Foreign News: Nazis in the Woodpile

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After Hitler's fall, the German Foreign Office moved from Berlin's Wilhelmstrasse to a two-story barracks in Bonn, but many critics complained that ideologically, at least, the Foreign Office had not moved far enough. Cried the Bavarian radio last March: "The proportion of Nazi Party members in the present Foreign Office is now higher than it was during the Nazi regime . . . The Foreign Office is a rat's nest ..." The Bavarian radio charged that 85% of the top personnel were Nazis. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (who is his own Foreign Minister) did not help matters much by replying meticulously that the correct percentage of Nazis was not 85% but 65%. Nine months ago, an angry Bundestag committee, composed of members of all the major parties, took off on its own to hunt the Nazis in the Foreign Office woodpile.

Last week the Bundestag committee reported back: the search had been pleasantly disappointing. Of the 21 top Foreign Office staffmen investigated, only four had records bad enough to warrant discharge.

¶Curt Heinburg, economic counselor, had served as a chief in the political division under Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop. He had worked on the "solution of the Jewish problem in Serbia," i.e., had helped deport Jews to slave labor, concentration camps, or death. He resigned after the investigations began.

¶ Werner von Grundherr, Bonn's Ambassador to Greece, had also served Ribbentrop as chief of the Scandinavian desk, and directed the roundup of Denmark's Jews. Ironically, Grundherr, a Junker, never made the grade as a Nazi Party member; the Nazis rejected his application. He also has already resigned.

¶Herbert Dittman, chief of Bonn's Foreign Office personnel, also did the same kind of work for Ribbentrop. Resigned for his "health" in May.

¶Werner von Barge, member of the Bonn Foreign Office legal staff, with ambassadorial rank, had served as Nazi minister to Belgium, where he helped to round up the Jews, later went to Paris as chargé d'affaires, where he did nothing to prevent the shooting of hostages. Suspended.

The committee provisionally cleared another seven of the 21 for limited service. It gave them tentative black marks for questionable backgrounds but said they could continue to work in the Foreign Office provided they did not represent Bonn in foreign countries, or serve in the personnel section where they were often guilty of "a certain narrowness" in preferring experienced diplomats, even if the diplomats had once served Hitler.

Clean bills went to ten of the 21. Among them: the highest-ranking ex-Nazi in the Bonn Foreign Office, Herbert Blankenhorn, who now heads the political division. Said the committee: Blankenhorn had been a Nazi all right, but his party membership was purely formal and was far overshadowed by his participation in the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler.

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