Gesinnungsgemeinschaft der Neuen Front (GdNF) is a German organisation that was the main group for neo-Nazi activity during the 1990s. It translates into English as the Community of Like-Minded People of the New Front[1] or the Covenant of the New Front.[2]
The GdNF was formed in 1985 by Michael Kühnen, Thomas Brehl and Christian Worch after the banning of the Action Front of National Socialists/National Activists.[3] Initially a loose group associated with the magazine Die Neue Front, the GdNF was soon formalised into an organisation, taking in most of the membership of the ANS/NA.[citation needed] The group placed itself within the more radical Sturmabteilung tradition of Nazism rather than simple devotion to Adolf Hitler.[citation needed] It also placed importance on opposing the influence of the United States, the destruction of the environment and the weakening of German racial purity.[3] The group was also active in Austria, which it referred to as "Ostmark", and called for the formation of an Austrian SA in a December 1990 edition of its paper Neuen Front.[4]
When Kühnen came out as a homosexual in 1986 the GdNF remained loyal to him in the resulting split, although the group lost control of the Free German Workers' Party.[5] However the group continued to improve its organisational basis despite this set-back, staging marches, paramilitary training and setting up cells in the German Democratic Republic.[5] It also sought to build up a portfolio of international contacts with which it co-operated on military drilling, propaganda dissemination and arms dispersal.[4]
After the death of Kühnen in 1991, the leadership of the GdNF, which had about 400 fully active members, passed to Worch, Winfried Arnulf Priem and Austrian neo-Nazi leader Gottfried Küssel.[6] In Austria the GdNF worked in tandem with Küssel's Volkstreue Außerparlamentarische Opposition (VAPO), a like-minded group.[4] However without Kühnen the group went into terminal decline and became lost in a sea of similar groups that were formed in the 1990s due to ever closer government scrutiny of neo-Nazi activities. The group continued to publish Neuen Front although increasingly this became an international magazine of neo-Nazism with close links to the NSDAP/AO with the GdNF doing little beyond publishing this work.[2] With Worch jailed in 1996 and other important figures such as Thomas Brehl starting up their own groups the GdNF gradually passed out of existence.[citation needed]
References
edit- ^ Peter James, Modern Germany: Politics, Society and Culture, Routledge, 1998, p. 134
- ^ a b Hermann Kurthen, Werner Bergmann, Rainer Erb, Antisemitism and Xenophobia in Germany after Unification, Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 166
- ^ a b "Irving v. Lipstadt Defence Documents". Archived from the original on 2015-01-05. Retrieved 2009-11-19.
- ^ a b c Bernd Baumgartl, Adrian Favell, New Xenophobia in Europe, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1995, p. 23
- ^ a b Cyprian Blamires, World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1, p. 369
- ^ Martin A. Lee, The Beast Reawakens, 1997, p. 253