Manfred Roeder

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.^{[citation needed]} In February 2005 a further sentencing for the same crime was passed by the court of Schwalmstadt.^{[citation needed]} On May 12, 2005 he began a prison sentence in Gießen.^{[citation needed]}

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.

Persondata
Name	Roeder, Manfred
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Date of birth	6 February 1929
Place of birth
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