A West German writer has charged that Chancellor Helmut Kohl volunteered for the Waffen SS as a teenager in the closing weeks of World War II and swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
Herbert Josef Stender made that claim in a letter sent to hundreds of journalists Tuesday, announcing a book he expects to publish in March.
The Waffen SS consisted of elite combat units and also provided the personnel who ran Nazi death camps.
Stender alleges that Kohl, leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, volunteered as a 15-year-old and took the SS oath, which was a lifetime commitment of loyalty to Hitler and the Nazi cause.
According to the writer. Kohl was sworn in on Hitler’s birthday, April 20, 1945, just 12 days before the fuhrer’s suicide and 17 days before the Third Reich surrendered.
He was posted to a unit run by Arnold Frank, which was assigned to destroy incriminating documents and to provide bodyguards for prominent Nazis who had gone underground, Stender says.
He claimed that Kohl and scores of other Bonn politicians have refused to answer questions about their activities during the Nazi era.
It is well-known in Germany that Kohl was a member of the Hitler Jugend, the Nazi youth organization in his teen years. But even the chancellor’s political enemies never argued that this made him a Nazi.
Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, a Social Democrat, and Hans-Jochen Vogel, current leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party, were also members of the Hitler Youth.
Stender contends that Kohl carefully concealed his membership in the Waffen SS from the public and Germany’s post-war allies.
There was no immediate comment from Kohl’s office in Bonn.
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