Charting the Counterrevolution: Transnational Jewish Perspectives on German Right-Wing Extremism in the 1960s

In 1968, a year commonly associated with global student revolts, the right-wing extremist NPD entered the parliament of Baden-Wurttemberg with nearly 10 percent of the vote. This latest electoral success of a party founded by former NSDAP members marked the culmination of a decade of far-right activism which, after its suppression during the early postwar years, resurfaced in the late 1950s. Scholars of modern German history have only recently begun to address the phenomenon of right-wing extremism after 1945. While a growing number of studies have contributed to our understanding of the far right as an inseparable part of postwar German history, they have rarely paid attention to those who were affected by it.

This paper investigates how Jews, within and outside the Federal Republic, perceived the return of German fascism and antisemitism during the 1960s, from the global “Swastika epidemic” of 1959/60 to the peak of the NPD’s electoral victories in 1968. It examines the concepts and conclusions put forth by Jewish functionaries, journalists, and scholars who tried to make sense of this political shift in German society. My analysis is based on the contemporary Jewish press and on policy papers and internal discussions of Jewish organizations in France, Britain, West Germany, and the United States, all of which paid close attention to the West German developments. I argue that international Jewish observers viewed the far-right resurgence in the FRG not primarily as a local affair but as part of the wider phenomenon of fascist revivals taking place in several European countries. Their deep fears about—and determined responses to—West German neo-Nazism can only be fully understood if seen in this pan-European context. Based on those Jewish perspectives, the paper reinterprets the 1960s as a period of reactionary backlash that questioned the viability of German and European democracy.