Koehler Defends Childhood Tie to Nazi Group, Won’t Leave New Job

John O. Koehler, President Reagan’s new communications director, said Saturday that he has “absolutely no” thoughts of withdrawing from the job because of the discovery that he was a member, at age 10, of a Nazi-sponsored youth organization.

“I am not going to withdraw,” the German-born Koehler said at a news conference. “If the President wishes me to, I will.”

He said he had been surprised to learn that the White House did not know about his brief membership in the Jungvolk, a state-run youth group in Nazi Germany, and added that the episode had nothing to do with his qualifications for the job.

“It came as a great surprise to me that the White House didn’t know about it,” Koehler said, noting that his government security file included the information.

He noted that Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, had dismissed the issue in a public statement. On Friday, Perlmutter said: “To judge a 56-year-old person by his associations as a 10-year-old is ludicrous logic and mean politics.”

Koehler said he canceled a vacation trip to Acapulco to hold the news conference to defend himself. The former reporter and editor for several news agencies said: “I am amazed at what has been made of this story. If I had been a reporter who dug up this information, which is a matter of public record, I would have said, ‘Hey man! This is a non-story.’ ”

However, several Republican strategists complained privately that Koehler, even before formally entering his post as Reagan’s top communications adviser, had committed a public relations blunder by holding the news conference at all.

“He’s just keeping the story alive, putting it on the evening news for one more day,” one said.

There also were suggestions that Koehler might have found a better time for his news conference, which coincided with Reagan’s weekly radio talk to the nation.

Koehler, 56, acknowledged that during World War II he belonged for six months to the Jungvolk, which he described as “a Cub Scouts equivalent” run by the Nazi Party. The organization prepared German boys to move into the Hitler Youth movement when they grew older.

But he said he never had any sympathy for Nazi ideology, and noted that he has twice married Jewish women in Jewish religious ceremonies.

His first wife, who died in 1978, was a member of the Anti-Defamation League, he said.

Koehler said he slipped out of his native Dresden during the final weeks of World War II and was adopted as a mascot by a U.S. Army unit.