History, a tangled web indeed

[kscarbel2]

Perhaps of interest to some.

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Half of post-WWII interior ministry were ex-Nazis

The Local – Germany / November 6, 2015

For two decades after the Second World War, over half of all employees of the West German interior ministry were ex-Nazis, a new study shows.

The research, carried out by the Centre for Contemporary Historical Studies with the blessing of the Interior Ministry, shows that the number of ex-Nazi party members in both the West and East German post-war administrations was much higher than previously thought.

In exact figures, an average of 54 percent of civil servants in the West German interior ministry were former Nazis, although at its high point between 1966 and 1961, two-thirds of all employees at the ministry had been Nazi party members during the war.

To have been a member of the Nazi party "was not seen as a bad thing in 1949," Dr. Frank Bösch, the lead researcher on the project told The Local. "There was a belief that they were people who had done their duty in a difficult time."

Bösch said the policy was more one of toleration than active encouragement. West Germany decided it needed expertise in managing its bureaucracy and only hired people with a legal education, meaning they often had little choice but to offer ex-Nazis positions.

The number of ex-members of Hitler's personal militia, the SA, was also surprisingly high, the report found, reaching a peak of 45 percent in 1961.

The number of ex-SS members meanwhile was between five and eight percent of interior ministry employees.

The fact that 14 percent of employees in the East German interior ministry were ex-Nazis also came as a surprise to the researchers as the communist state had at the time made a big deal of its stringent denazification process.

Reactionaries remained

A consequence of the West German policy was that many of the people responsible for running the country still held onto very reactionary views.

In one instance, a judge tried to have Jews who returned to the country from Israel deported by categorizing them as illegal immigrants. The attempt eventually failed - although four people were deported - due to government fear of how such a policy would be seen in the outside world, said Bösch.

It was only in the 1960s that people started losing their jobs because of their Nazi past, although they did manage to moderate their more extreme ideas in the face of public and especially media pressure, argued the historian.

Bösch explained that 1945 did create a genuine break with the Nazi past. Many of the elite were put into Allied prison camps where they learned about democratic values. They later adopted these values either because they believed in them or because it benefited their careers.

"But it takes much longer for the world to change," he said.

The researchers will now look further into the past of the Nazi members who worked at the interior ministries to understand what exactly they did during the Nazi period.

“Membership of the Nazi party in itself doesn't say that much,” said Dr. Andreas Wirsching, one of two researchers working on the study. “We want to know what the employees of the two German interior ministries did during the Nazi period.”

Related reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

https://books.google.com/books?id=aO5zAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA215&lpg=PA215&dq=eisenhower+denazification&source=bl&ots=DYuRX0nFk-&sig=j4QoMYFV2xSLCNG2jFOa5AVOHV0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEsQ6AEwCWoVChMI-LeDroiHyQIVSzkaCh1m5wSF#v=onepage&q=eisenhower%20denazification&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=OmRg2V71BCAC&pg=PA166&lpg=PA166&dq=total+denazification&source=bl&ots=DyDyEFwMiU&sig=rxFDXnVNf2m-SE8sOI_fvZVd-G4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBmoVChMIrti5uImHyQIVAigaCh1W6gCW#v=onepage&q=total%20denazification&f=false

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Berlin still pays Spanish Nazi volunteers pensions

The Local – Germany / November 6, 2015

Berlin is still honouring an agreement struck with Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to pay pensions to fascist volunteers who signed up to fight for Hitler, it has emerged.

Around €100,000 of German tax-payers’ money is paid to former combatants, their widows and orphans each year, according to left-wing political party Die Linke, who recently tabled a question on the matter in the Bundestag, Germany's national parliament.

"Even if the sum sounds small at €100,000, it's a scandal that the government to this day voluntarily compensates people who were involved in the Nazi war against the Soviet Union," Die Linke MP Andrej Hunko told The Local.

More than 47,000 Spaniards signed up to the Division Azul (Blue Division) to join Nazi troops fighting communism on Germany’s eastern front between 1941 and 1944.

A pension agreement was struck by German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer with Franco in 1961 that saw the Blue Division combatants, their widows and orphans receive a pension from the state.

Last year the figure amounted to €107,352 split between 41 veterans, eight widows and an orphan.

"The agreement signed by Adenauer is valid to this day and clearly no government to this day has questioned it. The political signal that sticking to this contract sends out is crucial. For this reason, this agreement must be cancelled,” Hunko said.

In return, Spain agreed to pay a stipend to the widows of fallen airmen of Hitler’s Condor Legion, who bombed Spain during the Civil War of 1936 and 1939 and most famously carried out the bombardment of the Basque town Guernica.

"It’s an absolute disgrace to think the German government is still paying out to Nazi volunteers," MP Jon Iñarritu of the left-wing Basque party Amaiur, told The Local.

"It doesn’t make sense, contravenes EU law and serves to humiliate victims of fascism," he said.

"It was my understanding that Germany had a completely different attitude when it came to historical memory and the rejection of fascism."

The Basque pro-independence coalition party EH Bildu said they would bring up the issue at European Parliament on Friday.

[41chevy]

Wasn't pensions paid to CSA Veterans, widows and orphans here also? Maybe after 70 years they should give it all a rest.

[Vladislav]

I'm not too surprized about ex-Nazy party folks in the after-the-war German ministries.

Pretty sure Nizy's had about a total support in the social and the most political active people took part in their crew.

Sure after the war end Germans had a need of high educated and intelligent managers but had a strong shortage of male persons at all.

So some ones were needed to work and in the internal ministries either.

As about the pensions it seems to me an ultimate BS.

Interesting facts, thank you for sharing.