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 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.
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