The cops used water cannon to protect the neo-Nazis, whose buses were nevertheless stoned. Some were punched when the anti-fascists were able to get near them. A police car was overturned.

In Nuremberg, 4,000 protestors marched north from the city center towards the planned neo-Nazi demonstration. Some 3,000 helmeted, club-swinging cops cracked heads in trying to protect the neo-Nazis from the anti-fascist demonstrators. The cops also attacked the anti-fascists with pepper spray and water cannons. The Nuremberg mayor exhorted people to ignore the neo-Nazis.

Only 200 anti-capitalist demonstrators attended a May Day rally in Hanover, most having gone to the protests in nearby Hamburg. The Hanover rally speaker said: "It is right to demand better working conditions and higher wages, but it is wrong not to make demands that go further. We are so bold as to ask: Wherefore work? Wherefore wages? And we demand the abolition of wage labor!"

On April 30, a dozen neo-Nazi thugs attacked five immigrants in Dortmund. German anti-fascists who happened to be nearby rushed up and together with the immigrant and native-born workers routed the neo-Nazis.

In Tübingen, 600 people marched on May Day.

Heribert Prantl, writing in the conservative Sueddeutsche Zeitung, said German unions’ failure to protect workers from the consequences of the Harz IV "reforms," which notably ended benefits for the long-term unemployed, has made workers here realize they must fight, which has breathed new life into May Day.