I Wonder...

[Annie]

Perhaps WJ would agree with this. Note the 'leader' is following in Hitler's footsteps, (see bold):

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1521248,00.html

March 12, 2005

Hitler was great; I can't say more
By Roger Boyes

Udo Voigt, leader of the German far-right NPD, faces inquiry for 'glorification' of Nazism

“ADOLF HITLER was a great German statesman,” the bête noire of the German Establishment said as he sat in a room darkened by bombproof shutters.

“If you can call Churchill a great Briton, if you can make a hero out of Alexander the Great, then you have to give that status to Hitler, too,” Udo Voigt, the leader of the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD), said. “My lawyer has told me to say no more than that.”

This rising right-wing extremist is under investigation for allegedly glorifying the Nazis. “All part of a strategy to criminalise me and marginalise the party,” he said.

But as Germany prepares for the 2006 general election, a criminal case could muzzle Herr Voigt, who is increasingly seen as a malign Pied Piper who entrances the surly young of eastern German housing estates.

So he is careful. There are no busts of the Führer in Herr Voigt’s bunker-like office, just maps of Germany as it was, various German and neo-Nazi flags and a poster that declares: “May 1945, Nothing to Celebrate.”

This year’s 60th anniversary commemorations have rallied Germany’s usually warring right-wing organisations. They are using them to stir regret for German wartime suffering, convert it into political anger and win voters across the generations.

Herr Voigt, 52 and a former army captain, is the mastermind. Since taking charge in 1996 he has converted the NPD from a mouthpiece for embittered war veterans into “a radical voice for the silent majority”. He addresses rallies using the slogan: “We are everywhere.”

He began by harnessing the raw energy of eastern Germany’s racist skinheads, recruiting them from pubs and placing them under near- military discipline.

“More than 600 have passed through our training centres, and many of them have become our leadership cadres,” he boasted, pointing at a picture of a graduation ceremony.

Behind the party’s headquarters, in the Berlin suburb of Köpenick, stands a new education centre with bunk beds, blackboards and an NPD flag fluttering in the courtyard.

The NPD is widening its appeal. Last month, during the anniversary of the Dresden bombing, 8,000 neo-Nazis marched silently through the streets, and they seemed to enjoy the sympathy of many citizens.

The NPD won more than 9 per cent of the vote in Saxony and has become a pivotal element in the Dresden parliament.

Sometimes the party is deliberately provocative, such as when its representatives walked out of Parliament rather than stand in silence for the victims of Auschwitz, but mainly it uses its status to build far-right cells beyond Saxony.

With the help of other far-right parties it is starting to make inroads in western Germany. “We are now in the middle of society, not on the fringes,” Herr Voigt said.

On May 8, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender, the NPD plans to march through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, chanting “Nothing to celebrate” in an effort to exploit Germany’s mixed feelings about losing the war.