The country’s intelligence service in 2012 identified around 10,100 dangerous neo-Nazis, Berlin’s Tagesspiegel reported. In 2011 this figure stood at 9,800 and in 2010, it was 9,500.

Accounting for a large part of Germany’s violent extreme-right were members of the National Democratic Party (NDP) – who tended to be mostly young and influenced by the underground skinhead movement or the growing fascist music scene.

There were of course politically-unaffiliated, more autonomous neo-Nazis who were also linked to violent crime – often directed at the extreme left, said the Tagesspiegel.

Yet the number of people that the German intelligence earmarked as a “potential” threat went down from 22,400 to 22,100 between 2011 and 2012. In 2010, this figure was 25,000.

This dip was thought to have been linked to the German People’s Union (DVB) parliamentary party losing its place in the Bundestag in 2010. While the NPD scooped up some of members left over from the flop, it too has only 6,000 people registered.

The Local/jcw