Stasi-Nazi connections
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LOS ANGELES TIMES
News: Opinion
Sunday, September 10, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/200 ... 85233.html
By MARTIN A. LEE
SAN FRANCISCO--Amid the recent surge of neo-Nazi violence in Germany,
reports disclosed that agents of the former East German secret service had
infiltrated and supported neo-fascist groups in the West during the Cold
War. This seems a decidedly strange partnering. But the prime objective of
the Stasi, according to documents discovered in the Gauck archives that
contain the communist-era secret police files, was to embarrass and
discredit West Germany's government.
These revelations came as German leaders deliberate over how to respond to
a recent wave of neo-Nazi hate crimes, including the brutal murders of
several foreigners and a bomb blast that injured six Jewish immigrants.
The newly released Stasi records indicate that East German intelligence
established ties to the neo-Nazi Hoffman Wehrsportgruppe (Hoffman Military
Sports Group) that sprang up in West Germany in the 1970s. "We had an
especially dense network of agents in this group," a former high-ranking
Stasi official told the magazine Welt am Sonntag. "It ensured that we were
able to steer the activities of these right-wing radicals in the right
direction and never against East Germany."
Hoffman group members were linked to several terrorist incidents, including
the 1980 slaying of a Jewish publisher in Erlangen, West Germany. Another
Hoffman group fanatic blew himself up while planting a bomb at Munich's
crowded Oktoberfest celebration in 1980. The final count of 13 dead and 200
hurt made this the worst terrorist incident in postwar Germany.
The Hoffman group was banned by the West German government after police
raided a castle near Nuremberg that served as a paramilitary camp for
neo-Nazis from several countries. The raid netted a large cache of
explosives, automatic weapons, uniforms, poisonous chemicals, antiaircraft
guns and an armored car--all supplied by sympathizers inside the West
German army.
Stasi contacts within the West German neo-Nazi scene included Odfried Hepp,
a young Hoffman group trainee who unleashed a spate of bombings that
injured military personnel and damaged property at four U.S. Army bases in
West Germany in the early 1980s. After hiding at a neo-Nazi safe house in
Britain, Hepp resurfaced in East Germany. The East German government's
refusal to provide financial reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors and
its anti-Israeli foreign policy appealed to Hepp, who later became a paid
employee of the Tangiers-based Palestine Liberation Front, or PLF, led by
Mohammed Abu Abbas.
As it turns out, collaboration between West German neo-Nazis and communist secret service organizations began far earlier-than is suggested in the declassified Stasi files. A key figure in this strange political alliance
was Maj. Gen. Otto Ernst Remer, who served as Adolf Hitler's bodyguard and personal security chief during the final months of World War II.