Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc. will remove videos depicting Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda from its YouTube site in Germany after complaints from activist groups.

A government-sponsored Internet watchdog, Jugendschutz.de, filed more than 100 complaints to YouTube about the clips, first reported yesterday by German broadcaster SWR's ``Report Mainz'' program, which also said that the Central Council of Jews in Germany may sue the company.

``We don't want these right-wing videos on our platform and they'll be removed,'' Kay Oberbeck, a spokesman for Google in Northern Europe, said in a phone interview today from Hamburg. He said Google will cooperate with state authorities in Germany, where the distribution of Nazi material is illegal.

Google has removed about a third of the videos the watchdog challenged, according to Jugendschutz's legal adviser, Thomas Guenter. YouTube has a system that allows viewers to identify clips as inappropriate, ``though no system is perfect,'' said Oberbeck.

Clips posted on YouTube include music videos from the neo- Nazi heavy metal band ``Landser,'' one of them an acoustic tableau praising the life of Rudolf Hess, a top deputy of Adolf Hitler and a senior Nazi figure who died in prison in 1987.

Other clips feature lyrics lauding German soldiers set against grainy films of World War II military maneuvers. One ends with a portrait of Hitler and a swastika.

Nazi Movie

YouTube also contains black-and-white clips from the 1940 anti-Semitic Nazi film ``Jud Suess,'' directed by Veit Harlan, in which a Jewish businessman is shown conniving with the Duke of Wuerttemberg to gain control of the state. The ``comment and responses'' column shows viewers outraged at the appearance of the extracts, while others support it for educational purposes.

Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told SWR that he expects state prosecutors and authorities to take action. Phone calls and an e-mail message sent to the Council seeking a response were unanswered.

YouTube doesn't yet have a separate German site, meaning viewers in Germany use the U.S.-maintained platform, which is regulated by American law, Oberbeck said. While Nazi material may not be banned in the U.S., YouTube plans to remove videos deemed to be inappropriate or incitement to violence, he said.

Increased right-wing activity has caused concern in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel last week condemned as ``shameful'' an Aug. 18 mob attack by as many as 50 youths on eight Indian men in a town in the eastern state of Saxony.

The German Interior Ministry reported in May that the number of criminal acts committed by right-wing extremists in Germany rose almost 15 percent last year. The anti-immigrant National Democratic Party is present in two eastern state legislatures, those of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 28, 2007 09:59 EDT