How Did Germany DeNazify So Quickly After WWII

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[AnonymousBosch]

I was in Germany in the late eighties, early nineties. For the older generation the difference between Nazi and non-Nazi was around six pints.

[Martin_Koepl]

As my grandfather once told me: Those who were the biggest Nazis out there were the first ones that got amnesia and weren't able to remember anything.

[Martinarmonica]

There's a joke here in Chile, regarding the arrival of nazi defectors to South America. It says: "don't ask a lady for her age, don't ask a man for his salary, and don't ask your southern friend what did his german grandpa do between 1938 and 1945"

[TheNerd]

The truth of the "Denazification" was, that it was not as fast as it looked like from the outside. My Grandma was born in 1929, so she grew up in Nazi Germany. When in 2004 the big earthquake in the Indian Ocean happend and a big (following) tsunami killed over 100.000 people in the area, I vividly remember her saying out loud "I don't know why everyone is making a big fuzz about it. It's only some japanse". In truth the "Denazification" happend by "people from that time dying over the decades".

[wabalaladabdab]

"How did they denazify so quickly?" - easy, they didn't. With the few "Argentinian" exceptions, the rest of the nazis just went back to a civilian life, (many of them cops, judges, teaches, officials etc), and pretended that nothing happened here...

[alcidesprieto]

Nazi officers escaped to South America, nazi scientists moved to North America and the nazi foot soldiers just got amnesia.

[lizgreer]

A friend of ours at church was in the Luftwaffe. I had no idea until I was in my teens. To me they were the kind old people from Germany.
As he said, he wanted nothing to do with the Nazis. One day officers came to his small village saying all men/boys of a certain age had to join. He quietly refused but his best friend openly refused. His friends entire family were shot and then hung up in the town center as a warning. So he joined, he crashed himself into a field, waited for the Americans to find him and was sent as a pow to the Midwest. He and his wife became very wealthy and gave most of their wealth to civil rights organizations. They said it was their moral duty to do the right thing.

[jboyler]

Never ask a woman her age; a man his salary; or your Uncle Franz what bar he drank at in Munich.

[johnclark]

They took off their SS uniforms, put on their civilian suits and went to work as usual.

[yeetusyeeterson]

Crazy how sensitive Germany is about what they did and teach it heavily to avoid that from happening again, meanwhile Japan just ignores all of the brutal shit they did. They’ll even believe that its not even true.

[Lockbar]

I was stationed in West Germany in the early 1970s. A running joke was "whats the difference between a German and an Austrian?" ..."The Germans use to be Nazis, and the Austrians still are."

[HanaThyregod]

WTF is this sponsor spot? It’s both hilarious and absolutely bonkers dystopian!

[JonasReichert]

Hint: it didn’t. Thousands of Nazis later worked in Governments in Ministries in intelligence Services and in the Police. And obviously everywhere else too.

[eucitizen]

Germany was not really denazified. When the first Chancellor of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Konrad Adenauer was asked why there are so many Nazis in his administration he answered: (quote) " No one throws away dirty water as long as he has no clean water."

[piobmhor]

I had a neighbour (passed away in 1998) who was a WW2 RCAF Navigator and former POW. He told us about his being shot down, his one and only parachute jump, capture and subsequent incarceration in a Luftstalag. He was caught up in a tree when a German Police Officer found him on patrol. He saw that his situation was fruitless and surrendered. He fully expected brutal treatment or summary execution, but instead received civility. The officer locked him up in their cells at the station, ensured he got a good meal and said in very broken English “for you the war is over, no worry”. He wasn’t turned over to the Gestapo, but rather the next morning a Luftwaffe guard and driver showed up to take him to a Stalag for questioning and incarceration. Life in the camps (he was moved a few times) was rough, but he survived and later liberated by the Russians.

Upon return to Canada, he found civilian life rather boring and rejoined the RCAF. While stationed in Zweibrüken West Germany (not sure, but I think he said that) he started looking for the Police Officer who captured him. He found him, still a Police Officer in the same small town near Frankfurt. During the de-Nazification of the American Sector where he was, any Police Officer that had anything to do with the Nazi Party whether as a member of the Gestapo, ordinary member of the Party or even as a “willing participant” of Nazi atrocities were at least fired or had to stand trial. Complete Police Departments were rebuilt with new recruits, trained by mostly US Police Officers from scratch to become Peace Officers rather than enforcers of the political ideologies of the Führer. Being that he kept his job, that would mean that either he was one of the good ones, or he managed to squeeze through. My neighbour preferred to think it was the former because of the kindness he received.

On a side note, the Police Officer told my neighbour that he still had the pistol he took from him upon capture, and if he wanted it back he could go home and get it for him. I guess he was required to turn it over to the Police Department, but I guess he slipped it into his coat as a souvenir, contrary to regulations. He probably took quite a risk keeping it after Germany’s surrender while the occupiers disarmed the local populace. Anyway, my neighbour said he could keep it. He thanked him for his kind treatment considering he was an enemy combatant.

The de-Nazification of the police was definitely necessary to the reconstruction of the Federal Republic of Germany from the ashes of the Third Reich, but it must have been difficult with almost a 100% change of personnel.

[MrChuckGrape]

This information just got a lot more useful.

[Scott-ji]

Fast forward to 3:32 to skip the horrible in video advertisement.

[EyeLean]

My father was part of the American occupation of Germany in the postwar era, in the early 1960s (yeah, we were there a long time). He was fluent in several European languages, including German, so he could understand what Germans were saying around them when they thought he couldn't. He told me that denazification was a _failure_, regardless of the propaganda messages back home in the states.

[klti]

The Auschwitz trials in 1960 (the only real attampt to get justice for what happened in the camps until decades later) really only happened because of the district attorney of Frankfurt, Fritz Bauer. He was a fascinating figure, being in exile during the nazi years, and probably on of the few high ranking figures in the justice system that actually were clean. He formed a small group of young prosecutors, and they essentially worked in isolation from the rest of his office because a lot of them had vivid nazi pasts. It got to the point where he thought the Telex machines in his office were bugged, so he used the one in the vegetable wholesaler across the street.

If the Auschwitz trials and Fritz Bauer don't already have Videos in the Whistler Youtube universe, they should really have one. Some of the witness testimony from the first trial is absolutely heartbreaking, I'll never forget the one where an older survivor of the camp laments the death of a young boy, the desperation and shock in his voice is just heartbreaking.

[pooneil]

Thanks. Germany 1945 to 1950 is a slice of history that I have the hardest time finding information on.