WORMS IN THE GERMAN APPLE SIR,—Having read Herr Ernst Friedlaender's
commentary on ' The Strange Case of Dr. John' in your issue of August 6, I was highly embarrassed over your correspondent's com- placent attitude towards this unprecedented case.
Everybody will agree with Herr Friedlaen-- der when he describes the case of Dr. John as ' a political scandal of the first order.' But I disagree with him when he comes to the conclusion that the head of the German federal security service deserted to the East simply because he was suffering from a perse- cution mania, because he is a man with an anti-Nazi complex. Let Dr. John be a labile character, let us confirm beyond doubt that he has unwisely chosen the wrong micro- phones to broadcast his charges against the Bonn government. But let us be fair as to the supposed motives of Dr. John's escape.
It is widely felt by the German public—an important factor which Herr Friedlaender has not mentioned—that Dr. John might have had his good reasons to go. Several German newspapers, very few indeed—for instance the Frankfurter Rundschau, the Sliiddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), the Weser-Kurier (Bremen) and the news magazine Der Spiegel (Ham- burg)—have repeatedly given evidence of resurgent Nazism in the administration, and harshly criticised Dr. Adenauer's government, which actually boasts of several former high- rank ing Nazis. May I call to your attention that many ex-chairmen of denazification chambers as well as former employees of the occupation forces had to overcome great diffi- culties and animosity when they tried to get back to positions in private life, where in the meantime former party members of the NSDAP were powerful again.
Remember the Nazi speech par excellence delivered to the public by Dr. Pecco Bauwens, president of the German Football AssOciation on the occasion of the victory of the German team in the world championship final 1 (Dr.
Bauwens has since been re-elected president.) Remember the scandalous affair, when it became known that Mr. Dag Ham- marskjOld, General Secretary of the UN, re- fused to accept Dr. Peter Pfeiffer as German ' observer' to the UN, as was planned by Dr. Adenauer's Foreign Office. Dr. Pfeiffer, German diplomat since 1926, became a mem- ber of the Nazi party in 1940 (1) and sent that famous message of loyalty from Algiers to Hitler before the Allies captured him after their landing in Tunisia. Rumour has it that now he will be sent to Tokio to occupy the position of German ambassador.
Let us recall that one of Chancellor Adenauer's closest advisors, State Secretary
Dr. Hans Globke, is the author of the com- mentary on the ill-famed discriminatory racial laws of Hitler, known as the Num- berger Gesetze, which led to the mass murder
of six millions of innocent Jewish people from all over Europe. And remember finally the protests of several federal ministers when the British Secret Service dealt the initial blow to the Naumann circle, an allegedly Nazi underground conspiracy.
In his article Herr Friedlaender continues: He [Dr. John] sees Nazis, feels Nazis, smells Nazis wherever he goes in Germany.' Herr Friedlaender should have used his irony for a worthier purpose since his tersely written phrase, though exaggerated, contains a bitter truth. I am a student, 25 years old. I remember a professor at the Munich Gisela- Oberschule in 1943, who ordered us to shout four times, ' Heil Hitler,' when he entered the classroom because the first three times we did not salute loud enough. This gentle- man, Dr. Anton Pfeiffer, brother of Dr. Peter Pfeiffer, is actually German ambassador in Brussels.
It is not true to say, as Mr. Sefton Delmer did, and still does in the Daily Express, that the Federal Republic is a renazified country. But Herr Friedlaender's assertion '. .. if there was any worm in the West German apple in 1954, its name was Otto John. And be has left the apple' is not true either.
We still have many worms.—Yours faith- fully,
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