Com­ment: For many years, we’ve been dis­cussing the ver­triebene groups, sub­sumed under con­trol of the Ger­man Min­istry for Expellees. Con­trolled by the post­war SS under­ground, the ver­triebene groups and the asso­ci­at­ed min­istry con­sti­tute one of the most pal­pa­ble links between the cur­rent gov­ern­ment of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and the Under­ground Reich.

Recent­ly, Eri­ka Stein­bach fol­lowed in the igno­ble his­to­ry of past Expellees Min­istry chiefs (such as Theodor Ober­lan­der) with a com­ment that man­dat­ed her dis­graced res­ig­na­tion from the lead­er­ship of the CDU. (Stein­bach is pic­tured at right.)

Ms. Stein­bach blamed the start of World War II on Poland!

“Merkel Ally Quits after Claim­ing Nazis Did­n’t Start War” by Tony Pater­son; independent.co.uk; 9/11/2010.

Excerpt: In Poland, she remains Ger­many’s most hat­ed liv­ing politi­cian. Her unashamed­ly revan­chist polit­i­cal views once prompt­ed a War­saw news mag­a­zine to por­tray her on its front cov­er clad in a sin­is­ter, swasti­ka-cov­ered Nazi SS uni­form.

But yes­ter­day, Eri­ka Stein­bach, prob­a­bly the last sur­viv­ing bête noire in Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel’s con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment, took the first step towards bow­ing out of pol­i­tics alto­geth­er after she start­ed an explo­sive row over who was to blame for start­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Mrs Stein­bach, 67, announced her for­mal depar­ture from the lead­er­ship of Ms Merkel’s Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty after enrag­ing Ger­many’s Cen­tral Coun­cil of Jews by infer­ring that Hitler’s inva­sion of Poland in 1939 was mere­ly a response to Poland’s mil­i­tary mobil­i­sa­tion ear­li­er that year.

“I am begin­ning to get the impres­sion that you can’t say what you want in Ger­many any more, even if one is talk­ing about facts,” is how the vet­er­an right-winger respond­ed to crit­i­cism from with­in her own par­ty and its lib­er­al coali­tion part­ners about her remarks. A Pol­ish gov­ern­ment spokesman said her com­ments were iden­ti­cal to ” Nazi pro­pa­gan­da”.

His­to­ri­ans has­tened to point out that Poland’s mobil­i­sa­tion in ear­ly 1939 was a response to the Nazi regime’s mas­sive rear­ma­ment pro­gramme. But Mrs Stein­bach main­tained she had made her remarks to sup­port her own organ­i­sa­tion, Ger­many’s two-mil­lion mem­ber Expellees’ Asso­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents the esti­mat­ed 12.5 mil­lion Ger­mans who were forced out of east­ern Europe after 1945. . . .