Hoffmann Military Sports Group

General Organization Structure

The organization was founded in 1973 by Karl-Heinz Hoffmann . Its headquarters since 1974 has been Almoshof Castle, and since 1978 Ermroit Castle in Neunkirchen am Brande (during the years of the Third Reich, there was a school of Gauleiter NSDAP). The principle of leaderism acted in the group (the same Hoffmann was the leader and leader). He himself called it "a military organization, in the long term a voluntary association." The selection of candidates for the organization was very strict, but regularly a security check was carried out inside the organization and constant monitoring of existing members was carried out in order to combat double agents. The organization was supposed to make collective decisions, but the last word, as a rule, remained most often with Hoffmann.

The group was based directly in Bavaria, but operated outside of it. Her allies were such paramilitary gangs as Sturmabtaylung 7 from Frankfurt . Hoffmann also mentioned colleagues from Tübingen, Cologne and Bonn. Since January 1979, he published the magazine Kommando - Zeitung für den europäischen Freiwilligen ( German for him - The Commando Magazine for European Volunteers), better known by the acronym WSG-Zeitung .

Ideology

Adhering to the ideology of neo-Nazism and pan-European nationalism, the Hoffmann military sports group opposed democracy in any form and adhered to the principles of an active revolution - it supported the conduct of the civil war and the rise to power through a coup. In his “First Manifesto of the Movement to Achieve a Rational Pragmatic Social Hierarchy” ( German 1. Manifest der Bewegung zur Verwirklichung der Rational Pragmatischen Sozial Hierarchie ), Hoffmann formulated 19 principles of his movement. He admitted that he was absolutely sure that the world would be lost in a sea of ​​ideologies, political and economic convictions with the further development of the country, therefore, he called for a radical change in the whole life of the country in all areas. The existing system should be destroyed and replaced after the leading structures of productivity and the choice of the principle of self-government at enterprises appear, and state power should be completely dropped from the top of the hierarchy of state administration. The national community should, according to Hoffmann, become the main form of government and an unspoken government. He proposed to ban the elections, and unions and churches to unite.

Stocks

Hoffmann organized his first public appearance in 1974. Hoffmann organized events of right-wing organizations in the assembly halls of various schools. The speeches were not without fights and riots: on December 4, 1976, at the University of Tübingen, Hoffmann's supporters staged a mass brawl with anti-fascists: as a result, several protesters against neo-Nazis were hospitalized. On July 22, 1978, in commemorative events dedicated to Adolf Hitler , with the support of friendly ANS / NA organizations and neo-Nazis with symbols of the NSDAP Foreign Organization, Hoffmann and his associates entered into a mass brawl with police in Lentforden.

At a rapid pace, the Hoffmann military sports group became the largest neo-Nazi gang that supported neo-Nazis across the country and was in fact their leading organization. She worked actively with young people from the Vikingugend and the VSBD group . It was Hoffmann who contributed to the appearance in the neo-Nazi world of the personality of Michael Künen and his military sports group Werewolf .

Financing

The Hoffmann group was funded on a voluntary basis solely through donations. To this end, in 1976, Hoffmann organized the “Circle of Friends of the Promotion of the Hoffmann Military Sports Group” ( German: Freundeskreis zur Förderung der Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann ). Bruno Weigand described the goal of creating a group as follows:

Hoffmann's military sports group organized recreational activities in many cities in Germany and Austria for the armed forces and contacted many similar associations. In the proposed field of activity, it was obvious: in order to maintain the military-sports group, those material resources were needed that no man could get alone. For this reason, the "Circle of Friends of the Hoffmann Military Sports Group Assistance" set the organization's task to create material conditions for the preservation and dissemination of further activities of the group.

Original text (German)

Die WSG Hoffmann-Truppe unterhält in vielen Städten Deutschlands und Österreichs Truppen, sie pflegt Kontakte mit vielen artverwandten Vereinigungen. Der angedeutete Umfang macht deutlich, daß die Unterhaltung der WSG Hoffmann-Truppe materielle Mittel benötigt, die über die Möglichkeit einer einzelnen Person weit hinausgehen. Aus diesem Grunde hat sich ein "Freundeskreis zur Förderung der Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann" die Aufgabe gestellt, die materiellen Voraussetzungen zur Erhaltung und Ausbreitung der WSG zu organisieren.

In March 1978, the Bavarian parliament received a request for sources of funding for the group, and the Bavarian government confirmed funding for the group through the Circle of Friends, which included about 400 people. Unfortunately, the government said that it was not possible to stop financing through external intervention ^[1] .

According to Reinhard Opitz , Anette Linke and Gerhard Frey were in the group and were its main financiers ^[2] . Opitz’s attempt to discredit Linke through a lawsuit failed: Rainer Fromm stated that it was not possible to verify the fact of Linke’s presence in the group’s friends, and she attended meetings of the Hoffmann group at her own request at any time ^[3] . In 1977, one of such donations in the amount of 8 thousand marks was transferred precisely with the help of Linke: often the group transferred funds to support the German People's Union ^[4] .

Ban

The group’s activities were banned on January 30, 1980 by the decision of the Federal Interior Minister Gerhart Baum , and the group itself ceased to exist. The court ruled that the groups were trying in an aggressive way to destroy the constitutional order of Germany and liquidate the republic as such ^[5] . The head of the Bavarian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Herold Tandler, called the fear of denigrating Germany in the eyes of the West the actual reason for the ban, which would lead to constant insults due to the presence of “half-crazy dreamers” ^[6] . The special services of Germany captured 18 trucks with personal belongings of the militants of the Hoffmann group during a raid in three federal lands. Among the captured material was the propaganda material of the Steel Helmet organization, a huge number of rifles, pistols, cartridges, bayonets and hand grenades. The size of the group on the day of the ban was about 400 people.

Hoffman did not stop his activities and in January 1980 disappeared into Lebanon, where he again began to create an armed organization. He had very good contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization . With the support of the Unified Security Apparatus organization and under the leadership of Abu Ayyad, in the Bir Hassan camp in southern Beirut , Hoffman fighters began training as part of the Foreign Military Sports Group. The group’s goal was the war against the federal services of Germany by organizing terrorist acts and preparing for the establishment of a dictatorship ^[7] .

On September 26, 1980, Gundolf Köhler , a member of the Hoffmann group ^[8] , launched a terrorist attack on Oktoberfest , detonating a bomb during the celebration. As a result, 13 people died (including Köhler), and more than 200 were injured. The prosecutor's office of Germany failed to find evidence that Köhler acted on the orders of Hoffmann; the explosion case is still unsolved. According to some versions, Köhler had accomplices ^[9] . On December 19 of the same year, another terrorist attack occurred: the former head of the Jewish community of Nuremberg, Shlomo Levin, and his wife, Frida Poshke, were shot dead in Erlangen . The killer turned out to be Uwe Berendt , also a member of the Hoffmann group. Levin repeatedly warned the Germans that Hoffmann had not stopped his activity and continued to undermine stability in the country from abroad. The investigation revealed that a Beretta gun belonging to Hoffmann was found on the spot, as well as a glass with fingerprints by Francis Hoffmann, Karl-Heinz’s wife. Berendt fled to Lebanon, where he committed suicide in a military camp on September 16, 1981 ^[10] . The group was later charged with kidnapping and bullying, as well as attempted assassination of federal prosecutor Kurt Rebmann. In 1981, Rebmann, however, ordered the criminal case to be terminated because the Hoffmann group was not registered in Germany, and it was not possible to hold her accountable under legal standards as a terrorist organization ^[5] .

In one of the leaflets of the Circle of Friends to Promote the Hoffmann Military Sports Group, which was printed in 1976 by extremist Peter Weinmann , the Bonn News Agency was mentioned ^[11] . Weimann was known under the pseudonym Werner and, by his own admission, collaborated with the Federal Constitution Protection Service of the Federal Republic of Germany and its branch in Cologne in 1968-1977 ^[12] , as evidenced by Stasi documents dating back to 1986 ^[13] . Facts about this surfaced in 1994 during a trial in Kolbenz: a triple agent named Römer confessed to secretly signing up for Stasi in 1980. In 1995, he was sentenced for treason for 9 months in prison conditionally ^[14] . The same Weinmann in 1973, with the consent of Hoffmann, sold a home-made film of the Redaktion Monitor group to WDR for the amount of 400 Deutschmarks ^[15] .

In the 1970s, according to Regina Igel , Stasi managed to lure several neo-Nazis for cooperation ^{[16] [17]} . Since 1982, Odfrid Hepp has been working in the Stasi as an unofficial employee: in exchange for silencing his past with special services, he supported the Palestinians in the Middle East, and also engaged in anti-American propaganda.

Among the famous members of the military-sports group, the following persons were featured ^{[18] [19] [20]}

• Karl-Heinz Hoffmann (head of organization)
• Uwe Berendt (Deputy Head)
• Kai Uwe Bergmann
• Steffen dupper
• Hans-Peter Fraas ^{[18] [21] [22] [23]}
• Peter Gamberger
• Audfried Gepp
• Walter Keksel
• Gundolf Köhler
• Uwe Mineka
• Arndt Marx
• Anton Pfaler
• Stefan Wagner

• Military sports group
• Trenka Military Sports Group
• Hengst Military Sports Group

• Rainer Fromm: Die "Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann" - Darstellung, Analyse und Einordnung - ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen und europäischen Rechtsextremismus . Lang, Frankfurt / Main ua 1998. ISBN 3-631-32922-9
• Ulrich Chaussy: Oktoberfest. Das Attentat. Wie die Verdrängung des Rechtsterrors begann , Ch. Links Verlag , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-757-1

• Vereinigung der Einzeltäter: Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann (bei haGalil.com)
• DPNI Forum: Red Brigades