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Reich Bureaucrats Seen in a New Light

(New York Times) Judy Dempsey - Coming to light now - and causing a major debate in Germany over the past few weeks - is the active involvement by Nazi Germany's civil servants in the annihilation of Jews. In 2005, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer commissioned a study of the ministry's past. The result, a thick tome called The Ministry and the Past, was published this autumn. It became a best seller, shocking a public used to looking up at its diplomats as gentlemen who would never dirty their hands. Eckart Conze, head of the commission of historians who wrote the study, described the Foreign Ministry under Hitler as a "criminal organization." The decision by the Foreign Ministry to break its silence led to much soul-searching in other official bodies in Germany, among them the Finance Ministry. It seemed the Finance Ministry was a highly efficient organization for collecting money, particularly targeting Jews, in order to help underwrite the Wehrmacht (German army). "The Reich's Finance Ministry literally plundered the assets of the Jews," said former Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck. "It was systematic." "The Jews were stripped of savings, assets, anything with a financial or material value." The head of the investigating commission, Professor Hans-Peter Ullmann of Cologne University, estimated that up to 30% of the Wehrmacht was at one stage financed by confiscated Jewish assets.
2010-12-31 08:41:24
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