an economic recession. The Landtag elections in Lower

Saxony and Baden Wurtemberg, the NPD's high water mark, also occurred 33 during times of stress: opposition to the Grand Coalition between the

Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party plus the ri­ sing volume of protest from the West German version of the New Left was crystallizing. During this same time period the NPD's vote increased while its membership rolls continued to shrink.

The timing of the NPD's most signal electoral victories with certain domestic crises is more than coincidence. If the NPD seeks to become more than an Isolated protest party it must draw more support away from the major parties, which -w command a following amounting to almost 35 90% of the vote. The Intensity of voter commitment to the CDU-CSU and the SPD may not be strong among all segments of the electorate, but the most numerically significant groups (the Catholics and Trade Unions) would be very hard for any new party to draw away. Without some very

33a 1966 poll reveals that some 58% of "potential" NPD voters based their attraction to the party on opposition to the Grand Coalition. Liepelt, p. 264. 34 Fichtner, "Protest on the Right," p. 185. 35 Editorial, "Germany Chooses Continuity," The New York Times (September 29, 1969), p. 42. 30 dramatic domestic or international development to assist it, the NPD's chances of overcoming this strong commitment and luring these votes to 36 its banner are not good.

36 Liepelt, pp. 264-271. CHAPTER III CHAPTER III

The Party Membership

A group of individuals need do little more than seek to gain elective office under a given label to qualify for the definition of political party.

The National Democrats easily fulfill this functional requirement. In ad­ dition, the NPD exhibits many of the structural characteristics associated with conventional models of the political party, several of which will be discussed in this chapter.

I.

In March of 1969 a government study placed the size of the Na- 2 tional Democratic Party membership at 38,700 persons. This figure 3 represents but a slight decrease from the 40,000 persons recorded on the party membership rolls in July of 1968, yet it seems reasonable to question whether there has not been further, even more marked, attrition as a result of the NPD's lack of success in the 1969 Bundestagwahl.

Il eon D. Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), p. 77. ^A reference to the report is made In "Towards the Election: the German Political Parties at the Beginning of the 1969 Federal Election,” International Press Release (March, 1969), p. 229. 3Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 31. 32

However, even if the higher figure is used as a measurement it is evident that the vast majority of NPD voters do not join the party. It is known that West Germans do not join parties in great numbers, but the ratio be­ tween votes and membership seems to be especially low in the case of the National Democrats with less than 1% of the party's share of the electorate in the 1969 Federal Election on the party membership rolls.5

II.

A number of observers consider the presence of former Nazis on the membership rolls to be a sufficient condition to warrant describing the

National Democratic Party as neo-Nazi or fascist in political orientation.

Actually, the number of erstwhile Nazis among the NPD membership is

^Arnold J. Heidenheimer, The Governments of Germany (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell & Co., 1966), p. 94.

^In comparison, 7% of the SPD's electorate is in the party member­ ship (700,000) while 3% of the CDU's aggregate vote is on the party mem­ bership rolls (300,000). The FDP has approximately 1% of its voters as members (40,000). See Edinger, p. 241 and 255. The Refugee party, the GB/^HE, was able to claim the highest ratio of members to voters of any party in the history of the Federal Republic. See Uwe Kitzinger, German Electoral Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 176. At a similar point of time in its development the National Socialist Party had 178,000 members. The NSDAP continued to accumulate members at the same time that its vote was declining to 810,000 votes in the 1928 Reichstag election. David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1966), p. 27. 33 , , 6 not statistically significant (2,400—12%), but the proportion of ehema- lige ("formers," meaning former Nazis) who occupy formal leadership po­ sitions within the party hierarchy is striking. For example, of the 18 member national committee, eight are former members of the NSDAP. In the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, 86 of 218 county committee members 7 were once members of the National Socialist Party.

Among the former Nazi luminaries who have held high positions in g the NPD are Otto Hess, once a provincial speaker for the NSDAP and a batallion leader of the SA (Storm Troopers) and Waldemar Schutz, a former leader of the SS (Black Shirts), who in addition to sitting on the party pre­ sidium with Hess has charge of the NPD's publishing concerns.

A further investigation of the National Democratic leadership group reveals that positions on the Parteivorstand (Executive Committee) are held by men like Wilhelm Gutmann, a leading functionary of the GdP (All Ger­ man Party) in Baden Wurtemberg, who early in the Spring of 1964 had

"Rechtradikallsmus in der Bundesrepublik Im Jahre 1967,“ (Bonn: Schrlften der Bundezentrale fur Politlsche Bildung, 1968), p. 12. Unless otherwise noted, all figures on the NPD membership have been drawn from this report. 7 Fred H. Richards, Die NPD: Alternative Oder Wiederkehr? (Munich: GunterOlzog, 1969), p. 66. ®Until his suicide in 1968.

yA Kuhnl,11 Die NPD, p. 28. 34 negotiated an electoral alliance with the DRP, and Heinrich Fassbender, founder of the arch conservative (German Nationalist People's Party) who left the FDP because he felt its politics were "too far to the left."

Although his participation in Right Wing politics has been extensive, the National Democratic Party leader Adolf von Thadden was not an Nazi activist. His membership in the NSDAP came comparatively late (Septem­ ber 1, 1939) and his service to the Reich was confined to action as a member of the armed forces.

III.

Although the profusion of former NSDAP members in NPD leadership 12 roles has been more widely publicized, it is far from the only similarity between the two parties that is relevant to a discussion of party member­ ship. In the early 1930's the National Socialists in effect "pledged to turn the clocks and make the world safe for small business, small farmers

10Ibid.

l^D. Ruf er, Adolf von Thadden: Wer 1st dieser Mann? (Hannover: DN Verlag, 1969), p. 6. 12 Over one-third (35%) of the NPD membership can be linked to pre­ vious parties and organizations of the Radical Right. The greater share of these individuals are not differentiated as to previous affiliation but are merely described as "having belonged to other organizations of the Radical Right." Of those who are identified with a specific party, some 3,000 (12%) are connected with the DRP. A tiny segment of the outlawed SRP (450—1.6%) can also be found among the NPD membership. "Rech- tradikalismus, '* p. 12. 35 13 and small towners.'1 In response, these as well as other elements of 14 the German Mittelstand who felt economically and socially insecure joined the NSDAP in large numbers, at one time making up 58% of the to­ tal party membership.^ A little more than three decades later, the NPD has made essentially the same promises to and generated the same appeal among these social groups to the extent that they are overrepresented in the National Democratic Party membership. They constitute 27% of the 16 NPD membership as compared with 21% of the total population. 17 "Working class authoritarianism" connotes a negative attitude to­ ward non-economic liberal values (l.e., civil liberties, internationalism etc.,) on the part of the lower strata of society. It is accompanied by a tendency toward extremist political organizations. In the West German political context, such a propensity among the working class might be construed as making them a fertile source of membership for the NPD.

1 ? Schoenbaum, pp. 275-276. 14 See page 20, note 26 for a more detailed discussion of this insti­ tution .

■^Hans Gerth, "The Nazi Party," in Barry McLaughlin (Editor) Stud­ ies in Social Movements (NewYork: The Free Press, 1969), pp.258-274, at p. 264. 16 "Rechtradikalismus in der Bundesrepublik,” 1968, p. 19. 17 See Lipset, Chap. V, "Working Class Authoritarianism," pp. 87- 126. For a discussion of this phenomenon's relevancy to West Germany, see Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1967), p. 186. 36

However, although workers at 32 per cent represent the largest single occupational category in the NPD membership, tills percentage is lower than the worker's share of the total population. The Hilfskrafte (appren­ tices in middle class trades) and Industriarbeiter (Industrial workers) each make up 16% of the party membership in comparison to 22% and 27% of the , , , 18 population at large.

IV.

Among the more prominent National Democratic Parteigenossen are intellectuals such as Professors Ernst Anrich, Otto Baxa, and Berthold

Rubin, the latter one of the world's foremost authorities on Byzantine 19 history. However, the presence of these intellectuals among theNPD partisans should not be taken to mean the party is favored by this group;

Anrich et. al., are somewhat atypical of the West German intellectual community as far as political orientation is concerned. The latest figures show that intellectuals comprise but a miniscule 4% of the party member- 20 ship.

The suggestion of a negative correlation between educational attain­ ment and support of the NPD is reinforced by statistics showing only 48%

^"Rechtradikalismus," p. 18.

l^Long, p. 181.

20 "Rechtradikalismus," p. 18. 37 of those with the equivalent of a grade school education (Volksschule) ex­ hibiting a negative reaction to the National Democrats while 66.9% of those possessing a high school diploma (Hochschule) viewing the party with an- tip a thy..U 21

V.

The National Democrats have made a concerted effort to recruit younger members both to give the Impression of “vitality" and to counter accusations that the party is primarily a collection of aging neo-Nazis.

The results of efforts in this direction have been partially successful, evidenced by the decline in the mean age of Parteigenossen from 50.3 years in 1965 to 41.2 years at the end of 1967. However, this develop­ ment has not altered the "balance of power" with regard to intraparty de­ cision making. The older party functionaries, most of whom are in the

45 through 64 age group which remains overrepresented in party member- 22 23 ship, still control the formulation of programs, ideology, and tactics to which the younger party members must give virtual unconditional

21 It should be noted that these figures refer to persons educated since 1945, although those whose schooling antedates the latter time period show the same tendency. "Rechtradikalismus," p. 24.

22 37.6% of the party membership as opposed to 31.4% of the total population. Ibid.

23Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 223. 38 acceptance.

VI.

In another area of its membership recruitment, the attainment of a

"balanced" representation of men and women, the National Democrats have been particularly unsuccessful. In fact, the NPD can be described as almost exclusively "the party of the man" in view of the statistics showing women comprising but 5% of the registered membership. At least a partial explanation for this state of affairs lies in the general tendency of West German women, so far as they may be described as involved in politics, to adhere to traditional political allegiances in the face of over- 25 tures from newly created political parties.

u ^^Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 223. The original Basic Law and a recently enacted "party law" (1967) proscribe situations where internal decision­ making does not take in a "free play of forces and a demonstration of the will of party members." It is a temptation to conclude that the exclusion of the more youthful members from any meaningful participation in policy decisions is irrefutable evidence (as a manifestation of the National So­ cialist Fuhrerprinzip, i.e., authoritarian principle, chain of command) of the Fascist or Nazi character of the party, but it is necessary to recog­ nize that true intraparty democracy, where party rank and file members play more than a peripheral role in the internal decision-making process has rarely been achieved. Studies show that the NPD's competitors in the Bonn party system are no exception. See Renate Mayntz, "Oligar­ chical Problems in a German Party District," in Dwaine Marvick, ed., Political Decisionmakers (NewYork: The Free Press, 1961), pp. 138- 192, Passim. Also, Donald Gunlicks, "Intraparty Democracy in West Germany," Comparative Politics (January, 1970), pp. 229-249, Passim. 25"Rechtradikalismus," p. 18. The percentage of women in the CDU/CSU and SPD memberships is 20% and 25% respectively. Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 224. In 1932 women made up half of the NSDAP electoral support although they represented only 3% of the party membership. Schoen- baum, p. 35. 39

VII.

A component of West German society whose adherence to traditional patterns of political behavior would probably be more congenial to the interests of the NPD is the new West German army. In spite of the advent of the "citizen soldier" and the alleged elimination of anti-democratic pro­ clivities among the military, many observers continue to view the Bundes- 26 wehr as one of the most undemocratic institutions in the Bundesrepublik, easily attracted to, and exploited by, a party which ostentatiously extolls 27 the virtues of the authoritarian style of military life, as does the NPD.

On the day after the 1969 Bundestagwahl, the Russian newspaper

Pravda published a cartoon depicting German soldiers being led to the 28 elections by their officers under orders to vote for the NPD. Although

26 An optimistic assessment of the democratization of the German Army is Eric Waldman's The Goose Step is Verboten (New York: The Free Press, 1964). There are also arguments to the effect that true democracy is impossible within the "military structure." For example, German so­ ciologist Ralf Dahrendorf asserts that political democracy is a "distinc­ tive arrangement" which is strictly appropriate only to the political com­ munity. According to this line of reasoning, the Bundeswehr is an insti­ tution possessing "features of social structure that either exclude the democratic procedure from the outset or reduce it to a metaphor, thereby transforming its effects more or less radically." See Dahrendorf, pp. 140-141. Also, H.P. Secher, "Controlling the New German Military Elite," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (April, 1965), pp. 63- 84, Passim, and Laquer, p. 11. 27 M Kuhnl, Die NPD, pp. 242-243, and Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Bundeswehr." Z^Cited in Klaus von Beyme, "The O stpolitik in the West German 1969 Elections," Government and Opposition (Spring, 1970) ,pp. 193-217, at p. 213. 40 this cartoon, like so much of the recent Soviet commentary on the Nation­ al Democratic Party, was a distortion of real events, the Bonn political elites should be sensitive to the results of a study warning that the Na­ tional Democratic Party could eventually claim as much as 25% of the

Bundeswehr as supporters in contrast to the 10 or 15% following what is considered to be the party’s peak among the population at large. The latest figures show that the NPD has less than one per cent of the 237,000 man Bundeswehr among its membership, a deceptive figure in light of the fact that within the party ranks army personnel are markedly overrepre­ sented, with three and one-half per cent as compared to three-tenths of 29 one per cent of the aggregate population.

VIII.

It is common for political parties to attain their objectives of win­ ning elections by building their organizations around geographical divi­ sions of the political system. The delimited area of the Federal Republic has doubtless made easier for the NPD the task of becoming a genuinely national party, although it was able to utilize the organizational frame­ work inherited from the old Deutsche Reich Partei (DRP). In addition to the National Party headquarters located in Hanover, the National Demo­ crats have Landesverbande (state organizations) and Kreisverbande

zyKuhnl, Die NPp, pp. 245-246. 41

ii on (county organizations) in nearly all the West German Lander. u

The regional profile of the NPD's membership recruitment shows that some 60% of its total membership is drawn from Bavaria, Baden-

Wurtemberg, and North-Rhine Westphalia. This may be contrasted with the Saarland and the city state of Bremen where the party derives less than 5% of its members.In populous West Berlin the NPD has been without organizational roots since the early part of 1968 when both the threat of allied legal action and the prospect of ignominous defeat in the elections made it expedient for the party to dissolve its organization 32 there.

IX.

As early as 1966 when it produced sums of 200,000 DM for print­ ing and distributing campaign material in Bavaria and 150,000 DM for the construction of new offices for the party headquarters in Hanover the NPD

^“Rechtradlkalismus," p. 18.

“ibid.

^Scandals linking the West Berlin NPD to the East Berlin Security Service (S.S.D.) were also a problem. Many of the party officials were discovered to be agents for the S.S.D. One observer goes so far as to assert that the S.S.D. established the NPD in the Western sector of the city for the purpose of providing "proof" for Communist propaganda that West Berlin was a hotbed of neo-Nazi activity. See Walter Henry Nel­ son , The Berliners (New York: David McKay Co., 1969), pp. 321-322. 42 33 gave evidence it was having little trouble getting money. The image of relative prosperity was enhanced through the party leadership's re­ action to the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court ordering the

Federal Republic to extend financial support to splinter parties, an edict which prescribed that any party obtaining more than half of one per cent of the vote in a federal parliamentary election would receive government assistance in defraying campaign expenses. Party Chairman von Thadden implied that the National Democrats were strong enough fi­ nancially to get along without government subsidies by his immediate 34 advocacy of a continued reliance on contributions from private sources.

Less than a year later he could be taken seriously when projecting a 35 seven million DM (almost two million dollars) "war chest."

Where does the money come from? In light of what is known about the party it must come from a variety of sources and in relatively small 36 amounts. The NPD lacks the mass membership base that would make

33Nagle, p. 36. S^Von Thadden's remarks may also have reflected the fear that government subsidies might give splinter parties the needed strength to siphon off some of the NPD's support. New York Times (December 4,1968) p. 4. 35 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "The German Version of George Wallace," The Minneapolis Star (August 29,197(3,p. 6. 36 Although its usefulness as a source of finances is limited, the membership as a whole is intensely committed and has made valuable contributions through direct personal participation in the form of cam­ paigning, canvassing, poll watching etc., See Long, p. 204. 43

dues enough to meet expenses and has not attracted the support of Ger­

man Big Business to the extent that the latter would become a source of 37 large contributions. Easily the largest single source of income for

the National Democrats is the Federal treasury, which in accordance

with the dictum of the Federal Constitutional Court allocated 1.2 million 38 DM to the party in 1969. This revenue has been supplemented by con­

tributions and subscriptions to the party newspaper, the Deutsche Nach-

richten, and other party publications. Income from the Deutsche Nach-

richten now comprises fifty-two per cent of the party's annual income,

a change from the first year of operation when it constituted almost six­

ty per cent of the total revenues. Membership dues at three DM (75

cents) represent a steady, albeit small (2.5%) share of these revenues.

The fees ordinarily charged for admission to party rallies have proven to be a more profitable avenue of remuneration. For instance, in 1966 the party took in eleven thousand DM from only seven party rallies, and

during the Baden-Wurtemberg election campaign in April of 1968, rallies featuring Chairman von Thadden as main speaker yielded thirty thousand DM.* 39

37“Rechtradikalismus," p. 19. 38joel M. Fisher and Sven Groennings, "German Electoral Politics A Case Study," Government and Opposition (Spring, 1970), p. 89. 39 „ Kuhnl. Die NPD, pp. 65-67. 44

The sources of the balance of the NPD's income are more ob­

scure. In the past, West German political parties (especially the CDU-

CSU) have not been legally required to adhere to the provision of the t Basic Law regarding the disclosure of sources of campaign contributions.

This tendency to be surreptitious about financial support is especially marked in the case of the National Democratic Party whose controversial political style doubtless increases donors'desires to remain anonymous.

The abundant rumors that the National Democrats are receiving funds from the John Birch Society in the United States and the East German

Government have never been proved. There is reason to believe some money is coming to the party from South America and South Africa, but the "main sources of NPD revenue Z^oth covert and over]/ are within 41 the perimeters of the Bundesrepubllk."

40 Ulrich Duebber and Gerard Braunthal, "West Germany," in Richard Rose and Arnold J. Heldenheimer, (Editors), "Comparative Political Finance," Journal of Politics (August, 1963), p. 787. 4 Lt Nagle, p. 36. 45

X. 42 Perhaps the most obvious conclusion that can be drawn from this analysis is the lack of factual justification for comparisons between the

NPD and NSDAP as far as the numerical size of their respective member­ ships is concerned. The NPD has attracted the largest membership fol­ lowing of any party of the Radical Right in Bonn Germany^ but accord­ ing to both relative and absolute standards of measurement the National 44 Democrats are dwarfed by the size of the Nazi Party.

As has already been suggested, the validity of comparisons between the NPD and NSDAP on the basis of similarities in sources of voting support has been diminished by the ability of the National Demo­ cratic Party to penetrate voter reservoirs previously closed to parties of the Radical Right. A more meaningful parallel can be found in the social

42 But not trivial, as many analyses have attempted to show chron-r ological parallels between the two parties in regard to the numerical size of voting and membership support. ^^At least two and one-half times the size of the Socialist Reich Party. See Werner Smoydzin, NPD: Partei mit Zukunft? (Pfaffenhofen: Ilmagau Verlag, 1969), p. 8. 44 In August of 1920 the German Worker's Party became the Nation­ al Socialist Worker's Party. Martin Brozart, German National Socialism: 1919-1945. trans, by Kurt Rosenbaum and Inge Pauli Boehm (Santa Bar­ bara: CLIO Press, 1966), p. 131. In 1929 the NSDAP could show a mem­ bership totalling 178,000 persons. Schoenbaum, p. 27. After some twenty years of activity the membership strength of the DRP and its suc­ cessor (for a time, dual membership was permitted) the NPD remains at a fraction of this figure. 46 composition of the parties' membership35 especially the heavy support both have elicited from farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, and other ele­ ments of the Mittlestand. However, this parallel too, must be qualified by the knowledge that the support from this social group is not peculiar to the NPD or the National Socialist Party. Political movements such as

Poujadism and McCarthyism also received considerable support from sub- 46 stantially the same elements.

In the final analysis, the proportion of party members who trace their political lineage back to the NSDAP is of greater significance than socio-economic background in understanding the political orientation of the NPD. Many of the leading personnel of the National Democratic

Party provide a direct link to the National Socialist Party. Whether this

Fuhrungskader (leadership cadre) has been able to infuse this newest party of the Radical Right with National Socialist political values in suf­ ficient degree to warrant describing it as neo-Nazi can not be determined.

45 Whether or not the description of the NPD as a Volkspartei or a Sammelpartei as gauged by voting support is accurate, such terms clearly do not apply to the limited scope of the party's membership re­ cruitment. Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 270. The NPD remains largely a collec­ tion of "Volkisch True Believers," much like the NSDAP of the 1920's. See Schoenbaum, p. 43. 46 Martin Trow, "Small Businessmen, Political Tolerance, and Sup­ port for McCarthy," The American Journal of Sociology (November, 1968), pp. 270-271. 47Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 270. 47 without first an analysis of the National Democratic Ideology. CHAPTER IV CHAPTER IV

The National Democratic Ideology

The preceding chapters have analyzed the National Democratic

Party from the vantage point of the pattern of its voting support and mem­ bership recruitment. These variables are not without significance for understanding the party's political orientation. However, many ob­ servers feel the public statements of party leaders and theoreticians are of greater value in determining whether the NPD is truly a neo-Nazi organization. Accordingly, this chapter analyzes the public remarks of the National Democrats, those that may be little more than brief value judgments on the course of political and social developments and those that have been elaborated to a degree that they may be described as

^In this context, ideology is defined as "a conglomeration of ideas, rationalizations, and illusions that refuse to yield to common sense ar­ gument." It is relevant to note that in highly advanced urban industrial societies "ideology has become primarily a defense by mainly middle class elements who cling to imaginatively distorted social thought in the hope it will shield them from the dangers of common sense realities. See H. P. Secher, "Current Ideological emphasis in the Federal Republic of Germany," (Paper delivered at the American Political Science Associa­ tion Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, 1964), p. 2. ■ 49 program and ideology ?* to determine significant comparisons and/or con­ trasts with National Socialism, Fascism, and other Rightist Ideologies.

^The primary sources upon which this analysis of the NPD ideology is based include the Politisches Lexlkon, Deutschen Nachrichten, and Proqramm der NPD: Grundlaqen National Democratlscher Politik. All of these documents are produced by the Deutsche Nachrichten Verlagsgessel- schaft in Hannover. The Politisches Lexikon (Volumes 1-8) is the most detailed exposition of NPD doctrine in print. As the closest thing to an expression of an official party intellectual position, the Lexikon could be used as evidence against the party should the government ever deem it ex­ pedient to prosecute it under the relevant provisions of the Basic Law. Ac­ cordingly, the use of terminology and advocacy of policies that have too obvious a parallel with National Socialist thought are carefully avoided. This sensitivity to semantics (as Dittmer points out) reaches ludicrous proportions In attempts to make the most reprehensible aspects of the Third Reich seem innocuous by utilizing the "value-free" language of so­ cial science. For example, the infamous Nazi concentration camp is described as "a number of buildings constructed partly of wood, partly of stone, in which men in uniforms guarded others dressed in striped uni­ forms." Deutschen Nachrichten, the official party newspaper, exhibits a more radical tone in articulating the NPD viewpoint. A recent study of the newspaper shows that many of its commentaries are unmistakably anti­ semitic, racist and xenophobic in content. See the content analysis by Heribert Kohl, "Die Deutschen Nachrichten: Bin Politologisch-Soziolog- • ische Analyze der Publizistischen Organs der NPD," Politische Viertel- fahresschrlft (February, 1967), pp. 272-297, atp. 283. The glorifica­ tion of aspects of the Nazi era and general disdain for democratic politics show up more often in the remarks of NPD speakers. In an effort to keep comments of this nature within the bounds of legality the leadership has instituted a novel device known as the Musterreden (model speeches). The individual speaker must rigidly adhere to the text of his model speech or be assessed a heavy fine or perhaps even face expulsion from the par­ ty. It is worth noting that these speeches are followed so faithfully that one Landtag candidate in Goettingen gave the same answer to a question as was given by Land representatives Stoeckricht in Stuttgart and Thad- den in Erlaugen. See Dittmer, "The German NPD," pp. 82-83. Also, Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 81. 50

I.

The overarching theme of the National Democratic Party's Ideology is nationalism, a phenomenon which can be defined as:

A consciousness, on the parts of individuals or groups, of membership in a nation, or of a desire to forward the strength, liberty, or prosperity of a nation, whether one's own or another. The Ger­ man equivalent 'natlonallsmus* implies the same desires to further the cause of one's own na­ tion, but does not shirk from doing it at the ex­ pense of others, if necessary.3

In the eyes of the NPD leadership, German nationalism should not be equated with chauvinism or an exaggerated national consciousness. As one means of supporting this contention, the party utilizes Herbert

Hoover's criticism of "Intellectuals" for "stigmatizing nationalism as an offense against humanity" when it actually has such noble origins as the

"creative depths of the human soul" and the powerful "longing of peoples 4 to be free." The National Democrats assert that their brand of nationa- lism® defined as "the expression and recognition of national

^Royal Institute of Foreign Affairs, Nationalism, 2nd Edition, (London: Frank Cass & Co., 1966), p. viii. ^Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Nationalismus." ^The Ideology of the NPD is based on an exclusive totalitarian com­ munity known as the "Volk." The Volksgemeinschaft was "pseudo- biologically defined as a “race' having a special historical role, a mis­ sion to purge the world of the great evils and impurities of the time—•ma­ terialism, corruption, plutocracy, and bolshevism'." See Talcott Parsons, "Controlled Institutional Change," in Politics and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press, 1969), p. 150. 51 consciousness. . . . that the people's first allegiance must be to the g nation," closely parallels Hoover's favorable description. However, the

NPD's brand of nationalism is far more demanding than this and is little different from the radical nationalism expounded by the National Socialists and the outlawed Socialist Reich Party.

The National Democratic Party has issued what amounts to a blanket condemnation of Bonn's social and political institutions for a lack of

"national content," a short-coming the party feels is at the root of many of the country's pressing problems. ("A healthy and sound national cons­ ciousness must be developed through the nation's educational system" and

"intellectuals must be confronted with the bitter truth that a person is only as German as he thinks." ) In its self-proclaimed capacity as the

Second Republic's only genuinely “national party" ("We are the gathering place for the rebirth of the German nation''^) the NPD is the sole hope for remedying the situation. The National Democrats use flamboyant termino­ logy to emphasize their qualifications for this undertaking, likening them­ selves to a collective "national fist," astride the neck of the Bonn

Spolitisches Lexikon derNPD, "Nationalismus." 7Ibld. ^Rudolf Heberle, Book Review, "Analysis of a Neo-Fascist Party: The NPD," Polity (Fall, 1970), p. 131. Heberle notes that this is exactly the same wording the Nazis used. 52 political parties, and "swelling on a great wave of nationalism that is g coming on us in Germany like an avalanche.

The irredentist component of the NPD's nationalism is found in the proposal that the foreign policy of the Federal Republic include the "resto- q ration of the political union of Germany as one of its primary objectives.

This "restoration" would include the restitution of the territories of West

Prussia, Silesia, and the Sudetenland, and would be accomplished by

"non-violent means," i.e., "gradual renegotiation and ultimate revision of the Potsdam Pact."^ The NPD dramatizes the German claim in the fol­ lowing statement:

It is a valid claim based on the fact that Germans settled and cultivated these lands for centuries, and were expelled only at the willful caprice of a conqueror, an act which has no legal sanction. Nothing, not even the loss of a war can erase this claim. 11

The National Democrats1 disenchantment with the postwar political arrangement is not limited to the question of the disposition of the East­ ern territories. In fact, the party sees the entire world (except for the

8Dittmer, "The German NPD," p. 82. 9Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Aussenpolitik." Party leader von Thadden has said that an independent Austria exists “only because of a lack of national consciousness on the part of the West German people. Fichtner, "Europe's New Nationalism," p. 308. IQpolltisches Lexikon der NPD, "Deutschlands Grenzen." 11Ibid. 53

France of Charles DeGaulle and the racist regimes In Rhodesia and South

Africa) as hostile to German Interests. The party publicity organs abound with references to an "international conspiracy: Germany in a world sur- rounded by enemies." This xenophobic viewpoint focuses on the United

States and the Soviet Union as the prime conspirators. According to the

NPD, the United States and the Soviet Union are engaged in a Diktat, a notion which imputes to these two superpowers a "purposive design" in forcing a partition on Germany and maintaining the division in order to 13 serve their own selfish Interests. ("The War aims of the U.S.A, and

U.S.S.R. involved the partition of the world into two equal spheres of in­ fluence . . . the only way in which this imperialism can be frustrated is for the people of the middlepowers to resist."^)

A further illustration of the party's xenophobia is its opposition to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which it sees as yet another in­ trusion on German sovereignty.

The soldier must be aware of the values he is fight­ ing for, and as a soldier he must not be required to serve foreign Interests. . . . the supreme command

12 Quoted in Giselher Schmidt, "Ideologie und Propaganda der NPD," Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte (February 14, 1968), p. 4. l^por details on the Diktat's significance in West German Foreign Policy see Karl Kaiser, German Foreign Policy in Transition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 18. ^Schmidt, "Ideologie und Propaganda," p. 4. 54

of German soldiers must be in German hands. . . . the creation of a German General Staff is essentialqg

The NPD is equally intense in its opposition to economic penetra­ tion of Germany by foreign powers. The present economic situation is undesirable in that "all the monetary benefits of the economic miracle are being reaped by the Americans, while the Germans are only the workers, employees,and consumers."^ The National Democrats regard the Federal

Republic as overly dependent on other nations for foodstuffs and other vi­ tal goods. In order to hold its own in a hostile world, Bonn must become self-reliant economically. This could be brought about through the ini­ tiation of a policy of economic autarchy, whereby the country could meet all of its needs from domestic sources. To do otherwise could be disas­ trous. For example, relying on other nations for means of subsistence would depend on a state of perpetual harmony between Germany and its suppliers—a highly improbable development, considering the sinister motives the NPD ascribes to its neighbors. The hunger and starvation that came to Germany during the allied blockades in World Wars I and II

^^Schmidt, "Ideologle und Propaganda," p. 4. The NPD's aversion to NATO is reinforced by its intense anti-American perspective. The par­ ty does not regard American assistance as essential for the re-unification Germany. In fact, it feels the question can be resolved only if the U.S. is absent. The National Democrats have called for the reunification of Germany to be negotiated through a "European Security Conference," New York Times (May 12. 1969), p. 11. 16Ibid., p. 5. 55 is used as an example of the country's fate if it does not structure the 17 economy according to the NPD's model.

II.

The "race doctrine" was a central component of the National Social­ ist ideology. This idea Involved a rejection of all non-Germans or non­

Aryans as inferior peoples. In the case of the Jew, doctrine became pol­ icy to such an extreme that one observer has been prompted to comment,

"the anti-Semitic nature of almost all fascist movements cannot deflect the horrified eyes of the world from National Socialism.10

A tendency toward racist and anti-Semitic thinking can also be found in the thinking of the National Democratic Party, although, again, the constitutional structure of the Federal Republic makes an open espou­ sal of such sentiments legally risky. In fact, this could well be the fact of the party's ideology that the Federal Constitutional Court would weigh most heavily in determining whether the NPD is in violation of the Basic

Law.17 *19

As with many reprehensible aspects of the Nazi era, the National

17 Schmidt, "Ideologie und Propaganda," p. 5. 19Emst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism (New York: Mentor Books, 1969), p. 39.

1 Q tt 19Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 185. 56

Democratic Party is intent on minimizing or transferring the blame for the genocide against the Jews to others. The NPD seems to be arguing that the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists had a legitimate motivation in that it was directed at a "Jewish World Conspiracy," composed of

"Russian Jews as well as the Jewish bankers in the United States of Amer­ ica who were instrumental in the rise of Bolshevism and the coming of the 20 Second World War."

According to this conspiracy theory, the National Socialist vendetta against the Jews was merely a defensive reaction to men like the journa­ list Chaim Weizmanns and his "formal declaration of war against Germany."

The "anti-German propaganda practiced by North American publications and Jewish periodicals,11 particularly Ilja Ehrenburgs and her "appeal" to the Red Army after the beginning of the Russian Campaign in June of 1941, must also bear a share of the responsibility for the war and the subse­ quent destruction of the Jews, if the NPD view of history is to be be- lieved.i, 2120

On the same theme of "guilt reduction," the accusations leveled against the Germans by the allies in regard to the final solution of the

"Jewish Question" are "the height of hypocrisy:"

20 Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Antisemitismus." 21Ibid. 57

The history of these same lands the allies abound with examples of murder, extermina­ tion, enslavement, torture, and oppression based on religious and political intolerance as well as race hate. The Thirty Years War, the Witchcraft Trials, the enslavement of the African Negro, the concentration camps during the Boer War, and the Russian engi­ neered Katyn Forest Massacre are but a few selected examples. . . . The American atti­ tude at the Nuremberg trials was contradicted by President Truman's decision to drop the atom bomb at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a clas­ sic example of cold blooded murder of a people— genocide. 22

However, even the NPD, in its efforts at camouflage, finds it dif­ ficult to rationalize the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the race legislation designed to prevent the "defilement" of the Volk by the Jews, which, in 23 effect, "punished a state of existence," that of being a Jew. The par­ ty's discussion of the laws admits their "disastrous nature, negative tendencies, and false biological assumptions ('German Blood')but in later statements pertaining to the role of the Jew in contemporary so­ ciety, the National Democrats appear to be resurrecting these very same principles. In their newspaper, the Deutschen Nachrichten, they une­ quivocally advance the thesis that “Jews should not be accorded equal

22 •• Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Humanitatsverbrechen." Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism, p. 475. 24^ w Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Numberger Gesetze." 58 rights with German citizens. They should not hold high official positions 25 because they represent but a small minority of the population." There is a definite parallel to be drawn between this kind of assertion and the distinction between Volksgenossen (Fellow Citizens) and NichtDeutschen

(non-Germans) formulated in the official program of the National Social­ ist Party:

One might be a member of the Volk in order to be a citizen. Membership in the Volk is limited to those of German blood. . . . Therefore, no Jew can be a citizen. 26

The NPD denigrates the poetry of Heinrich Heine, because he, as a Jew, cannot capture the essence of the "German national character" and the "soul of the people” (Volkseele). Heine's Jewish lineage makes it impossible for him to attain the “great German lyrical ability of Goethe," 27 a non-Jew. However, in Goethe's case Judaism was not the dominant 28 theme of his writings as it was for Paul Lagarde, a ferocious anti-Semite whom Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi theoretician, regarded as the true father of National Socialism over such notables as Richard Wagner, Friedrich

*°Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 184. 26Ibld., p. 185. ^Quoted in Giselher Schmidt, Hitler's und Maos Sohne, (Frankfurt am Main: Heinrich Scheffler Verlag, 1969), p. 118. 28 See the analysis of Langbehn's influence on National Socialism in Fritz Stem's The Politics of Cultural Despair (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1965), pp. 25-128. 59

Nietzsche, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In turn, the NPD has lionized Lagarde as the “spiritual advisor of the German nation" and the 30 "great teacher of the people. "

In an interview, party chairman von Thadden was asked if he op­ posed the mass murder of the European Jews during World War II; he res­ ponded in the affirmative. However, in the next breath he made clear the opposition was only on procedural grounds, stating had he been "Hitler's advisor on such matters," he too, would have advocated the elimination of the Jewish population from German soil, with the distinction they be

"deported."29 3031

III.

Although the NPD usually portrays the Jew's involvement in contem­ porary affairs in a fashion that betrays a latent anti-Semitism, i.e.,

Israel's "brutality" during the Six Day War in the Middle East and an in­ ordinate amount of attention devoted to the Jewish background of members

29Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 185. 30Ibid. Slper Spiegel (January 9, 1967), p. 37. Franz Florian Winter, the NPD's Bavarian Chairman, left the party in 1966 saying: "I will not allow my nation to be governed by godless fanatics who will bring it to ruin." Per Spiegel (December 18, 1968), pp. 67-69. One of the major reasons for Winter's exit was the conviction, based on what he heard in secret meetings, that the NPD was anti-Semitic in orientation. See also Winter's Ich Glaubte Die NPD (Mainz: von Hase und Koehler, 1968). 60 of Britain's House of Commons, the Jew's function as a scapegoat fig­ ures more prominently in the party's explanations of the past. When asked if he feels that a Jewish problem exists in the Germany of today, von Thadden replies, “there are not enough Jews in Germany to create such a problem . . . the Gastarbeiter are to us what the Jews were to 32 Hitler." The party leader was being uncommonly candid, for the Gast­ arbeiter or foreign workers have become a focal point for the party's racist thinking and xenophobia in being assigned considerable blame for the country's recent economic and social woes.

The Gastarbeiter are a postwar phenomenon, a product of the West

German economic "miracle" (Wirtschaftswunder) that created a level of labor demand that the domestic manpower was unable to absorb. This sur­ plus of jobs drew (between 1964-1967) approximately 1.5 million Italians, 33 Spaniards, Greeks, Slavs and Turks into the domestic labor market. The

National Democratic Party has labeled the foreign workers as interlopers, arguing that the German worker has a "prior claim to employment security 34 that supersedes that of a foreigner." This assertion finds some

32per Spiegel (January 9, 1967), p. 37. In 1933 there were approxi­ mately 530,000 Jews living in Germany. In 1946, some 180,000 Jews were to be found in West Germany. Today, some 30,000 of these have remained as residents of the Bonn Republic. Facts About Germany (Bonn: Press and Information Office of the Federal Government, 1968), pp. 270-271. ^Nagle, National Democratic Party, p. 41. 34Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 186. 61 resonance in a population that is beginning to experience the dearth of jobs in the more recent economic recession.

However, the threat the Gastarbeiter pose to the German nation is not confined to the economic sphere. In the view of the NPD, the vast majority of these immigrants are Communists who will stop at nothing to undermine the political and social order of the Bundesrepublik. Bavaria, where the greatest concentration of foreign workers has occurred, is seen to be in the greatest danger of Communist subversion. The National

Democrats charge that the governing Christian Social Union (C.S.U.), although well known for its rightist perspective on issues, is a “collab- 35 orator" for having failed to recognize the urgency of the situation.

The Gastarbeiter are also violators of German womanhood. Their racial characteristics make them unacceptable as mates for the German

Fraulein but numerous illegitimate children continue to be produced oc through “casual encounters" with the Gastarbeiter:

The guestworkers seduce in great numbers the girls and women of our nation. They ruin the volkllche substance. The presence of so many young men of an alien nationality endangers our Volkstum. 37

Inevitably, a large share of the blame for the "rising crime rate"

Or it dbKuhnl, Die NPD, p. 187.

SGpolitisches Lexikon der NPD, "Gastarbeiter."

37Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 187. 62

must be laid at the feet of the aliens. According to the National Demo­

crats, the guestworker is overshadowed in volume of criminal activity-

only by the hated Americans ("the fellow countrymen of Al Capone, citi- 38 zens of the American protectoral power"). Still, to be a Gastarbeiter

is to be involved in every conceivable form of criminal behavior:

Rape, indecent assault, homicide, pimping, sex crimes, counterfeiting, and hashish-handling are the favorite occupations of our guests from foreign countries, gg

IV.

Still another subversive entity in West German society is the intel­ lectual community, particularly liberal writers like Gunter Grass who has 40 been one of the foremost critics of the NPD:

The Morgenthau boys dominate the newspapers, radio, and television studios of the Federal Republic. For the past twenty years they have slandered the Third Reich, disparaging its genuine achievements through the con­ coction of false crimes. It must finally be recognized that these people are really glorifying the past of the Soviet Union.

38Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 187. 39Ibid.

40See Gunter Grass, “Speech to a Young Voter who Feels Tempted to Vote for the N.P.D." in Speak Out: Speeches, Open Letters, and Com­ mentaries (NewYork: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), pp. 54-60. 41Kuhnl. Die NPD, pp. 189-190. 63

In addition to their Communist sympathies, the ability of the Intel­ lectuals to analyze real life events is diminished by a "biased rationa­ lism" and failure to account for situations where "events can occur in a 42 pattern contrary to Intellect, logic, and rational thinking." The NPD would like to have it believed that this diminishes the credibility of the intellectual as a commentator and participant in politics, because it is an enterprise which is "the art of the possible, having to do with real­ ities . . . involving all of man's faculties (sentiment, emotion) not only 43 intellect."

V.

Anyone forced to confine his reading about the Federal Republic to the publicity organs of the NPD would undoubtedly arrive at the conclu­ sion that West Germany is a country in a state of internal chaos. A re­ cent headline in the Deutsche Nachrlchten describing Germany as a na- 44 tion "inundated by murders typifies the party's viewpoint. The 1969

Stuttgarter Wahlprogramm (the campaign program drafted for implementa­ tion in the Sixth Bundestag) promised to "take measures to arrest the grow­ ing crescendo of criminality."45* 4344 The National Democrats feel that this

42politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Intellektuell." 43Ibid. 44Peutsche Nachrlchten (April 10, 1970), p. 4. 45May, 1969. 64 situation has come about not only because of the actions of external and

Internal enemies, but because the Bonn Republic has forsaken traditional values. If the government had concentrated on Instilling attitudes of obedience to authority, internal discipline or self-control (Haltung) and unity of belief in the minds of the citizenry, West Germany would be a 46 model state. Party Chairman von Thadden expresses his misgivings about the moral fibre of the nation in this 1967 speech:

It is a national emergency when our folk are overrun by a wave of criminality and sex. In the United States such a state of affairs is traditionally explained by the presence of the Wild West. Here in Europe such a contention is without foundation since we are immediately confronted by the Communist East where nothing of this kind has taken place. If, in Germany, a youth grows up with his thoughts revolving around nothing but sex, it is a national emergency and we must put a stop to it.47 48 The NPD would check this alleged sex and crime wave, and achieve "security through law and order" ("Sicherheit durch Recht und

^Dittmer, "The German NPD," p. 83. ^Quoted in Gegen die NPD (Bad Godesberg: Neue Gesellschaft Verlag, 1969), p. 11. 4®The NPD insinuation that more crime occurs today than in the Na­ tional Socialist period is without basis in fact. The following table drawn from the Statisches TahrBuch for 1967 shows that the exact opposite has occurred: the number of persons convicted of crimes of violence (97% of such crimes are "solved" and the culprit is convicted) has decreased: (per 100,000 persons). 1925 1935 1955 1966 97.7 71.1 65.3 49.4 65

Ordnung.") by the use of Draconian penalties, including the return of the death penaltycastration of sex criminals,and an increase in the size of the police force, the strength of which the NPD feels has fallen to a dangerously low level:

In 1929 there was one policeman for every 414 persons. In 1969 the ratio had increased to 437 to 1. Simultan­ eous with this Increase has been a doubling in the inci­ dence of crime. More than 10,000 positions in the po­ lice forces stand vacant. Low wages notwithstanding, the policeman has become the scapecoat of the nation. What the politicians tear down, the police must bring to order. (. i

VI.

The root of the NPD's fears for the moral stability of West Germany is the prevailing culture, which the party regards as a hotbed of hedonism and purveyor of ideas inimical to the spiritual well being of the people, an attitude reminiscent of the cultural pessimism of the National Socialists during the Weimar Republic. 52

In this context, the National Democratic Party perceives its role in messianic terms, "we are the organized protest against the immorality of

49 Politisches Lexikon der NPD, "Todestrafe." SONaole, The National Democratic Party, p. 120. 51NPD Kurier, l(Hannover, 1970), p. 6.

SZprltz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1965), p. 5. 66 materialism and its barbarous followers . . . without standards there can 53 be no higher human culture." Predictably, Modern Art does not conform to this notion of culture and the NPD seeks to explain away any popularity it may have by characterizing adherents as the victims of "manipulation:11 -

A third example of manipulation is the public re­ lations propaganda on behalf of modern art. Here, the taste and reasoning powers of the individual are effected in a fashion similar to that of “The Emperor's New Clothes," where those who perceived his nudity instead of his 'clothes' were dumb. He who does not appreciate the value of modern art (for example, a layer of leaf mold from the floor of the gallery) is petty bour­ geois or philistine.54

A primary source of this manipulation are the mass media (televi­ sion, newspapers, movies, radio, and telephone) which are steadily con­ tributing to the cultural and moral decay by:

Producing an increasing parade of sexual propaganda, creating in the liberal democratic West a climate of flabbiness, lewdness, and covetous toward a slav­ ery to narcotics. The result is a direct attack on the human substance. . . . Equally revealing is the ma­ licious cynicism with which the mass media deals with agriculture, above all the peasantry, the role of the father, teacher, army officer, and others that stand for modesty and self control.55

All forms of German artistic expression are dominated by sinister

SSpoiitisches Lexikon der NPD, "Freiheit undOrdnung."

S^ibid., "Manipulation."

S^Ibid., "MassenMedien." 67

influences, including the ubiquitous American:

It is frankly alarming, the degree of foreign penetra­ tion of our lives . . . the language stems from the American gangster, the music from the primieval for­ est, and the dance resembles the spasms of an epi­ leptic.^

In keeping with the theme that true German art forms are being cor­

rupted by alien influences, the party strikes out against a modern musical

concept known as the "Zvrolftoner" (twelve notes or tones) which "has 57 been forced on Germany through the dictatorship of the mass media."

The originator of the new musical style, the widely acclaimed composer

U EQ Arnold Schonberg, is dismissed as "unmusical" and "uncreative. "QO

H In sharp contrast to the denigration of Schonberg is the veneration

accorded the composer Richard Wagner, whose "romanticism" has been

described by many students of the Third Reich as the most important 59 single source of Nazi ideas and ideals. The NPD feels the German na­

tion is duty bound to establish a national museum as a testament to 60 Wagner's contributions.

56Kuhnl, Die NPD, p. 152.

S^Schmidt, "Ideologie und Propaganda," p. 12. 58Ibid.

CQ 3Peter Vierick, Metapolitics, Second Edition (New York: Capri­ corn Books, 1965), p. 315. SOpeutsche Nachrichten (April 10, 1970), p. 9. 68

The National Democrats regard the greater share of the offerings

of the contemporary theatre with revulsion. The fear that the American

production of "Oh Dad, Poor Dad," would result in "American Momism"

destroying the structure of the German family is a typical expression of 61 the party's perspective.

The NPD laments the fact that more attention is not given to play­

wrights of the past such as Karl Schonherr. At the bottom of this state of

affairs is a "disdain and contempt for 'Blut und Boden' and "the smoke­

screen from the inhabitants of the coffeehouses, the proponents of the 62 asphalt literature."

The National Democratic Party's disenchantment with the Bonn Re­

public is not confined to the state of its cultural life. The NPD exhibits

reservations about phenomenon found in any modern Industrial system.

For example, in a poem entitled "Deutsche City," the modern metropolis

is depicted as "a Babylon teeming with masses from the foreign South, a

wave of people" of uncertain racial characteristics. The conclusion is that the city means the "extermination of the Volk, and therefore the des­ truction of the people."®^ Plainly the party is uncomfortable in a modern

Glpichtner, "Protest on the Right," p. 195. 62 Schmidt, "Ideologie und Propaganda," p. 12. 63 » Kuhnl. Die NPD, p. 153. 69 setting, and in character with the reactionary nature of its social think­ ing, would favor a regression to the social patterns of an earlier period.

It defends its preference for the past with such reasoning as the follow­ ing:

Is it so meritorious, in every view 'to go with the times' and always be a man of 'today' ? Is it not conceivable that an opinion from yesterday or the day before is as valid as the slogans of today. . . Are not many of today's cominant views drawn from yesterday? What are the officially sanctioned and promoted 'artistic* experiments in music, painting and sculpture but an empty repltition of twenty years? Is not Marx of the past?. . . Is one in error if he prefers well founded geographical and historical knowledge as well as relying on a few practical experiences and observations.,, 64 vn.

The National Democrats indignantly reject attempts to label them as neo-Nazi or anti-democratic in political orientation as “the greatest 65 lie of our time." A documentary film prepared by the Paris Match pur- portint to describe the rise of neo-Nazism in West Germany was angrily dismissed as "propaganda" by the party leadership.In addition, the the party program features what appears to be an unqualified commitment

64poiitlsches Lexikon der NPD, "Unbelehbar" (und "ewig gestrig").

65NPD Kurier, I (January, 1969), p. 4.

SSpolitisches Lexikon der NPD, "Propaganda." . 70

to all aspects of the Bonn political system:

The NPD is dedicated to the liberal democratic basic order because it preserves a high measure of personal freedom and as much order as is necessary. The lib­ eral democratic state must be a constitutional state, g?

However, these professions of loyalty to the Bonn democracy can not be taken seriously. Such remarks are tactical in motivation, designed to meet the requirements of the Basic Law, while the substance of the par­ ty's position is one of contempt for democratic politics:

Democracy is only a technical proceeding, the deter­ mination and realization of the will of a prescribed majority;form and not substance. This interpretation is applicable anywhere in the West. . . . Elections and voting provisions of democracy have little in­ fluence on decision-making.gg

Accordingly, the parliamentary democracy of the Bonn Republic is democratic in name only, a system in which the elected officials not only lack the requisite leadership qualities (sense of duty, willingness to accept responsibility)^® but also subvert the will of the Volk:

The power of parliament actually is derived from the political parties, who allegedly represent the will of the people on essential political questions. However, the elected representatives really represent the dic­ tates of a rigid party organization or succumb to the

67 Deutsche Nachrichten (Sonderdruck A/70), Programm der NPD. eg Politisches Lexlkon der NPD, "Demokratie.11 G^Ibld., "Fuhrungskrafte." 71

Influence of the lobbyiests and foreign interests.

This cynical viewpoint is extended to other components of the demo­ cratic process, including the majority principle, where the suggestion of an elitist philosophy toward political participation appears:

This proposition the majority principle Is based on the assumption that the people are alike, not only before the law and god, but also equal In Intel­ ligence and ability to evaluate events. Then and only then can the judgment of the majority be as cor­ rect and genuine as the verdict of the minority.7j

During the time of the Grand Coalition, the National Democrats looked upon themselves as the sole effective opposition voice in the

Bonn Republic and frequently used the slogan “one can vote again" to en­ hance this image in the eyes of the electorate. That this statement was based on political expediency and was not a legitimate expression of concern for maintaining all the elements of the classical model of parli­ amentary democracy is evident from the NPD's scornful remarks on the subject of pluralism:

The fashionable catchword ‘pluralistic society* masks the state negating tendencies of pluralism and merely states that numerous interest groups exist and inter­ act with one another, a platitude. . . . The pluralism has no method of gauging the value or classification of

70 Polltlsches Lexikon der NPD, "Parliamentarianism. " 71 ^Ibid., 11 Merheitprin zip. “ 72

these groups as to their vital necessity to the state and when their value has come to an end.

At least one observer sees the NPD covertly desirous of revisions in the political structure of the Bonn Republic which would "place it in a historical view similar to that of the Weimar Republic," and "submit it 73 to the same dangers which helped to destroy Weimar." The party has already advocated the elimination of the five per cent requirement of the electoral law, a measure the drafters of the Basic Law felt would contri­ bute to the maintenance of political stability in the Bundesrepublik:

Dangers to the functional capabilities of the govern­ ment can not in any case be inherited from Weimar times. The decisive factor in the fall of the Weimar government was the superiority of the Radical parties and the stubborness of the coalition parties. It was not the presence of the splinter parties. Further, LL is ludicrous to state that in 1966, 665,000 votes ^74/ do not constitute an 'earnest expression of political will*. In the Reichstag election of November 11, 1932 the German Democratic Party obtained only 300,000 votes but no one questioned its 'legitimacy' or 'dura­ bility'. . . .The danger of the embargo clause is its falsification of the will of the people. It is preju­ diced against new parties and balanced in favor of the established parliamentary parties. 75

In addition, the NPD has called for the abolition of the constructive

72poiitlsches Lexikon der NPD, "Pluralismus.n 73 Nagle, The National Democratic Party, p. 108. 74 The number of votes the NPD received in the 1965 General Elec­ tion . 7Spolitlsches Lexikon der NPD, "Sperrklauseln. “ 73 vote of no confidence,the direct election of the Bundesprasldent (Fed­ eral President) through the people, and a drastic increase in the length of the annual parliamentary session. The cumulative effect of these reforms, in the opinion of the NPD, would be to bring the country closer to the re­ alization of its version of a democratic state, a Volksdemokratie. In fact these changes could be viewed as arrangements that contributed to the downfall of the Weimar Regime most notably a renewal of the parliament­ ary deadlocks that stifled legislative policymaking and cleared the way for extravagant displays of executive power. 7 7

A return to executive dictatorship would approach the "political 78 n ideal" of the NPD, the total leadership state of Ruhrerstaat. In this scheme of government, according to the party1 s chief theoretician. Dr.

Ernst Anrich, the state is an entity which:

Is more than the people, more than the number immedi­ ately living and more than the passing generations— that is the state . . . the state is higher than the people and the mass of those alive. The state has

76 The five per cent clause is designed to prevent the proliferation of small parties that Inhibited coherent policy making in the German Reichstag, while the constructive vote of no confidence is aimed at lim­ iting the incidence of negative majorities forcing the resignation of gov­ ernments without having sufficient votes to replace the deposed with one of their own. Loewenberg, The Federal Parliament, pp. 66, 272 and 273. ^^Naqle, The National Democratic Party, pp. 108-111. 78 °Schmidt, “Ideologic und Propaganda," p. 15. 74

sovereignty over them all, and represents the whole of the people.7g

VIII.

The dominant components of the National Democratic ideology In­

clude an extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, antl-intellectualism, and

cultural pessimism. These attitudes were an integral part of the National

Socialist belief system. However, this is not sufficient evidence to sup­ port a conclusion to the effect that the NPD is the sole, or even the most faithful ideological "reproduction" of the NSDAP. The ideas cited above

were also promoted by the Deutschnationale during the Weimar Republic,

and more recently, representatives of the Christian Social Union of

Franz Josef Strauss, to name a few examples within the German political 80 context. Similar perspectives on political and social life can be found on the rightist extreme of the political spectrum in many political t 81 systems.

79 See the text of Anrlch's speech at the Karlsruhe party meeting (1966} in Richards, Die NPD, pp. 112-118, at p. 115. ®^Kuhnl, Die NPD, pp. 298-301. Marcell Hepp, a close advisor to Strauss, is a prominent example. Whether the balance of the CSU leadership and party rank and file share his philosophy is problematical. 81 See the exhaustive study by Angelo Del Boca and Mario Giovana, Fascism Today: A World Survey (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969). 75

It Is Interesting to note that sympathy for the NPD's position on

Issues is not confined to what may be loosely described as the West Ger­

man "lunatic fringe.” According to recent polls, the party can anticipate

a positive reaction from over one-fourth of the electorate in regard to

Volkisch slogans and a similar response when attacking the parliamentary 82 democracy of the Bundesrepublik.

The most significant link between the NPD and the NSDAP is found

in the former's usage of the concept of the Volk to justify its declarations

about political affairs. The language utilized by the National Democrats

bears a striking resemblance to the mood of mysticism that pervaded

National Socialist commentaries:

It is quite possible, that the Maos and the liberal Egalitarians in the United States are the portents of the final stage of mankind. But everything that has any vitality left, that still bears life, will defend it­ self against this decadent substitution of death for bloom. The prime mush of chaos knows no bounda­ ries, everything appears indistinct, smudged, neither worth nor unworth, neither virtue nor vice remain re­ cognizable. . . . Average is trump, the bases has every chance, the superior none . . . the horizontal rules. . . . The vertical, the upright, the gothic of our cathedrals . . . all that has to disappear.33

®2See Chapter IV, "Propaganda and Ideology of the National Demo­ cratic Party," In Nagle, The Notional Democratic Party, pp. 68-122. Here the author not only discusses the Ideology of the party, but utilizes sur­ vey research techniques to test the electorate's response to various com­ ponents of the NPD belief system. 83Quoted In Heberle, "The NPD," p. 130. 76

Although National Socialism seems too narrow a description of the

NPD’s political ideology it can safely be concluded that the party is anti­

democratic in orientation. Despite elaborate propaganda®^ to the con­

trary, the NPD is not an ordinary conservative party, but an "opposition

of principle" l.e., a political entity which indicates the desire for a de­

gree of goal displacement incompatible with the constitutional require- 85 ments of a given system.

®^In Its "Infancy" or before It is able to seize power, the totalita­ rian movement must appeal to the non-totalitarian strata of the popula­ tion as well as the totalitarian. In the Federal Republic governed by the Basic Law which has already brought about the abolition of two "anti­ democratic parties" this strategy Is particularly necessary. Thus, the distinction between propaganda and the "true" ideology of the NPD. For a discussion of totalitarian propaganda practices see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (New York: Meridan Books, 1958, Second Edition), pp. 341-364, at p. 342.

85 Otto Kirchheimer, "Germany, the Vanishing Opposition, “ In Robert Dahl, (Editor) Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven: The Yale University Press, 1966), p. 237. CONCLUSION

The National Democratic Party does not fit neatly the label of a neo-Nazi party. The NPD is basically anti-democratic in its operational values and programmatic goals, the nature of the party's voter reservoirs the political background of the membership, and the content of the party ideology. The analysis of these components suggests parallels between the NPD and Nazi Party. Yet to find parallels is not to find a perfect identity between the two parties. An observer of German politics has commented that there are no "black and white answers” to questions in­ volving the contemporary political scene but only a "complicated, multi­ faceted, set of gray shades. This is an apt description of the NPD phenomenon, for while the party is not a simple case of neo-Nazism the departures from the National Socialists patterns are often so subtle as to cause many casual observers to argue they are non-existent.

On an obvious level of analysis the NPD is not a new Nazi party in the sense that it has approximated the electoral success enjoyed by the National Socialists. The NPD has never exceeded 4.3% of the vote in federal elections and has a high water mark of less than 10% of the

Ijohn Domberg, Schizophrenic Germany (New York: The Mac­ millan Co., 1961), p. 3. 78 ballots in Landtag competition. This limited success is a far cry from the dramatic increase in support achieved by the NSDAP when it went from a paltry 2.6% of the vote in the 1928 federal parliamentary election 2 to become the choice of 43.9% of the electorate in the 1933 poll.

, The same numerical disparity may be noted in regard to membership recruitment where the NSDAP eventually succeeded In transforming Itself from a "small band of Volklsch true believers" into a genuine mass mem- 3 bershlp organization. The NPD remains a cadre party with a low ratio between votes and party membership with little potential of ever chang­ ing this status.

An early study conducted by the German Institute of Social Science

Research established statistical relationships between the composition 4 of NPD and NSDAP voter reservoirs in certain selected electoral districts.

However, the significance of this parallel has been diminished by the

NPD's performance in recent elections, particularly the 1969 Bundestag competition where the National Democrats received important support from Catholics and workers, collectivities formerly cool to appeals from parties of the German Radical Right, including the National Socialists.

2 Lipset, Political Man, p. 139. 3 Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution, p. 43. ^The states of Bavaria and Hesse in 1966. See Liepelt, "Anhanger," p. 268. 79

The dubious validity of the neo-Nazi explanation for the NPD phen­ omenon is well Illustrated by exposing the weakness of certain other fre­

quently stated parallels between the two parties. For example, the fact

that former members of the Nazi party have found in the NPD a convenient political haven is noteworthy but is not of great significance in that many one-time Nazis occupy positions of influence in the social and political

hierarchy of the Federal Republic. In the party infrastructure, the CDU-

CSU and FDP have elicited membership support from erstwhile Nazis.* 5

The Chancellor of West Germany from 1966 through 1969, the CDU's Kurt

Georg Kieslnger, was once a member of the NSDAP. The presence of old

National Socialists within its membership ranks is not a sufficient condi­ tion to brand the NPD, let alone the Christian Democratic Union and the

Free Democratic Party, as a neo-Nazi entity. /~

Reservations should also be expressed about the contention that the

socio-economic composition of the NPD membership cadre is Irrefutable evidence of a link with the National Socialist Party. It is true that both parties recruited considerable support from the Mittelstand, i.e., farmers,

shopkeepers, artisans etc., but similar elements in their respective coun­ tries also gave McCarthyism and Poujadism significant support.5

5See Tauber, Beyond Eagle and Swastika, Chap. VII, pp. 879-936.

5See Chapter III, p. 46. 80

The major components of the National Democratic ideology include extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism, and cultural pessimism. The party's doctrinal literature abounds with attempts to justify or glorify aspects of the Nazi era. However, the fact that the NPD doctrine contains elements of National Socialism is not conclusive proof that the party is a duplica­ tion of the NSDAP. It is known that the National States Rights Party of the United States publishes Nazi racial commentaries (many verbatim in the original German) in its journal the Thunderbolt, including the notor­ ious 1934 number of Per Sturmer in which Julius Streicher accused the 7 Jews of “ritual murder." This does not make the party a neo-Nazi organ­ ization and neither are its counterparts of the Radical Right wing ideolo­ gies in various political contexts, including France, South Africa, the o United States and Great Britain. The NPD has more in common with this genre of political party than it does with National Socialism. Those who seek to place it within the narrow framework of Nazism are straining an analogy that may distort more than explain the NPD,

What does the future hold for the NPD? The party has already a longevity that has astonished many observers. In September of 1969, it was widely believed the National Democrats would finally be forced to

7 George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology (New York: Gross- et & Dunlap, 1964), p. 321, note 7.

Q See Del Boca and Giovana, Fascism Today, Passim. 81

disband as a result of their failure to win representation in the Bundestag.

Despite protests to the contrary, this was a crushing defeat, but not a

fatal one. Von Thadden and his minions could still find some consolation

in the fact that the party had doubled its vote from the previous Feceral 9 Election.

The National Democratic Party continues to function; that is, meet­

ings are held, publications are issued, and candidates continue to be

presented for elective office. However, in the time that has passed

since the last Bundestagwahl, the party's position as a factor in elect­

oral politics at the state level has diminished considerably. In June of

1970, the NPD lost its mandates in the Landtag of North-Rhine Westpha­ lia and Lower Saxony, failing to win more than a meagre 3.3% of the

aggregate vote in either of the two states. The Ignominy of the defeat

was deepened by the National Democrats'^poor showing in von Thadden's 10 home district in Hannover. In November of 1970, the party was de­

prived of its mandates in two more state legislatures as its share of the

vote shrank to 3% and 2.9% in the Hessian and Bavarian state elections,

respectively.^^

It is significant that these electoral reverses were concurrent with

q Per Spiegel (Octobers, 1969}, p. 46.

10NewYork Times (Tune 15, 1970), p. 1. 11Die Zeit (December 1, 1970). 82 the launching of the ambitious foreign policy initiatives known as "Ost- politik" by the government of Social Democratic Chancellor Willy Brandt.

This policy of relaxation of tensions between Bonn and her neighbors to the East was expected to drive countless numbers of Refugees and Ex­ pellees into the arms of the NPD. That it has not, despite the signing of a West German-Soviet "non-aggression pact" and a treaty with Poland recognizing the Oder-Neisse Line, is a bad omen for the future electoral fortunes of the NPD. Especially when the NPD, like the early National

Socialists, is primarily dependent on the “crisis strata" of the elector­ ate, which may be sympathetic to a party, but will vote in its column 12 only in times of adversity. At the present time, there seems to be no ready issue which the National Democrats can utilize to "trigger" this

support.

The NPD has responded to its recent electoral frustrations by going beyond the pale of traditional political activity and joining with other

Right Wing groups to form the Aktion Widerstand (Action Resistance), an organization which has threatened the use of terrorist tactics to combat 13 what it calls the "criminal treaties" of the Bonn regime. Not only is such a course of action in apparent contradiction to the NPD's position

^See Chapter II, page s 28-29.

^^The German Tribune (March 25, 1971), p. 3. 83 on Law and Order but it could provide the Bonn political elites with a rationale to suppress the party through the Federal Constitutional Court.

Barring any action by the government, the NPD could linger indef­ initely on the Rightist fringe of West German politics, much in the fash­ ion of its predecessor the Deutsche Reich Partel (DRP)—a strident, but politically impotent voice of Right Wing protest. SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources: Party Publications

Politisches Lexikon. Volumes 1-8. Hannover: Deutsche Nachrichten Verlagsgesellschaft, 1966-1969.

"Richard Wagner-Natlonalmuseum?" in Deutsche Nachrichten, April 10, 1970.

"Die Mo rder Uberflu ten Uns," in Deutsche Nachrichten, April 10, 1970.

"Die NPD Aber Lebt," in NPD Kurier, January, 1969.

"Aber Starke der Pollzei," in NPD Kurier, January, 1970.

Proqramm der NPD. Sonderdruck, April, 1970.

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Bolling, Klaus. Republic in Suspense. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964.

Brozart, Martin. German National Socialism: 1919-1945. Trans, by Kurt Rosenbaum and Inge Pauli Boehm. Santa Barbara: CLIO Press, 1966. 85

Dahl, Robert, ed., Political Oppositions In Western Democracies. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966.

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Epstein, Leon. Political Parties in Western Democracies. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967. n Grass, Gunter. Speak Out: Speeches, Open Letters, and Commentaries. New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1968.

Groennings, Sven, and Leiserson, Michael. The Study of Coalition Be­ havior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1970.

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Schmidt, Gi sei her. Hitler's und Maos Sohne. Frankfurt/Main; Hein­ rich Scheffler Verlag, 1969.

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Stem, Fritz. The Politics of Cultural Despair. Garden City: Anchor Books 1965.

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Frye, Charles. "The Third Reich and the Second Republic: National So­ cialism's Impact Upon German Democracy," The Western Political Quarterly, XXI (December, 1968).

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Klingemann, Hans D., and Pappi, Franz Urban. "The 1969 Bundestag Election in the Federal Republic of Germany: An Analysis of Voting Behavior," Comparative Politics, III (July, 1970), 523-549.

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"Rechtsradikalismus in der Bundcsrepublik im Jahre 1967."