Germany's far-right AfD bans EU top candidate from public appearances

Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has banned its lead candidate for the European election, Maximilian Krah, from making public appearances, following his comments that not all SS members were criminals.

A party spokesman confirmed a report in the Bild newspaper on Wednesday that the federal executive committee had banned Krah from making public appearances around two weeks before the EU election.

Krah declared on the social media platform X that he would refrain from further election campaign appearances and would resign as a member of the federal executive committee.

The move comes a day after the French far-right National Rally party said it no longer wants to sit in the same parliamentary group as the AfD over Krah's comments.

Krah told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that not all members of the SS were criminals, referring to the Schutzstaffel (SS), a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

"I will never say that everyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal," said Krah. When asked whether the SS were war criminals, he replied, "There was certainly a high percentage of criminals, but not all of them were criminals."

Nazi concentration camps were guarded and administered by the SS, which was heavily involved in war crimes. The organization was declared a criminal organization in the Nuremberg trials after the end of World War II.