This book is the product of a dispute between German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer from the Green Party (1998 – 2005) and some sections of his staff. It concerned the obituary in the internal journal of the AA (Auswärtiges Amt – German Foreign Ministry) of a certain Herr Franz Krapf. He died in 2004. Franz Krapf was born in 1911 and became a Untersturmfüher (Second Lieutenant) of Hitler’s dreaded SS. He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1938 and was deeply involved in solving the Jewish problem, read annihilation. After the war he made himself very rare, although he returned to the AA in the 1950s and served as ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany in various countries including a spell at NATO Headquarters.
This is a typical white/blue collar argument. Your scribe had the opportunity to interview a number of white Generals of the South African Defence Force in Pretoria shortly after Nelson Mandela became President of his country. Without any exception, all of them, all three that I spoke to, had nothing to do with apartheid. They were just serving their country. What a bunch of liars. And they knew that I did not believe a word they were saying. All of them were smug with their membership in the National Party. A party which adopted Nazi ideology from the very early 1930s and tried to sway South Africa to the Nazis.
Joschka Fischer also did not believe his staff and before he left office in 2005, he authorised a commission to delve into the history of the AA which included the period of the Dritte Reich. Those “findings” are presented in a book running into almost 900 pages and was launched on 28 October 2010 in the huge hall of the House of Culture in Berlin in the presence of the two former Foreign Ministers, Joschka Fischer and Frank-Walter Steinmeier. That hall was packed with 100s of journalists both internal and international and a fair number of veterans from the AA.
The commission that was set up to bring about this book has dug deeply and exposed the dirt in this huge organisation. The truth is that the AA was swarming with Nazis during the Dritte Reich and immediately thereafter. A large number of these Nazis remained in office until retirement and some were even decorated with national orders of the state. What must be borne in mind is that these diplomats did not secretly permeate themselves into the ranks of the AA and other state organs. On the contrary, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who was a strong opponent of the Nazis, defended the move to employ these people. His excuse was that they were needed and it was difficult to bake new ones.
An Examination of West German Policies
Seven Seas Books – 19692) Brown Book
– War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany – State, Economy, Administration, Army, Justice, Science –
The German Democratic Republic (DDR) came into being on 7 October 1949 with East Berlin as its capital in the Soviet Occupied Zone. The Berlin Wall was set up on 13 August 1961 by the DDR and collapsed in November 1989. Germany was re-united on 3 October 1990.
What Fischer overlooked is that the civil servants are not elected people. They stick to their posts like barnacles. It is they who call the shots. Ministers come and go. The British TV series “Yes Minister” hit the nail on the head. Fischer was made to understand that the AA kept its distance from Hitler and his hordes. They, AA, serve their country irrespective of the political ideology in power. In truth, the AA was a cesspool of fascist activity. Those who did not support the Nazis were playing with their lives and this group represented a tiny minority.