The Embers

"Fascists out, fascists out!" yelled hecklers. But the speaker of the German Reich Party meeting in Hamburg last week went right on with his hoarse oratory. "It is not historical," he cried, "to accuse the Germans of starting the war against Poland in 1939." Wrote Die Zeit's reporter: "The man next to me covered his face with his hands and said, 'It can't be true.' "

It was not true, but the outbreak of anti-Semitic incidents after the Christmas smearing of swastikas on the Cologne synagogue jolted West Germany into taking a new and disgusted look at the neo-Nazi Deutsche Reichs-Partei. Police established that the two young swastika smearers, aged 25, were both German Reich Party members. Though the party hastily expelled the pair, newspapers and Bundestag members demanded that the party be banned under the constitution's Article 21, which outlaws "parties that according to their aims and the behavior of their members seek to impair or abolish the free and democratic basic order." Under Article 21 the Communist Party was declared illegal in 1956.

In two elections, the tiny German Reich Party (estimated membership: 16,000) has failed to win a single seat in the Bonn Parliament. Successor to the Socialist Reich Party, which was banned under Article 21 after winning a thumping 366,790 votes and 16 seats in 1951 state elections in Lower Saxony, the party 1) demands that foreign troops be kicked out, 2) repudiates "the disgusting self-accusation that Germany alone was guilty of two world wars," 3) promises "to create a new epoch in history" without repeating Hitler's "mistakes." Led by paunchy ex-Brown Shirt Wilhelm Meinberg, 61, who says he is "proud" of having been a Nazi, the German Reich Party is a hard-core political nucleus keeping alive old slogans. Others work at it too, including some 40 Nazi-run or Nazi-tainted publishing houses, some 25 youth social groups.

Despite the public outcry, none of the big parties are keen to ban the German Reich Party. "There are so many ex-Nazis," explains a Socialist official. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's policy is still to ignore fanatic elements like the German Reich Party on the theory that its members will grow old and their issues will be forgotten by a democratically schooled youth. What many Germans, including Adenauer, dread is some unforeseen event, such as a heavy economic or political reverse for Germany, that could give the tiny German Reich Party an importance that it now certainly cannot claim.

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