At the turn of 1959, West Germany was startled by of a newly opened synagogue in Cologne. This crime was committed by two members of the radical-right Deutsche Reichspartei and followed by a series of all over the Federal Republic of Germany.

Other groups did not get beyond anti-Semitic statements and murder fantasies about the Jews. For example, in 1966, a group of three neo-Nazis plotted to murder a Jewish district attorney, Fritz Bauer, who was a leading figure in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials against Nazi criminals. Members of the radical-right terrorist group Nationalsozialistische Kampfgruppe Großdeutschland in the early 1970s were also militant anti-Semites who planned to throw bombs at Jewish-owned shops. Others turned their plans into action, such as a group around the neo-Nazi Hans Joachim Neumann, which destroyed and desecrated Jewish cemeteries in Lower Saxony in 1974.

Overcoming the Past

From the mid-1970s, radical-right terrorist groups planned and conducted attacks on prominent figures who, in their opinion, were responsible for the prosecution of Nazi crimes. The focus lied mainly on Jewish representatives of the ����-�ձ�������Բ���Գ�𾱳ٲ������ä���پ����ܲԲ� — a process of coming to terms with the Nazi past — particularly the writer and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal and the .

Wiesenthal was a well known as “Nazi hunter” who played a decisive role in finding and arresting the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1960. The radical-right terrorist scene detested him to the extreme. For example, Neumann’s followers planned to kidnap or kill Wiesenthal in 1974. Such plans did not emerge out of nowhere: The radical-right had been agitating against Wiesenthal for years, which is an indication that those ventures have often been flanked by radical-right political activities.

On June 11, 1982, a bomb hit Wiesenthal’s apartment in Vienna, where he was working as the head of the Jewish Documentation Center. The police arrested nine neo-Nazis, accusing them of a series of anti-Semitic attacks, including the one on Wiesenthal. In 1983, the suspects were brought to trial, with West German radical-right terrorist Ekkehard Weil as the main suspect. The court found the defendants guilty of various attacks, but the one on Wiesenthal’s home could not be definitively tied to the group.

Radical-right terrorists also targeted the Franco-German couple Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, who worked to track down Nazi criminals and bring them to justice. Their contribution to the criminal prosecution of Nazi perpetrators as well as the fact that Serge Klarsfeld was a Jewish Holocaust survivor got them in the sights of radical-right terrorists. For example, some West German groups included the “liquidation” of the couple in their plans. Similar to the Wiesenthal case, the Klarsfelds became victims of a bomb attack when, on July 9, 1979, an explosive device with considerable effect exploded in Serge Klarsfeld’s car in Paris. Only by luck nobody was hurt, but the attack was never fully solved. A , which called itself ODESSA, took responsibility for the bombing and went on to threaten the Klarsfelds’ life in the aftermath. This attack was part of a in France in the late 1970s and early 1980s, partly perpetrated by radical-right terrorist groups and partly by pro-Palestinian groups.

Latest in Line

Many cases remained unresolved over the years, with neither the motive nor the perpetrator identified. One of the most outstanding and shocking was an act of arson against a in Munich in February 1970 that killed seven elderly Jewish residents, two of them Holocaust survivors.

On December 19, 1980, Uwe Behrendt, a member of the radical-right Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann formed around Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, murdered the Jewish publisher Shlomo Lewin and his partner Frida Poeschke in their home in Erlangen. When the police managed to track down Behrendt a couple of months later, the perpetrator had already left the country, having fled to East Germany and afterward to Lebanon with Hoffmann’s help. There, the neo-Nazi presumably committed suicide in September 1981. Lewin had been under constant observation and harassment by neo-Nazis since he openly spoke out against the radical right. This crime was one of the most violent expressions of anti-Semitism before 1990.

Hatred and attacks against Jews had always been a crucial feature of radical-right terrorism in West Germany. While the dichotomy of “friend” and “enemy” constitutes a central feature in radical-right worldview, terrorist groups bring their violent practices in line with this dual principle. The support for the “friends of the cause” is contrasted with the fight against their “enemies.”

Death lists of Jews, political enemies or other opponents were and still are a common practice of radical-right terrorists. Anti-Semitism plays a crucial role in this, as anti-Semitic thought patterns are particularly suitable for constructing a common enemy stereotype. The shooting at Halle targeting worshippers marking Yom Kippur — Judaism’s holiest day — is only the latest in a long line to demonstrate its deadly effects.

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Indeed, several financial sources for (West) German right-wing terrorism since the 1970s can be found: In some cases, sympathizers or activists themselves brought in their own private, personal assets, such as an inheritance or savings. Existing evidence indicates that the vast majority of right-wing terrorist groups financed their activities and underground life through crime, particularly bank robberies and theft — sometimes attaining considerable amounts of money.

The , led by the neo-Nazis Odfried Hepp and Walther Kexel, active in the early 1980s, serves as an example. This was a well co-ordinated terrorist group with a pronounced political profile that systematically committed bank robberies to finance its activities. The main enemy was “US imperialism,” particularly the US troops deployed in West Germany.

The Hepp/Kexel was well equipped for the underground fight. When German authorities uncovered a weapons cache buried by the group, they found sawed-off shotguns, automatic weapons and pistols. Police also discovered US military uniforms, disguises and explosives in one of the group’s . In its clandestine modus operandi, the group showed a degree of professionalism and conspiracy that has not been seen before in the right-wing scene. However, compared to the radical-right terrorist group (NSU), which existed from 1998 until 2011, the Hepp/Kexel Group did not survive very long, having been tracked down by the police after just several months.

Members of the Hepp/Kexel Group committed five robberies between April and December 1982 in order to prepare for the terrorist bomb attacks that began in December of that year. Overall, the group captured the sizeable financial sum of around 635,000 Deutsche Marks ($349,000). Interestingly, some members also used the money for personal purposes, for example to pay private debts, buy luxury cars or to even go on holiday in Italy. Hence, it can be concluded that at least a part of the group had private motives for the robberies, which is not completely exceptional. However, after the second bank robbery, the leaders of the group decided that there would be a common coffer for weapons, travel and a fund for supporting their collective political goals.

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The NSU took a similar road. Its core members, Uwe Bönhardt, Uwe Mundlos and Beate Zschäpe, started with in 1998 and lived underground for two and a half years before committing their first racist murder. Altogether, the NSU members carried out at least 14 bank robberies and probably financed their life through that money. Most likely, they also received money from relatives and donations by far-right sympathizers. Between 1998 and 2011, the NSU terrorists attained more than half a million euros ($550,000). Police from existing evidence that the money the NSU attained through its raids was used for financing rent, living expenses, travel, the preparation of terrorist attacks, rental cars and holidays.

Robberies, theft and other illegal activities were, as logistics crimes, essential features of far-right terrorism. Most right-wing terrorist groups in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany have planned or carried out bank robberies or similar crimes. The money flowed in order to maintain the underground and clandestine infrastructure of the terror group, to buy weapons and finance a life in hiding. Additionally, it was sometimes used to support the : Some groups such as the Hepp/Kexel and the NSU decided to provide the far-right scene with money from bank robberies. This behavior points to the fact that these groups were surrounded by a network of supporters and confidants that was based in the militant neo-Nazi scene.

The leaders of the Hepp/Kexel Group especially strove for a central control of the money and for using it for political purposes. The NSU donated €500 to the editor of the neo-Nazi magazine Der Weisse Wolf (The White Wolf), whereupon the magazine printed a “” passage in 2002.

The example of the Hepp/Kexel Group in particular demonstrates that the money was also spent for private purposes, such as holidays and luxury goods. It was common, too, that the money from a bank robbery was split into stakes for the perpetrators’ personal use. Furthermore, it is a striking feature that armed robberies were often the first crimes nascent right-wing violent extremist organizations carried out after deciding to take the terrorist “option.” This was, on the one hand, due to the necessity to finance daily life, infrastructure and weapons. On the other hand, these preparatory crimes created an aura of radicalism and ruthlessness. Therefore, criminal activities — also for the purpose of private gain — are not contradictory to the neo-Nazi ideology that subsists on the use of violence.

The will and the readiness to act violently, as well as the desire to cause harm, go along with the neo-Nazi intention to assure themselves of their own radicalism, as radical-right expert . Therefore, even criminal actions by neo-Nazis should be regarded as a consequence of their ideology and contempt for mankind.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In Germany, there has been an ongoing public debate as to whether radical-right terrorists take responsibility for their crimes, particularly after the radical-right terrorist group (the National Socialist Underground, NSU) was uncovered. This group did not claim credit for its attacks before 2011, when its existence was revealed.

Security forces like the police and the domestic intelligence services often assumed from insights into the communication strategies of left-wing terrorism that a terrorist attack requires a communicative act claiming responsibility. Since this was not the case with the NSU attacks, authorities concluded before 2011 that there could be no political basis for the crimes committed against minorities, suspected minorities and a German policewoman between 2000 and 2007, in what became known as the . Other observers, particularly NGOs and critical journalists, argued that right-wing terrorists would (almost) never write .

This take is only partially true. Generally, it can be stated that most radical-right terrorist groups in Germany do not declare responsibility for their crimes, but there were exceptions. For example, the (German Action Groups), which committed several attacks in 1980, claimed credit for its crimes via phone calls and letters to the media, even though they were neither detailed nor well elaborated. Therefore, ever since the group carried out its first attack, the public was aware that there was a neo-Nazi group called Deutsche Aktionsgruppen that committed terrorist attacks.

Other actors, such as the (1982) and the NSU (1998-2011) serve as example for radical-right terrorist organizations that deliberately did not claim responsibility for their deeds. Besides these two, there are many other examples of groups or lone actors who did not admit their perpetration: the Otte Group and the Kühnen/Schulte/Wegener Group in the late 1970s; those responsible for the Oktoberfest bombing in 1980; the murderer of the Jewish publisher Shlomo Lewin and his partner Frieda Poeschke in 1980; as well as numerous attacks on immigrant homes in the early 1990s.

In the cases of the Hepp/Kexel Group and the NSU, both the police and the general public made false assumptions with regard to the background of the attacks. While the bombings carried out by the Hepp/Kexel Group against US Army personnel deployed in West Germany were thought to be left-wing terrorist attacks committed by the Red Army Faction (RAF), the NSU murders and bombings were misattributed to conflicts within differing factions inside the Turkish community.

Why, then, would right-wing terrorists decide not to claim responsibility for their crimes and miss the chance to transmit their messages to a wider audience? First, practical aspects should be considered. The leaders of the Hepp/Kexel Group took the view that letters or pamphlets always involved the risk of leading prosecutors on the right track. If the investigators initiated an active search for the actual perpetrators, the terrorists would probably soon be detected. This assumption may also apply to the NSU, since a significant bonus for terrorists in hiding was that the police never seriously investigated within the radical-right scene.

Assuming that terrorism is a communication strategy, following , a second aspect needs to be taken into account. One primary goal of terrorism — to produce a state of fear through the use of violence — is fulfilled when the victim group is intimidated. This was the case both with the attacks carried out by the Hepp/Kexel Group and the NSU, which managed to unsettle the target groups (US military personnel in the former case and the Turkish community in the latter). Furthermore, in the eyes of the terrorists, the attacks should speak for themselves. The NSU produced a DVD in which a text panel was shown, : “The National Socialist Underground is a network of comrades with the principle — deeds instead of words.” According to this logic, the attacks themselves, rather than letters, give a hint of the underlying motive.

A third aspect deserves attention. The terrorists may have intended to leave the police and general public ignorant of their true motives. It was a strategy by West German right-wing terrorists to blame the left for their attacks in the 1970s and 1980s. This was also the case in Italy, where numerous radical-right motivated attacks were committed in order to blame the communists, the idea being to win the population over to the far-right cause through a so-called “strategy of tension.”

For example, members of the Otte Group posted a letter after a bomb attack in Hannover in 1977, in which the RAF allegedly took responsibility for the bombing. The Hepp/Kexel Group did the same. When German authorities suspected left-wing terrorists of the attacks, Odfried Hepp, one of the leaders of the group, even considered encouraging this with a fake letter of confession. It was, in the eyes of the terrorists, not necessary to enlighten the public about the truth. This strategy might also have been pursued by the NSU. It is a matter of fact that the group was well informed about the police investigations into the Turkish community. For example, it collected newspaper clippings about the Česká murder series.

Therefore, it is fair to state that the terrorists not only tolerated the lack of knowledge about the background of their deeds, but may even have approved of it. The fact that the victims of the attacks were victimized for a second time through the police investigations must have been welcomed by this racist group.

The NSU might have been inspired by the racist American novels The Turner Diaries and The Hunter. These books point to a supposed necessity for a “race war” sparked by terrorist attacks. The white population is expected to join this war on the side of the racists and bring the conflict to an end. Political involvement is implied to be nonessential and sometimes even counterproductive. In the 1990s and 2000s, the violent German neo-Nazi scene not only translated and disseminated the novels, but also regarded them as a welcome . The NSU’s strategy of killing citizens and planting bombs without leaving any indication that this was a politically motivated crime strikingly resembles the discussed conceptions of starting a “race war,” albeit in a covert and indirect fashion.

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On the evening of December, 19, 1980, a double homicide was committed in the German city of Erlangen: A stranger shot and killed the Jewish publisher Shlomo Lewin and his life companion, Frieda Poeschke, in their private home. Lewin had been a former chairman of the Jewish community in Nuremberg. Frieda Poeschke was the widow of the former senior mayor of the city of Erlangen.

When police entered the crime scene, they quickly concluded that this had not been a robbery but an execution. The most significant piece of evidence was a pair of lady’s sunglasses left at the crime scene. Aside from that minor detail, the police were completely in the dark, also concerning the motives for the crime. In February 1981, the investigation stalled. A special commission had questioned a thousand witnesses and tracked some 240 clues. However, the owner of the sunglasses had not been identified despite the fact that the glasses had been produced by a very small company and were a special design.

It is remarkable that, following the crime, newspaper headlines were dominated by mainly negative speculation about Shlomo Lewin. Very soon after the murder, the press spread the idea that Lewin had been killed by a Palestinian because he was an agent of the Israeli intelligence, the Mossad. This information was completely unfounded and disconfirmed shortly afterward. Nevertheless, the investigators showed an increased interest in finding out about the victim’s extraordinary connections. Police also spread the rumor, that Lewin held a high rank in the during his time there. Although the rumor was quickly dismissed, the press continued to discuss it in a negative way.

Fatal Effect

These are only some examples from the extensive guesswork on Lewin’s personality that was mainly derived from his identity as a Jew. It is important to look not only at what was written about the victims, but also what was not, since the press coverage was more or less characterized by a lack of positive information. Lewin’s achievements could scarcely be found in the media reports — for example the fact that he was decorated with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz). Frieda Poeschke was hardly mentioned aside of some basic information.

That attitude fits into the direction the investigations were conducted in the following weeks. The police and the prosecutor investigated in a one-sided way, concentrating on a personal motive since Lewin was considered to be an “ambivalent character” and had come to be suspected to have caused financial irregularities within the Jewish community in Erlangen. The , who did research on the double homicide, pointed out that questioning the moral integrity of Lewin had a fatal effect: It undermined solidarity with the victim and diminished a desire for justice.

In February 1981, the owner of the sunglasses was finally identified: Franziska B., the life companion of Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, the leader of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (Hoffmann Paramilitary Sports Group), a paramilitary neo-Nazi organization with ties to the right-wing terrorist milieu in Western Europe. The group had been banned a year ago, in January 1980.

In retrospect, the sunglasses should have been . Only a few of them had been produced, and Hoffmann and B. had been neighbors with the company for several years. In June 1981, both were arrested for conspiracy to murder. The investigators suspected them of having initiated the crime that was then carried out by a close confidant of Hoffmann, Uwe Behrendt. In 1979, Behrendt had moved in with Hoffmann and B., at Schloss Ermreuth, only 15 kilometers away from Erlangen. On December 19, 1980, Behrendt dressed up in a wig and the sunglasses, which were left at the crime scene. After he had killed Lewin and Poeschke, he returned to Ermreuth, where he immediately confessed to Hoffmann. Hoffmann gave him money and a ticket to flee abroad. Behrendt left the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) for West Germany, and later moved onto Lebanon, never to return. It appears he killed himself in September 1981.

Political Climate

Although we still don’t know much about the background of the crime today, there are two hints why Lewin was chosen by his murderer. In 1977, Lewin had spoken out against the Hoffmann Group in an article that was published by an Italian magazine. In March 1979, Hoffmann wrote an article in his magazine, Kommando, where he made references to Shlomo Lewin. Therefore, Lewin was known to the Hoffmann group and probably chosen by Behrendt as a representative of the Jewish community as well as a political opponent.

The proceeding against Hoffmann and B. began in 1984, and became a trial without a murderer or murder weapon. The defendants were accused of conspiracy to murder, but not of having committed the crime. In the summer of 1986, the court acquitted Hoffmann and B. of the murder charge. Uwe Behrendt was considered to have acted alone. B. was set free, Hoffmann sentenced to nine and a half years of prison for other offences.

To understand why the case was handled in this manner it is important to point out the political climate of that time. The early 1980s in particular saw highly polarized debates on right-wing terrorism. This might be a reason for the subsequent disregard for the homicide. An analysis of the murder case reveals that it was disgracefully handled both by the police and the public. The criminal investigations were sloppy and unambitious; furthermore, we observe a rush to close the case quickly and a clear hesitancy to talk about political motives. The defamatory press campaigns against the victims followed these investigations and had a fatal impact on public sympathy.

Later on, the — it has neither become general knowledge in Germany, nor did it lead to a collective rallying to the victims’ side. Also, the assassination was not addressed in the analysis of later right-wing terrorist crimes, especially the of the early 2000s. Compared with the remembrance of the victims killed by the , better known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, the assassination never became part of the official historical narrative. This fits into a general silencing that concerns the victims of right-wing terrorist attacks in the former FRG.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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This year, the fatal arson attack in Solingen, a North Rhine-Westphalian city of around 160,000 inhabitants, marked its 25th��anniversary. Chancellor Angela Merkel, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, his Turkish ministerial colleague Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, as well as members of the victims’ family attended an official on May 29.

On that day in 1993, four young men with ties to the local neo-Nazi group set the Genç family home on fire. Five — 27-year-old Gürsün, 18-year-old Hatice, 12-year-old Gülüstan, 9-year-old Hülya and 4-year-old Saime — died during the assault. In 1994, the four perpetrators, aged 16 to 23, were sentenced to between in prison. It came to light during the trial that three defendants were trained, and probably radicalized, in a combat sport school in Solingen, which was led by a confidential informant of the North Rhine-Westphalian branch of the domestic intelligence service.

This racially motivated arson attack is considered the climax of radical-right violence in Germany following reunification. In the early 1990s, Germany saw an outburst of radical-right violence erupting in murders, street violence, mass riots and arson attacks. It is estimated that radical-right perpetrators more than 100 people across Germany in the decade between 1990 and 2000.

The political climate during that time was tense due to a controversial public discussion on immigration and, in that context, a political argument over reform in German Basic Law that guaranteed an absolute right to political asylum. These debates were accompanied by distinct racist overtones, given that among the German population were widespread at the time. Amid racially motivated assaults and riots — such as in ��in�� August 1992, where rioters besieged an asylum hostel for several days — the way was paved for the parliamentary decision that asylum seekers entering from a secure country were no longer allowed to invoke the right of asylum.

Credit for this escalation of violence can be given to the election success of radical-right parties like Die Republikaner (Republicans) that inflamed the political climate with their racist statements. Especially in East Germany, the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), a viral neo-Nazi scene emerged, that could —��almost unhindered — extend its structures and terrorize migrants and other minority groups.

However, the phenomenon of radical-right violence must not be placed solely at the feet of the former GDR, since all forms of radical violence also occurred in the west of the country, albeit in lesser numbers. The most lethal arson attacks of the late 1980s and early 1990s took place in West Germany. In December 1988, a neo-Nazi set fire to a house in Schwandorf (Bavaria), murdering four people, among them a 12-year-old boy. A similar arson attack to that in Solingen took place in Mölln (Schleswig Holstein) on November 23, 1992, which killed a woman and two girls with a Turkish background.

Unlike the rather indifferent reactions to the racist riots and street violence, the Mölln and Solingen attacks provoked a public outcry across Germany. Certainly, the atrocity of the crimes, especially the death of innocent children, affected the public. After the Mölln attack, several hundred thousand people participated in rallies against racist violence; grew further after the Solingen attack. Authorities finally decided to take more decisive action against the neo-Nazi scene by banning radical-right organizations.

However, although radical-right violence declined after 1993, a militant neo-Nazi milieu stabilized, particularly in eastern Germany, from which the right-wing terrorist network around the Nationalist Socialist Underground arouse in the late 1990s.

The commemoration of the Solingen attack comes within a time when radical-right assaults have increased dramatically: In 2015, the numbers of racist multiplied from 199 in 2014 to 1,031 in 2015. It is a trend that underlines a in radical-right activity and violence connected to the arrival of immigrants to Germany that year, as well as to the following debates on immigration. These days, a complex militant scene has been established, which although difficult to penetrate, is capable of .

As a lesson learned from the 1990s, it is necessary not to trivialize racist violence as apolitical peccadillo but to prosecute it as serious crime. The relative impunity many perpetrators have experienced during that time encouraged the radical movement to a great extent. Eventually, it is crucial to strengthen the concerns of the victims and their relatives — too little has yet been done in that respect.

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