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Records reveal unwilling Nazis

Kate Connolly

Several prominent Germans were recruited en masse on Hitler’s birthday.

Hundreds of elderly Germans are being confronted with the revelation that they were recruited into the Nazi party during the Second World War. Historians researching Nazi party archives in Frankfurt have discovered that a string of prominent Germans were among those automatically granted membership to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

Writers, a cabaret artist, scientists, journalists and politicians, including former cabinet ministers, are among those whose names are on the list. According to records, they were part of a group of Germans born between 1925 and 1927 recruited en masse on the Fuhrer’s birthday on April 20, 1944.

While there is general acceptance that most of those on the list became card-carrying Nazis against their will, the findings have unleashed a debate among German historians over the extent to which Germans were willing followers of the Nazis and how many were unwittingly sucked into the party machine.

The former SPD member, Horst Ehmke, a former Justice Minister, and the philosopher Hermann Lubbe, whose names were on the list, said they had not been aware of any collective recruitment policy. Niklas Luhmann, a leading sociologist, and the former editor-in-chief of the tabloid Bild, Peter Boenisch, are dead, leaving their families to deny charges that they willingly joined the party. —

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