Dr. Hans Globke, State Secretary and principal aide to West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, denied formally last night Adolf Eichmann’s charge he had a major role in the stripping of citizenship and property of the Jews of Nazi Germany. He was immediately supported in a statement from the West German Chancellor’s office.
Dr. Globke, 62, who helped write the legal commentaries to Hitler’s racial laws, has been credited by Dr. Adenauer and others with having sought, as an official in the Nazi Ministry of the Interior, to moderate the impact of the laws.
The statement, drawn up in consultation with Dr. Globke, asserted that his Nazi post was not high enough to give him authority to enlarge Eichmann’s section of the Nazi main security office.
The Chancellery declared that Dr. Globke “knew nothing” about the effort by the Ministry of the Interior to expand Eichmann’s Jewish Affairs section and that he “was in no way involved and would also have not been competent to take an initiative of this nature, owing to the division of responsibilities in the Ministry of the Interior.” The statement also said again that Dr. Globke had served in the Nazi regime at the request of Roman Catholic sources, to provide them with information on Hitler’s plans.
The Chancellor’s office was equally quick in rejecting a second statement, made by Eichmann in his testimony today, asserting that Globke attended and was active in a Nazi German Security conference in which the confiscation of Jewish property was discussed and a plan for that purpose developed. A spokesman for the Chancellor’s office flatly denied the charge of Globke’s “active” participation in the conference.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
