“ADOLF HITLER was a great German statesman,” the bête noire of the German Establishment said as he sat in a room darkened by bombproof shutters.

“If you can call Churchill a great Briton, if you can make a hero out of Alexander the Great, then you have to give that status to Hitler, too,” Udo Voigt, the leader of the far-right National Party of Germany (NPD), said. “My lawyer has told me to say no more than that.”

This rising right-wing extremist is under investigation for allegedly glorifying the Nazis. “All part of a strategy to criminalise me and marginalise the party,” he said.

But as Germany prepares for the 2006 general election, a criminal case could muzzle Herr Voigt, who is increasingly seen as a malign Pied Piper who entrances the surly young of eastern German housing estates.

So he is careful. There are no busts of the Führer in Herr Voigt’s bunker-like office, just maps of Germany as it was, various German and neo-Nazi flags and a poster that declares: “May 1945, Nothing to Celebrate.”

This year’s 60th anniversary commemorations have rallied Germany’s usually warring right-wing organisations. They are using them to stir regret for German wartime suffering, convert it into political anger and win voters across the generations.

Herr Voigt, 52 and a former army captain, is the mastermind. Since taking charge in 1996 he has converted the NPD from a mouthpiece for embittered war veterans into “a radical voice for the silent majority”. He addresses rallies using the slogan: “We are everywhere.”

He began by harnessing the raw energy of eastern Germany’s racist skinheads, recruiting them from pubs and placing them under near- military discipline.

“More than 600 have passed through our training centres, and many of them have become our leadership cadres,” he boasted, pointing at a picture of a graduation ceremony.

Behind the party’s headquarters, in the Berlin suburb of Köpenick, stands a new education centre with bunk beds, blackboards and an NPD flag fluttering in the courtyard.

The NPD is widening its appeal. Last month, during the anniversary of the Dresden bombing, 8,000 neo-Nazis marched silently through the streets, and they seemed to enjoy the sympathy of many citizens.

The NPD won more than 9 per cent of the vote in Saxony and has become a pivotal element in the Dresden parliament.

Sometimes the party is deliberately provocative, such as when its representatives walked out of Parliament rather than stand in silence for the victims of Auschwitz, but mainly it uses its status to build far-right cells beyond Saxony.

With the help of other far-right parties it is starting to make inroads in western Germany. “We are now in the middle of society, not on the fringes,” Herr Voigt said.

On May 8, the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender, the NPD plans to march through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, chanting “Nothing to celebrate” in an effort to exploit Germany’s mixed feelings about losing the war.

“May 8 is not a day of liberation for the Germans,” Herr Voigt said. “It’s a day of mourning. Millions of German civilians died in the months after the supposed liberation.”

The Government is seeking to outlaw the demonstration, and the parliament yesterday tightened the laws of assembly to reverse what it called a “steady rise in far-right gatherings that resemble ever more the character of the Nazi regime’s marches”. Her Voigt claims that the authorities tap his phone, intercept his e-mails and film his public meetings.

Herr Voigt’s father was a nationalist-minded soldier who returned after years of Soviet captivity and became a reluctant driver for the British Forces in Rheindalen. The family lived in British barracks, a circumstance that stirred Udo’s contempt for German subservience to the occupiers. He joined the NPD at 16.

Today he advocates “national solutions” to Germany’s economic crisis, namely, quitting the euro and repatriating foreigners. Jobs would be offered to foreigners only in the absence of German takers, and for a limited period. Only those with German parents would qualify for passports. Foreigners would be excluded from Germany’s social welfare and pension schemes and from buying property. The aim would be to reduce the number of foreigners living in Germany by two million within six months of the NPD entering government.

The chances of Herr Voigt’s party coming to power next year are remote, but polls suggest that 14 per cent of Germans share his views, and he has even wider support on issues such as immigrant children in inner-city schools.

Herr Voigt rarely talks to foreigners and seemed to be testing some of his more outlandish views on The Times.

“Turks who have lived here for 20 or 30 years will be given back what they have paid into national insurance — around €120,000 — as a one-off sum, and will then be told to go home,” he said. “That’s a lot of money in a country (Turkey) where the average wage is €250 a month. We can send them home rich. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?

” As a foreigner with blond hair and blue eyes, I might be allowed to stay, but I certainly could not join his party. “We have to insist on members having German fathers,” Herr Voigt said. “Sorry.”

Rise and fall of the NPD

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