Website selling Nazi-themed products under investigation
August 10, 2018
Adolf Hitler fans could buy almost any conceivable Nazi-themed object at an online retailer. But that may end now that the alleged site operator has been tracked down through bank transactions and mail service providers.
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German prosecutors are investigating a man for allegedly running a mail order website that sells a huge variety of Nazi-themed products, officials told German news outlets.
The offending site sells products such as peanuts packaged like a tin of Zyklon B, the poison gas most notably used in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Other products include SS bed linen, busts of Hitler and his cronies, various Nazi-themed rip-offs of famous alcohol brands, such as "Reichs Jägermeister" (referring to an official title once held by Hermann Göring) or "Heil Hitler" (instead of Heineken), children's furniture adorned with Nazi symbols and general Nazi paraphernalia.
The public prosecutor's office in Neuruppin told reporters it was investigating a man from Uckermark in northeastern Germany for incitement to hatred and other crimes. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors told public broadcaster RBB they tracked down the operator through bank accounts in the Baltic States and through the postal service providers he used. He is allegedly based in Gibraltar.
RBB reported the man was already involved in a long-postponed trial for separate Nazi-related crimes.
The German National Socialist Workers' party profoundly affected the course of 20th-century world history with their ideology, propaganda and crimes. Who were the key leaders of the movement?
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Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
As Hitler's Propaganda Minister, the virulently anti-Semitic Goebbels was responsible for making sure a single, iron-clad Nazi message reached every citizen of the Third Reich. He strangled freedom of the press, controlled all media, arts, and information, and pushed Hitler to declare "Total War." He and his wife committed suicide in 1945, after poisoning their six children.
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Adolf Hitler (1889-1945)
The leader of the German National Socialist Workers' Party (Nazi) developed his anti-Semitic, anti-communist and racist ideology well before coming to power as Chancellor in 1933. He undermined political institutions to transform Germany into a totalitarian state. From 1939 to 1945, he led Germany in World War II while overseeing the Holocaust. He committed suicide in April 1945.
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Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945)
As leader of the Nazi paramilitary SS ("Schutzstaffel"), Himmler was one of the Nazi party members most directly responsible for the Holocaust. He also served as Chief of Police and Minister of the Interior, thereby controlling all of the Third Reich's security forces. He oversaw the construction and operations of all extermination camps, in which more than 6 million Jews were murdered.
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Rudolf Hess (1894-1987)
Hess joined the Nazi party in 1920 and took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, a failed Nazi attempt to gain power. While in prison, he helped Hitler write "Mein Kampf." Hess flew to Scotland in 1941 to attempt a peace negotiation, where he was arrested and held until the war's end. In 1946, he stood trial in Nuremberg and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died.
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Adolf Eichmann (1906-1962)
Alongside Himmler, Eichmann was one of the chief organizers of the Holocaust. As an SS Lieutenant colonel, he managed the mass deportations of Jews to Nazi extermination camps in Eastern Europe. After Germany's defeat, Eichmann fled to Austria and then to Argentina, where he was captured by the Israeli Mossad in 1960. Tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was executed in 1962.
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Hermann Göring (1893-1946)
A participant in the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Göring became the second-most powerful man in Germany once the Nazis took power. He founded the Gestapo, the Secret State Police, and served as Luftwaffe commander until just before the war's end, though he increasingly lost favor with Hitler. Göring was sentenced to death at Nuremberg but committed suicide the night before it was enacted.
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Reported AfD link
Papers Bild and B.Z., both run by the same publisher, alleged the man was the brother of a relatively prominent AfD politician.
Spirit maker Jägermeister is now taking legal action against the alleged operator of the website for impinging on its copyright, according to the Berliner Morgenpost.
Section 130 of Germany's penal code defines incitement to hatred as a criminal offense. Several crimes fall under this category, including inciting hatred against a national, racial or religious group, and approving of, denying or downplaying an act committed under the rule of National Socialism. Doing so is not protected by Germany's constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, as the country's top court asserted in 1994.
