The National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) has many faces, but there is only one event where they all come on display at the same time: the "Pressefest" of German Voice, the party's publishing house, a political rally-cum-garden party where skinheads rub shoulders with ageing Third Reich nostalgics and adolescents in checkered shirts.

However, what struck the German intelligence officers who observed last month's gathering in Mückay, Saxony, was less the diversity than the scale of the attendance: 4,000 sympathisers had come from all over Germany and Austria, more than twice the expected number.