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Many German Workers Are “homesick” for Nazi Regime, Survey Reveals

March 29, 1956
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A large number of Germans evidently are “homesick” for Hitler, it was revealed today. Results of a survey of 5,000 West Germans. it was reported, indicated that about 70 percent of West German workers are discontented with their present position in society and feel they were more highly valued under the Nazi regime.

In Kiel, largest Baltic port in West Germany, the Freedom of the City has been restored to Nazi Grand Admiral Erich Raeder explicitly and to Adolf Hitler implicitly. In December 1945, even before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced Admiral Raeder to life imprisonment for Nazi war crimes, the Kiel City Council unanimously resolved to withdraw honorary citizenship from Hitler and from. Raeder, the only two individuals upon whom it had been conferred during the Nazi era.

Times have changed since 1945, however. The present head of the Christian Democratic Union in the Kiel City Cancil is Guenther Schubert, a good friend of Raeder’s and himself a former Nazi admiral. He discovered that, in the chaotic conditions left behind by the collapse of the Nazi regime no one in 1945 had thought it necessary to formally notify Admiral Raeder, who was then a prisoner on trial in Nuremberg, of the City Council action in withdrawing the Freedom of the City. This technical omission “invalidates the cancellation of the honorary citizenship,” Herr Schubert now contends.

This back-door rehabilitation of convicted war criminal Raeder has now been endorse by both the City Council and the municipality. Asked whether Hitler is now again an honorary citizen of Kiel. Herr Schubert hemmed and hawed but then acknowledged that the two cases are identical.

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