3 - The National Liberation Zone

Summary

THE COLLAPSE OF the East German state coincided with a dramatic rise in radical right-wing and neo-Nazi activity, especially among young people. The political scientist Gideon Botsch has called this “one of the most striking secondary consequences of the historic change that came to Germany in 1989.”

The neo-Nazi boom was by no means a phenomenon that western observers retroactively attached to the period as a way of explaining subsequent destabilizing trends, such as the popularity of the Alternative für Deutschland party (Alternative for Germany, AfD) three decades after reunification or the racist murders committed by Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (National Socialist Underground, NSU) terrorists in the first decade of the twenty-first century. On the contrary, careful observers of the East German scene—including the Stasi itself—had been noting the rise of the far right throughout the 1980s.

Between 1983 and 1987, GDR police registered a five-fold increase in radical right-wing criminality. In 1987, the Stasi reported an unprecedented rise in extremist brutality, with incidents including attacks on soldiers, assaults on punks in Berlin, and young racists chasing Mozambicans through the streets of Dresden. In subsequent years things got even worse. In 1988, officials initiated 44 criminal proceedings in response to right-wing crimes. In the first eleven months of 1989, prosecutors were forced to initiate 144 such proceedings—a rise of over 300% in rightextremist criminality in less than a year.

An East German police report issued toward the end of the country's existence noted that the 1980s had been a fruitful decade for neo-Nazis:

Since 1981 visible elements of nationalist and neofascist ideologies have been coming to the fore. Their attacks are aimed at: lazy, smelly, anarchist punks, foreigners, Goths, homosexuals, and people of Jewish faith or places connected with them. Amidst widespread public silence, skinhead groups are developing a mission-oriented life of their own, characterized by increasing numbers of followers in all areas and the establishment of conspiratorial structures.

The radical right was on the move in East Germany during the second half of the 1980s. According to a study completed in 1988, about 2% of East German young people identified as skinheads, with twice as many, 4%, actively sympathizing with skinheads. That meant that about 6% of GDR young people were either skinheads or skinhead sympathizers. Almost a third of young people declared at least some understanding for the skinheads.