Why an Influential Figure in Germany’s Far-Right AfD Party Is Accused of ‘Whitewashing’ Nazi Crimes
Update: According to preliminary results, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party won the largest portion of the vote in Thuringia’s Sept. 1, 2024, state election — the first such victory for a far-right party in Germany since the Nazi era. The AfD’s role in a governing coalition in Thuringia remains to be determined. After the election, Germany’s chancellor urged other parties to form coalitions without the AfD.
In the almost 80 years since the Holocaust ended, Germany has worked to face and overcome its Nazi history — prominently acknowledging Nazi crimes and memorializing victims, establishing strict laws about antisemitism and hate speech, and becoming a global leader in welcoming refugees.
But over the past decade, Germany has faced a wave of far-right violence and plots against Jews, Muslims, immigrants and politicians. And ahead of crucial state elections in September, a far-right party appeared more ascendant than at any other time since World War II.
Amid accusations that the party, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), has provoked violence, Germany’s Enemy Within, a FRONTLINE documentary that premiered July 30, investigates the overlapping rise of the AfD and far-right extremism in modern-day Germany.
“The political arm of right-wing extremism is becoming ever stronger,” Thomas Haldenwang, director-general of Germany’s national domestic intelligence, says in the film. “The New Right, as we call them, ostensibly distance themselves from the violence, but provide the underlying ideology for right-wing extremists of all persuasions.”
As part of an in-depth investigation of the forces shaping the rise of the far right in Germany, the documentary probes the story of influential AfD politician Björn Höcke. The former history teacher, who was on the brink of a potential election victory in the German state of Thuringia when the documentary premiered, has been fined for using a Nazi slogan and accused of “whitewashing” Nazi crimes in Germany’s past.
“Björn Höcke is extraordinary within the AfD because he is really a quite old-fashioned, right-wing extremist,” Kai Arzheimer of Mainz University, a political extremism expert who has studied Höcke’s rhetoric, tells correspondent Evan Williams in the above excerpt. “He’s not just a radical. He’s not just opposed to immigration. He is really one who favors rewriting German history.”
As the excerpt explores, at a 2017 speech in the city of Dresden, Höcke criticized the Holocaust memorial in Germany’s capital, Berlin.
“We Germans — our people are the only people in the world to have planted a monument of shame in the heart of its capital,” Höcke said. “We need nothing less than a 180-degree turnaround in the politics of remembrance.”
Germany’s remembrance culture, Arzheimer says, “is the idea that the crimes of the Nazis must never be forgotten, and that we should educate future generations in the knowledge that Germany in the past has committed those atrocities, to safeguard our future.”
Höcke, Arzheimer says, wants a “reversal” of this policy — and “is engaged in whitewashing what the Nazis did.”
As the excerpt reports, Höcke’s statements about the Holocaust memorial were widely criticized, including by some members of his own party. Amid calls for him to be expelled from the AfD after his 2017 comments, he stated that he’d made a “mistake” and that he‘d learned “many lessons.”
Then came a speech in 2021, in which Höcke repeated a slogan used by the Nazis: “Everything for Germany.”
German law bans the phrase, and Höcke was charged with knowingly using a Nazi slogan. He claimed he wasn’t aware of the phrase’s history.
But then, he invoked the slogan again.
“He went to Gera in front of a public audience and he made everybody scream, ‘All for Germany,’ after he already knew that he was on criminal charges for this,” says Stephan Kramer, domestic intelligence chief in Thuringia, where the state chapter of the AfD is classified as an extremist organization and is under government surveillance. “Look. Any misunderstandings? ‘Oh, he didn’t know what that means.’ Let me remind you: He is a history teacher, a certified history teacher, and he knows damned well what this phrase means.”
In a rare interview with Williams, who directed and produced the documentary, Höcke defends himself, saying freedom of expression is “very severely restricted” in Germany.
“In a campaign speech, expressing love for my country and urging compatriots to give everything for Germany in its current volatile position is not a Nazi slogan,” Höcke says.
“Trump once said, ‘America first,” he adds. “And I think it’s perfectly legal and perfectly legitimate to demand the same for Germany, and that’s akin to what I did. That’s in no way a crime or a criminal offense.”
Shortly after the interview, Höcke was found guilty and fined more than $30,000.
Höcke has rejected the charge that the AfD is extremist or that it stokes violence, has called the Nazi era horrific, and accused the intelligence services of trying to suppress legitimate opposition. In the documentary, he tells Williams that in Germany, “we only have a very small problem with right-wing extremism.”
“In Germany, our main problem is government extremism, with a government intent on destroying its opposition,” Höcke says. “With a government that pursues policies against its own people by wanting to ‘multi-culturalize’ its people with millions of illegal immigrants.”
Germany’s Enemy Within examines how such anti-immigrant rhetoric has found a foothold in Germany, allegations that it has inspired attacks, and how, if Höcke and the AfD win power in Thuringia, it would be the first time a far-right party has controlled a German state since the Nazis. The film is a potent look at violent far-right attacks and plots over the past decade, the increased political power of Germany’s far right, and the potential implications.
“This is exactly a situation that we would have never thought would occur after what we’ve learned in ‘33 to ‘45,” Kramer, the domestic intelligence chief in Thuringia, tells FRONTLINE, referring to when the Nazis were in power. “And here we are.”
For the full story, watch Germany’s Enemy Within:
The documentary premiered July 30, 2024. It is available to watch at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App, on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel and on the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Germany’s Enemy Within is a FRONTLINE Production with Mongoose Pictures in association with Evan Williams Productions. The correspondent, reporter, producer and director is Evan Williams. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.
This story was updated following the Sept. 1, 2024, election in Thuringia.
