The Last White House Comms Director To Resign This Quickly Was A Nazi Youth
Jungvolk was a Nazi youth party that featured outdoor activities to indoctrinate young boys. Image by Wikimedia Commons
After 10 days, Anthony Scaramucci is out as White House communications director — but he’s not the only one who graced the West Wing for less than two weeks.
John Koehler served as Ronald Reagan’s communications director from March 1 to March 13, 1987. He also belonged as a child to Jungvolk, a Nazi youth party.
Koehler, who died in 2012, insisted he resigned to let the newly appointed chief of staff choose his team members, and not because it had become known that he had once belonged to Jungvolk, according to his Associated Press obituary. He admitted that he belonged as a 10-year-old to what he called “the Boy Scouts run by the Nazi Party.”
Koehler was involved with the party for six months, according to United Press International, and Reagan hadn’t initially known about his membership before he appointed him. Koehler volunteered as an air raid police runner to avoid the Hitler Youth, later volunteering to serve as an American interpreter, according to another obituary. After World War II, he worked in U.S. counterintelligence then and immigrated to the States in 1954, eventually gaining citizenship and enlisting in the Army.
Koehler, a former Associated Press executive from Germany, said if he was denied the White House position because of his past, it would be “a black day in journalism.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
