Thousands of neo-Nazis held their biggest demonstration in Berlin since the end of World War II today, rallying to challenge a public exhibition claiming the German army had been involved in wartime Nazi atrocities.
Police stopped the neo-Nazis parading through Berlin's traditional Jewish quarter following protests by the mayor and other leading personalities of the German capital.
Police also managed to prevent a confrontation between neo-Nazis and anti-Nazis, using water cannon and tear gas grenades against anti-Nazi militants protesting against the march by some 3,500 Nazi sympathisers who had arrived in special trains from all over the country.
The exhibition, asserting the Wehrmacht (armed forces) had taken part in war crimes opened earlier in the week.
The neo-Nazi rally was organised by the National Democratic Party (NPD) - a German fringe party on the extreme right, which Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government wants banned because of its extremist views.
Berlin's vestigial Jewish community reacted with fury and anti-racist organisations intervened forcefully to stop the march through the Jewish district.
Berlin's Social Democrat Mayor Mr Klaus Wowereit was among the many political and cultural personalities to protest.
Mr Wowereit was among those who demonstratively visited the Wehrmacht exhibition today.
Hundreds of anti-Nazi demonstrators chanting "Nazis Out!" rallied at Berlin's New Synagogue to oppose the march. Some threw paving stones and firecrackers at police and clashed violently with officers stopping them crossing barriers set up to prevent contact between the two sides.
Several demonstrators and police were injured and a number of arrests were made, police said.
Police diverted the neo-Nazi protest to the north of the city and closed off the city centre to traffic.
The march ended without further incident in the late afternoon, and the neo-Nazis dispersed homewards, leaving Berlin again by special train.
The aim of the neo-Nazi march was to protest the exhibition that challenges many Germans' long-held belief the Wehrmacht was not involved in the crimes perpetrated by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its political structures, such as the SS.
AFP