Shirer Claims German Nazis Rose Threat

The Bonn foreign office is shot through and through with Nazis," William L. Shirer declared last night the Ford Hall Forum.

The author of The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich maintained that there are more Nazis in the present West German foreign office than there were in Hitler's. "It doesn't hurt you in Germany be a Nazi," he said. "That business should keep in mind."

Protesting the American tendency to view all anti-communists as paragons of virtue, Shirer denied that criticism of Germany should be suppressed to maintain a common front against the Soviet Union.

It may not take any U.S. antagonism to shift West Germany to the Soviet Union, he said. Bismark turned to Russia, the Weimar Republic turned to Russia, and Hitler turned to Russia. For this reason he suggested that an economically strong and rearmed West Germany might well "make a deal" with the Communist sphere.

Reunification Could Be Dangerous

A denauer deliberately decided to stress economic recovery and attachment to West rather than reunification, Shirer pointed out. Expressing dismay at the additional American advocacy of reunificatioin, he declared that such a step would almost preclude the possibility of pro-Western Germany.

Now that Adenauer appears to be fading out of the picture, Shirer said, West Germany will surely drift closer to the Soviet Union. Both Erhard and Strauss would deal with Russia and East Germany. And, although he expressed some admiration for Erhard, Shirer claimed that Strauss is potentially dangerous- "a little Bismark perhaps."

Willy Brandt might be a solution to German problem, according to Shirer, but he doubted that the Social Democrats could ever obtain a majority in additionally conservative and Catholic West Germany.

In answer to a question, Shirer asserted that anti-Semitism remains fairly strong in Germany. Most appalling, though, he said, is the refusal of the schools to inform students concerning the atrocities of the Third Reich.