Denazification

Eagle above the rear main entry to the Robert-Piloty building, department of Computer Science, Darmstadt University of Technology. Note the effaced Swastika under the eagle.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 directed US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower's policy of denazification. A report of the Institute on Re-education of the Axis Countries in June 1945 recommended: "Only an inflexible long-term occupation authority will be able to lead the Germans to a fundamental revision of their recent political philosophy." The United States military pursued denazification in a zealous and bureaucratic fashion, especially during the first months of the occupation.[13] It had been agreed among the Allies that denazification would begin by requiring Germans to fill in a questionnaire (German: Fragebogen) about their activities and memberships during Nazi rule. Five categories were established: Major Offenders, Offenders, Lesser Offenders, Followers, and Exonerated Persons. The Americans, unlike the British, French, and Soviets, interpreted this to apply to every German over the age of eighteen in their zone.[14] Eisenhower initially estimated that the denazification process would take 50 years.[15]

When the nearly complete list of Nazi Party memberships was turned over to the Allies (by a German anti-Nazi who had rescued it from destruction in April 1945 as American troops advanced on Munich), it became possible to verify claims about participation or non-participation in the Party.[16] The 1.5 million Germans who had joined before Hitler came to power were deemed to be hard-core Nazis.[6]

Progress was slowed by the overwhelming numbers of Germans to be processed, but also by difficulties such as incompatible power systems and power outages, as with the Hollerith IBM data machine that held the American vetting list in Paris. As many as 40,000 forms could arrive in a single day to await processing. By December 1945, even though a full 500,000 forms had been processed, there remained a backlog of 4,000,000 forms from POWs and a potential case load of 7,000,000.[17] The Fragebögen were, of course, filled out in German. The number of Americans working on denazification was inadequate to handle the workload, partly as a result of the demand in the US by families to have soldiers returned home.[18] Replacements were mostly unskilled and poorly trained.[19] In addition, there was too much work to be done to complete the process of denazification by 1947, the year American troops were expected to be completely withdrawn from Europe.

Pressure also came from the need to find Germans to run their own country. In January 1946 a directive came from the Control Council entitled "Removal from Office and from Positions of Responsibility of Nazis and Persons Hostile to Allied Purposes". One of the punishments for Nazi involvement was to be barred from public office and/or restricted to manual labor or "simple work". At the end of 1945, 3.5 million former Nazis awaited classification, many of them barred from work in the meantime.[20] By the end of the winter of 1945–1946, 42% of public officials had been dismissed.[21] Malnutrition was widespread, and the economy needed leaders and workers to help clear away debris, rebuild infrastructure, and get foreign exchange to buy food and other essential resources.[6]

Another concern leading to the Americans relinquishing responsibility for denazification and handing it over to the Germans arose from the fact that many of the American denazifiers were German Jews, former refugees returning to administer justice against the tormentors and killers of their relatives. It was felt, both among Germans and top American officials, that their objectivity might be contaminated by a desire for revenge.[22]

As a result of these various pressures, and following a January 15, 1946, report of the Military Government decrying the efficiency of denazification, saying, "The present procedure fails in practice to reach a substantial number of persons who supported or assisted the Nazis", it was decided to involve Germans in the process. In March 1946 the Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism (German: Befreiungsgesetz) came into effect, turning over responsibility for denazification to the Germans.[23] Each zone had a Minister of Denazification. On April 1, 1946, a special law established 545 civilian tribunals under German administration (German: Spruchkammern), with a staff of 22,000 of mostly lay judges, enough, perhaps, to start to work but too many for all the staff themselves to be thoroughly investigated and cleared.[24] They had a case load of 900,000. Several new regulations came into effect in the setting up of the German-run tribunals, including the idea that the aim of denazification was now rehabilitation rather than merely punishment, and that someone whose guilt might meet the formal criteria could also have their specific actions taken into consideration for mitigation.[25] Efficiency thus improved, while rigor declined.

Many people had to fill in a new background form, called a Meldebogen (replacing the widely disliked Fragebogen), and were given over to justice under a Spruchkammer,[14] which assigned them to one of five categories:[23][26][27]

• V. Persons Exonerated (German: Entlastete). No sanctions.
• IV. Followers (German: Mitläufer). Possible restrictions on travel, employment, political rights, plus fines.
• III. Lesser Offenders (German: Minderbelastete). Placed on probation for 2–3 years with a list of restrictions. No internment.
• II. Offenders: Activists, Militants, and Profiteers, or Incriminated Persons (German: Belastete). Subject to immediate arrest and imprisonment up to ten years performing reparation or reconstruction work plus a list of other restrictions.
• I. Major Offenders (German: Hauptschuldige). Subject to immediate arrest, death, imprisonment with or without hard labor, plus a list of lesser sanctions.

Again because the caseload was impossibly large, the German tribunals began to look for ways to speed up the process. Unless their crimes were serious, members of the Nazi Party born after 1919 were exempted on the grounds that they had been brainwashed. Disabled veterans were also exempted. To avoid the necessity of a slow trial in open court, which was required for those belonging to the most serious categories, more than 90% of cases were judged not to belong to the serious categories and therefore were dealt with more quickly.[28] More "efficiencies" followed. The tribunals accepted statements from other people regarding the accused's involvement in Nazism. These statements earned the nickname of Persilscheine, after advertisements for the laundry and whitening detergent Persil.[29] There was corruption in the system, with Nazis buying and selling denazification certificates on the black market. Nazis who were found guilty were often punished with fines assessed in Reichsmarks, which had become nearly worthless.[30] In Bavaria the Denazification Minister, Anton Pfeiffer, bridled under the "victor's justice", and presided over a system that reinstated 75% of officials the Americans had dismissed and reclassified 60% of senior Nazis.[31] The denazification process lost a great deal of credibility, and there was often local hostility against Germans who helped administer the tribunals.[32]

By early 1947, the Allies held 90,000 Nazis in detention; another 1,900,000 were forbidden to work as anything but manual laborers.[33] From 1945 to 1950, the Allied powers detained over 400,000 Germans in internment camps in the name of denazification.[34]

By 1948, the Cold War was clearly in progress and the US began to worry more about a threat from the Eastern Bloc rather than the latent Nazism within occupied Germany.[35]

The delicate task of distinguishing those truly complicit in or responsible for Nazi activities from mere "followers" made the work of the courts yet more difficult. US President Harry S. Truman alluded to this problem: "though all Germans might not be guilty for the war, it would be too difficult to try to single out for better treatment those who had nothing to do with the Nazi regime and its crimes."[36] Denazification was from then on supervised by special German ministers, like the Social Democrat Gottlob Kamm in Baden-Württemberg, with the support of the US occupation forces.

Contemporary American critics of denazification denounced it as a "counterproductive witch hunt" and a failure; in 1951 the provisional West German government granted amnesties to lesser offenders and ended the program.[37]

While judicial efforts were handed over to German authorities, the US Army continued its efforts to denazify Germany through control of German media. The Information Control Division of the US Army had by July 1946 taken control of 37 German newspapers, six radio stations, 314 theaters, 642 cinemas, 101 magazines, 237 book publishers, and 7,384 book dealers and printers.[38] Its main mission was democratization but part of the agenda was also the prohibition of any criticism of the Allied occupation forces.[39] In addition, on May 13, 1946, the Allied Control Council issued a directive for the confiscation of all media that could contribute to Nazism or militarism. As a consequence a list was drawn up of over 30,000 book titles, ranging from school textbooks to poetry, which were then banned. All copies of books on the list were confiscated and destroyed; the possession of a book on the list was made a punishable offense. All the millions of copies of these books were to be confiscated and destroyed. The representative of the Military Directorate admitted that the order was in principle no different from the Nazi book burnings.[40]

The censorship in the US zone was regulated by the occupation directive JCS 1067 (valid until July 1947) and in the May 1946 order valid for all zones (rescinded in 1950), Allied Control Authority Order No. 4, "No. 4 – Confiscation of Literature and Material of a Nazi and Militarist Nature". All confiscated literature was reduced to pulp instead of burning.[Notes 1] It was also directed by Directive No. 30, "Liquidation of German Military and Nazi Memorials and Museums". An exception was made for tombstones "erected at the places where members of regular formations died on the field of battle".

Artworks were under the same censorship as other media: "all collections of works of art related or dedicated to the perpetuation of German militarism or Nazism will be closed permanently and taken into custody." The directives were very broadly interpreted, leading to the destruction of thousands of paintings and thousands more were shipped to deposits in the US. Those confiscated paintings still surviving in US custody include for example a painting "depicting a couple of middle aged women talking in a sunlit street in a small town".[41] Artists were also restricted in which new art they were allowed to create; "OMGUS was setting explicit political limits on art and representation".[41]

The publication Der Ruf (The Call) was a popular literary magazine first published in 1945 by Alfred Andersch and edited by Hans Werner Richter. Der Ruf, also called Independent Pages of the New Generation, claimed to have the aim of educating the German people about democracy. In 1947 its publication was blocked by the American forces for being overly critical of occupational government.[42] Richter attempted to print many of the controversial pieces in a volume entitled Der Skorpion (The Scorpion). The occupational government blocked publication of Der Skorpion before it began, saying that the volume was too "nihilistic".[43]

Publication of Der Ruf resumed in 1948 under a new publisher, but Der Skorpion was blocked and not widely distributed. Unable to publish his works, Richter founded Group 47.

The Allied costs for occupation were charged to the German people. A newspaper which revealed the charges (including, among other things, thirty thousand bras) was banned by the occupation authorities for revealing this information.[44]

From the beginning, denazification in the Soviet zone was considered a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society and was quickly and effectively put into practice.[45] Members of the Nazi Party and its organizations were arrested and interned.[46] The NKVD was directly in charge of this process, and oversaw the camps. In 1948, the camps were placed under the same administration as the gulag in the Soviet government. According to official records, 122,600 people were interned. 34,700 of those interned in this process were considered to be Soviet citizens, with the rest being German.[47] This process happened at the same time as the expropriation of large landowners and Junkers, who were also often former Nazi supporters.[48]

Because part of the intended goal of denazification in the Soviet zone was also the removal of anti-socialist sentiment, the committees in charge of the process were politically skewed. A typical panel would have one member from the Christian Democratic Union, one from the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany, three from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, and three from political mass organizations (who were typically also supportive of the Socialist Unity Party).[49]

East German propaganda poster in 1957

Former Nazi officials quickly realized that they would face fewer obstacles and investigations in the zones controlled by the Western Allies. Many of them saw a chance to defect to the West on the pretext of anti-communism.[50] Conditions in the internment camps were terrible, and between 42,000 and 80,000 prisoners died. When the camps were closed in 1950, prisoners were handed over to the East German government.[51]

Because many of the functionaries of the Soviet occupation zone were themselves formerly prosecuted by the Nazi regime, mere former membership in the NSDAP was judged as a crime.[46]

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, reasoning for these accusations focused on the fact that many former functionaries of 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.[52] 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.[53] As part of the propagandistic campaign against West Germany, Theodor Oberländer and Hans Globke were among the first federal politicians to be denounced in the GDR. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia by the GDR in show trials in April 1960, and in July 1963.[54] The president of West Germany Heinrich Lübke, in particular, was denounced during the official commemorations of the liberation of the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen held at the GDR's National Memorials.[55]

Not all former Nazis faced judgment. Doing special tasks for the Soviet government could protect Nazi members from prosecution, enabling them to continue working.[3][56] Having special connections with the occupiers in order to have someone vouch for them could also shield a person from the denazification laws.[57] In particular, the districts of Gera, Erfurt, and Suhl had significant amounts of former Nazi Party members in their government.[52]

A poster from the North Rhine-Westphalia state elections 1947, with the slogan "For a quick and just denazification vote CDU"

The British prepared a plan from 1942 onwards, assigning a number of quite junior civil servants to head the administration of liberated territory in the rear of the Armies, with draconian powers to remove from their post, in both public and private domains, anyone suspected, usually on behavioral grounds, of harboring Nazi sympathies. For the British government, the rebuilding of German economic power was more important than the imprisonment of Nazi criminals.[58] Economically hard pressed at home after the war, they did not want the burden of feeding and otherwise administering Germany.[59]

In October 1945, in order to constitute a working legal system, and given that 90% of German lawyers had been members of the Nazi Party, the British decided that 50% of the German Legal Civil Service could be staffed by "nominal" Nazis. Similar pressures caused them to relax the restriction even further in April 1946.[60] In industry, especially in the economically crucial Ruhr area, the British began by being lenient about who owned or operated businesses, turning stricter by autumn of 1945. To reduce the power of industrialists, the British expanded the role of trade unions, giving them some decision-making powers.[61]

They were, however, especially zealous during the early months of occupation in bringing to justice anyone, soldiers or civilians, who had committed war crimes against POWs or captured Allied aircrew.[62] In June 1945 an interrogation center at Bad Nenndorf was opened, where detainees were allegedly tortured via buckets of cold water, beatings, being burnt with lit cigarettes, etc. A public scandal ensued, with the center eventually being closed down.[63]

The British to some extent avoided being overwhelmed by the potential numbers of denazification investigations by requiring that no one need fill in the Fragebogen unless they were applying for an official or responsible position. This difference between American and British policy was decried by the Americans and caused some Nazis to seek shelter in the British zone.[64]

In January 1946, the British handed over their denazification panels to the Germans.[65]

The French were less vigorous, for a number of reasons, than the other Western powers, not even using the term "denazification", instead calling it "épuration" (purification). At the same time, some French occupational commanders had served in the collaborationist Vichy regime during the war where they had formed friendly relationships with Germans. As a result, in the French zone mere membership in the Nazi party was much less important than in the other zones.[66]

Because teachers had been strongly Nazified, the French began by removing three-quarters of all teachers from their jobs. However, finding that the schools could not be run without them, they were soon rehired, although subject to easy dismissal. A similar process governed technical experts.[67] The French were the first to turn over the vetting process to Germans, while maintaining French power to reverse any German decision. Overall, the business of denazification in the French zone was considered a "golden mean between an excessive degree of severity and an inadequate standard of leniency", laying the groundwork for an enduring reconciliation between France and Germany. In the French zone only thirteen Germans were categorized as "major offenders".[68]

The culture of denazification strongly influenced the parliamentary council charged with drawing up a constitution for those occupation zones that would become West Germany. The Basic Law (German: Grundgesetz) was completed on May 8, 1949, ratified on May 23, and came into effect the next day. This date effectively marks the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The end of denazification saw the ad hoc creation initially of the Western Union which would be institutionalised as the Western European Union in 1947 and 1955, with a broad socio-economic remit actually implemented in the strict domain of arms control.[72]

On 24 February 2022, Vladimir Putin issued a casus belli in his speech "On conducting a special military operation". In the speech, Putin pointed to "denazification" as the objective of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, going on to describe modern-day Ukraine as a "neo-Nazi" state with an intent of the genocide of Russian speakers in the country.[106][107] Media and members of Russian administration used these terms repeatedly in the ensuing conflict. Previously, Putin's statements of denazification were echoed in his essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" and in the speech "Address concerning the events in Ukraine", filmed three days prior to the invasion, wherein Putin accused Ukraine of "being infected with the virus of nationalism". The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem condemned Putin's misuse of Holocaust history; Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, with much of his family being victims of the Holocaust, and a native Russian speaker. The organisations described Ukraine as "democratic" and the Russian claims of Nazism and genocide as "imaginary".[108][109][110]

Usage of the term "denazification" in the Russian media spiked after 24 February,[111] despite the term lacking any application in Russia's invasion of Ukraine or specific historical reference. Russian journalists and political commentators were surprised to find no actual Nazi symbols or parties present in Ukraine mainstream, which was described as confusing and a "PR disaster" undermining the whole justification for the war.[112] Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan later attempted to redefine the word "Nazi" as being a synonym of "Russophobe" or "anti-Russia".[113] The confusion was further worsened by reports of actual neo-Nazi military units "Rusich unit" and parts of Wagner Group taking part in the war on Russian side,[114][115] as well widespread presence of far-right, anti-Semitic and nationalist websites and literature in Russia.[116]

Statements of denazification continued to permeate throughout Russian media and justification for the war. On 1 March, a large number of diplomats at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva staged a walkout in protest of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov began his prepared remarks to the assembly via video from Moscow,[117][118] in which he echoed the statements of denazification in Putin's speech: "The goal of our actions is to save people by fulfilling our allied obligations, as well as to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine so that such things never happen again."[119] In a RIA Novosti op-ed published in early April, "What Russia should do with Ukraine", Timofey Sergeytsev argued strongly for the full destruction of Ukraine as a state and the Ukrainian national identity in the ambit of the denazification of the latter.[120][121][122] The Ukrainian state was, according to Sergeytsev, to be renamed after the war.[123][124] The op-ed attracted criticism from as far afield as Slavoj Žižek. In an analysis of the article, American historian Timothy Snyder pointed out that the use of words "Nazi" and "denazification" by the Russian regime was historically inaccurate.[125] On 26 April, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev threatened that Ukraine would be Balkanized as a result of Russia's invasion.[126]

By early May, usage of the term in Russian media appeared to be on a decline, reportedly because it had not gained traction with the Russian public,[127] although the term experienced a slight resurgence when United Russia party member Oleg Viktorovich Morozov called in the Duma for the denazification of Poland later that month.[128] The Russian ambassador to Bulgaria, Eleonora Mitrofanova, has used the moniker "Nazi regime in Kyiv" to refer to the post-Revolution of Dignity administrations of Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.[129]

In May 2022, Aleksandr Dugin, frustrated by "strange and convoluted arguments" used by Lavrov to explain the Russian meaning of "denazification", proposed that it is necessary to simply "identify Ukrainian Nazism with Russophobia". Dugin argued that in the same way as Jews have a "monopoly" of definition of antisemitism, in this way Russia holds a "monopoly" on the definition of Russophobia and "Ukrainian Nazism".[130]