After Sunday’s election the far-right party has decided to allow Maximilian Krah and Matthias Helferich to return to the parliamentary group

Two politicians for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) who were sidelined over remarks they made relating to the Nazis have been welcomed back into its parliamentary group after the party’s historic performance in the German general election.

Maximilian Krah resigned from the AfD’s federal executive board before the European elections last June after telling an Italian newspaper that not all members of Adolf Hitler’s SS had been “automatically criminals”.

Prospective chancellor takes startlingly aggressive line against those protesting against gamble with AfD

The German conservative opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, whose party is widely tipped to win this month’s general election, defended his hardline migration proposals after a wave of protests accused him of breaching the time-honoured “firewall” between the far right and centrists.

In an uncompromising speech to a party congress of his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin, Merz said he was confident they would win the 23 February vote “with a very good result”, well ahead of the anti-immigration, anti-Islam Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which has been consistently placing second in the polls.

Karlsruhe police say they have opened inquiry into ‘persons unknown on suspicion of incitement of racial hatred’

German police have launched an investigation after the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party distributed flyers designed to resemble plane tickets for deportation that were addressed to “illegal immigrants” as part of an increasingly provocative campaign for next month’s general election.

People from immigrant communities in the south-western city of Karlsruhe found the flyers in their letterboxes, although it was not immediately clear if they had been directly targeted.