Neo-Nazis plan to build Fourth Reich on back of economic crisis claims far-right defector



Neo-Nazis are on the rise in Germany and are planning to exploit the economic crisis to build a Fourth Reich, a defector from their ranks warned yesterday.

Uwe Luthardt painted a chilling picture of the far-Right trying to recruit the record number of young Germans facing a bleak future as the country's economy contracts and unemployment mounts.

Experts fear that the worsening conditions are worryingly similar to those of the late 1920s and early 1930s which propelled Hitler's Nazi regime - the Third Reich - to power.

German neo-Nazis idolise Adolf Hitler, seen here addressing supporters at Nuremberg in 1933

Mr Luthardt was a senior member of Germany's neo-Nazi National Democratic Party - the NPD - but resigned to inform on the group which Germany tried unsuccessfully to ban several years ago.

German unemployment has climbed by 63,000 this month to 3,552,000, or 8.5 per cent. Its economy - the world's third largest - is predicted to shrink by 5 per cent this year.

A sign of resurgent extreme Right came earlier this month in Dresden where nearly 7,000 neo-Nazis turned up to 'honour German patriots' on the anniversary of the Allied bombing in 1945 which killed 25,000 residents.

A young neo-Nazi in Leipzig, Germany: Far-right groups continue to be a huge problem for the authorities who have tried to ban many of them

It was nearly double the turnout of last year. Far-Right attacks on immigrants, anti-Nazi activists and Jewish sites are growing.

Youngsters have always been recruiting fodder for the party, but now German intelligence officials worry that, as young people or their parents lose their jobs, they will drift into the politics of the extreme Right with increasing enthusiasm.

Mr Luthardt described an organisation that preys on the gullible and the weak who seek, as he did, to restore some mythical glory to Germany while finding scapegoats for the economic misery.

Rampant inflation meant Germans needed huge amounts of money simply to buy a loaf of bread during the Weimar Republic: Parallels have been made with today's economy

He told of weapons stores, how members greet each other with Heil Hitler! salutes, sing the banned songs of the Third Reich, relish the idea of a new Holocaust against the Jews and plot to bring hard-core Nazism back with a vengeance.

Luthardt was in the NPD for only four months, but quickly rose to become a member of the ruling board.

He told Der Spiegel magazine that old Nazis living in South America donate to the party via shell companies. Other funds come from the staging of skinhead-music concerts.

He went on: 'The simple aim is the restoration of the Reich in which a new stormtrooper organisation takes revenge on anyone who disagrees with them.

'In Jena in East Germany in the NPD HQ there are a load of SS pictures in the cellar. And there's a room with weapons.

'The basic concept the NPD talks about is, "Let's kick out all the foreigners, then the Germans will have jobs again".

'The dream is of the German Reich. They're totally convinced that they'll win an election one day and that things will really get going. Everyone can imagine what would happen then.'