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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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.
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