On Thursday (28 October) the Independent Commission of Historians* will present Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle with the study “The Office and its Past. German Diplomats in the Third Reich and in the Federal Republic”.

The Commission was established by the Federal Foreign Office in 2005. Its members – Profs. Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes and Moshe Zimmermann – are distinguished historians from Germany and abroad. With the presentation of the study the Commission will have completed its work.

Its remit was to examine the role of the Foreign Service during the National Socialist era, how its members perceived and portrayed this role after the re-establishment of the Foreign Office in 1951 and, in terms of personnel, how much continuity or otherwise existed with the pre-1945 Foreign Service.