In the 1970s, right-wing terrorism in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) grew out of the mere theoretical planning stages into a phenomenon that saw a number of severe terrorist acts committed in its name. By the end of the decade, right-wing terrorist networks had emerged, its adherents building secret armouries and robbing banks to prepare for lethal attacks.
This paper uses a historical approach and qualitative methods to explain the conditions under which this extremely violent phase occurred; it aims at the conjunction of contemporary history and studies in terrorism and right-wing extremism. Following a discussion of the term “right-wing terrorism”, this paper argues that multifaceted factors caused the escalation of violence: In the 1970s, new generations of neo-Nazis were willing to carry out violent attacks, in what was not only a German but also a European trend. While a few perpetrators operated as single actors, most likely belonged to a group or a larger network. The paper furthermore inquires into the impact of leading exponents and the consequences of criminal prosecution. When examining the terrorists’ motivations, the importance of ideology becomes clear since the actions were driven by contemporary far-right narratives: glorification of the National Socialist past, fighting the “enemy within”, anti-Semitism and racism. It is not a coincidence that these issues were also subjects of public debates and societal developments in the FRG during that time; the paper explains how the rise of right-wing terrorism was closely related to changes in West German society.
