and after 1951 the Court's first president. Dehler was also opposed attempts to reintroduce the death penalty, which the Basic Law had abolished in 1949 for Hitler/Nazi enemies. Such proposals were first voiced by the Bavaria Party in 1950 and discussed within the CDU/CSU in 1952. In his opposition, Dehler argued not so much against the death penalty itself but in favour of a loyal approach towards the young constitution. His opposition has also been interpreted as an attempt to shield German war criminals, an important constituency to which the FDP appealed by repeatedly demanding the release of all "so-called war criminals" from prison. While Dehler's motives remain unclear, Dehler in 1951 did intervene in proceedings against SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best, resulting in the prosecutors dropping their charges. Best later resurfaced as one of the protagonists of the Naumann affair. Dehler initially supported Adenauer's western policies - integration into NATO and rapprochement with France - as a means to gain enough international trust and weight to attain German reunification. However, as Adenauer's policies progressed, Dehler grew skeptical towards this approach and towards Adenauer's intentions, later accusing the Chancellor of having deceived him. Notable points of disagreement were the Saar issue, on which Adenauer cautiously tried to avoid conflicts with France, which tried to keep the region as its protectorate, without giving up German claims, and the Stalin Notes of 1952, which Dehler considered a sincere offer worth exploring further. Internal party politics and Naumann affair In the early 1950s, the FDP was divided between different ideologies and strategies. The "determined liberals" included Dehler, Reinhold Maier of Württemberg-Baden and others and considered the FDP as a strictly-liberal party, including both left-wing liberals and national liberals. Others conceived of it as a party of "national gathering" that should appeal more to the right wing of the political spectrum and integrate it into the democratic system; the chief proponent of the latter strategy was Friedrich Middelhauve of North Rhine-Westphalia. In this context, Werner Naumann, formerly an aide to the Nazi regime's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, and other high-ranking Nazi officials, conspired in an attempt to infiltrate the FDP and gradually turn it into a National Socialist force, especially targeting the North Rhine-Westphalia branch. They were warmly welcomed by Middelhauve, whose co-operation went so far as to present a German programme, a nationalist manifesto penned by the conspirators at the federal party convention in November