Nazis plan protest as atrocities exhibition reopens

Neo-Nazis from across Europe are planning a protest rally in Berlin this weekend after the reopening last night of a controversial exhibition which has sparked riots in several other German cities.

The new, improved version of "Crimes of the Wehrmacht" sets out to prove that ordinary German soldiers, not just a Nazi hard core, took part in atrocities against civilians during the Second World War. The original exhibition was closed two years ago when a Polish historian discovered that some of the pictures showed not German troops, but the Soviet NKVD secret service at work.

Historians spent a year sifting through the display, concluding that while some of the 1,400 photos had been badly chosen, the exhibition provided enough evidence to support its central argument.

The tobacco magnate Jan Philipp Reemtsma, whose left-leaning Institute for Social Research organised the show, promises no mistakes this time. "There is no change in the thesis, but there is change in argumentation," Mr Reemtsma said.

Nearly a million people saw the travelling exhibition in the first four years, undeterred by often violent protests. Now the brown army is mobilising again. The National Democratic Party of Germany is planning to march on the exhibition on Saturday. Leftist groups and unions promisecounter-demonstrations.

In the past, the street battles often distracted from the upheaval the exhibition was generating in mainstream society. But times have changed. When the first exhibition opened in Hamburg six years ago, Wehrmacht deserters were still criminals in the eyes of the law. The Bundestag has since acknowledged that the Second World War was a "war of aggression and extermination".

The historians are confident they have now been able to prove the Wehrmacht's "decisive" role in exterminations.