Ulrich Graf
Shortly after the First World War, Graf became a member of the German Workers' Party (DAP). Later, the DAP was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP; Nazi Party) and taken over by Adolf Hitler. Founded in 1920, the "Sturmabteilung" (SA) was the first of many paramilitary protection squads that worked to protect Nazi officials. These storm troopers, outfitted in brown uniforms, were initially charged with the duty of keeping order at Nazi Party meetings. They soon expanded their role to include disruption of rival political party's functions. Graf was an early member of the SA. In 1921, he became member number 2882 of the Nazi Party.
National Democratic Party of Germany
In the 1950s, despite the overall failure of de-Nazification, early right-wing extremist parties in West Germany failed to attract voters away from the moderate government that had presided over Germany's recovery. In November 1964, however, right-wing splinter groups united to form the NDP. One of the four founding members was Adolf von Thadden (1921 - 1996), alleged to have been an agent for the British MI6. Thadden had a British grandmother and was NPD chairman from 1967 to 1971. Owing to von Thadden's effective leadership the NPD achieved success in the late 1960s, winning local government seats across West Germany. In 1966 and 1967, fuelled by West German discontent with a lagging economy and with the leadership of Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the NPD won 15 seats in Bavaria, 10 in lower Saxony, 8 in Hesse, and several other seats. However, the NPD did not then and has never since received the minimum 5% of votes in federal elections that allow a party to send delegates to the German Parliament. The NPD came closest to that goal in the 1969 election, when it received 4.3 per cent of the vote. An economic downturn, frustrations with the emerging leftist youth counter-culture and the emergence of a coalition government between the center-right Christian Democratic Party (CDU), the Christian Social Union (the CDU's present-day sister party), and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) helped to pave the way for those NPD gains. The coalition government had created a vacuum in the traditional political right wing, which the NPD tried to fill. Additionally, the party benefited from hostility to the growing immigrant population and fears that the government would repudiate claims to the "lost territories" (pre-World War II German territory east of the Oder-Neisse River.) The historian Walter Laqueur has argued that the NPD in the 1960s cannot be classified as a neo-Nazi party.