Michael Kühnen

Michael Kühnen (21 June 1955 – 25 April 1991) was a leader in the German neo-Nazi movement. He was one of the first post-World War II Germans to openly embrace Nazism and call for the formation of a Fourth Reich. He enacted a policy of setting up several differently named groups in an effort to confuse German authorities, who were attempting to shut down neo-Nazi groups. Kühnen's homosexuality was made public in 1986, and he died of HIV-related complications in 1991.

Kühnen was raised as a staunch Roman Catholic, and initially came to politics in his early teens as a Maoist. When he took a job at the shipyards of Hamburg, Kühnen moved to the far right, joining a local National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) youth group. He did not remain long in the NPD, soon denouncing party members as "a bourgeois crowd of swines", and leaving the party to join the neo-Nazi movement.

Following his departure from the NPD, Kühnen had a brief spell in the German Army but he was dishonourably discharged in 1977 for attempting to spread Nazi propaganda in his barracks. During that time, he studied at the Helmut Schmidt University (originally known as the University of the German Federal Armed Forces Hamburg), located in Hamburg, Germany. After this expulsion, he took his first steps in organising a new movement, setting up the Action Front of National Socialists. Initially, the organisation consisted only of Kühnen, but he soon made contact with like-minded individuals across West Germany, resulting in a nationwide network of cells. The group soon became notorious for its violent activities, which included bank robberies and arms raids, often working in tandem with other similar groups, such as the . Known as the leader of the group, Kühnen was arrested in 1979 and sentenced to three and a half years in prison for inciting violence and racial hatred. Released in 1982, he set about trying to reorganise the Action Front of National Socialists, merging them with Thomas Brehl's National Activists, but the attempts were hindered by the Ministry of the Interior, who outlawed the group in November 1983.

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