Rechte Gewalt in Hamburg

The Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten (Action Front of National Socialists) was a neo-Nazi organisation founded by Michael Kühnen in late 1977. The group published and distributed materials prohibited under Germany’s laws against Nazi propaganda, and committed numerous acts of violence. The organization was banned in 1983.

‘Antisemitism is hostility toward Jews. The hatred of Jews and of everything Jewish has existed for a long time. Negative characteristics and supposed physical and character traits are ascribed to Jews in a generalized manner. But antisemitism is more than hostility to particular people. It serves as an explanation for the way the world works, making Jews responsible for political, economic, and social processes.’

From: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg, Antisemitismus.

‘Antiziganism is an umbrella term for racism directed at Romani people – Sinti, Roma, Yenish, and other groups and individuals stigmatised as “gypsies”. Effects of antiziganism reach from personal prejudice to open rejection, marginalisation, deportation, or physical violence, to systematic annihilation during the Nazi era.’

From: Gesellschaft für Antiziganismusforschung e.V., Was ist Antiziganismus?

The Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Jungsozialistinnen und Jungsozialisten in der SPD (Jusos) (Young Socialists in the SPD) is the youth organisation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Blood & Honour is a far-right rock music network that coordinates and disseminates the scene worldwide. It was supposedly founded in the 1980s in Great Britain by Ian Stuart Donaldson, the singer of the extreme right-wing ban Skrewdriver. A German division was established in 1994 to organise concerts. It was banned in September 2000, but it continued its activities under different names. Persons involved in the NSU are also connected to Blood & Honour. The militant neo-Nazi organisation Combat 18 is considered to be the armed branch of Blood & Honour. It was banned in Germany in 2020.

The Bund Deutscher Jugend (League of German Youth) was an anti-communist society founded in Frankfurt in 1950, most of whose functionaries were former members of the SS and officers in the Wehrmacht. The BDJ received funding and material support from US intelligence agencies, and it created a paramilitary arm, the Technische Dienst, to train for a possible conflict with the Soviet Union. The activities of the Technische Dienst led to the prohibition of the BDJ in 1953.

Christian Worch (*1956) is a German neo-Nazi functionary from Hamburg-Hamm. Worch joined the Junge Nationaldemokraten (JN – Young National Democrats) in 1977, and in the 1980s became Michael Kühnen’s right-hand-man for organizational issues. He was a co-founder of the Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten (ANS), and, when it was banned, switched to the Freiheitliche Arbeiterpartei (FAP). With the pending ban on the FAP, he, together with Thomas Wulff and others, founded the Nationale Liste (NL – National List) in 1989. In order to circumvent the prohibition on neo-Nazi organisations, Worch and Wulff developed the concept of Freie Kameradschaften in the 1990s. One such, the Nationale und Soziale Aktionsbündnis Norddeutschland (National and Social Action Alliance of Northern Germany), served as an inter-regional coordination unit. In the 2000s, Worch moved from Hamburg to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and since then has lived in Parchim. For a time he was national chairman of the far-right political party Die Rechte (The Right). Worch has been a central organizer of German neo-Nazism for decades.

The Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (German Communist Party) was founded in 1968. Due to similarities in terms of personnel and content, it is considered to be the successor organization to the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany), which was banned in 1956.

The Deutsche Partei (German Party) was, at first, a national-conservative party, which was founded in 1945 as the Niedersächsische Landespartei (NLP – Lower Saxony State Party). In 1946 it changed its name to the Deutsche Partei and expanded its activities to Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, and Bremen. It ran in the 1947 federal elections in these states, and was able to win enough votes (a minimum of 5% of votes cast) to gain seats in the Bundestag. In Hamburg it even achieved 13.1% and five directly elected seats. From 1949 to 1960 it was a part of the governing coalition and several of its representatives were federal ministers. In Hamburg, the Deutsche Partei joined with the CDU, the FDP, and the Bund der Heimatvertriebenen und Entrechteten (BHE – Union of Expellees and of those Deprived of Rights) to form the Hamburg-Bloc, an official party that held the majority in the Hamburg Parliament from 1953 to 1957. Over time the German Party distanced itself less and less from extreme right-wing positions. In Hamburg, the former Minister of Police during the Nazi era, Alfred Richter, became party vice-chairman. In 1961 the party disbanded at the national level after losing numerous members to the CDU.

The Deutsche Reichspartei (German Empire Party) was an extreme right-wing party founded in Kassel in 1950 as a merger of the "Deutschen Konservativen Partei – Deutsche Rechtspartei" (German Conservative Party/German Right Party) and the "Nationaldemokratischen Partei" (National Democratic Party). Some of the founding members had joined the Nazi Party as soon as it was created. The party had particular political significance in northern Germany, with strongholds in Bremen and Lower Saxony. Until the founding of the NPD in 1964, the DRP was the largest extreme right-wing party in Germany. Most of its supporters immediately switched to the NPD, and the DRP disbanded that same year.

The Deutscher Block (German Bloc) was an ethnic-nationalist organisation that formed in 1947 when it split away from the extreme right-wing Wirtschaftlchen Aufbau-Vereinigung (Economic Reconstruction Union). In the Bavarian state election of 1950, the DB received only 0.9% of the vote, and was thus only of local relevance. It took part in the 1953 federal election as part of the umbrella organisation the Nationale Sammlung (National Congress), which garnered no success. The DB disbanded in the early 1970s.

Die Bruderschaft (the Brotherhood) was a secret organisation founded in Hamburg in 1949 by former Nazi functionaries. Their goal was to place their members in key public offices.

The extreme right-wing Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) was founded in 1964, essentially as the successor to the Deutsche Reichspartei. After it achieved some success in elections in Baden-Wurttemberg, the party failed to achieve the 5% electoral threshold in the 1969 federal election and fell into a long crisis. In 2003 an attempt to ban the party failed, because too many of its officials were working for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Germany’s domestic intelligence agency). The party held seats in Saxony’s state parliament from 2004 to 2014 and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s from 2006 to 2016. A second attempt to ban the party was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court, which declared that, although the party was anti-constitutional and shared characteristics with National Socialism, it did not pose a threat to democracy. In June 2023 the NPD renamed itself Die Heimat (the Homeland). The party is presumed to have approximately 3000 members nationwide.

Both its anti-Semitic and racist positions and its ethnic world view are very similar to National Socialism. Party members repeatedly deny the Holocaust and are involved in far-right assaults and acts of violence.

The endorsement of Nazism is understood as any form or positive reference to the Nazi world view, the Nazi state, its institutions and actors, or to Nazi crimes. Such endorsement can take the form of statements, demonstrations and rallies, or the display or distribution of Nazi symbols, such as swastika graffiti.

‘Extreme-right violence has its basis in the false idea that certain social groups are of less worth than others. Such groups may be refugees, immigrants, Jewish people, Muslim people, Sinti and Roma, political opponents, unhoused people, people with handicaps, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, people of color, punks, left-wingers and anti-fascists, or other groups of people that are devalued in the extreme-right world view. These people are not attacked because of their personality or their behaviour. For the perpetrators, the supposed inclusion in one or more of the devalued groups is generally the motive for the attack, and it is irrelevant whether their assumptions are true or not. Extreme right-wing violence has many faces. It may take the form of physical assault, threats, mobbing, harassment, or targeted property damage. Right-wing agitation and online abuse are also forms, as are many other situations that people experience as violent.’

From: Opferperspektive. Erste Fachberatungsstelle für Betroffene rechter Gewalt

The Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (Free German Workers’ Party) was an extreme right-wing minor party founded in 1979, and at times the largest neo-Nazi organisation in Germany. When Michael Kühnen’s Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten (ANS) was banned in 1983, he called on his followers to infiltrate the FAP. Although the FAP achieved no success in elections, it was significant as an organisational centre for the neo-Nazi scene. Members of the FAP were involved in numerous far-right acts of violence. From 1991 onwards their national headquarters was in Halstenbek near Hamburg. In early 1995 the Federal Ministry of the Interior banned the FAP for violating association law. Many of its members, such as Thomas Wulff, Christian Worch, and Jürgen Rieger, later joined Freie Kameradschaften or the NPD.

The Deutsche Volksunion (German People's Union) was an extreme right-wing party. The publisher Gerhard Frey founded it in 1971 in competition with the NPD, initially as an association and then as a party in 1987. The DVU's programme and concerns were always closely intertwined with Frey's economic interests as an entrepreneur and publisher of the "National-Zeitung". In the 1980s and 1990s, it was one of the most important parties of the extreme right, and at times also the party with the largest membership. It made a name for itself primarily with campaigns against refugees and by relativising Nazi crimes. Despite publicly distancing itself from the militant neo-Nazi scene, there were numerous thematic and personal overlaps. The DVU merged with the NPD in 2011.

Beginning in 1977, Green Lists and Alternative Lists were founded in many German cities as political parties that had their roots in the environmental protection and anti-nuclear movement. They gave rise to the current Bündis 90/Die Grünen party. In Hamburg, the Green Party and the more left-leaning Alternative List joined together to form the Grün-Alternative Liste (Green-Alternative List) Hamburg, and ran in the 1982 state election. The Hamburg Alternative List disbanded in 1984, but the party retained the name GAL until 2012, when it was changed to Bündnis 90/Die Grünen Hamburg (Alliance 90/The Greens Hamburg).

The Hamburger Liste für Ausländerstopp (Hamburg List for Foreigner stop) was an extreme-right minor party. It was founded in 1982 after the state election by former members of the NPD. The party blamed immigrants for social problems, campaigned with a racist platform, and saw itself as the spearhead of a ‘reasonable xenophobia’. The HLA ran in all Hamburg state elections between 1982 and 1991, but never won more than 0.7% of the vote. In 1998 its status as a political party was revoked.

The Hansa Leisure Club, called the Hansa-Bande (Hansa Gang), was a neo-Nazi group cantered around Michael Kühnen. It first appeared in 1977, and by the end of the year was absorbed into the Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten (ANS).

‘Historical negationism is the attempt to falsify or radically distort the historical record. Holocaust denial and the trivialisation or glorification of Nazi crimes are types of historical negationism. The extreme right denies, minimises, or even justifies the crimes committed by the Nazis. The critical examination of Germany’s National Socialist past is seen as a ‘cult of guilt’, with which Germans are supposedly morally blackmailed and the country is kept from becoming a global political power.’

From: apabiz e.v., Immer wieder? Extreme Rechte und Gegenwehr in Berlin seit 1945. Pädagogische Handreichung zur Wanderausstellung für die schulische und außerschulische Bildungsarbeit mit Jugendlichen ab 15 Jahren, 2019

The Junge Nationalisten (Young Nationalists) is the youth organisation of the political party Die Heimat, formerly the NPD. The youth organisation is committed to the party’s platform, and also adheres to its extreme right-wing positions.

Jürgen Rieger (1946-2009) from Hamburg-Blankenese was a leading figure in the neo-Nazi scene, in which he served various functions: as a lawyer, representing neo-Nazis like Thies Christophersen, Michael Kühnen, and Christian Worch; as a propagandist, touting his own ideology constructs, such as the neopagan Artgemeinschaft Germanic Faith Community; and finally as a financial backer and functionary for diverse organisations and projects. He was a member of the Aktion Oder-Neiße, chairman of the Society for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Behavioural Research and of the Artgemeinschaft Germanic Faith Community. He also held positions in the FAP, which was banned in 1995, and in the NPD, and supported other organisations without formally being a member. He only joined the NPD in 2005 after they no longer excluded the violent Freie Kameradschaften. In addition, he also bought real estate for retreats and events for the far-right scene, such as the training centre Hetendorf 13 in Lower Saxony. Rieger was also known for organising the Rudolf Heß Memorial March in Wunsiedel. He declared his anti-Semitic and racist positions openly and sometimes with violence. He was charged and found guilty several times for various crimes, including incitement to racial hatred and assault.

Karl-Heinz Hoffmann (*1937) is a convicted neo-Nazi from Nuremberg. His involvement in extreme-right organisations began in his youth, and in 1973 he founded the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (WSG Hoffmann), out of which several extreme-right terrorists emerged. The group had several hundred members, and held paramilitary training exercises on the grounds of Hoffmann’s castle near Nuremberg. The WSG Hoffmann was banned by the Federal Ministry of the Interior in 1980. Hoffmann fled to Lebanon, where he had close contacts to Palestinian groups and built up a new right-wing terrorist organisation, the WSG-Ausland. Members of the WSG Hoffmann were responsible for the 1980 Oktoberfest attack in Munich, in which 13 people were killed and more than 200 injured, and for the 1980 murder of Shlomo Lewin and Frida Poeschke in Erlangen. In 1986 Hoffmann was sentenced to several years in prison for possession of explosives and other crimes, but was never convicted of murder. After his release from prison he continued to be active in the extreme-right scene as a speaker and writer.

The Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of Germany) was a left-wing political party founded in early 1919 during the Weimar Republic. The KPD was staunchly anti-fascist. It was banned in 1933 under the Nazi regime, and members were systematically persecuted and murdered. The party reconstituted in 1945 in Hamburg and held seats in Hamburg’s parliament. The KPD’s influence began to wane in 1947 due to the Cold War, and it’s membership decreased. It was banned in 1956, but remained active underground. Some members of the party’s executive committee moved to East Germany. When the Deutsche Kommunistische Partei (DKP) was founded in 1968, many former KDP members joined.

The Kühnen-Schulte-Wegener Group was an extreme-right terrorist organisation that robbed banks and Bundeswehr weapons depots in the late 1970s, in order to supply themselves for planned attacks.

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Michael Kühnen (1955-1991) was a German neo-Nazi who initially became active in and around Hamburg at the end of the 1970s. In the 1980s, he rose to become the leading figure in the nationwide scene. Kühnen founded the "Aktionsfront Nationaler Sozialisten" (ANS) together with extreme right-wing actors such as Thomas Wulff and Christian Worch in 1977, which initially made a public appearance through provocative acts such as the so-called donkey mask action in May 1978. From 1978, Kühnen was repeatedly sentenced to prison for incitement of the people, among other things. While in prison, he wrote the propaganda pamphlets "The Second Revolution" and "National Socialism and Homosexuality". Kühnen's defense of homosexuality earned him personal hostility and contributed to the division of the West German neo-Nazi scene. From the mid-1980s, Kühnen made efforts to reorganize his followers in the "Gesinnungsgemeinschaft der neuen Front" (GdNF), which, among other things, published a "Work Plan East" in January 1990, describing the establishment of a comprehensive neo-Nazi scene in East Germany. Michael Kühnen died in April 1991 as a result of an HIV infection.

The extreme right-wing Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) was founded in 1964, essentially as the successor to the Deutsche Reichspartei. After it achieved some success in elections in Baden-Wurttemberg, the party failed to achieve the 5% electoral threshold in the 1969 federal election and fell into a long crisis. In 2003 an attempt to ban the party failed, because too many of its officials were working for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Germany’s domestic intelligence agency). The party held seats in Saxony’s state parliament from 2004 to 2014 and in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s from 2006 to 2016. A second attempt to ban the party was rejected by the Federal Constitutional Court, which declared that, although the party was anti-constitutional and shared characteristics with National Socialism, it did not pose a threat to democracy. In June 2023 the NPD renamed itself Die Heimat (the Homeland). The party is presumed to have approximately 3000 members nationwide.

Both its anti-Semitic and racist positions and its ethnic world view are very similar to National Socialism. Party members repeatedly deny the Holocaust and are involved in far-right assaults and acts of violence.

The NSDAP/Auslandsorganisation (AO) was the Nazi Party’s foreign branch from 1931 to 1945. In 1972, the US-American neo-Nazi Gerhard ‘Gary’ Lauck (*1953) used the slightly-changed name – he added Aufbau, development – with the same initialism for the group he formed in Fairbanks, Nebraska. This group is banned in Germany. Its headquarters is in the USA, where it publishes and distributes racist and neo-Nazi propaganda material to a broad international network. In the 1970s, NSDAP/AO groups appeared all over Germany, including Hamburg, where both Michael Kühnen and Christian Worch were involved. Members were simultaneously active in legal organisations such as the GdNF. The common goal of all of these organisations was or is the reconstitution of a national-socialist dictatorship. An international arrest warrant was issued for Lauck, and he was captured in Denmark in 1995. He was deported to Hamburg and sentenced to four years in prison in 1996. After his release he was deported back to the USA.

The Naumann Circle was a secret organization of National Socialists centred around Werner Naumann, the former second-in-command to Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. The group attempted to infiltrate the FDP in North Rhine-Westphalia in the early 1950s.

The Neumann Group was far-right terrorist organisation founded by Hans-Joachim Neumann, a former police academy cadet. The group carried out attacks throughout the country in the 1970s.

The Odal Group was an extreme-right terrorist organization that perpetrated several attacks in Hamburg in the early 1970s.

Otto Strasser (1897-1974) was a German Nazi. He became active in the Nazi movement in the early 1920s, and campaigned in the early days for a form of ethnic socialism. In 1930 he left the party and, together with the Schwarze Front (Black Front), formed his own minor national socialist party. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Strasser fled the country, eventually settling in Canada. From exile he continued his campaign for a national-revolutionary and ethnic socialism. In 1955 he returned to Germany, and in the following year founded the minor, right-wing conservative party Deutsch-Soziale Union (German Social Union). It remained in existence until 1962, but never achieved electoral success. Until his death, Strasser continued to publish numerous writings, and passed himself off as an early opponent of Hitler. His ethnic socialist ideas found fertile ground with the New Right and parts of the NPD.

In the context of this website, political opposition is any form of political action that the extreme right considers to be in opposition to its goals and against which they fight. Political opponents include but are not limited to anti-fascists, left-wingers, Communists, and Social Democrats.

‘Racism is an ideology that devalues people based on their looks, their names, their (supposed) culture, ethnicity, or religion. In Germany, the targets of this ideology are non-white people – those who are considered non-German, and who thus do not belong. When people are judged not according their personal abilities and characteristics or their individual actions, but rather as part of a supposedly homogenous group and are seen as inferior, that is racism. This ideology is used to justify unequal social and economic conditions, marginalization of people, or even violence.’

From: Amadeu Antonio Stiftung, Was ist Rassismus?

Reichsgründungsfeier celebrated the founding of the German Empire on 18 January 1871. The day was celebrated during the German Empire (1871-1918), and during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) it was often a day of gathering for nationalistic and extreme right-wing opponents of the democratic republic. After 1945, right-wing and extreme right-wing groups reinstated this tradition. Because these gatherings were so politically charged, they were banned in Hamburg in 1951. The date remained an important element in the mobilisation of the extreme right, and is still celebrated by some fraternities today.

Right-wing rock refers to music from the rock, metal or hard-core spectrum with extreme right-wing lyrics. Around 1980, the neo-Nazi scene increasingly began to integrate elements of youth culture. Based on skinhead Oi! music, right-wing rock has racist, anti-Semitic, queer-hostile, and nationalistic lyrics that relativize National Socialism. Many records have been banned because the lyrics glorify National Socialism and call for acts of violence. Internationally, the Blood & Honour network was an important centre for the organisation of neo-Nazi propaganda through music until it was banned in 2000. The extreme right often uses music to recruit young people. In 2004, for example, neo-Nazis distributed CDs on school playgrounds. Since the 2000s, genres such as hip-hop, rap, and techno have also become established in the extreme right. To this day, the concerts, some of which are organised in secret, are considered important meeting places for the scene.

Rudolf Heß (1894-1987) was a leading Nazi and Deputy Führer to Hitler from 1933 to 1941. He joined the Nazi Party in 1920. His main responsibility was expanding the party’s infrastructure, and he had far-reaching authority. In May 1940 he flew alone to Scotland, without the knowledge of the rest of the Nazi leadership, presumably to negotiate an end to the war, and was taken prisoner. In 1946 Hess was sentenced to life in prison at the Nuremberg trials. He was held in a former military prison in Berlin-Spandau until his suicide in 1987. The extreme right has glorified him as a martyr, and holds memorial marches annually on the anniversary of his death.

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‘Sexism is the discrimination of persons based on the gender attributed to them. Expectations about characteristics and societal roles bound to that gender lead to unequal treatment, devaluation, and marginalisation. Threats against women, physical and psychological assault, other violence and even femicide (the murder of women or girls because of their gender) are all expressions of sexism. Since our society has an unequal distribution of power with regard to gender, it is women who are the victims of sexism, while men enjoy numerous privileges and advantages from a position of power.’

From: Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Kirche und Rechtsextremismus, 5 Fragen zu Sexismus und Antifeminismus, 2021

The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic Party) was founded in 1890 as a successor to the Social Democratic Workers’ Party and is the oldest party still in existence in Germany. During the Nazi era, the party was banned and remained active in exile.

The Sozialistische Reichspartei (Socialist Reich Party) was founded in 1949, immediately before the first federal election. It was considered a successor party to the Nazi Party, with regard to both its membership and its ideology. One of its leading members was the former Wehrmacht general Otto Ernst Remer, who had taken part in the suppression of the attempted coup after the assassination attempt on Hitler on 20 July 1944. In the 1951 Lower Saxony state election, the SRP achieved a spectacular success, receiving 11 percent of the vote, mostly from rural regions. In the assumption that the Allied occupation authorities would otherwise intervene, the federal government initiated proceedings to ban the party. The Federal Constitutional Court banned the SRP in October 1952. Local governments, including that of Hamburg, had already issued assembly bans on the party.

The Technischer Dienst (Technical Services) was the paramilitary arm of the Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ), founded in 1951 to train for a possible Soviet invasion. The activities of some members of the TD, in particular the making of lists of enemies, let to the prohibition of the BDJ and the TD in 1953.

Thies Christophersen (1918-1997) was a farmer, publisher, and writer from Schleswig-Holstein. In 1944, during the Nazi regime, he worked in a subcamp of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in a laboratory for plant breeding, a fact that he used to legitimize his denial of the Holocaust. After 1945 he was active in several parties on the right-wing spectrum, and he was a founding member of the Notgemeinschaft Deutscher Bauern (Emergency Association for German Farmers). The association, with Christophersen as its leader, changed its name in 1971 to the Bürger- und Bauerninitiative e.V. (Citizens’ and Farmers’ Initiative). It’s quarterly, Die Bauernschaft, served primarily to spread the national socialist blood-and-soil ideology and Nazi content. In 1973 Christophersen published a pamphlet called “The Auschwitz Lie”, and he planned an Auschwitz Congress in Nuremburg for 1977. He and the US Holocaust denier Gerhard Lauck appeared together at an event in Hamburg in 1974. Christophersen’s publications received much attention in the far-right scene outside of Germany. For his activities he repeatedly received suspended prison sentences, and from 1986-1995 he sought protection from prosecution in Denmark. He died in 1997 in Molfsee near Kiel.

Thomas Wulff (*1963) is a German neo-Nazi from Hamburg-Bergedorf. He is considered one of the leading figures in the Northern German extreme right-wing scene. He emerged in the scene in the early 1980s in the circle around Michael Kühnen and Christian Worch, and took over the state chairmanship of the Freiheitliche Arbeiterpartei (FAP) in the mid-1980s. In 1989 he and Worch founded the miniparty Nationale Liste, which became known across the country for its anti-Antifa work. As a reaction to the banning of neo-Nazi organisations, Worch and Wulff developed the concept of Freie Kameradschaften in the 1990s, with the Nationale und Soziale Aktionsbündnis Norddeutschland serving as a supra-regional coordination centre. In 2004 Wulff urged the Freie Kameradschaften into a closer relationship with the NPD, and he became the deputy state chairman of the NPD in Hamburg in 2011. In 2016 he left the party over disagreements with the national governing board. Wulff repeatedly publicly denied the Holocaust and was found guilty of several crimes, including incitement to racial hatred, for which he received prison sentences.

The Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (Union of those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime) was founded in 1947 as an association of former resistance fighters against the Nazis and those who suffered persecution at their hands. It offers support to victims on issues of social welfare, educates about Nazi crimes, hunts down old Nazis, and stands against neo-fascism, war, and arms build-up. During the Cold War, the VVN was affected by anti-communist sentiment, and the federal government initiated a ban in 1951. It was not enforced in all states, but Hamburg prohibited it as a communist group from 1951 to 1967. In 1971 the VNN expanded to include young people with no experience of Nazi persecution and extended its name to include the League of Antifascists.

The Wehrmachtausstellung is the general name for two travelling exhibitions created by the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (HIS). In March 1995, the HIS opened the travelling exhibition Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941-1944 (War of Extermination. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944). Over the next 4 years it was shown in 33 cities. Its theme was the participation of the Wehrmacht in the murder of the European Jews and the civilian population in the German-occupied regions. The exhibition caused an intensive debate in Germany. Extreme right-wing and conservative groups organized demonstrations protesting the exhibition and defended the Wehrmacht’s ‘honor’. After it became known that research errors had been made, the HIS developed a second travelling exhibition in 2001, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941-1944 (Crimes of the Wehrmacht. Dimensions of the War of Extermination 1941-1944). It was shown in 13 cities, but was less controversial.