Germany's neo-Nazi party using meltdown to rebuild Reich

Berlin, Mar. 8 (ANI): Members of Germany's radical neo-Nazi party plan to rebuild Hitler's Reich using the current economic crisis, a report has disclosed.

To build-up their exposi on the increasingly influential neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), the authors of the report spent two years infiltrating Germany's far right. They interviewed party leaders and defectors who have quit the organization in disgust, The Independent reports.

"The NPD is a dangerous organization. It pretends to be democratic, but make no mistake about it: these people are genuine Nazis," warned Olaf Sundermeyer, one of the two journalists who wrote In the NPD, published in Germany last week.

Despite government attempts to ban the party, the overtly racist NPD has already won seats in two of Germany's 16 regional state parliaments. It has some 220 members on local councils, and expects to consolidate its political power base in a series of regional and local polls this year.

In their book, Sundermeyer and his co-author, Christoph Ruf, make it clear that the economy and unemployment are playing into the hands of the NPD.

"The party has infiltrated militant jobless groups, and is winning support. Germany's ability to cope with such developments is going to be on trial in 2009. It will be a test of the country's political maturity," they wrote.

Some of the most disturbing revelations about the NPD, which began life in the mid-1960s, are provided by former members who were shocked by the violence of its members and their hero-worship of Adolf Hitler.

Furthermore, the party's regional headquarters in Jena is deliberately called the "Brown House" after Hitler's Munich HQ. The cellars of the building contain a weapons cache, and are adorned with photographs of SS men.

Luthardt described how the party is funded by donations from expatriate Nazis and their families who fled to South America after the Second World War.

"A new organisation of stormtroopers would take revenge on anyone who disagrees with them. The concept is simply: let's kick out all the foreigners, then Germans will have jobs again. The are convinced that they will win an election one day, and that then things will really get going," Luthardt said. (ANI)