West Germany: Familiar Whiffs

The ghosts of West Germany's Nazi past have an embarrassing way of cropping up to haunt officials in high places. Often they are gleefully generated, replete with whiffs of Zyklon B gas and the ring of SS jack boots, by East Germany's Communist propagandists, who hold the most comprehensive set of Third Reich records. Frequently the Bonn government ignores the East German charges—and rightly so, for many of them are phony. But now and then, Bonn has been guilty of undue laxity. Not so last week, when two more ghosts loomed up from history. This time Chancellor Ludwig Erhard dispatched...

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