Encyclopaedia Judaica
Neo-Nazism 1945-1970
How the Nazi mindset was spreading in different world
continents: "USA", Germany, Argentina, Egypt
[[Comment
Nazism has its base in Darwinism which says the stronger will kill the
weaker, and the "Aryan" race would be the best. So this movement is
against
any human rights and has nothing to do with human existence and
cultural wealth. The question is always if a balance is balanced, and
if the real living standard of a country is going up or down, with
human rights. It seems strange that racist Darwinism is not forbidden
until today]].
<NEO-NAZISM,
a new Nazi movement that emerged after World War II and is based on
anti-Semitic doctrines similar to those propounded in Hitler's Mein Kampf and exemplified in the
structure and aspirations of the Third Reich. Since Neo-Nazism's
appeal, like that of Nazism, is specifically German, it is in Germany
that one would expect the movement to flourish. However, as incitement
to race hatred, as well as any attempt to resuscitate the Nazi Party,
are explicitly outlawed by the Constitution and the criminal laws of
the German Federal Republic (as well as in the Communist German
Democratic Republic), no party overtly attempting to revive Nazism can
legally exist there.
["USA"]
Although National Socialist parties openly propagating anti-Semitism,
displaying the swastika flags, and glorifying Nazi achievements sprang
up under Colin Jordan in Great Britain and Lincoln Rockwell (murdered
in 1967) in the United States, both have been utterly inconsequential
fringe movements, of interest to the social pathologist rather than the
student of politics.
["GFR"]
Allowing for a broader definition, Neo-Nazism has come to be identified
with German anti-Semitic ultra nationalist, extreme right-wing
movements, whether made up of old or new Nazis.
[GFR: Alfred Loritz]
Without seriously threatening the still fragile German democracy, a
number of such movements gained some short-lived popularity and
notoriety. The first to draw, if somewhat unwittingly, ex-Nazis into a
political party was Alfred Loritz, a confused demagogue with an
anti-Nazi record. His Bavarian Economic
Reconstruction Association, founded in 1945 with U.S. consent,
denounced Allied policies and articulated the widespread economic
discontent of the "pre-economic miracle" era. The "blonde Hitler", as
he was sometimes called, frightened the young republic and the world at
large when he gained 14.4% of the vote (col. 954)
in his native Bavaria, winning 12 seats in the Bundestag, after the
first German general election (1949). The lack of positive policies,
however, coupled with internal dissensions, rent the party asunder long
before it failed to gain a single seat in the following (1953) general
election.
[GDR: Fritz Dorls - Dr. Naumann]
Similarly spectacular and ominous was Fritz Dorls's deliberate attempt
to revive Nazism through the Socialist Reich Party (SRP). Its
leadership was made up entirely of old Nazis, the most prominent of
whom was the deputy chairman, Ernst Rhemer, the Wehrmacht officer who
successfully thwarted the July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler. Apart
from distributing anti-Semitic election leaflets, reminiscent of Der Stuermer, the SRP even boasted
a gang organized on storm-troop lines, the so-called Reichsfront. In
1951 when the SRP gained 11% of the Lower Saxony vote, an alarmed
federal government contested the party's legality before the
Constitutional Court. Declared illegal as an attempt to reestablish the
proscribed Nazi Party, this particular specter of resurgent Nazism
disappeared.
It reappeared a year later when the British arrested Dr. Naumann, one
of Dr. Goebbels' top-ranking officials, whose plot to subvert the
respectable Free Democratic Party by infiltrating ex-Nazis into key
positions was well on the way to succeeding.
In the 1960s the spectacular and unexpected success of the NDP
(National Democratic Party of Germany) aroused worldwide fears of
a Nazi revival. Founded in 1965 by Adolf von Thadden to unite the
hitherto splintered and ineffectual "nationalist opposition", the party
shocked the German and world opinion when in the 1966-67 Land elections [[provincial
elections]] it gained admission to a number of Land parliaments
[[province parliaments]] by substantially exceeding the required 5% of
the vote.
[GFR: NPD (National Party of
Germany)]
Careful not to fall foul of the Constitutional Court, the NPD, run
largely by ex-Nazis, appealed to exactly the same prejudices and
self-assertions to which Germans responded so overwhelmingly in the
Hitler era. Jews were not openly denigrated, but the State of Israel
and its policies were viciously attacked. The "domination by alien bog
powers", reminiscent of the Nazi fiction of "Judean-Marxist world
conspiracy", was denounced, as were references to Nazi crime. The party
manifesto demanded "an end to the lie of Germany's exclusive guilt
which serves to extort continuously thousands of millions from our
people", apparently a reference to *restitution and compensation
payment to Israel and individual Jews.
Beset like its predecessors by internecine leadership struggles and
lacking forward-looking policies, the NPD failed to gain the qualifying
5% in the 1969 general election. This failure led to a crisis of
confidence, which resulted in the party losing its seats in the various
Land parliaments after the
1970 elections.
At that time it was doubtful whether Neo-Nazism still commanded a
politically meaningful potential, although the phenomenon still
lingered on in violently "anti-Israel" weeklies (like the Deutsche National Zeitung) or in
the publications of ex-Reich press chief Suedermann's Druffel Verlag
and similar publishing houses.
[Austria]
In Austria, Neo-Nazism lacked the organizational framework of a
sufficiently numerous following to qualify as a politically relevant
force. Among the minuscule groupings more or less openly committed to
propagating Nazi ideas and extolling Nazi achievements, Theodor
Soucek's Sozialorganische Bewegung
Europas (SOBRE, [[Social Organic Movement of Europe]]) was
perhaps the most noteworthy in the early 1950s. It tried to coordinate
efforts of Nazi collaborators and sympathizers in the former occupied
territories to revitalize the Hitlerian "new order" in the context of
the then emerging Europe. SOBRE enjoyed the support of Konrad Windisch,
one of the founders of the Bund
Heimattreuer Jugend (BHJ, [[Confederation of Youth loyal to
their home]]), whose initials HJ (for Hitler
Jugend [[Hitler Youth]]) proclaimed its ideological lineage and
(col. 955)
identification. Despite the insignificance of these movements, residual
anti-Semitism and subliminal Nazi sympathies seemed to be more
widespread in Austria than in Germany, thus the marked reluctance of
Austrian authorities to prosecute and of juries to convict such war
criminals and Eichmann aides as Murer, Novak, or Raiakovic and the
parsimoniousness of Austrian restitution.
[Argentina]
Argentina figured prominently in the Nazis' plans to save the movement
and themselves after defeat. This tied in well with President Peron's
dreams of Argentinian hegemony based on a modernized army and an
independent armament industry, which the Nazi experts were to develop.
Nazis headed nuclear research institutes, while World War II air aces
like Rudel and Galland advised the Argentinian air force and Professor
Tank, a German jet designer, started an Argentinian aircraft industry.
Eichmann and his aides (Klingenfuss, Rademacher, and Dr. Mengele) found
sanctuary, while Johannes von Leers, head of an anti-Jewish department
in Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry, became Peron's adviser. Moreover,
the Nazi gospel continued to be preached in German in Der Weg (Buenos Aires) and other
Duerer Verlag publications.
[From Argentina to Egypt]
After Peron's fall (1955), some of these fugitives moved to Egypt (a
Nazi sanctuary since 1945), where military needs and anti-Israel,
anti-Semitic resentments offered them scope. Years later the effort of
ex-Nazis to develop Egyptian jet engines, supersonic fighters, and
rockets (the Messerschmidt, Brandner, and Pilz teams) caused greater
international consternation than the activities of von Leers and S. S.
General Bender in the Egyptian Ministry of National Guidance or of the
former Gestapo chief Sellman as a police adviser on "anti-Jewish
action". On the whole, however, in 1970 Neo-Nazis seemed to be
declining.
[ER.H.]> (col. 956)
[[Supplement:
There were many more neo-Nazi movements in the world: in Chile, in
France, whole Spain under Franco, in Italy with Mussolini ceremonies
etc. And also many religions have Nazi material in their "holy books".
The problem is that "USA" with its CIA world manipulations and with its
wars in the world have not made democracy more credible in the world.
So, under "US" leadership peace never came. Communism was financed by
"US" banks, and since the globalization there is a global religious
spiritual war, and "US" warriors are fighting against their own shadow
up to their financial self-destruction. Human rights would be good,
also for "USA" and for religions...]]
Sources
|
Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971: Neo-Nazism, vol. 12, col. 953-954
|
Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971: Neo-Nazism, vol. 12, col. 955-956
|
