West Germany Can’t Stop Nazi Meetings

Former Nazi officers and soldiers still get together regularly in West Germany, and government officials can do little to stop them.

Officials say they check on such meetings only if they detect concrete signs of extremist right-wing tendencies.

Gatherings of ex-Nazis range from yearly reunions of former SS officers to meetings of regular army veterans, many of whom once belonged to the Nazi Party.

Other gatherings on formal occasions draw old battle comrades.

Funeral Drew 100

The funeral in Dusseldorf, West Germany, for a former aide to Adolf Hitler, for example, drew about 100 ex-members of the Nazi’s Waffen SS, the newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported.

Many of the former SS men at the July 8 funeral wore the insignia of an SS veterans’ group and draped the casket of the former Hitler aide, Richard Schulze-Kossens, with wreaths bearing tributes from several former SS units, the newspaper said.

Afterwards the former SS men, now mostly in their 70s and 80s, went out for coffee and talked about their health, Welt am Sonntag said.

“We don’t approve of it, but attending a funeral isn’t illegal,” Interior Ministry spokesman Roland Bachmeier said. “Such a gathering does not in fact pose much danger to society.”

Small Splinter Group

The number of right-wing extremists in West Germany is 25,200, according to Interior Ministry figures. The nation has a population of 61.5 million.

While it is illegal in West Germany to display Nazi symbols and propaganda, and known neo-Nazi groups are banned, war veterans’ groups are legal.

“Unless we have concrete proof that a veterans’ group is involved in illegal activities, it is allowed to meet,” Bachmeier said. “If we suspect that a group has right-wing extremist tendencies, we keep a very close eye on it.”

One of the most hotly protested reunions was one held by hundreds of Waffen SS veterans in the Bavarian Alps town of Nesselwang in May, 1985.

Churches, Unions Protest

The reunion, held just before President Reagan’s visit to a military cemetery in Bitburg, where 49 Waffen SS members are buried, drew protests from church groups, labor union groups and angry citizens.

Both the Nesselwang gathering and the Dusseldorf funeral, according to Welt am Sonntag, included members of a veterans’ organization with many former SS members, known as HIAG, an acronym for mutual aid society.

The SS, or Schutzstaffel, was an elite military guard of the Nazi Party. The Waffen SS was the fighting branch of the guard, which also ran concentration camps and massacred civilians.