Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD party in the state of Thuringia, has twice been fined by a German court for using a banned Nazi slogan. The phrase, “Everything for Germany” (“Alles für Deutschland”) was a slogan of the Nazi stormtroopers and engraved on their daggers.
In a 2017 speech to the AfD youth wing, Höcke bemoaned German’s culture of remembrance of the Holocaust, saying, “We Germans, our people, are the only people in the world who planted a monument of shame in the middle of our national capital.” He called for Germany to stop atoning for Nazi crimes and make a "180-degree turn" in how it remembers its past.
Alexander Gauland, an AfD co-founder, former party leader, and current Member of Parliament, has engaged in Holocaust trivialization on several occasions. In a 2018 speech to the AfD youth wing, he said, “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird poop in more than 1,000 years of successful German history.” Gauland also said in 2017 that Germans should be “proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars.”