Peddler Of Neo-Nazi Materials Arrested Nebraskan Was Germany’s Largest Distributor Of Hate Literature
An American believed to be one of the largest distributors of neo-Nazi materials in the United States and Europe was arrested in Denmark, and German police followed up Thursday with raids on apartments of more than 80 of his followers in Germany.
Police in suburban Copenhagen, Denmark, said they had arrested Gary Rex Lauck, 41, of Lincoln, Neb., and were awaiting extradition papers from Germany. The city-state of Hamburg had issued an international warrant seeking the self-professed Nazi’s arrest.
Meanwhile, Germany’s Federal Criminal Office said about 800 police had seized weapons, ammunition and Nazi documents in dawn sweeps of the homes of some of Lauck’s known German followers, most of them teenagers.
It is illegal in Germany to produce, possess or distribute Nazi materials. German law also makes it a crime to incite violence.
“We hope that with this campaign of searches, we have dealt a decisive blow to (Lauck’s) Nazi delivery system, which has been a thorn in our eye for a long time,” said Willi Fundermann, spokesman for Germany’s Federal Criminal Office.
Lauck, whose main publication is the “Nazi Battle Cry,” speaks German and is believed to have been smuggling racist hate literature into Germany for more than 20 years. He also sells his products by mail in America.
A 1993 report on German neoNazis by the New York-based AntiDefamation League of B’nai B’rith named Lauck as the movement’s most dangerous propagandist. The league, which monitors anti-Semitic and far-right activity, dubbed the Nebraskan the “Farm Belt Fuhrer.”
From Nebraska, Lauck had operated the National Socialist German Workers Party-Overseas Organization - Adolf Hitler gave the same name to his international support groups - and published newspapers and magazines in a dozen languages, including English, German, Russian and Hungarian. He had been arrested in Germany in 1976 and jailed for four months for possessing illegal stickers.
Authorities say Lauck was Germany’s single largest source of contraband Nazi materials. Teenagers at illicit political rock concerts sported Lauck’s SS armbands and waved his SS flags; disaffected youths out of work plastered his swastika stickers on walls; his better-educated disciples read his covert copies of “Mein Kampf” and listened to his tapes of Hitler’s speeches.