Fritz Rössler
Encyclopedia
Fritz Rössler was a low-level official in the Nazi Party who went on to become a leading figure in German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 neo-Nazi
Neo-Nazism
Neo-Nazism consists of post-World War II social or political movements seeking to revive Nazism or some variant thereof.The term neo-Nazism can also refer to the ideology of these movements....

 politics. In his later life he was more commonly known as Dr. Franz Richter.

Nazi activity

Rössler was born in Bad Gottleuba-Berggießhübel
Bad Gottleuba-Berggießhübel
Bad Gottleuba-Berggießhübel is a spa town in the district Sächsische Schweiz-Osterzgebirge in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. The municipality borders the Czech Republic in the south....

, Saxony
Saxony
The Free State of Saxony is a landlocked state of Germany, contingent with Brandenburg, Saxony Anhalt, Thuringia, Bavaria, the Czech Republic and Poland. It is the tenth-largest German state in area, with of Germany's sixteen states....

. After attending university in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

 (where he did not complete a degree), Rössler became a Nazi in 1930 and soon became a technical adviser to the Gau of Saxony where he specialized in plans for resettlement of the East. By the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, Rössler was heading up the main office of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Nazi Germany's ministry that enforced Nazi Party ideology in Germany and regulated its culture and society. Founded on March 13, 1933, by Adolf Hitler's new National Socialist government, the Ministry was headed by Dr...

 before fleeing the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...

 to Saarland
Saarland
Saarland is one of the sixteen states of Germany. The capital is Saarbrücken. It has an area of 2570 km² and 1,045,000 inhabitants. In both area and population, it is the smallest state in Germany other than the city-states...

. In his later years he went on to write his memoirs, in it he described his deep hatred for the Jews, homosexuals, and gypsies that still inhabited Germany.

Dr. Franz Richter

As the war came to an end, Rössler emerged in Hanover
Hanover
Hanover or Hannover, on the river Leine, is the capital of the federal state of Lower Saxony , Germany and was once by personal union the family seat of the Hanoverian Kings of Great Britain, under their title as the dukes of Brunswick-Lüneburg...

 where he claimed to be Dr. Franz Richter, a Sudeten German
Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938)
From 1918 to 1938, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, more than 3 million ethnic Germans were living in what became the Czech lands of the newly created state of Czechoslovakia. Ethnic Germans had lived in Bohemia, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, since the 14th century , mostly in...

 teacher. The ruse was accepted, and Rössler moved to Luthe in Saxony where he found teaching work. Fired from his position in 1949 for teaching the Stab-in-the-back legend, he soon joined the Deutsche Rechtspartei
Deutsche Rechtspartei
The German Right Party was a right-wing political party that emerged in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany after the Second World War....

 and its successor the Deutsche Reichspartei
Deutsche Reichspartei
For the party that existed in Imperial Germany, see Free Conservative Party.The Deutsche Reichspartei was a nationalist political party in West Germany...

. Bearing a passing resemblance to Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 due to his toothbrush moustache
Toothbrush moustache
The Toothbrush moustache is a moustache, shaved at the edges, except for three to five centimeters above the centre of the lip...

 and habit of wearing Jodhpurs
Jodhpurs
Jodhpurs in their modern form are tight-fitting trousers that reach to the ankle, where they end in a snug cuff, and are worn primarily for horse riding. The term is also used incorrectly as slang for a type of short riding boot, also called a paddock boot or a jodhpur boot, because they are worn...

 and jackboots, he was elected to the Bundestag
Bundestag
The Bundestag is a federal legislative body in Germany. In practice Germany is governed by a bicameral legislature, of which the Bundestag serves as the lower house and the Bundesrat the upper house. The Bundestag is established by the German Basic Law of 1949, as the successor to the earlier...

 in the 1949 election
German federal election, 1949
The 1st German federal election, 1949, was conducted on 14 August 1949, to elect members to the Bundestag of West Germany. This was the first free election conducted in Germany since Adolf Hitler had become Reich Chancellor in 1933....

 but was expelled from the party the following year due to his radical Nazi ideals and his habit of attending parliament drunk.

Along with a number of other expellees from the DRP, he was a founder member of the Socialist Reich Party
Socialist Reich Party
The Socialist Reich Party of Germany was a West German far-right political party founded in the aftermath of the World War II in 1949 as an openly Nazi orientated split-off from the national conservative German Right Party...

, which called for a restoration of Germany's historic borders and "National-Socialist fundamental principles". Continuing to sit in the Bundestag, he made a notoriously anti-Semitic speech in November 1951 and was arrested soon afterwards for forging documents. In the course of investigations it was uncovered that Dr. Franz Richter was in fact Fritz Rössler, and he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the forgery, on top of a three-month sentence for insulting Lower Saxon ministers and breaching electoral regulations.

As Richter he also built up a close relationship with the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 Union Movement
Union Movement
The Union Movement was a right-wing political party founded in Britain by Oswald Mosley. Where Mosley had previously been associated with a peculiarly British form of fascism, the Union Movement attempted to redefine the concept by stressing the importance of developing a European nationalism...

, distributing Mosleyite literature across Germany, whilst also establishing the All German Representations "pen club" to arrange contacts between British activists and German followers of Europe a Nation
Europe a Nation
Europe a Nation was a policy developed by British politician Oswald Mosley as the cornerstone of his Union Movement. It called for the integration of Europe into a single entity....

.

Later years

Involved with the European Social Movement
European Social Movement
The European Social Movement was a neo-fascist Europe-wide alliance set up in 1951 to promote Pan-European nationalism.The ESM had its origins in the emergence of the Italian Social Movement , which established contacts with like-minded smaller groups in Europe during the late 1940s, setting up...

, Rössler was expelled from the SRP before it was banned, and after his release from prison he moved to Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, where a number of neo-Nazis operatives were based, and adopted the name Achmed Rössler. He returned to Germany in 1966 and became a businessman in Essen
Essen
- Origin of the name :In German-speaking countries, the name of the city Essen often causes confusion as to its origins, because it is commonly known as the German infinitive of the verb for the act of eating, and/or the German noun for food. Although scholars still dispute the interpretation of...

. He died at age 75 in Radstadt
Radstadt
Radstadt is a historic town in the district of St. Johann im Pongau in the Austrian state of Salzburg. It is located at the confluence of the Taurach stream and the Enns river, at the foot of Roßbrand mountain, part of the Salzburg Slate Alps.-History:...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.

External links

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