JEWISH leaders in Germany are planning to bring criminal charges against the owners of YouTube after Nazi propaganda was posted on the video-sharing website.

Extremist footage that has appeared on the site includes The Jew Suess, an antisemitic 1940 propaganda film that purports to show a Jewish businessman plotting to gain control of the German state.

There have also been postings by Blood and Honour, a neo-Nazi music promotion network that takes its name from the motto of the Hitler Youth, and by a heavy metal band called Landser (Footsoldier), whose videos praise Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, and glorify Third Reich soldiers.

The distribution of Nazi material is banned in Germany, where Blood and Honour and Landser are outlawed. But the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which believes the videos could incite racist violence at a time when attacks are on the increase, claims the response of Google, YouTube’s parent company, to numerous protests has been “unacceptably passive”.

Stephan Kramer, the council’s secretary-general, said it was disappointed that Google had failed to “sit down and talk seriously about what was possible”.

He said: “I do not want to be the ‘opinion police’ but in extreme cases something should be done. I’m talking about videos that are dangerous in manipulating young people.”

The council’s lawyers plan to submit a case to the German authorities under the country’s strict laws against incitement to racial hatred. They are also considering whether to sue Google in America.

The moves coincide with growing concern in Germany about an increase in attacks by right-wing extremists. The federal police say that 1,658 offences “with an extremist and antisemitic background” were recorded in 2005, a 26% increase on the previous year.

Last week Google blocked some videos from its German site, including extracts from The Jew Suess, but Tomas Guenter, legal adviser of Jugendschutz.de, an internet child protection group, said there had been no response to complaints about 60 others.

Google said these were “under review” and insisted it was keen to talk to all the parties. “We understand that these are real and sensitive matters, and we respect the feelings of the people concerned,” said Rachel Whetstone, Google’s director of communications.

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