Germany to investigate Nazi influence on post-war government

Four-year, $5 million probe will assess how many members of Nazi regime stayed on after 1945 • Probe comes as report finds around 77% of senior legal experts in Germany’s Justice Ministry in 1957 were former Nazi party members.

ISRAEL HAYOM

Germany will investigate the Nazis’ influence on the country’s post-war government, German magazine Der Spiegel reported over the weekend.

At an estimated $5 million cost, the four-year probe will assess how many members of the Third Reich stayed on at the German Federal Chancellery — the agency that serves the executive office of the chancellor, equivalent to the White House — after the war.

This will be the 21st time Germany’s government has investigated Nazi influence on Germany since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.According to a statement released by Germany’s Culture Ministry and reported by The Independent, the investigation will also study post-war recruitment policies and “the mentality of the political culture.”

The government probe will also focus on the role of Hans Globke, a senior civil servant in the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime. As a member of the Third Reich, he helped draft the Nuremberg race laws that revoked the citizenship of German Jews in 1935.

When Nazi leaders were tried in Nuremberg after the war, Globke was called as a witness for both the prosecution and the defense. While on the stand, he admitted he knew “the Jews were being killed in large numbers.” Globke would later serve as chief of staff to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer from 1953 to 1963.

According to The Independent, a report in October found that around 77% of senior legal experts serving in Germany’s Justice Ministry in 1957 were former members of the Nazi party.

Several prominent Nazis escaped to South America after war. Many of the party’s members, soldiers and administrators who remained in the country managed to evade justice as the Cold War divided the country and the Allies set out to rebuild what would become West Germany.