A senior far-right German politician said he would withdraw from his campaign for the upcoming European elections, although he would remain his party’s leading candidate.
The latest controversy comes after Maximilian Krah of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) told an Italian newspaper that members of the SS were not automatically “criminals”.
“It depends. You have to assess responsibilities individually. At the end of the war there were almost a million SS. Günter Grass was also in the Waffen SS,” he told La Repubblica, in referring to the German novelist who wrote The Drum.
“Before I declare someone a criminal, I want to know what they did.”
The SS, or Schutzstaffel, was a Nazi paramilitary group active in the 1930s and 1940s. Among other war crimes, SS members played a leading role in the Holocaust, the genocide of six million Jews and others during the Second World War.
In response to these remarks, the French far-right National Rally (RN) announced that it would no longer sit with the AfD in the European Parliament.
The leader of the RN, Marine Le Pen, declared on French radio that “it was urgent to establish a cordon santé” between the parties.
“Cordon Sanitaire” is a term used by certain political parties to reject cooperation with movements deemed too extremist. It is often used by French politicians to refuse to work with Ms. Le Pen’s RN.
“It is time to definitively break with this movement,” she added.
In February, AfD leader Alice Weidel met with RN leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella to try to heal the divide between the parties.
The RN had distanced itself from the AfD following revelations that the German party held a secret meeting at a lakeside villa outside Berlin where mass expulsions of non-ethnic Germans – including German citizens – would have been discussed.
At the time, Le Pen said she rejected mass expulsions of citizens based on their ethnic origin.
Announcing his decision to withdraw from the campaign, Mr Krah wrote on X: “The AfD must maintain its unity.
“It is for this reason that I will refrain from any further electoral appearances with immediate effect and resign from my position as a member of the Federal Executive Council.”
Mr Krah has been under pressure in the run-up to this year’s European elections, which take place between June 6 and 9.
In April, one of his collaborators was arrested by German police on suspicion of spying for China.
And German prosecutors have opened an investigation into Mr. Krah over alleged payments from Russia and China, which he denies.
The AfD has slipped in the polls this year. But the party still comes in second or third in national polls, and first in some states expected to vote in local elections later this year.
