Editing Denazification (section)

==Hiding one's Nazi past==
[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F015051-0001, Hans Globke.jpg|thumb|Adenauer's State Secretary [[Hans Globke]] had played a major role in drafting antisemitic [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg Race Laws]].]]
Membership in Nazi organizations is still not an open topic of discussion. German President [[Walter Scheel]] and Chancellor [[Kurt Georg Kiesinger]] were both former members of the [[Nazi Party]]. In 1950, a major controversy broke out when it emerged that [[Konrad Adenauer]]'s State Secretary [[Hans Globke]] had played a major role in drafting antisemitic [[Nuremberg Laws|Nuremberg Race Laws]] in Nazi Germany.<ref>Tetens, T.H. ''The New Germany and the Old Nazis'', New York: Random House, 1961 pp. 37–40.</ref> In the 1980s former UN Secretary General and President of Austria [[Kurt Waldheim]] was confronted with allegations he had lied about his wartime record in the Balkans.

It was not until 2006 that famous German writer [[Günter Grass]], occasionally viewed as a spokesman of "the nation's moral conscience", spoke publicly about the fact that he had been a member of the [[Waffen-SS]]{{snd}}he was conscripted into the Waffen-SS while barely seventeen years old and his duties were military in nature. Statistically, it was likely that there were many more Germans of Grass's generation (also called the "[[Flakhelfer]]-Generation") with biographies similar to his.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de/debatte/kommentare/tom-cruise |first=Karen |last=Margolis |title=Who wasn't a Nazi? |date=November 4, 2007 |work=Mut gegen rechte Gewalt |publisher= [[Stern (magazine)|Stern]]}}</ref>

Joseph Ratzinger (later [[Pope Benedict XVI]]), on the other hand, was open about his membership at the age of fourteen of the [[Hitler Youth]], when his church youth group was forced to merge with them.<ref>{{Cite news |last1=Bernstein |first1=Richard |last2=Landler |first2=Mark |date=April 21, 2005 |title=POPE BENEDICT XVI: THE NAZI YEARS; Few See Taint in Service By Pope in Hitler Youth |work=The New York Times |url= https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/21/world/worldspecial2/pope-benedict-xvi-the-nazi-years-few-see-taint-in.html |access-date=April 1, 2021}}</ref>