Danes Arrest American Publisher of Nazi Materials : Racism: Nebraskan is believed to have smuggled hate tracts into Germany for years. Bonn follows up with raids.

An American believed to be one of the biggest distributors of neo-Nazi materials in the United States and Europe was arrested in Denmark, and German police followed up Thursday with raids on apartments of more than 80 of his followers in Germany.

Police in suburban Copenhagen said they had arrested Gary Rex Lauck, 41, of Lincoln, Neb., and were awaiting extradition papers from Germany. The city-state of Hamburg had issued an international warrant seeking the self-professed Nazi’s arrest.

Meanwhile, Germany’s Federal Criminal Office said about 800 police had seized weapons, ammunition and Nazi documents in dawn sweeps of the homes of some of Lauck’s German followers, mostly teen-agers.

It is illegal in Germany to produce, possess or distribute Nazi materials, and it is a crime to incite violence.

“We hope that with this campaign of searches, we have dealt a decisive blow to (Lauck’s) Nazi delivery system, which has been a thorn in our eye for a long time,” said Willi Fundermann, spokesman for the criminal office.

Lauck, whose main publication is the “Nazi Battle Cry,” speaks German and is believed to have been smuggling racist hate literature into this country for more than 20 years. He also sells his products by mail in America.

A 1993 report on German neo-Nazis by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith named Lauck as the movement’s most dangerous propagandist. The league, which monitors anti-Semitic and far-right activity, dubbed the Nebraskan the “Farm Belt Fuhrer.”

From Nebraska, Lauck had operated the National Socialist German Workers Party-Overseas Organization--Adolf Hitler gave the same name to his international support groups--and published newspapers and magazines in a dozen languages, including English, German, Russian and Hungarian. He had been arrested in Germany in 1976 and jailed for four months for possessing illegal stickers.

Authorities say Lauck was Germany’s single largest source of illegal Nazi materials. German teen-agers at illicit political rock concerts sported his SS armbands and waved his SS flags; disaffected, out-of-work youths plastered his swastika stickers on village walls; his better-educated disciples read his covert copies of “Mein Kampf” and listened to his tapes of Hitler’s speeches.

Both authorities and readers agreed that Lauck’s literature was far more virulent than anything printed in Germany.

Germans who wanted hard-core Nazi paraphernalia praised Lauck for the cunning with which he smuggled his illegal goods. In a previous interview with The Times, he even boasted of using carrier pigeons to ship his publications.

Lauck also maintained a complex web of international shipping addresses and computer links.

German officials had tried to get U.S. cooperation in arresting Lauck but failed because the U.S. Constitution protects free speech.

But in recent months, Lauck had come under mounting pressure from non-government watchdog groups in the United States. He apparently decided to scale back his Nebraska operation, go to Denmark and join the ranks of neo-Nazi publishers who take advantage of liberal free-speech provisions.