Manfred Roeder

Manfred Roeder (born 6 February 1929 in Berlin) is a former lawyer and Wehrmacht soldier, and a prominent Holocaust denier.

Life

Roeder attended a National Political Institute of Education in Plön.[1] After the Second World War he was for a time a member of Germany's CDU party.[1] After leaving the party he forged ties with the far-right political scene in Germany and abroad, including the Ku Klux Klan.[1][2] From 1947 he worked for the American CIC against communism.[3] Roeder's career has been marked by an abundance of criminal charges, including resistance against state authority,[1] and battery. In 1980 the Deutschen Aktionsgruppen ("German Action Groups"), a neo-Nazi organisation founded by Roeder, carried out attacks against buildings that housed foreign workers and asylum seekers.[1][4][5] Roeder was classified as a terrorist by German legal authorities as a result of these activities.[6]

In 1997 the current affairs program Panorama revealed that in 1995, Roeder had appeared, by invitation, as a speaker at the German military's officer training academy[1] in Hamburg. This scandal, as well as the fact that Roeder had received financial donations from the military, led to the sacking of the academy's commander[6][7] and the instatement of Rear-Admiral Rudolf Lange[8] as his replacement, with the goal of restoring the good reputation of the academy.

In 1997 Roeder stood as the NPD candidate (a far-right party) for Stralsund in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern during the parliamentary elections,[1][9] promoting himself as "Chancellor alternative 1998", but was unsuccessful.

Criminal record

Because of his integral role in a terrorist organisation Roeder was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 1982,[1][6][10] and was released in 1990,[10] after serving two-thirds of his sentence, for good behaviour and a perceived social rehabilitation. In 1996 Roeder, together with other far-right extremists, perpetrated an attack on an exhibition in Erfurt detailing the role of the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany, for which he was charged with property damage and fined DM-4,500.[11] After being sentenced to prison by the state courts of Schwerin[12] and Rostock[13] under Germany's Volksverhetzung law (incitement to hatred), and for other crimes, he was given a further ten months in September 2004 by the state court of Frankfurt for contempt of the state. In February 2005 a further sentencing for the same crime was passed by the court of Schwalmstadt. On May 12, 2005 he began a prison sentence in Gießen.

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h „Porno-Anwalt“ als Größe der Neonazis Bergsträßer Anzeiger, 7 July 2007. (Large pdf) (German)
  2. ^ Detlef Junker, Philipp Gassert and Wilfried Mausbach (2004). The United States and Germany in the era of the Cold War, 1945-1990. 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 497–498. ISBN 0521834201. 
  3. ^ Richard Breitman (2005). U.S. intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge University Press. pp. 299–303, 450. ISBN 0521852684. 
  4. ^ David Charters (1994). The deadly sin of terrorism: its effect on democracy and civil liberty in six countries. Greenwood. p. 47. ISBN 0313289646. 
  5. ^ Lee Griffith (2004). The war on terrorism and the terror of God. Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 53. ISBN 0802828604. 
  6. ^ a b c Bundeswehr will im Fall Roeder hart durchgreifen Die Welt, 8 December 1997. (German)
  7. ^ Rühe zieht Konsequenzen im Fall Roeder Rüdiger Moniac, Die Welt, 9 December 1997. (German)
  8. ^ Volker Rühe: Auf Kampfstation Focus, 15 December 1997. (German)
  9. ^ Ein notorisch Rechtsextremer will nach Bonn Andreas Baumann, Die Welt, 18 September 1998. (German)
  10. ^ a b Rand C. Lewis (1996). The Neo-Nazis and German Unification. Greenwood. p. 25. ISBN 0275956385.  Preview at Google Books.
  11. ^ Die Wehrmachtsausstellung zwischen Krawallen und Kritik Der Spiegel, 27 November 2001. (German)
  12. ^ Volksverhetzung: Neonazi Roeder muss ins Gefängnis Der Spiegel, 29 June 2001. (German)
  13. ^ German Neo-Nazi sentenced to two years in prison ORF, 30 January 2002.
Much of this article is translated from the German Wikipedia article of March 5th 2007.