A top far-right German politician says he will pull back from campaigning for the upcoming EU elections - although he will remain his party's lead candidate

The latest controversy comes after the Alternative for Germany (AfD)'s Maximilian Krah told journalists that SS members weren’t automatically "criminals"

"It depends. You have to assess blame individually. At the end of the war there were almost a million SS. Günter Grass was also in the Waffen SS," he told La Repubblica and the Financial Times, referring to the German novelist who wrote The Tin Drum

"Before I declare someone a criminal, I want to know what he did"[…]
In response to the remarks, France’s far-right National Rally (RN) announced it would no longer sit with the AfD in the European Parliament

RN leader Marine Le Pen told French radio that "it was urgent to establish a cordon sanitaire"[…]
The RN had distanced itself from the AfD following revelations about the German party holding a secret meeting in a villa on a lake outside of Berlin where mass deportations of non-ethnic Germans - including German citizens - were allegedly discussed[…]
Mr Krah has been under pressure in the lead-up to this year's EU elections, which will take place between 6 and 9 June

In April, one of his staffers was arrested by German police on suspicion of spying for China[…]
The AfD has slipped in the polls this year. But the party is still polling second or third nationwide, and first in some states due to vote in local elections later this year