Friedhelm Busse

Friedhelm Busse
Friedhelm Busse in 2006
Born	Friedhelm Busse (1929-02-04)4 February 1929 Bochum, Weimar Germany
Died	23 July 2008(2008-07-23) (aged 79) Passau, Germany
Nationality	German
Occupation	Politician
Organization	12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend
Known for	Neo-Nazi activist
Political party	Free German Workers' Party
Movement	Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands

Friedhelm Busse (4 February 1929 – 23 July 2008) was a German national socialist politician and activist. In a career taking in some six decades Busse established himself as a leading voice of German neo-Nazism.

The son of an SA Sturmbannführer, Busse was born in Bochum and served in the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend in 1945. After the war Busse served in the Bund Deutscher Jugend, a semi-clandestine anti-Soviet Union paramilitary squad exposed in the German press as a front operation for the CIA in 1952. He then became active in Reichsjugend, the youth wing of the Socialist Reich Party and later the Deutsche Reichspartei. During the early 1960s he took an active role in terrorism in the majority-German speaking Italian province of South Tyrol, and was arrested in 1963 for possession of dynamite.

Busse joined the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) in 1964 and soon became one of the party's leading members in North Rhine-Westphalia. As a member of the NPD Busse became associated with student radicalism, much to the displeasure of the NPD leadership. To this end he set up a radical far right group, Aktion Widerstand, in 1970 and was expelled from the party the following year as the leadership sought to reassert itself. This followed a conviction for weapons offences, also in 1971.

In June 1971 he joined with other radicals in setting up the Partei der Arbeit/Deutsche Sozialisten, which re-emerged in 1975 as Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands (VSBD). During this time he was also involved in organising neo-Nazi cadres and played a leading role in the establishment of the NSDAP/AO. He had worked closely with the groups counterparts in France, Fédération d'action nationale et européenne, in order to increase international co-operation. Alongside this he continued to play a leading role in the VSBD until it was outlawed in 1982 following a shooting incident with Munich police in which two VSBD gunmen were killed and two police officers injured. The group had been involved in a number of bank robberies during the summer of 1981 but this incident, which occurred in November 1981, represented the end of this fundraising initiative. Busse was sentenced to six years imprisonment at his 1983 trial after being found guilty of charges of illegal possession of weapons and receiving stolen goods.