The lead candidate for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliamentary election has resigned from the German far-right party’s leadership.
Maximilian Krah, who last weekend told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”, said in a statement that his comments were “being misused as a pretext to damage our party”.
The SS, or “Schutzstaffel”, was the main paramilitary force of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, and, among its many roles, took a leading part in the Holocaust, the slaughter of 6 million Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis.
