European Liberation Front

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The European Liberation Front (EBF) was a neo-Nazi group in the Federal Republic of Germany . It was founded in 1969 in North Rhine-Westphalia in the context of the resistance campaign by the NPD members and planned an attack on the power supply for an appearance by Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt ( SPD ). The EBF saw itself as a “fighting group against communism”.

history

Founded in the group of the NPD members Helmut Blatzheim and Hartwig Neumann, former Foreign Legionnaire John Brodka and an undercover agent of the secret service , Helmut Krahberg. It had around 30 members and was organized militarily. Allegedly there were contacts with former members of the Belgian SS and the French OAS . The EBF saw itself as a "combat group against communism" and since 1969, when Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt ( SPD ) took office , considered the Federal Republic of Germany to have been infiltrated by communists, including the Bundeswehr and the police .

activity

On May 29, 1970, the group was evacuated by the police on the basis of information from Krahberg, and 14 members were arrested. Allegedly, attacks on power supply facilities in Kassel were planned for the next day , as Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt and GDR Prime Minister Willi Stoph met there for deliberations. One submachine gun , 15 pistols , three revolvers and several rifles were confiscated.

Criminal proceedings were initiated against nine people . The District Court Dusseldorf recognized in 1972 on the fulfillment of the offense of § 129 of the Criminal Code and recognized four acquittals and five prison sentences , which for parole have been suspended. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on this in its July 19, 1972 edition:

... The judgments are not yet final because the defense lawyers want to obtain further acquittals through the appeal. However, the prosecution has already lost out , whose indictment, which is largely based on material from the North Rhine-Westphalian State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, turned out to be unprovable on many points.
When the "European Liberation Front" was dismantled by the police in May 1970 on the eve of the Kassel meeting between Chancellor Brandt and GDR Prime Minister Stoph, it still seemed as if a right-wing extremist cadre, working with great criminal energy, was about to commit serious acts have. Not only was an extensive arsenal of weapons found, but the founding pamphlets of this group of former National Democrats also revealed that they wanted to build a conspiratorial terrorist organization across the country, bound by absolute military obedience. There was talk of a central high command, of propaganda and special departments, of liaison officers, squadron commanders and squad leaders. Allegedly, politicians and journalists were supposed to be kidnapped, internal German border incidents were provoked with armed violence and even the top talks in Kassel were to be disrupted by attacks on the power grid.
Little was left of this during the taking of evidence. The main witness for the public prosecutor's office, Helmut Krahberg, who was also a former agent of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, gave such a dubious idea during his protracted interrogation that the prosecution ran into trouble. Krahberg could not dispel the suspicion of the defense attorneys of the nine defendants that he had played a double role in the birth of this secret society from the beginning. The witness diligently provided the Office for the Protection of the Constitution about the intention of some NPD functionaries to go underground after the lost federal election in 1969 and to continue working here politically and militantly. But it was also Krahberg who, according to the unanimous admission of the main defendants ... appeared as the most reliable co-thinker and first encouraged them to do their thing. Obviously he belonged to the top trio from the start, be it as an agent provocateur or as a constitutional guardian called to play along. The witness Krahberg is now charged with knowingly false testimony in the house.

The defendants' defense argued that the supposed secret society consisted only of "beer table talks in political sauce". The criminal chamber did not follow this line, but took seriously the pamphlets that had been seized and encouraged criminal acts. Even so, the court did not understand the process as a political process. The defendants were credited with the fact that none of the allegedly planned acts were carried out. In the opinion of the FAZ author Bewerunge, the judgment served as a warning signal to all those who call for political action "without carefully considering the criminal content of their demands in the choice of words".

classification

The EBF was an example of the radicalization of the extreme right in the Federal Republic after the defeat of the NPD in the Bundestag elections in 1969, when it failed to get into the Bundestag with 4.3% of the vote . Some of the members, especially the steward service, migrated to radical splinter groups that were ready to carry out militant or terrorist actions.

Typical of these groups was their control by various constitutional protection agencies, which enforced the organizations with informants. Both the EBF, the Wehrsportgruppe Hengst , the National Socialist Combat Group Greater Germany and the National German Liberation Movement were repealed by the police when the first attacks were to be carried out.

literature

  • Rainer Fromm : The "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann". Presentation, analysis and classification. A contribution to the history of German and European right-wing extremism. Frankfurt am Main 1998, p. 98 f.
  • Klaus-Henning Rosen: Right-wing Terrorism. Groups - perpetrators - backgrounds. In: Gerhard Paul (Ed.): Hitler's shadow fades. The normalization of right-wing extremism. Bonn 1989, pp. 49-78, here p. 51.
  • Antifa commission of the KB: How criminal is the NPD? Analyzes, documents, names. Hamburg 1980, p. 117, p. 38.
  • Lothar Bewerunge: right-wing extremists on probation. The judgment against the "European Liberation Front". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of July 19, 1972, p. 9.