In the Eastern zone, there could be no real attempt by the far-right to resurrect National Socialist-style political party as the Soviet military government (SVAG) was quite active in suppressing any sign of far-right activity. SVAG was also in the process in the first few years of the occupation of trying to prepare the ground for KPD-led of a highly moderated political landscape in which minority parties were reduced to pliant collaborators for the SED state. The western zone though was a different story.

The Western zones witnessed the trend of the rise of far-right parties almost as soon as their respective military governments allowed German political parties to form. These parties tended to incorporate elements of the National Socialist platforms and pushed for an end to the occupation and a partnership with the West against Communism. In Bavaria, under the control of the US military government (OMGUS), the Wirtschaftliche Aufbauvereigung (Economic Reconstruction Organization/WAV) was created in October/December 1945 and managed to win 15% of the votes in Bavaria's December 1946 elections. Concurrent to the rise of the WAV, Hesse had the Nationaldemokratische Partei (National Democratic Party/NDP), which appealed to OMGUS for a license to become a legitimate political party. The British zone had the Deutsche Konservative Partei - Deutsche Rechtspartei (German Conservative/Right Party/ DKP-DRP) which had connections with the WAV. In northern Germany, the Deutsche Bauern und Landvolkpartei (German Farmer and Peasants' Party) grew out of connections with the DKP-DRP.

This alphabet soup of political parties gingerly played with its ideological and personal connections to the previous regime. Much of its own leadership was drawn from conservative-nationalist circles that were sometime collaborators with the NSDAP, but also at various times were estranged from it. Heinrich Leuchtgens, the leader of the DVP, was a Weimar-era conservative and staunch anti-socialist, but was also briefly jailed by the NSDAP in 1934 because of his monarchist sentiments. Fritz Rössler, one of the DRP's deputies, was a low-level NSDAP official posing as one Franz Richter. When appealing to their licensing to the Allied military governments, these parties embellished their conservative principles, but various reports filtered into the occupation governments of the anti-democratic sentiments of the leadership.

This posed a problem for the military governments because there was little in these parties' actual platforms that smacked of National Socialism and there was a real fear that by suppressing them, the Allied governments would make martyrs of these right-wing forces. Writing about the NDP in a report, Perry Laukhuff of OMGUS's Political Division, summed up this dilemma:

It is not easy to know what to do about this party....On what grounds can we dissolve the party where it exists and deny its Land [license] application? One ground would be that it advocates Nazi or militaristic doctrines. Neither the platform nor the recognized leaders of the party do this, however. Another ground would be that party sponsors or leaders or candidates have Nazi records. The facts, so far as they are available, do not support this charge either. Or we might say that the party may attract reactionary, militaristic, and even ex-Nazi elements. Supposition is surely not a good basis for taking such repressive action, however.

Instead of actively banning these groups, the Allied military governments instead banked on improving material conditions and hoping that these various parties would fritter away their political capital by competing for the same votes. OMGUS surveys of political opinions in the American zone did show there were sentiments among Germans for a strong, single national party, albeit one that eschewed many of the key tenets of the NSDAP. Some within OMGUS saw the NDP as a useful tool that would break apart the various extreme anti-communist parties. The British military authorities also had similiar thoughts. In a report back to London, the Political Division contended that keeping the DKP-DRP alive would:

cleanse the CDU [the mainstream conservative party] of Right Wing elements who are tending to use it for their own needs and turn it into a Right Wing party.

Other British officials stated that it was better to keep these right-wing figures out in the open where they can be observed rather than suppressing them and driving them to the underground.

This proved to be an apt gamble on the part of the Western occupation forces as the electoral returns in the national elections of 1949 for these various right-wing parties was relatively small. OMGUS public opinion surveys also showed a marked decline for support of statements like do you desire "a national leader who rules Germany with a strong hand for the welfare of all" or "a party established which only had the good sides of National Socialism."

Nevertheless the presence of these parties along with various antisemitic and pro-Hitler graffiti during the elections was an embarrassment and one that the SED and Soviet press loved to highlight to call attention to Western hypocrisy. Just days after the ending of the formal end of Western occupation, the Sozialistische Reichspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Reich Party/SRP) formed, often culling members and support from the DKP-DRP. Unlike the occupation-generation of the German far-right, the SRP was much more open with its affiliation with the NSDAP with one of its chief architects being Otto-Ernst Remer, the Heer officer that crushed the 20 July revolt in Berlin. The SRP tended to argue it was a champion of a "third way" between communism and capitalism, while also calling for a unified Germany. The SRP also articulated some of the first Holocaust denial positions within Germany. The SRP managed to gain 11% of the Lower Saxon votes in 1951 and this greatly alarmed the Adenauer government. The federal government appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court to ban the SRP on the grounds that it was an anti-constitutional political party, which under German Basic Law, was unconstitutional. The Court agreed with the government's case, and the SRP was banned. But, in pattern that would soon become familiar in FRG law, many of the elements of the SRP reconstituted themselves in the Deutsche Reichspartei (German Reich Party/DRP) soon after.

But the problem for the far-right in this period was that their banning coincided with the economic success of the Adenauer-led CDU coalition and thus denuded them of a great deal of electoral support among right-leaning Germans. The pattern of internal competition and petty bickering also repeated itself and the DRP soon found itself merged/subsumed by the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands(National Democratic Party of Germany/NPD) in the 1960s as well as various right-wing neo-nazi groups. Although these parties remained largely on the fringes of FRG politics, they did provide a haven for unreconstructed Nazis in the 1960s and 70s such as Hans-Ulrich Rudel.

Sources

Glaessner, Gert-Joachim. German Democracy From Post-World War II to the Present Day. Oxford: Berg, 2005.

Merritt, Richard L. Democracy Imposed: U.S. Occupation Policy and the German Public, 1945-1949. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Rogers, Daniel E. Politics After Hitler: The Western Allies and the German Party System. New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1995.