Germany's neo-Nazi terror front

"All the ingredients for right-wing terrorism are there," he says. "Part of the scene is really steaming and looking for a way to take action."

Hajo Funke, an expert on right-wing extremism at Berlin's Free University, says the most striking characteristic of the group behind the Munich bomb plot is that it is not yet a full-fledged terrorist group. But he also warns against underestimating their potential and failing to act in time to head off greater threats.

"Munich is different because they tried to organize," he says. "There have been attempted acts of right-wing terrorism, but there isn't a terrorist structure yet."

The group behind the Munich plot is allegedly led by Martin Wiese, a neo-Nazi leader who originally comes from Anklam, in eastern Germany near the Baltic Sea. Wiese gained his social education in the disillusionment and unemployment in the east following German unification. In the early 90s, eastern neo-Nazis and skinheads attacked hostels for asylum seekers, in one instance setting a hostel on fire while local townspeople cheered. Wiese is best known for spearheading demonstrations to protest a traveling exhibit documenting war crimes of the German Army in World War II. He moved to Munich three years ago and has become the inofficial leader of the right-wing scene.

Wiese embodies a growing faction of right-wing extremists who remain aloof from far-right political parties and instead build loose autonomous groups called Kameradschaften, or comrades. Analysts estimate that there are as many as 160 Kameradschaften throughout Germany. Increasingly they seek contact with international right-wing extremists, especially a group called Combat18, a British organization known for militant violence. Wiese is listed on Combat18's Web site as the group's contact in Germany.

"During the years of imprisonment after the actions of the '90s, the people around Wiese spent a lot of time thinking about how they could become more effective," says Funke. "Terrorism is an alternative for them."

The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which monitors extremist groups, says that while membership in right-wing organizations fell around 10 percent last year, the number of right-wing extremists willing to commit violence is rising. Their favorite targets are foreigners, especially blacks, Turks and Jews.

The Munich bomb plot has sent a shudder through the Jewish community. But community leader Charlotte Knobloch says that the plan to rebuild the synagogue will proceed.

"We had hoped that we could rebuild the synagogue in the heart of the city and finally return to some kind of normalcy," she says. "We haven't even laid the cornerstone yet, and already those eternally living in the past have cast their ugly shadow across our plans. But we won't back down."

In the past decade, about 100 people have died in far-right or racist violence in Germany. Among the worst incidents was the firebombing death of five Turks in the western German city of Solingen in 1993.

Germany's main Jewish leader, Paul Spiegel, urged Germans Monday to increase vigilance against rightist threats. "Such groups will continue to agitate until the people finally understand that such attacks are not against Jews ... but attacks on democracy and humanity in this country," he told Deutschlandfunk radio. "It's not about protecting Jews. It's about protecting this land from rightist terror."

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