Third Way (Germany)

'''The III. Path or The Third Path''' (Der III. Weg, Der Dritte Weg) is a far-right and neo-Nazi political party in Germany.

It was founded on 28 September 2013 by former NPD officials, and activists from the banned Free Network South. They have ties with Assad's government in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the National Corps, Misanthropic Division, Right Sector and Svoboda in Ukraine, and the Nordic Resistance Movement in the Nordic countries. Their founder and chairman until 2021 is Klaus Armstroff. The party mostly operates in Thuringia, Bavaria and Brandenburg. A group of people bearing Der Dritte Weg flags marched in through a town in Saxony on 1 May 2019, the day before the Jewish remembrance of the Holocaust, carrying a banner saying "Social justice instead of criminal foreigners". The Central Council of Jews said that the state government should ban such marches if it were serious about tackling right-wing extremism. The party stood in the 2019 European elections, achieving 0.03% of the vote.

Name
The party is registered at the Federal Returning Office as "DER DRITTE WEG" short-form: "III. Weg". According to the party's website, the official English translation of the name is "The Third Way", stylized as "THE THIRD WAY". Despite this, the party's name is commonly translated as "The Third Path" or "The III. Path".

Structure
In Bavaria, the six “bases” in 2014 reflected the centers of the former comradeships. In 2019, the party succeeded in expanding its structures, albeit only slightly. Accordingly, only three of the planned four regional associations have been founded so far. The party has not yet succeeded in establishing structures in the north of Germany. At the federal party conference in September 2019, Der III. Weg decided to amend its statutes to restructure the regional associations into state associations. The party had previously taken part in the local elections in Saxony in 2019, but was denied participation in the state elections in Saxony on September 1, 2019 by the state election committee for formal reasons. With the amendments to the statutes, the party underlined its intention to continue to contest elections in the future and thus fulfil or consolidate one of the requirements necessary to maintain party status.

In 2019, the estimated number of members/followers/supporters nationwide increased to around 580. As of 2021, the majority of the approximately 650 full and supporting members were active in the federal states of Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony, and since 2019 also in NRW in the greater Cologne-Düsseldorf area.

Ideology
The party describes itself as national revolutionary and partially bases itself on the ideology of the left wing of the Nazi Party, namely the Strasser Brothers. The III. Path has widely been described as a ultranationalist and neo-Nazi party.

Funding
According to the constitutional protection report of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the party is mainly financed by donations and contributions in 2019.

10 point program
On its website, the party presents a 10-point election program, available in 12 European languages.