Germany's FBI examines its Nazi roots

Germany's federal police is admitting that most of its founding members had blood on their hands as active members of Hitler's brutal security apparatus. It's the first time one of Germany's security services is examining its own history. But there may be more to come.

Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) President Jörg Ziercke has launched a series of conferences to shed light on the history of the BKA. At one such conference last month at the BKA's headquarters in Wiesbaden, he said the aim wasn't to point fingers but to analyze what role former Nazi organization members played in setting up the new force and to what extent it was damaged in the process.

Only if the BKA takes responsibility for its history "can it fulfil its role in the democratic legal state and live democracy with conviction each day," he told the conference, the first of three such meetings which may be followed by a research project.

The recruitment of Nazi police officers and agents into the security apparatus of West Germany after World War II is a well-known fact -- the country lacked personnel with the relevant experience who hadn't been involved in the Nazi machine.

The BKA is the first of Germany's security organizations to own up to its past in this way. The foreign and domestic intelligence services, the Bundesnachrichtendienst and Bundesverfassungsschutz respectively, also drew heavily on Nazi personnel in their early days.