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Ex-nazis in Bonn Government Will Not Affect British Support

April 13, 1954
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The British Government rejected today suggestions that it refuse to support German rearmament or membership in the European Defense Community until allegedly notorious ex-Nazis were removed from the West German Government.

Arthur Lewis, Labor M. P., who raised the issue, charged that Waldemar Kraft, minister without portfolio, Emanuel Preusker, Minister of Housing, and Theodor Berliner, Minister for Expelled Persons, in the Adenauer Cabinet had all been members of the Hitler Elite Guard. Berliner was Reichsfuehrer for the Nazi organization, Federation of German East. Mr. Lewis also accused Gerhard Schroder, Minister of the Interior, of having joined the Nazi Party in 1933, the year Hitler came to power.

In his reply, Anthony Nutting, the Foreign Under Secretary, said that Kraft and Oberlander had both been cleared by a denazification tribunal. Pruesker, he said, had been able to produce evidence of having helped Jews. He denied that Pruesker had received a special citation for anti-Semitic practices.

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