How did Germany stop being Nazis after the end of WWII? Did everyone just “snap out of it” after Hitler’s death?
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One really important thing was the Marshall Plan. After WWI the Germans were punished and put in an economic situation that made Hitler’s nationalism attractive. So after WWII, the Americans poured a lot of money into rebuilding Germany. This made it much more attractive to give up on the Nazi failure and become part of a more cooperative European and world order.
They didn’t. Those that were caught were arrested were either prosecuted and put to death or jailed and eventually released.
Those that weren’t just kept their mouths shut. They kept their hands down and their personal opinions to themselves.
That’s no longer the case. Proof:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6bH2fHbt2w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6bH2fHbt2w)
Nazi’s are like HIV. You think it’s no longer a major issue for humanity, but it’s still *everywhere*. It’s not as bad of a problem as it was before…but it still is very much a problem.
Time and silence.
For 13 years, almost all of the elite had to join the Nazi party. In 1952, 25% of West Germans admitted to having a “good opinion” of Hitler. In his first official address to the parliament, Chancellor Adenauer (in 1949) said “The government of the Federal Republic, in the belief that many have subjectively atoned for a guilt that was not heavy, is determined where it appears acceptable to do so to put the past behind us.” The German government was generally determined to forget.
In 1968, Germany had its own set of internal revolutions, where the baby boom children grew up and protested against the crimes of their fathers, so to speak. This was helped along by the fact that the actual chancellor, the third in the history of West Germany, was himself a former Nazi and a party member from 1933-1945 who served under Ribbentrop. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Georg_Kiesinger#Early_life_and_Nazi_activities
They made it illegal to continue to be a Nazi or to support Hitler, but for the most part, if you were a Nazi and said “sorry about all that Nazi stuff” the German government was fine with it.
No, quite a few moved away from Germany though, Argentina and Namibia are two locations I know of but there could be more. The remake of the Prisoner was filmed in Namibia and one actor said the local shops sold Nazi memorabilia and the locals spoke of the “good old days” and they found the whole place quite creepy.
In Germany there’s still plenty of far right supporters but the general culture is very different for example they don’t have school uniforms as it’s seen as militaristic, freedom is embraced and encouraged and the general attitudes towards life are far removed form Nazism and the positives of this outlook are highlighted.
If you were a high ranking government official you were shot or hanged, if you were a low level one you were generally allowed to keep your post as long as you kept your head down (until the 80s in the west and forever in the East), and if you were gestapo you were recruited into the Stasi by the Soviets
I haven’t seen anyone comment on the fact that the Cold War happened. Germany was split and tightly controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. The allies searched out and put on trial every Nazi that they possibly could (accept for scientists because the nuclear arms race was on). Meanwhile the Soviets jailed everyone who wasn’t on board with communism.
Not at all
Both east and west Germany had tons of Nazis after
Well into the 60s, many judges etc were nazi supporters
There’s actually quite a bit of info on it, I’d watch the documentary the accountant of Auschwitz it’s a very good film but quite devastating
Hitler put a bullet in his brain and with him died the dream of a 1000 year Reich. The nationalism and propaganda stopped, millions of men had been killed or injured, people were starving living in cities that had been obliterated by bombing, the Russians raped an estimated 2 million women, people had to watch movies on the horrors that occurred in the death camps. Being a Nazi and the promises it once gave kinda lost its shine in a devastated and defeated country now occupied and run by other nations.
One of the reasons was that Germany was occupied, and both the Soviet Union and the other Allies took ‘denazification’ very seriously. The overwhelming presence of the Red Army put, uh, a bit of a damper on any potential East German Nazis, whilst the Americans made everyone in their quarter fill out a form declaring their affiliations, and banned former Nazis from public office. On both sides of what would become the Iron Curtain there was heavy censorship as well.
However, German politics were actually not completely denazified at the end of the War. Many former Nazis still held high-ranking sociopolitical positions [in places like the Ministry of Justice and Interior Ministry](https://www.businessinsider.com.au/former-nazi-officials-in-germany-post-world-war-ii-government-2016-10?r=US&IR=T). When everyone in the former government was a Nazi, it’s had to ban everyone with political and administrative experience and still have people to run the country. This was a big problem, because the Cold War was beginning and Germany was one of the first points of tension. It was extremely important for both the Soviets and the Western Allies to reconstruct their parts of Germany as quickly as possible.
To start with, most people weren’t Nazis, but they did agree with them on certain ideas. They did believe the USSR was a mortal threat, various antisemitic conspiracies (which even Churchill believed) etc., but whether they agreed on the obsession with racial purity and the need for exterminating the Jews was another question. These beliefs predated the Nazis.
Now, did they “snap out of it”? Well, no, but being occupied by Allied powers and with the political leadership coming from an anti Nazi background there wasn’t any room for open sympathy. New generations were taught a more honest history, and there is still great shame felt over WWII. On top of this, there are government agencies dedicated to fighting Nazi like groups which threaten the Constitution. Military members are encouraged to place the Constitution and human rights above their orders, there is a division of the intelligence agency dedicated to fighting extremist groups.
However, in private, a lot of Nazism remained within Germany, after all a lot of Nazis were still around, and they had kids too. Neo Nazi movements had been a problem in East Germany, but instead of doing anything about it the government covered it up. So there was always this undercurrent, but rather than doing anything about it they tried to downplay it.
They’re deeply unpopular, so instead they’ve tried to infiltrate the government. The government for its part had take a blind eye to far right extremists, partly because they didn’t take it seriously but also because members of the far right themselves were influencing decisions, often shifting the focus on murders of non ethnic Germans to an Arab mafia and drug trafficking rather than a hate crime. That all came to a head when a man named Franco A was caught. He had been impersonating a Syrian refugee, and was trying to carry out a terrorist attack while pretending to be one. Franco was a high ranking member of the German military and part of the National Socialist Underground, a Neo Nazi group that has infiltrated the government. Since the. The German government has been more vigilant about far right extremism, but we still don’t know the full extent of the infiltration.
All in all, de nazification had some successes, but the governments have tried their best to ignore the failures.
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