Introduction

Summary

ONAPRIL 22, 1967, A PLATOON of heavily armed border police officers from West Germany's Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Guard— BGS) arrived at Konrad Adenauer's home in the village of Rhöndorf on the Rhine. Three days earlier, the Federal Republic's ageing first chancellor had died in his sleep, and the men were there to escort his body in what would be the beloved old man's final journey to his former office at Bonn's Palais Schaumburg. The men, clad in military uniforms and steel helmets, looked more like members of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht than law enforcement officers. As the bells of the local church tolled, nine officers solemnly emerged from Adenauer's home carrying his coffin on their shoulders. The crowd of spectators and reporters who gathered in the quiet neighborhood watched as the pallbearers carefully secured his flag-draped coffin to the open bed of an olive drab-colored BGS utility truck. A massive convoy of military trucks loaded with hundreds of rifle-wielding police officers escorted the makeshift hearse bearing Adenauer's remains. When the motorcade arrived in Bonn, the officers carried his coffin into the Palais Schaumburg's large cabinet room, where it was guarded by an “honor watch” consisting of the chief officers from each of six BGS regional command centers.

All of these senior officers were veterans of the Nazi Wehrmacht and its security forces. Standing prominently at the head of Adenauer's coffin was BGS Brigadier General Otto Dippelhofer, a veteran SS and Field Gendarmerie officer who led police battalions on the Eastern Front. Next to Dippelhofer stood BGS Inspector Heinrich Müller, a veteran of Rommel's Africa Corps and an instructor at the Third Reich's War Academy. Behind them stood Brigadier Generals Willy Langkeit and Detlev von Platen. Langkeit was a tank officer who commanded the Grossdeutschland and Kurmark divisions on the Eastern Front; von Platen was a member of the Nazi General Staff and commanded Army Group Center in Russia. The Interior Ministry had planned to limit displays of militarism during the funeral services, preferring instead to emphasize the Federal Republic's place among the Western democracies that made up the postwar Transatlantic Alliance.