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Unfortunately, as a German, this does not surprise me in the least. The article should have also mentioned that Reinhard Gehlen, the head of “Organisation Gehl
by johndoe0815 5y ago
Unfortunately, as a German, this does not surprise me in the least.
The article should have also mentioned that Reinhard Gehlen, the head of “Organisation Gehlen” - the precursor of today’s German intelligence service - was the former head of the Nazi German military intelligence in the Eastern Front during World War II [1]. Adenauer was well aware of this.
There seems to be a pattern here, just look up details on Hans-Georg Maaßen, [2] who was dismissed from his post as head of the BND as recently as 2018 because he denied that a foreigner was hunted by a right wing mob at a demo in Chemnitz, Germany (and many other controversies).
You might also want to look up the involvement of former Nazi judges, Kiesinger and Filbinger, in German post-WW2 politics. All of these were/are members of Adenauer’s CDU party.
“Der Schoß ist fruchtbar noch, aus dem das kroch!” [Bertold Brecht, Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Maaßen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Maaßen
- MandieD 5y agoAs my husband, a German, says, the judicial system in Germany is blind in the right eye.
- eliaspro 5y agoIt truly is, and it's not only the judicial, but also the executive system. Our police force is full of right-wing extremists and their networks, which lead to numerous scandals within the last few years, but a systematic study of those issues was repeatedly shot down by the former minister of the interior "Horst Seehofer". Only the recent change in government and the current minister attempts to do something about it.
- MandieD 5y agoI’m generally proud of how my home country treated West Germany after WW2, but opting for a rushed “denazification” that allowed actual Nazis back into power, as long as they hadn’t been terribly loud actual Nazis, in order to get things moving was a tragic mistake.
- mzs 5y agoThat's all well known. I personally still wonder what really happened in 1972 when Barzel thought he had 250 votes to oust Brandt and then in the elections that followed. The spying allegations that did him in finally had been in view for years by that point. I hope someday to read a good book about it all but I don't think key parts have been declassified. https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/23/archives/the-painful-road-to-brandts-resignation-leadership-failure-as-well.html https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/23/archives/the-painful-road...
- johndoe0815 5y agoThere are so many dark corners of the past-WW2 German history... such as the "black suitcases" full of money and other shady donations to the CDU party where the donors were - illegally - never revealed by former chancellor Helmut Kohl and his crony Wolfgang Schäuble (former minister of the interior and of finance under the Kohl governments) [1]. Kohl valued his pledge to the donors not to reveal their identity above German law and took the knowledge about it into his grave. It is assumed that this was money originally stolen from Jewish victims of the Holocaust. I don't think I am going to see these uncovered in my lifetime... and it will be interesting to see the aftermath of 16 years of the Merkel government. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU_donations_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDU_donations_scandal
- mzs 5y agoThat's another good one. I never bought into the theft theory. My opinion is that it was money from US & UK to prop-up CDU. Would love to know the answer someday to this one too.