German Contrition Dubious Teschke

Hitler’s Legacy: West Germany Confronts the Aftermath of the Third Reich, by John P. Teschke. 1998

Dubious German Contrition for Nazism. Numerous Former Nazis in the Highest Positions in the Adenauer Government

There are several noteworthy themes in this book:

ADMITTED LENIENCY ON NAZI GERMANY DEFENDANTS

The author devotes a significant amount of attention to the trials of Nazis. He realizes that, in many cases, the sentences given the murderers were, in his words, lenient (p. 313), and even “scandalously lenient”. (p. 314). He also acknowledges the reality of what may be called the German “pass-the-buck” mentality, “German legal doctrine, however, continued to hold dead people such as Hitler and Himmler to be legally responsible for the murders.” (p. 313).

KONRAD ADENAUER WELCOMES FORMER NAZIS

Author Teschke identifies many specific ex-Nazis that became part of Germany’s post-WWII government. This fact can be generalized. Teschke writes, “At the end of the 1950’s, 72 of the 83 ambassadors appointed by West Germany were veterans of the Nazi foreign office.” (p. 87).

However, Teschke greatly understates the degree of the hollowness of so-called de-Nazification. For corrective, please click on [and read my detailed review] of B0007DKKKU .

COMMUNIST HYPOCRISY

East Germany used the prevalence of ex-Nazis, in high positions in Adenauer’s government, for propaganda purposes. However, East Germany also used ex-Nazis in various positions, though only in “minor” ones. (p. 89). In fact, differences, between the two Germanys in this regard, were largely cosmetic, “Though the DDR, as compared with West Germany, reemployed a similar proportion of Nazis, there were subtle pressures which tended to keep notorious Nazis out of the more visible positions.” (p. 90).

THE KARAITES: A JEWISH SECT DELIBERATELY SPARED BY THE NAZIS

Teschke thus describes Otto Brautigam (1895-1992), “As an administrator, he defined racial “Judaism” in a way which preserved certain Russian Jews from the extermination program by characterizing them as members of ethnically ‘tatar’ ‘tribes’.” (p. 87). [However, this was arbitrary, as “racial” origin of the Jews were irrelevant in other contexts. Thus, it did not matter, to the Nazis, if they were dealing with Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews, and it did not matter if Jews were descended from the Khazars or if they were descended from the Israelites of Biblical times.]