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Germany tries to purge Nazi past before World Cup

(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-04-11 09:33

Although few in the DFB were Nazi party members or especially vocal advocates of the regime's racist doctrines, the book found most were willing tools or opportunists who let themselves be used out of ignorance or professional ambition.

Many historians and critics praised the book as an important first step but others complained it is not sufficiently critical of the organisation -- which commissioned the book. The Bad Boll symposium was an eagerly awaited follow-up to the book.

"The DFB policy of turning a blind eye to their Nazi past and cover up has now ended," said Erik Eggers, 35, a sport historian after the two days of subdued soul-searching.

After the war, the DFB spent nearly six decades concealing that unseemly collaboration that contributed to the Holocaust, fending off researchers by saying archives were destroyed.

But pressure on the DFB to open up increased as Germans began looking critically at the Nazi past after a landmark speech by former President Richard von Weizsaecker in 1985. He called Hitler's defeat a "day of liberation" for Germans.

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, responsible for sport told said the DFB's behaviour in the Third Reich was no worse than that of big German companies. He and other speakers said DFB treatment of Jews reflected the broader society.

GENERAL TREND

"The truth is that the DFB's behavior was no worse than major German companies -- they were all part of the same general trend," said Moshe Zimmermann, a historian professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who delivered a guest lecture.

"The DFB tried to cover it up after the war but they should not have bothered. It was well known that they collaborated. The only new thing that's come out now is a lot of details."

Zimmermann said German soccer players and leaders all claimed afterwards they had privately harboured shame when their Jewish team mates were forced to leave but that, like the public at large, they accepted that as a fact of life in the tyranny.