[4] Thadden served as a lieutenant with the Wehrmacht in the Second World War, suffering a number of battle injuries during the conflict.

In the 1950s he was befriended by Winifred Wagner, whose grandson Gottfried Wagner later recalled that My aunt Friedelind was outraged when my grandmother again slowly blossomed as the first lady of right-wing groups and received political friends such as Edda Goering, Ilse Hess, the former NPD chairman (sic) Adolf von Thadden, Gerdy Troost, the wife of the Nazi architect and friend of Hitler Paul Ludwig Troost, the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, the Nazi film director Karl Ritter and the racist author and former Senator of the Reich Hans Severus Ziegler.

[2] Thadden regularly clashed with the more moderate Thielen, and both men became involved in several lawsuits against each other, each aiming at gaining control of the NPD and ousting his rival from membership.

[3][need quotation to verify][9] He moved the party to the right, bringing in policies such as withdrawal from NATO, a return of Danzig to a united Germany, wide-ranging reform of the constitution and possibly a second Anschluss.

[2] He remained leader until 1971, achieving strong showings in regional elections, although the party failed to gain representation in the Bundestag under his leadership (and have never succeeded in doing so).

[11] Thadden left active politics in 1974 and worked for a construction-firm, although he remained as chief editor of the Deutsche Wochenzeitung into the 1980s.

[2] He maintained an interest in publishing for several years and was reported as acting on behalf of the Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik [de], a far-right journalism organisation linked to the NPD[12][13] in 1981 and 1982.