German foreign ministry staff and diplomats were actively involved in all aspects of the deportation, persecution and genocide of Jews by the Nazis, more than previously acknowledged, according to a government-sponsored report released Thursday in Berlin.
The 900-page book represents a devastating indictment of Germany's war-era diplomatic corps, that long cast itself as relatively "clean" of Nazi war crimes and tried to portray any wrongdoing as the result of a few bad actors.
The book "Das Amt und die Vergangenheit" ("The Ministry and the Past") was formally presented Thursday to current German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer commissioned the report in 2005 and four historians were tasked with sheding light on the ministry's role in the Holocaust. One of the authors of the report branded Nazi Germany's foreign ministry a "criminal organization".
"The Foreign Ministry wasn't just somehow involved in national socialism or even a hotbed of resistance, as was long claimed," said German historian Eckart Conze. He added that "from day one, it functioned as an institution of the Nazi regime and backed its politics of violence at all times."
"After 1945, there was a high degree of staffing continuity within the ministry, and some of its diplomats were seriously tainted," he said.
Minister Westerwelle expressed shame at the role the diplomats played in assisting the Nazis with what he called "bureaucratic coldness" in the systematic annihilation of European Jews.
"The more radical the (Nazis') Jewish policy became, the more strongly the foreign ministry was involved with the planning and policies of the Final Solution," Westerwelle cited the report as saying.
The report also shows how West German diplomats after the war worked to whitewash history and create a myth of resistance and opposition to Nazi rule.