Denazification

 So this is a simple story that I'll try to limit to forty lines and explain the Americanized version of 'Denazification' (a German would use the phrase  Entnazifizierung).

In the midst of 1943...with the war nowhere near ending...a group of smart American folks sat down and examined how they were going to 'fix' Germany after the war.  By 'fix'....I mean to take society, correct their behavior, and the Nazi-stuff out of their system.

This would mean news, culture, entertainment, the economy, social customs, laws, and just general politics....would all have to be screwed with.

By August of 1945, with the peace agreement on the table....the Denazification program would start.

There were different pieces and parts to this.  

For example....it would be at least a year in most cases,  for German Army members to be 'walked-out' of holding camps that the US, France and the UK ran.

The US ran their denazification program in their sector (the south....meaning Baden-Wurttemberg and Bavaria). The French ran their program in the middle section of West Germany. And the UK ran their program in the north.

Were the three running identical programs?  No.  Each ran their own version....some historians generally regard the French effort to be marginal.

The chief American corner piece to the effort in the south?  A questionnaire.  Yes, you'd show up in a village of a thousand people, and mandate that they fill out this form to identify themselves....their past Nazi connections, and convey private details about their lives.  It sounds funny today, but that was the effort in 1945/1946.

With the results from the questionnaire, you then had categories....which meant there was the hard-core guy, the lesser-hard-core guy, the medium-core guy, the somewhat guilty guy, and the marginal-guilt guy.  Yes, five levels of guilt.    

The hard-core ex-Nazis were never supposed to get ahead, or ever get some status back.  This tended to be more of a joke over time.

To make this whole effort work in the south of Germany....the US Army ended up being a full censorship manager....over theaters, book stores, book and magazine publishers, radio stations, and newspapers.  Just having a single printing-press in your greeting card business....meant management by the US Army.  If you count up what was involved in the two German states....well over 8,000 different sources were involved.

Confiscation of material?  Literally millions of sources were confiscated (listed as forbidden).  If you had a book on Nazi poetry....as silly as it sounds....it had to be taken.  Going out today to find copies of Mein Kampf existing?  It's very few...because this was forbidden material to exist by US Army standards.

Effective nature of the Denazification?

There was a poll done about seven years into this program....asking Germans this one question....'was Hitler good'?  Roughly one out of four Germans responded yes.  Now, you could make the case that half of the folks answering 'NO' probably saw the survey/poll to be a bad thing and simply answered in a false/fake way.  There's no proof that it was a serious poll to trust or distrust.

I would imagine that even through the 1960s (being twenty years after the war)....the one out of four response would probably still stand.

So what came out of this enormous effort, with millions of man-hours and resources involved?  

Basically, two things:

1.  The Americans convinced themselves of a noble deed and positive accomplishments....whether they actually occurred or not.

2.  Eventually, just by Germans of the era dying off....the pro-Nazi slant went to a marginal status.  You can make the case today....with Germans born around 2000 (4th generation)....that it's rare for any pro-Nazi view to exist.

I should end this essay here, but there is this one odd thing that occurred around forty-five years after WW II in Germany.

They (the West German Republic) had to go and build up a second similar program to the Denazification effort.  This one?  Well....to resolve the DDR/East German Communist period from 1945 to 1989. 

You had to go and assess various people....their jobs or spying activities....past accomplishments, etc.

Decommunization?  Yeah....more or less.

Where do things stand thirty years after the Decommunization effort?  Most 'Easties' that are over 60 years old....will say that they had more stability, better lifestyles, and less crime.  They see some improvements in their life, but still see positives with the old system. 

Yeah....it's a repeat performance of Denazification in the end.....you can pat yourself on the back for all the work done, but an era must pass and a whole generation needs to die off before everyone thinks the same way.