THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A German government report has concluded that German diplomats were complicit in the murder of millions of jews during the Second World War.
Despite decades-long efforts by ministry employees to present the foreign office as a place of opposition during the Third Reich, diplomats were actually willing participants in the Nazis' campaign against the Jews, the report concluded – from spying on Jewish-German emigrants abroad to actively contributing to the mass murder of Europe's Jews until 1945.
"The German Foreign Ministry collaborated with the Nazis' violent politics and especially assisted in all aspects of the discrimination, deportation, persecution and genocide of the Jews," said Eckhart Conze, one of four historians who helped prepare the 880-page official report on the German Foreign Ministry's involvement in the Holocaust.
Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer commissioned the report while he was in office in 2005. His decision was prompted by a public debate over the ministry's Nazi past, after it became known that the ministry was still publishing well-meaning obituaries about former employees who were committed Nazis. >>> | Thursday, October 28, 2010
FOCUS ONLINE: „Diplomaten waren Mittäter im Dritten Reich“ : Die Geschichte der Diplomaten im Dritten Reich ist eine Geschichte der Kollaboration bei der Judenvernichtung. Dies hat eine Historiker-kommission herausgefunden. Der beteiligte Marburger Professor Eckart Conze im FOCUS-Online-Interview. >>> von FOCUS-Online-Redakteurin Sandra Tjong | Donnerstag, 28. Oktober 2010
