German fascists broke generation-long taboos about Nazism in an extraordinary day of Far Right demonstrations against historic ‘war crimes’ in Dresden.

Thousands wore all black as they marched through the streets in a funeral procession to honour the deaths of those killed by the Allied Forces bombings during World War Two.

Waving banners of Holocaust denial, chanting ‘heil’ and singing banned versions of the national anthem, there were stand-offs with anti-fascist counter-protesters on a day of high tension in Saxony.

One young man willing to say the unthinkable was Luis Wagner who told the Express he was “proud to call himself a Nazi”. Wagner claimed to be part of a “growing” wave of young people in Germany who felt the same way.

“[The stigma to call yourself a Nazi] is really changing because of people like me that are standing here and saying openly what I think. I am that’s a signal for other young Germans to do the same,” he said.

“Most people who have my views don’t agree with their parents. They are mostly left-wing whereas young people are getting more and more right-wing.”

Wagner, who was wearing an all-black outfit that was reminiscent of clothing worn by Nazi party followers, said he had not discussed the Second World War with his grandparents because they had died when he was young.

But, the far-right follower expressed anger against Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, who he accused of targeting civilians during the RAF’s attacks on East Germany.

“Up to 300,000 Germans civilians died in the firestorm [in Dresden],” he added. “There were no military or industrial buildings. This was just all about bombing civilians.”

Wagner said he had a “problem” with Jewish people but refused to elaborate and said he had no problems with Muslims if they “stayed in their own country”.

Joining him on the march was Max Schreiber, who claimed not to be didn’t care if people called him a Neo-Nazi because the words “didn’t mean anything anymore because they had been used so often”.

Schreiber, who would not describe himself in this way, is a member of the Stadtrat Freie Sachsen party-which is on a German government watch list for extremist organisations-said he’d learned about the Dresden bombings from his grandparents.

He also claimed that the increased numbers at the march evidenced the growing number of those supporting the Far Right in Germany.

“This is definitely the biggest demonstration in a number of years,” he said. “I’m happy that a lot of quite normal people have come, not just neo-Nazis, and that people are not being convinced by the German media to avoid this protest.”

Despite both claiming there had been a groundswell of support for their views, neither man felt this would result in transformative change at the German elections next week.

The Elon Musk-backed Alternative Fur Deutschland frequently battles allegations from rivals it is pandering to Far Right extremists, but neither Schreiber or Wagner said they’d be supporting them next week.

Schreiber didn’t want to see their leader Alice Weidel become Chancellor because she was a former “Goldman Sachs banker” and “a lesbian”, while Wagner objected because he didn’t believe in democracy.

Counterprotesters at the event were more willing to associate the two.

“Far right parties will get votes,” a masked man holding an anti-fascist banner told the Express. “There is a global uprising of fascism, including in Germany. It’s a bit s**t. We felt we had to come out to the streets.”

One thing was abundantly clear, the new generation of Far Right activists are challenging old stigmas about what can be said.