Nazis and the West, name a better duo

  • CoralMarks [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Let me add some names to the list:

    In West Germany, Konrad Adenauer became the first post-war Chancellor. He was an arch-conservative, ardent Catholic and pre-war mayor of Cologne as well as President of the Prussian State Council. Before the war he had called for a coalition government with the Nazis, and although never a member of that party himself, he was certainly no anti-fascist. His first post war government was packed with other right-wing and Catholic figures as well as high-ranking former Nazis.

    Hans Globke was Adenauer’s personal advisor. He had been an active member of the Nazi party, and had served as chief legal advisor to the Office for Jewish Affairs in the Ministry of the Interior, the section headed by Adolf Eichmann that was responsible for the administrative logistics of the Holocaust. It was he who co-wrote the official annotation explaining the implementation of the race laws which legalised the discrimination against the Jews.

    West Germany’s second Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the man credited with the country’s post-war ‘economic miracle’ and dubbed the ‘father of the social market economy’ had previously occupied a leading position in the Nazi Reichsgruppe Industrie and the Institute for Industrial Research financed by the chemical conglomerate IG Farben that supplied Zyklon-B for the gas chambers.

    Kurt Kiesinger, who followed Erhard as Chancellor in 1966, joined the Nazi Party in 1933, a few weeks after Hitler came to power. In 1940, he was employed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ radio propaganda department, rising to become deputy head from 1943 to 1945 and was liaison officer with Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda.

    Heinrich Lübke, who became President of the Federal Republic in 1959, was another controversial figure. His signature (which he disputed) was found on the building plans for a concentration camp. He was involved in the setting up of an aircraft factory in an underground chamber and, under his direction, barracks were built to house concentration camp inmates who worked as slave labourers. Lübke was also involved in setting up the army research station at Peenemunde (where the V2 rockets were developed under Werner von Braun) as building director of the Schlemp Group. From 1943-45 he was responsible for the employment of concentration camp inmates as slave labour.

    Hans Speidel, Commander-in-Chief of the allied ground forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963, served in the Nazi army’s French campaign of 1940 and became Chief of Staff of the military commander in France. In April 1944, Speidel was appointed Chief of Staff to Field Marshall Rommel.

    Reinhard Gehlen, President of the BND, the West German secret service until 1968, had been chief of Hitler’s military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front. He had been officially released from American captivity in 1946 and flown back to Germany, where he began his intelligence work by setting up an organization of former German intelligence officers.

    Source is the book "Stasi State or Socialist Paradise?"