Socialist Reich Party
The Socialist Reich Party of Germany (SRP) (German:Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands) was a West German National Socialist political party founded 2 October 1949. Leading figures included General Otto Remer, Dr. Fritz Dorls and Dr. Gerhard Krüger.
The party is claimed to have seen itself as the "legitimate heir of the NSDAP" and to have been funded by the Soviet Union because of anti-American and pro-Soviet views. Affiliated associations were the Reichsfront paramilitary organisation and the Reichsjugend youth wing, which were banned in 1951. The party was banned in 1952.
History
The SRP, a split-off from the German Right Party (German: Deutsche Rechtspartei), called for a united Europe, led by a rejuvenated German Reich, as a "third force" against both capitalism and communism. However the SRP never openly criticised the Soviet Union and secretly received funding from Moscow.[1]
It claimed Konrad Adenauer was a United States puppet and that Karl Dönitz was the last legitimate Führer of a pan-German Reich.[2] It denied the propaganda of the so-called Holocaust and claimed that the US built the gas ovens of the Dachau concentration camp after the war.
The party had its own paramilitary organisation, the Reichsfront.
The SRP had about ten thousand members and it won 16 seats in the Lower Saxony Landtag election, and in Bremen scored 8 seats. It was banned on 22 September 1952 by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany.
The party's official publication was Der Reichsruf issued from Hanover.[3]
External links
References
- ↑ Lee, p. 58.
- ↑ Martin Lee, The Beast Reawakens (Warner Books, 1998), p. 50.
- ↑ Cross-Currents, by Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, page 236
