Rudel Scandal

The Rudel Scandal of 1976 ( _de. Rudel-Affäre) was a political affair in Germany concerning the German Army´s dealing with the traditions of the Wehrmacht and its political implications.

In the spring of 1976, businessman and former Luftwaffe Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel, who had returned from Paraguay and earlier been a leading member of the Neo-Nazi German Reich Party, was invited by high ranking Bundeswehr officers to a "tradition meeting" of the Aufklärungsgeschwader 51 "Immelmann". Rudel was considered a persona non grata by the Ministry of Defense because of his unrepentant admiration of Adolf Hitler, but finally he was invited and attended as the last commander of Schlachtgeschwader 2 "Immelmann", after an intervention of the opposition´s spokesman for Defense, Manfred Wörner.

Present at the meeting, where Rudel signed his books and gave autographs to soldiers, were the Luftwaffe Generals Karl Heinz Franke and Walter Krupinski. Later on, the Generals publicly compared Rudel´s past as Nazi and Neo-Nazi supporter to the career of prominent Social Democrat leader Herbert Wehner, who had been a member of the German Communist Party back in the 1930s and lived in Moscow during World War II, where he was allegedly involved in NKVD operations, calling Wehner an extremist. They said, Rudel was after all an honourable man and "hadn't stolen the family silver or anything else" [ [http://www.zeit.de/1976/46/Die-Generaele-von-gestern?page=3 Die Generäle von ges: | Nachrichten auf ZEIT ONLINE ] ] .

When these remarks became public, the Federal Minister of Defence Georg Leber ordered them into early retirement as of 1 November 1976. Leber himself, however, was heavily critisized for his actions by the CDU opposition, and the scandal contributed to the Minister´s retirement in early 1978.

References

[http://www.geschichte.luftwaffe.de/portal/a/luftwaffe/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLN48PdvUESYGYAYb6kTChoJRUfV-P_NxUfW_9AP2C3IhyR0dFRQA_872o/delta/base64xml/L2dJQSEvUUt3QS80SVVFLzZfN19TRUk!?yw_contentURL=%2F01DB060000000001%2FW26PNBZJ384INFODE%2Fcontent.jsp Die Rudel-Affäre @ Geschichte der Luftwaffe]