Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi

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Random House, 1996 - Biography & Autobiography - 384 pages
Germany 1990, a world where young men in old SS uniforms regard the Holocaust as a nostalgic myth, play concentration-camp board games, firebomb refugee shelters, and network with old war criminals to plot a new Reich. Most shockingly, their plans and propaganda - Holocaust denial literature and bomb manuals - come primarily from white-power extremists in Boston, California, and Nebraska. This is the world of the neo-Nazis, told through the story of their former leader. Ingo Hasselbach, the "Fuhrer of the East", grew up as the son of members of the Communist elite in the looking-glass world of the German Democratic Republic. Rebelling against the state, he found himself spending his adolescence in and out of prisons. His avuncular old cellmate, the former Gestapo chief of Dresden, persuaded him that a world Jewish conspiracy was bringing ruin and division to Germany. Upon Hasselbach's release from prison in 1988, he founded the country's first neo-Nazi political party. For the next five years, he led a violent extremist group: street fighting, indoctrinating young members, and plotting terrorist attacks. But as Hasselbach confronted the fruits of his labor - the firebombed bodies of refugees, the anguished faces of the survivors - a profound change occurred within him: He began to doubt. Secretly, Hasselbach began to investigate the Holocaust revisionism he and his Kamerads propagated, and he finally learned the truth about the murder of the Jews - and about the lie he had been living. He no longer wanted to live a life of hate. He decided to get out. In 1993 he publicly renounced the neo-Nazi movement and dedicated his life to dissuading German youths from following his dark path. Hebegan lecturing to student groups and in Jewish community centers and trying to open a dialogue about race relations in Germany. His Kamerads initiated their dialogue by sending Hasselbach a mail bomb. Pursued by death threats, he now lives in hiding.

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Contents

COLD INNOCENCE
3
POTENTIAL DISTURBER OF THE SOCIALIST PEACE
16
MY FATHERS HOUSE
32
Copyright

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About the author (1996)

Tom Reiss (born May 5, 1964) is an American author, historian, and journalist. He grew up in New York City and graduated from Harvard University in 1987. Reiss is the author of three nonfiction books, the latest of which is The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (2012), which received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. His previous books are Führer-Ex: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi (1996), the first inside exposé of the European neo-Nazi movement; and The Orientalist: Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life (2005), which became an international bestseller. As a journalist, Reiss has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

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