West Germany’s Defense Minister. Dr. Gerhard Schroeder, an admitted one-time member of the Nazi Party who was outspokenly anti-Israel and pro-Arab when he served as Foreign Minister in the Bonn Cabinet, may be nominated for the presidency of the Federal Republic by the Christian Democratic Union, it was reported here yesterday. Reiner Barzel, head of the parliamentary group of the CDU, the party of Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, refused to take a position, when asked about this possibility in a radio interview.
Dr. Schroeder, who has also served as Minister of Interior, admitted that in 1933 he had applied for membership in the Nazi Storm Troops. He said he did it in order to be able to continue his law studies. When he became Defense Minister shortly before the June, 1967 Arab-Israel war. Dr. Schroeder opposed the dispatch of gas masks to Israel, favored at the time by Chancellor Kiesinger and Foreign Minister Willy Brandt. Israel got the masks.
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