West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, addressing an election meeting in Regensburg, Bavaria, last night condemned the re-appearance of former Nazi leaders in German political life.
In a reference to the candidacy of Dr. Werner Naumann, former righthand man to Joseph Goebbels in the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, Dr. Adenauer said: “If I had been Goebbels’ Secretary of State I would have been ashamed of myself because of all the suffering that National Socialism brought on the world,” He told his audience that no one need fear a repetition of Hitler’s 1933 rise to power because “the entire German people will prevent the restoration of Nazism or any similar political direction.”
Meanwhile, in Lower Saxony in the British zone where he is running for Parliament, Dr. Naumann is aping the Nazi program and methods in his bid for election. Using the greetings of the Nazi movement at public rallies and concentrating on the idea that Europe would have gone Communist without the rise of the Hitler regime, the ex-Nazi leader also attacks the British High Commissioner, who had him arrested for heading a plot to return the Nazis to power.
When he was recently barred from making public appearances in Hanover and Dortmund, by the municipal authorities, Dr. Naumann and his followers retired to beer halls and continued their meeting. This is an exactimitation of the beer hall tactics of the Nazis before they came to power in Germany.
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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.
