- Germany's most notorious postwar neo-Nazi party was led
by an intelligence agent working for the British, according to both published
and unpublished German sources.
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- The alleged agent - the late Adolf von Thadden - came
closer than anyone to giving the far-right real influence over postwar
German politics.
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- Under his leadership, the National Democratic party (NPD)
made a string of impressive showings in regional elections in the late
60s, and there were widespread fears that it would gain representation
in the federal parliament.
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- Yet, according to a report earlier this year in the Cologne
daily, the Klner Stadt-Anzeiger, the man dubbed "the New Fhrer"
was working for British intelligence throughout the four years he led the
NPD, from 1967 to 1971.
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- However, a former senior officer in German intelligence
told the Guardian this week that he had been informed of a much longer-standing
link between Von Thadden and British intelligence. His recollection raises
the question of whether the German far-right-winger was under the sway
of M16 when he and others founded the NPD in 1964.
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- Dr Hans Josef Horchem, who was the head of the Hamburg
office of the Verfassungsschutz - the West German security service - from
1969 to 1981, said he received regular visits from British intelligence
liaison officers.
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- "We held general discussions on security. At one
of these - I think it was towards the end of the 70s- they said, 'Adolf
von Thadden was in contact with us', and that that was in the 1950s".
Mr Horchem did not know whether the links between the German and British
intelligence had continued into the 60s and 70s.
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- According to the Klner Stadt-Anzeiger, whose report passed
virtually unnoticed when it was published, the neo-Nazi leader met his
British contact at a hotel in Hamburg.
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- Germany's government is currently trying to ban the NPD
on the basis that its policies violate the constitution.
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- But the government's case is in danger of collapse after
the disclosure that some senior NPD members were agents of the Verfassungsschutz.
This has sparked debate about the extent to which counter-intelligence
officers were sustaining the far right in their efforts to monitor it.
Similar issues arise in Von Thadden's case.
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- The question also arises of whether MI6 was seeking help
from the neo-Nazi movement when far-left militancy was sweeping Europe
after the uprising of May 1968 in Paris.
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- Von Thadden left the NPD in 1975, and died at the age
of 75 in 1996.
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- His younger sister, Barbara Fox von Thadden, said she
had had no reason to suspect her brother worked for British intelligence.
But she added that they had very different political views and steered
away from political discussion.
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- They had an English grandmother, and Ms Fox von Thadden
said her brother "did like coming to Britain, and did like Britain
very much".
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4480651,00.html
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