German Extreme Right Bids For Voters

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32005, 4 June 1969, Page 20

German Extreme Right Bids For Voters

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BONN. The speakers railed against “the victors of yesterday,” who had branded the German volk as “criminal” and “accursed.” They reviled West German’s post-war leaders for accepting the notion of German war guilt.

They assailed pornography, the mass media, “red students” and “ultra-Left unions.” They mourned the decline of physical fitness.

They pledged to fight for

lebensinteresse, the vital interests of the German volk. As for lebensraum, they demanded the return of “robbed German land” in Poland and Czechoslovakia.

This is how West Germany’s extreme Right-wing National Democratic Party in Stuttgart kicked off its election campaign—a drive most analysts see ending with the party's capture of up to 60 seats in the 518-member Federal Parliament after the election of September 28 The speakers, the party chairman. Adolf Von Thadden and his deputy, Siegfried Poehlmann. and some lesser officials were rewarded with horse cheers, applause and foot-stamping. Has the German far Right become a serious threat again? No, decided the Conserva-tive-Socialist coalition Cabinet of Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and most informed observers of the German scene agree.

The Cabinet decided last month that the movement, as incarnated in the National Democrats, did not warrant the filing of a constitutional court case against the party as undemocratic. In spite of the party’s shrill rhetoric and—to many —menacing shadow, it is still a relatively small organisation of fewer than 30,000 paid members, most of them elderly men with Nazi pasts. The party has scored up to 9.8 per cent of the vote in state elections but that was during the recession of 1966-67. Last September, when the economy moved back on the track, the party lost ground. The National Democrats now hold 62 seats in seven of the 10 State parliaments, amounting to about 1000

seats. Although the party's strength varies in different; parts of the country, the fact that it has chapters almost! everywhere qualifies it as anational organisation. VOCAL OPPOSITION ' Although the party draws on a national vein of protestvoters, it must also contend! with a vocal, sometimes vio-j lent, opposition. Bayreuth,; Bonn and Stuttgart have re-! fused to rent the party con-; vention halls in recent - months. Nor is there evidence of [any sharp political turn to! the Right or to nationalism in polls taken by the respected Allensbach Institute. A balanced sample of 200 citizens was asked in 1955 if they thought Germans were more gifted than other people. The “no,” numbered 38 per cent. Ten years later, 50 per cent said "no." Asked if they i thought Germany would again be a world power, 41 per cent said “no” in 1954. In 1965, the figure had grown to 52 per cent. But some traces of the Third Reich remain. When citizens were asked last month if the time limit on the prosecution of murderers should be dropped, 71 per cent said “yes.” When the question was asked another way—if the time limit should be dropped for the murderers of Jews—only 44 per cent answered in the affirmative. MIGHT BENEFIT

1 Neither Kiesinger nor : other politicians believe that ■ the far Right can sweep to power this year or in the ■ foreseeable future. But the Chancellor thinks he has 1 identified a Rightist trend in 1 the country that could benefit • his Christian Democrats at the polls if any such trend can be kept from accruing solely to the benefit of the I National Democrats. To this end, Kiesinger has taken a marked “nationalist conservative” turn. In recent months he has blocked Bonn’s signature on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, favoured a bill that would ease penalties on minor Nazi criminals while dropping the time limit on Major Casew, and defended the value of the Deutschmark against supporters of revaluation. He will go to the United States on July 22 and 23 as part of a series of regular consultations between the two allies. But he has made it known that the Bonn-Wash-ington accord on paying troop deferment costs to the United States involving about 8NZ664,640,000 a year —will have to be agreed first, first.

This was the issue that helped bring down his predecessor, Ludwig Erhard, who under pressure from President Johnson agreed to pay a greater share. The chancellor’s aides have made it known that Kiesinger would welcome foreign attacks that would place him in the heroic role of defending West German interests, against outside pressure, a position designed to appeal to nationalist voters. It remains to be seen whether the forces the crafty Chancellor has banked on—a spurt of nationalism fed by growing prosperity and a blacklash against Leftist student unrest—will prove stronger than the Socialist, internationalist and labour-orien-ted appeals.