"The poison of the Hitler regime has largely immunized the Germans against any form of totalitarianism, "West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer claims in an article in the current issue of the Saturday Evening Post.
The Chancellor also declares that "overnight (immediately after the war) everything smacking of Nazism was rejected by the Germans. Today not a single overt neo-Nazi organization exists." He adds that the Deutsche Reichs Partei, "the party most closely resembling the Nazis," failed to elect a single member to Parliament in the last national election.
Explaining his attitude toward former Nazis, Dr. Adenauer says: "No one, whether he is an ex-Nazi or not, who has committed crimes against his fellow men will ever have my support for public office. But I do not believe that an error of political judgment is in itself a crime beyond reprieve."
Elsewhere in the article. he says: "I sometimes have the impression that some of our friends abroad are so preoccupied with the possible revival of Nazism that they seem to be standing guard over a rat hole marked ‘Hitler,’ a broom held menacingly over their shoulders, while behind them a half dozen other unmarked rat holes stand unguarded."
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.
