Sev­eral things about this remind me of the Sym­bionese Lib­er­a­tion Army oper­a­tion with its ele­ments of mind con­trol and its intel­li­gence ori­gins, even though that faux-left ter­ror done by right han­dlers varies from this faux-right ter­ror done by right han­dlers . The National Social­ist Under­ground was heav­ily infil­trated (han­dled? gen­er­ated? ) by police agen­cies, hence the volu­mi­nous records on them which were destroyed. Despite the polices’ ongo­ing knowl­edge of the NSU cell and its goals and capa­bil­i­ties, police insisted through­out that the string of mur­ders were part of a Turk­ish mafia war by unknown par­ties. The assas­si­na­tions of eth­nic for­eign­ers were effi­ciently and pro­fes­sion­ally done, usu­ally with silenced weapons, imply­ing a level of mil­i­tary train­ing not evi­dent in the young peo­ples’ back­grounds. And finally the ones who knew most con­ve­niently sui­cided just before arrest.

So, we get yet another reminder that the Nazi threat in Ger­many is lim­ited to low level street thugs. short on the­ory but long on testos­terone and focused hatred. With each of these (NEO?) groups dis­cov­ered and smashed the men in suits, the gov­ern­ment min­is­ters the bankers, the EU rep­re­sen­ta­tives can dis­tance them­selves from the cru­dity of such peo­ple and denounce their ugly vio­lence and rac­sism. Later per­haps we’ll see some well-researched arti­cles about how cur­rent social and eco­nomic con­di­tions give rise to such move­ments, end­ing with ambi­gu­ity over whether we cam blame them completely.

We’ve heard this tune enough. Too much.

Exerpted from:
Ger­many: Neo-Nazi ter­ror and the secret ser­vice
By Diet­mar Hen­ning
24 Decem­ber 2011

A con­fi­den­tial paper by the Fed­eral Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion (secret ser­vice) of July 2004 states: “Notwith­stand­ing the fact that the ‘bomb-makers of Jena’ suc­ceeded for years to evade arrest, there is no effec­tive sup­port net­work to con­duct a sus­tained cam­paign from the under­ground”. At this time, the Nazis had already killed five immigrants—Enver Şimşek, Abdur­rahim Özüdo&;ru, Süley­man Taşköprü, Habil Kılıç and Mehmet Turgut.

Police “pro­fil­ers” had come to the con­clu­sion that the mur­ders were the work of a right-wing ser­ial killer. But the secret ser­vice would have none of it. The same year, the Fed­eral Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion dis­banded its “right-wing extrem­ism department”.

The mur­der of the migrants was blamed on a “for­eign drug mafia”. A 2006 BKA inter­nal memo, quoted in the cur­rent edi­tion of Der Spiegel, says, “Almost all the evi­dence” pointed to the vic­tims of the trio being “involved in var­i­ous ways in drug traf­fick­ing”. “Polit­i­cally or reli­giously moti­vated mur­ders”, accord­ing to the BKA, were “unlikely”.

The men were sup­pos­edly killed as pun­ish­ment by an “inter­na­tion­ally orga­nized” drug mafia; the mur­ders were “car­ried out pro­fes­sion­ally”. The bereaved fam­i­lies of the vic­tims were then put under pres­sure to admit to con­nec­tions between their mur­dered rel­a­tives and “orga­nized crime”.

In one murder—that of Halit Yoz­gat in an Inter­net cafe in Kas­sel in 2006—it was proved that an offi­cer of the Hesse State Secret Ser­vice was at the scene. Andrew T., who was called “lit­tle Adolf” by friends, was said to have also been in the vicin­ity of the crime scenes in five other murders.

The Erfurt State Attor­ney is cur­rently inves­ti­gat­ing “sev­eral per­sons” on sus­pi­cion of obstruct­ing the course of jus­tice in office. The spokesman for the pros­e­cu­tor, Hannes Grüneisen, told Focus that it appears that this is now cov­ered by the statute of lim­i­ta­tions.
Rumours are now ema­nat­ing from the Inte­rior Min­istry that Beate Zschäpe, the only sur­vivor of the ter­ror trio, will not be tried for mur­der, acces­sory to mur­der, or mem­ber­ship of a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Since she has remained silent and will con­tinue to do so in the view of the Inte­rior Min­istry, it would not be pos­si­ble to prove con­spir­acy or par­tic­i­pa­tion in the 10 killings car­ried out by the NSU. A thinly veiled invi­ta­tion for Zschäpe to keep quiet!

The con­se­quence would be that the NSU would not be con­sid­ered a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. Since accord­ing to Penal Code Sec­tion 129a this must con­sist of at least three peo­ple. Böhn­hardt and Mund­los would then be regarded in a legal sense as lone per­pe­tra­tors, reported the Mit­teldeutsche Zeitung, with ref­er­ence to Inte­rior Min­istry cir­cles.
At least 10 dead, three bomb attacks in Cologne, Jena and Saar­brücken and 14 bank rob­beries are attrib­ut­able to the three right-wing ter­ror­ists from Zwickau. Politi­cians and the media speak of “fail­ures, bad luck and mishaps” and “break­downs”. But the alleged “mishaps” or “fail­ures” have assumed a scale that lead to only one con­clu­sion: The far-right ter­ror­ist scene is being pro­tected by the state.

@Dwight: This also reminds me of the Tea Party wackos & and cer­tain amongst the mili­tias as well.
What’s funny about the for­mer, espe­cially, is that it just sud­denly and inex­plic­a­bly appeared out of nowhere....a bolt out of the blue, in other words, in Feb. 2009, just a month after Obama was inau­gu­rated. And also in the way that they’re sup­pos­edly just a bunch of street-level peo­ple who just hap­pen to be a lit­tle ‘dif­fer­ent’ and aren’t actu­ally going to try to harm any­one. That, I believe, is HIGHLY fal­la­cious, because already, the cries of sedi­tion have gone up again with Roberts back­ing off on the A.C.A., and the fact that more and more peo­ple are wak­ing up to the real­ity of elec­tion fraud and extreme-right terror.....one has to won­der when the bal­loon will go up and how bad things could get, espe­cially if Obama wins by a good por­tion of the vote this year.
Can you say ‘Turner Diaries’, anyone? =(

I’m left won­der­ing if ... well maybe that they, Ger­man intel­li­gence, didn’t want to expose any agents who may have infil­trated the neo-Nazi group?

A minor cor­rec­tion (sort of): accord­ing to this arti­cle, the agency didn’t destroy the files one day before they were to be handed over...instead, they are claim­ing that the files were on Novem­ber 12, 2011, one day after the informant-status of the neo-nazi pair became pub­lic OR they were destroyed in Jan­u­ary, 2011. It was all due to inno­cent con­fu­sion by a “mis­guided indi­vid­ual” that heads the agency depart­ment for procur­ing intel­li­gence sources:

06/29/2012

Neo-Nazi Cell Scan­dal Intel­li­gence Agency under Fire for Shred­ding Files

By SPIEGEL Staff

The offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion into the National Social­ist Under­ground (NSU), the neo-Nazi cell which is believed to have killed at least 10 peo­ple over a period of years, has been marked by a series of embar­rass­ing fail­ures and slip-ups by the author­i­ties. But new rev­e­la­tions about the case threaten to trig­ger a major scan­dal with pos­si­ble polit­i­cal consequences.

...

Mem­bers of the par­lia­men­tary inves­tiga­tive com­mit­tee reacted to the news with shock and out­rage. “Such inci­dents make it dif­fi­cult to con­vinc­ingly refute the con­spir­acy the­o­ries,” said com­mit­tee chair­man Sebas­t­ian Edathy, a mem­ber of the center-left oppo­si­tion Social Democ­rats. There has been per­sis­tent spec­u­la­tion that the domes­tic intel­li­gence ser­vice may have used mem­bers of the NSU as informants.

Other mem­bers of the com­mit­tee were equally scathing. Hart­frid Wolff of the business-friendly Free Demo­c­ra­tic Party described the inci­dent as “unbe­liev­able,” while Clemens Bin­ninger of the center-right Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­tic Union said it cre­ated scope “for all kinds of the­o­ries.” “Clearly the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion has a lot to hide,” said Petra Pau of the far-left Left Party, which has been par­tic­u­larly crit­i­cal of the author­i­ties’ han­dling of the case.

Indi­vid­ual ‘Acted Alone’

On Thurs­day, offi­cials at the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the shred­ding of the doc­u­ments was unprece­dented. They insisted it was due to the mis­guided actions of an indi­vid­ual and not the result of an order to destroy the files.

Sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity said that a legal inves­ti­ga­tion had been opened against an employee of the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion. The offi­cer is appar­ently head of a so-called “pro­cure­ment” depart­ment, which is respon­si­ble for run­ning sources and obtain­ing infor­ma­tion from them. The agency’s man­age­ment is “appalled” and “absolutely furi­ous” about the inci­dent, sources said, adding that offi­cials were try­ing to recon­struct the files as best they could. Appar­ently seven files were destroyed.

The agency has recon­structed the time­line of the doc­u­ments’ destruc­tion. The depart­ment head sup­pos­edly received orders on Nov. 10, 2011 to search his files for the names of the three NSU mem­bers — Uwe Böhn­hardt, Uwe Mund­los and Beate Zschäpe — and look for pos­si­ble con­nec­tions to the far-right scene. Among other files, the offi­cer looked at doc­u­ments relat­ing to Oper­a­tion Rennsteig.

The oper­a­tion, whose name refers to a famous hik­ing trail in the state of Thuringia, was intended to recruit inform­ers from a far-right group called the Thüringer Heimatschutz (“Thuringian Home­land Pro­tec­tion”) dur­ing the period from 1996 to 2003. Böhn­hardt, Mund­los and Zschäpe, who all used to live in the Thuringian city of Jena, were also active in the group for a time. Both the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion and Germany’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency, the Mil­i­tary Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Ser­vice (MAD), were involved in the operation.

The depart­ment head allegedly did not find any­thing of inter­est in his files. One day later, on Nov. 11, he informed his supe­ri­ors that he had not found the names of the three sus­pected ter­ror­ists or other evi­dence in his records. At the same time, he noted that seven so-called pro­cure­ment files had been archived for too long. This type of file includes all the details about the recruit­ment of a source, includ­ing their code­name and obser­va­tions about their char­ac­ter. The agency is gen­er­ally obliged to destroy such files after a max­i­mum period of 10 years. The depart­ment head gave orders for the files to be destroyed imme­di­ately. A day later, on Nov. 12, another employee car­ried out the shred­ding as per instruc­tions.

Embar­rass­ing Revelations

The behav­ior of the depart­ment head appears odd, how­ever. He told his supe­rior offi­cer in Jan­u­ary 2012 that the seven files from Oper­a­tion Rennsteig had already been destroyed in or around Jan­u­ary 2011 because of the time limit on files. Only when Fromm, the agency head, asked follow-up ques­tions did the offi­cer admit that the files had actu­ally been destroyed on Nov. 12, 2011 — in other words, just as the cell’s con­nec­tion to the mur­der series was uncov­ered. At that time, the Fed­eral Prosecutor’s Office had taken over the inves­ti­ga­tion and requested to see all the rel­e­vant documents.

Accord­ing to sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity, Oper­a­tion Rennsteig was a large-scale attempt to infil­trate the far-right scene around Thüringer Heimatschutz. Intel­li­gent agents ini­tially selected 35 “prospec­tive can­di­dates” as poten­tial sources. Eight of those peo­ple were later recruited as inform­ers, with six of them being run by the fed­eral intel­li­gence agency and the oth­ers by the state-level intel­li­gence agency in Thuringia. In addi­tion, the Office for the Pro­tec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion drew up a list of 73 men of “mil­i­tary ser­vice age” for the Mil­i­tary Coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence Ser­vice. It is unclear what the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency wanted to do with the list. But it is per­haps sig­nif­i­cant that the names of Mund­los and Bön­hardt appeared on that list.

....

It also sounds like the remain­ing files that are to be turned over are expected to demon­strate that the gang mem­bers were, indeed, work­ing as infor­mants, rais­ing ques­tions of just how damn­ing was the evi­dence on the destroyed files. Also note that the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence unit, MAD, which was also work­ing on “Oper­a­tion Rennsteig”, is coop­er­at­ing...they just hap­pened to not keep any files at all on the mat­ter:

Date 03.07.2012
Right-Wing Extrem­ism
Ger­man intel­li­gence grants access to files in neo-Nazi probe

Germany’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency has offered the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee access to 25 files relat­ing to “Oper­a­tion Rennsteig,” which was aimed at recruit­ing infor­mants in right-wing cir­cles in the east­ern state of Thuringia between 1997 and 2003.

The oper­a­tion involved the fed­eral domes­tic intel­li­gence agency, the regional agency in Thuringia and, accord­ing to the com­mit­tee, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence ser­vice MAD.

The files are expected to reveal that the author­i­ties were work­ing with infor­mants from the so-called National Social­ist Under­ground (NSU), an extrem­ist group that is believed to have killed 10 peo­ple with non-German back­grounds over more than a decade before their cover was blown ear­lier this year.

Last week, it became appar­ent that some of the files relat­ing to the oper­a­tion were shred­ded by the fed­eral intel­li­gence agency last year. On Mon­day, the head of the agency, Heinz Fromm, resigned his post.

Another head rolls

On Tues­day, Fromm’s coun­ter­part at Thuringia’s intel­li­gence agency, Thomas Sip­pel, also stepped down in con­nec­tion with the rev­e­la­tions. He will go into early retirement.

The chair­man of the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee, Sebas­t­ian Edathy, also urged the MAD to release their files, while the MAD insists it is coop­er­at­ing. It also said on Tues­day that it does not have “Oper­a­tion Rennsteig” files.

...

And speak­ing of neo-nazi move­ments worth inves­ti­gat­ing and infiltrating...Germany’s fra­ter­ni­ties appear to have been heav­ily infil­trated by the far-right for decades now. Win­ning hearts and minds, one keg­ger at a time:

DW
How right-wing are Germany’s fra­ter­ni­ties?
Date 05.07.2012
Author: Klaus Dah­mann / cmk
Edi­tor: Gregg Benzow

It’s a seri­ous accu­sa­tion: accord­ing to the defen­dant Chris­t­ian Joachim Becker, many of Germany’s fra­ter­ni­ties have been sat­u­rated by right-wing extrem­ism in the past decades. Some of the country’s most sig­nif­i­cant stu­dent fra­ter­ni­ties, steeped in tra­di­tion, have already been com­pletely infil­trated.

For this rea­son, Becker launched the ini­tia­tive known as Burschen­schafter gegen Neon­azis (Fra­ter­ni­ties Against Neon­azis). With its online por­tal Quo­Vadis­Buxe, the orga­ni­za­tion denounces all forms of right-wing extremism.

One exam­ple is Nor­bert Wei­d­ner, who called the the­olo­gian and resis­tance fighter Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer, exe­cuted by the Nazis, a “trai­tor.” Wei­d­ner said his sen­tenc­ing was “legally justified.”

Wei­d­ner is cur­rently the editor-in-chief of the ‘Burschen­schaftlichen Blät­ter’, Germany’s fra­ter­nity quar­terly pub­li­ca­tion, and is there­fore one of the most influ­en­tial and highest-paid offi­cials in the larger umbrella orga­ni­za­tion of Germany’s fra­ter­ni­ties, the ‘Deutschen Burschenschaft.’

Infil­tra­tion by right-wing extremists

In his youth, Wei­d­ner was part of the far-right Viking Youth orga­ni­za­tion, and then moved on to become an offi­cial in the Free Ger­man Work­ers’ Party. After this far-right party was banned in 1995, Wei­d­ner dis­ap­peared for a short while, only to re-emerge in the Bonn area fra­ter­nity ‘Alten Bres­lauer Burschen­schaft der Raczeks zu Bonn’, the same fra­ter­nity to which Becker belongs.

Becker, how­ever, does not want their fight to be reduced to a mat­ter of per­sonal ani­mos­ity. On the con­trary, he thinks the prob­lem of right-wing extrem­ism is one faced by the wider com­mu­nity of Ger­man fraternities.

“We would like the topic of right-wing extrem­ism at the aca­d­e­mic level to be dis­cussed, and that politi­cians and the author­i­ties deal with the issue,” he said. The sit­u­a­tion is seri­ous, he adds. “Writ­ings by these aca­d­e­mic neo-Nazis give rise to far-right slo­gans, and this then sparks vio­lence.”

...

Neo-Nazis spring into the breach

No won­der, then, that many fra­ter­ni­ties are find­ing it hard to keep up the mem­ber­ship num­bers — a prob­lem that, accord­ing to crit­ics, the neo-Nazis have exploited. Of the 10,000 active fra­ter­nity mem­bers, about 1,500 are right-wing extrem­ists, accord­ing to Becker. And Wei­d­ner is one of the “heads of the right-wing move­ment” that has entwined the far-right NPD party and a part of the fraternities.

Wei­d­ner has strongly denied these claims — and has taken his com­plaint to the Bonn Dis­trict Court. “These struc­tures do not exist,” said his lawyer Björn Clemens. “Accord­ingly, my client has no lead­ing role in such struc­tures. These are flights of fancy.”

Wei­d­ner plans to sue Becker for up to 250,000 euros ($313,375) if he repeats these, or sim­i­lar, alle­ga­tions. Clemens deferred the ques­tion of whether his client could be called a “right-wing extrem­ist,” say­ing, “You should ask him your­self.” How­ever, the lawyer, once one of the lead­ing right-leaning fig­ure him­self, adds, “I don’t think so.”

...

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/jul2012/nazi-j16.shtml

“Every pass­ing day brings new rev­e­la­tions con­firm­ing that the mur­der ram­page car­ried out by the neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion “National Social­ist under­ground” (NSU) would have been impos­si­ble with­out the active sup­port of the Ger­man secret services.”

Nazi war crim­i­nal Las­zlo Csa­tary arrested in Budapest

By Markus Salz­mann
23 July 2012

The Budapest state attor­ney has placed Hun­gar­ian war crim­i­nal Las­zlo Csa­tary under house arrest. The 97-year-old is accused of being involved in the mur­der of 16,000 Hun­gar­ian Jews dur­ing the Sec­ond World War. In 1948, he was sen­tenced to death in absen­tia in Czechoslovakia.

The Hun­gar­ian author­i­ties only pur­sued Csa­tary after reporters from the British tabloid the Sun tracked him down and pub­lished pho­tos of him. He was liv­ing in his apart­ment in a posh dis­trict of Budapest.

The Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter (SWC) in Jerusalem has been pur­su­ing Csa­tary for decades. As SWC direc­tor Efraim Zuroff reported, the Hun­gar­ian jus­tice sys­tem had evi­dence in 2006 that Csa­tary was in Budapest. For two years, the author­i­ties had been aware of his address but had done nothing.

Csa­tary was high on the SWC wanted list. As chief of police in 1944 in Kassa—now the Slo­vak town of Kosice—he is accused of being respon­si­ble for the depor­ta­tion of nearly 15,700 Hun­gar­ian Jews to Auschwitz, and to have acted with sadis­tic bru­tal­ity. As early as 1941, he is said to have deported 300 Jews from the Ukrain­ian city of Kamianets-Podilskyi. The area was con­quered by the Ger­man Wehrma­cht (army), and shortly after­wards the Nazis per­pe­trated a mas­sacre of 23,600 Jews there.

After he was sen­tenced to death in 1948, Csa­tary fled to Canada, where he lived with a new iden­tity until his expul­sion in 1997. After his return to Hun­gary, he was able to dis­ap­pear with­out hindrance.

Csa­tary, who is said to be in good phys­i­cal and men­tal con­di­tion, was ques­tioned last Wednes­day for the first time by the prosecutor’s office in Budapest. Fol­low­ing a report by the Hun­gar­ian news agency MTI, the author­i­ties then sought an arrest warrant.

Accord­ing to media reports, when ques­tioned, the 97-year-old rejected all charges against him on the grounds that he had at that time “only been fol­low­ing orders” and “doing his duty” as chief of police.

The fact that Csa­tary could live undis­turbed for years in Hun­gary raises doubts whether he will ever stand trial and face con­vic­tion. “I’m not sure that the dis­cov­ery will have legal con­se­quences under this con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment,” Serge Klars­feld, the “Nazi hunter,” told the news agency AFP.

The Hun­gar­ian gov­ern­ment of the right-wing Cit­i­zens Fed­er­a­tion (Fidesz) under Vic­tor Orban is cur­rently reviv­ing fas­cist and author­i­tar­ian traditions.

The con­sti­tu­tion adopted under Fidesz enshrines God, Chris­tian­ity and pride in the thousand-year his­tory of Hun­gary as legally bind­ing stan­dards. The text refers to the “his­tor­i­cal” her­itage of Hun­gary and, accord­ing to Orban, has ended the period in which “the Hun­gar­i­ans [were] sys­tem­at­i­cally sup­pressed”. The con­tent of the new con­sti­tu­tion has links to the fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship of Mik­los Hor­thy in the 1930s and 1940s. The term “repub­lic” has dis­ap­peared from the name of the country.

Under Hor­thy, the Hun­gar­ian author­i­ties deported more than 400,000 Jews to Auschwitz or had them mur­dered. Today, under the influ­ence of Orban and the far-right party Job­bik, a ver­i­ta­ble Hor­thy cult has devel­oped. In mid-May, a statue of Hor­thy was set up in Kereki in south­west Hungary—the first to be erected since the end of the dic­ta­tor­ship in 1945. In Debre­cen, a com­mem­o­ra­tive plaque to Hor­thy was recently unveiled, and in the town of Gyömrö, south­east of Budapest, a park now bears his name. Fur­ther Hor­thy stat­ues are to be erected in var­i­ous cities, includ­ing Budapest.

In addi­tion to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Job­bik, which draws on the tra­di­tion of the Nazi Arrow Cross, and the Catholic Church, Fidesz politi­cians are also reg­u­larly present at inau­gu­ra­tion fes­tiv­i­ties. Orban claims that this is solely the doing of the local munic­i­pal­i­ties, which are often run by right-wing Fidesz and Job­bik politi­cians. “Why does Fidesz stand along­side the Arrow Cross—how far have things come with us?” com­mented polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Zoltan Som­o­gyi on this development.

In addi­tion to Hor­thy, other Nazi fig­ures are also being rein­stated. At the behest of the Hun­gar­ian par­lia­ment, writer Jozsef Nyiro, who died in 1953 and was once sought for war crimes, has been reburied in Tran­syl­va­nia with a state funeral. Nyiro was a cul­tural ide­ol­o­gist under Hor­thy. After the takeover of the fas­cist Arrow Cross in Octo­ber 1944, he was a mem­ber of the Hun­gar­ian National Assem­bly and fled from the Red Army to Aus­tria. Under the pro­tec­tion of Franco, he was finally able to set­tle down in Madrid.

Orban is pur­su­ing his right-wing course against the back­drop of mas­sive attacks on the liv­ing stan­dards of broad sec­tions of soci­ety. The aus­ter­ity mea­sures adopted by his right-wing gov­ern­ment must, sooner or later, trig­ger protests and social con­flicts. Orban wants to pre­vent this through the revival of fas­cist tra­di­tions and the foment­ing of nationalism.

In this polit­i­cal cli­mate, a seri­ous case against Las­zlo Csa­tary is hardly likely. This is clear from the pre­lim­i­nary excuses made by the Budapest state attorney’s office. They have stated that the inves­ti­ga­tion would be “very dif­fi­cult” because the crime scene lies in another coun­try and the events hap­pened more than half a cen­tury ago.

Wag­n­ers at war over Nazi past

Daily Mail 7–29-12

A feud has bro­ken out between mem­bers of the Wag­ner opera fam­ily in Ger­many as the leader of the clan threat­ens legal action unless they co-operate with a ‘moral house clean­ing’ aimed at de-Nazifying the world’s lead­ing opera festival.

Katha­rina Wag­ner, who now directs the annual Bayreuth Fes­ti­val of Richard Wagner’s operas, wants fam­ily mem­bers to turn over every doc­u­ment they have in a bid to exor­cise the ghosts of the Third Reich — includ­ing ‘poten­tially explo­sive’ let­ters penned by Hitler to Winifred Wag­ner, the Eng­lish­woman who became head of the fam­ily in wartime.

Katha­rina Wag­ner, 34, said silence on the part of her fam­ily will not be tol­er­ated as the links that the fes­ti­val had dur­ing the 12 year lifes­pan of the Third Reich with the Nazi hier­ar­chy, includ­ing Hitler, are probed.