Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan. Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive. Additionally, the program was highly unpopular in West Germany, where many Nazis maintained positions of power. Denazification was opposed by the new West German government of Konrad Adenauer, who declared that ending the process was necessary for West German rearmament.
The journalist that slapped one of these nazis in power in 1968 has my respect
You probably mean Beate Klarsfeld. The Nazi she slapped was then-chancellor of West Germany Kurt Georg Kiesinger. Her work also helped bring several high-ranking Nazis and war criminals to justice, Klaus Barbie being one of the more well-known ones.
Yes! Thank you sharing her name and the link :)
Shit like this is why I shake my heads at dumbasses going “Just you wait ICE agents! Things didn’t work out too well for all the former Nazi’s who tried to say they were ‘just following orders’!”
Yes things actually did turn out just fine for the overwhelming majority of Nazi’s. Only like a couple dozen faced any sort of consequences. The rest quietly returned to their lives as machinists, butchers, office workers, farmers, etc.
Not just west Germany. There was also a pipeline from the Gestapo to the Stasi.
The cold war ended up preventing the denazification programs from being concluded everywhere.
At some point the occupation administration realised that if they got rid of all the nazis there wouldn’t be a functioning government, legal system or military.
The western nations had a similar problem with debathification in Iraq. When a system invades and takes over a state how do you keep things running while ripping it’s influence out?
There’s a scene at the end of Band of Brothers where the guy from Easy company is taking to a German who’s recollecting the countries he’s visited while at war. It’s a reminder that not everyone in Germany was a Nazi but it was hard to sit it out in a nation committed to Total War. It might be easy to say you’d never sign up to the party but if the choice was between staying in the civil service or being shipped off into the meat grinder? Where else could you go?
We never really have the luxury of tearing down whole societies and rebuilding from scratch in a more prefect form. Generally the countries that have gone through such radical changes have paid for it with a lot of suffering.
This is no excuse. The Allied powers could and should have trained up anti-fascists to fulfil those roles. You should be asking yourself why they didn’t.
They wouldn’t do that because the only durable anti fascists are leftists and they spent decades trying to destroy leftism.
You mean like the Mossad?
Can you explain what you mean?
And the anarchists would finally have utopia
That’s interesting, do you have a source for that? I’d like to learn more, I did a quick search and I didn’t find anything, and the Wikipedia article said this:
In contrast, in the Soviet occupation zone and later East Germany, denazification was considered a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society, and the country was stricter in opposing Nazism than its counterpart.
I’m not defending the USSR by any means, just to be clear, I know Lemmy has a bunch of tankies, I’m not one of them! I just would like to learn more.
While I’m not overly educated in the history of denazification in East Germany, I know that at least later, it was more of a proclamation than something actually happening. That’s why so many neo-nazis “suddenly appeared” in the supposedly nazi-free zone after the unification of the germanies.
Supported by the fascists in the west that had never gone away, the unified right made quick progress in their organization.
One example I found is https://www.dw.com/en/book-claims-stasi-employed-nazis-as-spies/a-1760980, but I have seen other sources in the past too.
There is a relatively famous clip of Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, were he said that it was important for him to create a friendship between the German and Jewish people as the Jews are powerful and control so much especially in the USA. I wonder why he opposed Denazification…
“but it’s our heritage!”
The vast majority of the doctors and psychiatrists who participated in and pioneered the nazi genocide of disabled people continued to practice medicine and hold major academic positions of power for decades.
Probably why German born peter thiel is destroying the world now
I recently read the book aftermath from Harald Jähner. In the last chapter he argues that this sort of “clemency” for the nazis was necessary to recreate the German society. After the war there were still 6 million Nazis, and one way or another these had to be integrated in society. That way was to start with a new beginning for everyone. According to the author it was mainly the children of that generation that did wanted to deal with the crimes and horrors of their parents past. Years later, in the 60s and 70s.
Link: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/ce8bc276-180b-4c3c-9d79-9585178fd2b1
Think of all the jobs that would have been provided by building prisons to house those 6 million Nazis and give them therapy until the antifascist psychologists declare them safe to return to society?
Pure, unadulterated copium. Sorry. There is no excuse. I’d say that denazification efforts were abandoned because the Western powers were themselves fascist. Look at our society now.
Relevant section of the article: Denazification#End
Relevant quote:
As a result, many people with a former Nazi past ended up again in the political apparatus of West Germany. In 1957, 77% of the German Ministry of Justice’s senior officials were former Nazi Party members. Included in this ministry was Franz Massfeller, a former Nazi official who had participated in the meetings which followed the Wannsee Conference, in which the extermination of Jews was planned.
East Germany, in contrast, declared everyone that opposed the state to be a ‘nazi’ and had them imprisoned.
Even before denazification was officially abandoned in West Germany, East German propaganda frequently portrayed itself as the only true anti-fascist state, and argued that the West German state was simply a continuation of the Nazi regime, employing the same officials that had administered the government during the Nazi dictatorship. From the 1950s, the reasoning for these accusations focused on the fact that many former functionaries of the Nazi regime were employed in positions in the West German government. However, East German propaganda also attempted to denounce as Nazis even politicians such as Kurt Schumacher, who had been imprisoned by the Nazi regime himself.[34] Such allegations appeared frequently in the official Socialist Unity Party of Germany newspaper, the Neues Deutschland. The East German uprising of 1953 in Berlin was officially blamed on Nazi agents provocateurs from West Berlin, who the Neues Deutschland alleged were then working in collaboration with the Western government with the ultimate aim of restoring Nazi rule throughout Germany. The Berlin Wall was officially called the Anti-Fascist Security Wall (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by the East German government
Yeah that’s right, I can quote wikipedia too.
You realize I’m not a tankie, right? I don’t care to defend the USSR or East Germany in any way.
the West German state was simply a continuation of the Nazi regime, employing the same officials that had administered the government during the Nazi dictatorship […] many former functionaries of the Nazi regime were employed in positions in the West German government.
Gotta hand it to them, though, sometimes they do call balls and strikes.
East German uprising of 1953 in Berlin was officially blamed on Nazi agents provocateurs from West Berlin
While I’m sure there absolutely was popular opposition to the increased work quotas, I can believe that this might have some truth to it, too. There’s absolutely shitloads of evidence that Western powers love to turn civil unrest into uprisings and attempted coups in socialist and anti-imperialist countries.
Gotta hand it to them, though, sometimes they do call balls and strikes.
What materialist analysis does to a MF
Yeah, and honestly it worked better than purges have historically.
Debaathification is an extreme and when it and similar practices have been attempted after the destruction of a government, it’s the populace that suffers most.
West Germany messed up badly, but Austria was worse.
Removed by mod
Israel was a product of the British and French antisemites of WW1.
There were Zionist Jews who tried to join WW2 on the side of the Nazis, but the Nazis told them to fuck off.
That particular group, Lehi, then just adopted Nazi race science but swapped themselves in as “God’s Chosen People”.
This made the group especially murderous.
In the 1980s, a former Leader of Lehi became the Israeli Prime Minister and oversaw a fairly brutal period of oppression of the Palestinians.
That particular asshole was also Netanyahu’s political mentor.
But no, the Rat Line did not go to Israel, or Mandatory Palestine as it was known as before 1949.
