YSK: Denazification in West Germany was lenient and ultimately abandoned, with many Nazis remaining in positions of power.

Submitted ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨bearboiblake@pawb.social⁩ to ⁨youshouldknow@lemmy.world⁩

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification

Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan. Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive. Additionally, the program was highly unpopular in West Germany, where many Nazis maintained positions of power. Denazification was opposed by the new West German government of Konrad Adenauer, who declared that ending the process was necessary for West German rearmament.

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I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world ⁨54⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
Shit like this is why I shake my heads at dumbasses going “Just you wait ICE agents! Things didn’t work out too well for all the former Nazi’s who tried to say they were ‘just following orders’!”

Yes things actually did turn out just fine for the overwhelming majority of Nazi’s. Only like a couple dozen faced any sort of consequences. The rest quietly returned to their lives as machinists, butchers, office workers, farmers, etc.

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grranibal@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The journalist that slapped one of these nazis in power in 1968 has my respect

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Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This was a huge societal topic in the 70s as the after-war generation were becoming adults, and many realizing that their own father had been a nazi

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ModernRisk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Honestly; I’m curious how does one de-program another person. How do you denazification, defascism etc.

When I look at the world right now, it feels as if these things never left. Nazis stayed Nazis, fascism stayed with fascistic people.

All the while capitalism uses it to gain more money and wealth while looking at the world and not giving a care.

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- bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It’s probably a similar kind of approach as would be taken for cult deprogramming - fundamentally, a form of therapy, to deconstruct the harmful beliefs and brainwashing of the ideology from first principles.
  
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  - CainTheLongshot@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Unfortunately to your second point, I don’t think that’s the best approach either. Check out the first 6-12 months of the Iraqi government rebuild during the Iraq war. The Americans basically fired 20,000 Iraqi officials and military members who then had nothing to lose anymore. They then immediately started an insurgency.
    
    Also after these fascist take overs, it’s not as easy as simply saying “you’re a Nazi, therefore you go to jail” because if you didn’t swear fealty to the new government (i.e. if you were Democrat you would now have to call yourself Republican) you could be summarily executed on the spot (check out the video of Sadam’s take over).
    
    So you could resign. But then you get called a coward by armchair generals for not trying to stay in the system and slow it down as much as possible.
    
    So you stay in and keep your head down, and may try to slow the processes down enough to hopefully save some innocents without getting pulled out back and shot. But then you’re called a Nazi collaborator. Idk, I would probably just as well resign, but that could put a target on your back, too, because you’re basically outing yourself as hostile.
    
    Personally, i think how we handled it after WW2 wasn’t perfect, but should be the goal. There’s always clean up that can happen even years afterwards. But if you go purging an entire country’s worth of government officials, you have to replace those you purged with equally qualified people. And you often find that those who are eager to step in, are often just eager to enact revenge, or in some cases, even worse than their predecessors because they are just opportunists who now have the good graces of the new regime who just wanted a quick transition to a friendly government.
    
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- Rusty@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Image
  
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- FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The French executed a lot of them, like 10,000 to 15,000.
  
  Shutting their brains off entirely seems effective.
  
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- ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  So this often comes up and there’s a lot of opinions. I often reference the Nuremberg Trials as an example of how a society expresses the consequences of not changing behavior and ideology. You know, if the failure of their war, and the craven suicide of their fuhrer hadn’t already.
  
  But, probably the best example is Pu-Yi and how the CCP handled the Chinese emperor that collaborated with the Japanese.
  
  In short: education and work. Teach them the right way and make them work a job that satisfies the material conditions of a common citizen.
  
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  - quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Your suggestion sounds dangerously close to “work will set you free”
    
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- FlyingCircus@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Fascism is a social disease that is injected by the bourgeoisie into the petit-bourgeoisie during times when capitalism is in crisis. They do this through propaganda and economic warfare like austerity coupled with tax cuts for the rich. This results in an economic downturn that hits the “middle class” the hardest (relatively - poor people are also fucked, but they had less to lose in the first place). Economic woes coupled with divisive and authoritarian propaganda and — boom — fascism.
  
  So how do you stop it? Well, ultimately by dismantling capitalism and removing the power of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise fascist crises will just keep being manufactured.
  
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- HotDog7@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I read that while denazification largely failed, the cold war got going and Germany realized they needed to pass pro-Democracy policies to garner aid from the rest of the free world. The next generation of Germans largely turned away from nazism and here we are today.
  
  Someone similar happened in Taiwan. The KMT under Chiang Kai-shek weren’t really pro-Democracy either, but they knew they had to steer policy in that direction to win international support.
  
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  - bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The Israeli Knesset is democratically elected, too. Under capitalist economies, a democratic system just means that the state is for sale.
    
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- dis_da_mor@anarchist.nexus ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  you can’t unless the other person wants to. they need to realise their mistakes and be willing to never commit them again and attempt to amend them if possible.
  
  a lot of people taken in by fascism were originally and continue to be in poor living conditions. if they are first guaranteed all basic human rights & the required needs to live, talking to them about their politics will be a lot easier.
  
  does this mean people who helped commit genocide should be allowed to live as if they’ve done nothing wrong? definitely not, they should have all tools that they used removed from them, be separated from their prrvious co-conspirators, and all other measures required to keep society safe. does that mean that they should all be forced into concrete boxes with no rights? also no, as that is depriving them of their humanity, and removing any chamce of them cooperating.
  
  the real method of removing fascism is very complicated and highly dependant on the specific situation. the consent of the broader community needs to be taken into account, and restorative justice needs to be achieved.
  
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- foggy@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  We don’t give the fact that people can be effectively brainwashed enough attention.
  
  Just as people can be programmed, they can be deprogrammed.
  
  How do you deprogram 30% of a nation? Not without yourself committing atrocities.
  
  Time is a flat circle.
  
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  - SoloPhoenyx@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Does not committing atrocities against 30% of a nation, itself, constitute an atrocity though? When the consequences of not killing authoritarians and a critical mass of their supporters leads to them further entrenching and committing more atrocities than simply eradicating them, wasn’t a choice already made to be party to the atrocities through inaction?
    
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- quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Prisons and therapy.
  
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Gammelfisch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
West Germany messed up badly, but Austria was worse.

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Telodzrum@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yeah, and honestly it worked better than purges have historically.

Debathification is an extreme and when it and similar practices have been attempted after the destruction of a government, it’s the populace that suffers most.

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ViatorOmnium@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not just west Germany. There was also a pipeline from the Gestapo to the Stasi.

The cold war ended up preventing the denazificantion programs from being concluded everywhere.

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- ohulancutash@feddit.uk ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  At some point the occupation administration realised that if they got rid of all the nazis there wouldn’t be a functioning government, legal system or military.
  
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  - stsquad@lemmy.ml ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The western nations had a similar problem with debathification in Iraq. When a system invades and takes over a state how do you keep things running while ripping it’s influence out?
    
    There’s a scene at the end of Band of Brothers where the guy from Easy company is taking to a German who’s recollecting the countries he’s visited while at war. It’s a reminder that not everyone in Germany was a Nazi but it was hard to sit it out in a nation committed to Total War. It might be easy to say you’d never sign up to the party but if the choice was between staying in the civil service or being shipped off into the meat grinder? Where else could you go?
    
    We never really have the luxury of tearing down whole societies and rebuilding from scratch in a more prefect form. Generally the countries that have gone through such radical changes have paid for it with a lot of suffering.
    
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  - bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    This is no excuse. The Allied powers could and should have trained up anti-fascists to fulfil those roles.
    
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  - quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    And the anarchists would finally have utopia
    
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- bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  That’s interesting, do you have a source for that? I’d like to learn more, I did a quick search and I didn’t find anything, and the Wikipedia article said this:
  
  In contrast, in the Soviet occupation zone and later East Germany, denazification was considered a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society, and the country was stricter in opposing Nazism than its counterpart.
  
  I’m not defending the USSR by any means, just to be clear, I know Lemmy has a bunch of tankies, I’m not one of them! I just would like to learn more.
  
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  - Zwiebel@feddit.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The soviets declared the denazification to be complete in '48, before the GDR was even formed in '49
    
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  - halfdane@piefed.social ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    While I’m not overly educated in the history of denazification in East Germany, I know that at least later, it was more of a proclamation than something actually happening. That’s why so many neo-nazis “suddenly appeared” in the supposedly nazi-free zone after the unification of the germanies.
    
    Supported by the fascists in the west that had never gone away, the unified right made quick progress in their organization.
    
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- leftascenter@jlai.lu ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  France wasn’t clean either:
  
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Papon
  
  en.wikipedia.org/…/33rd_Waffen_Grenadier_Division…
  
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RmDebArc_5@piefed.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There is a relatively famous clip of Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of West Germany, were he said that it was important for him to create a friendship between the German an Jewish people as the Jews are powerful and control so much especially in the USA. I wonder why he opposed Denazification…

Clip in German

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FundMECFS@piefed.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The vast majority of the doctors and psychiatrists who participated in and pioneered the nazi genocide of disabled people continued to practice medicine and hold major academic positions of power for decades.

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carrylex@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Relevant section of the article: Denazification#End

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- bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  As a result, many people with a former Nazi past ended up again in the political apparatus of West Germany. In 1957, 77% of the German Ministry of Justice’s senior officials were former Nazi Party members. Included in this ministry was Franz Massfeller, a former Nazi official who had participated in the meetings which followed the Wannsee Conference, in which the extermination of Jews was planned.
  
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pyre@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“but it’s our heritage!”

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yucandu@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
East Germany, in contrast, declared everyone that opposed the state to be a ‘nazi’ and had them imprisoned.

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, the reasoning for these accusations focused on the fact that many former functionaries of the 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.[34] 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

Yeah that’s right, I can quote wikipedia too.

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- bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  You realize I’m not a tankie, right? I don’t care to defend the USSR or East Germany in any way.
  
  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 […] many former functionaries of the Nazi regime were employed in positions in the West German government.
  
  Gotta hand it to them, though, sometimes they do call balls and strikes.
  
  East German uprising of 1953 in Berlin was officially blamed on Nazi agents provocateurs from West Berlin
  
  While I’m sure there absolutely was popular opposition to the increased work quotas, I can believe that this might have some truth to it, too. There’s absolutely shitloads of evidence that Western powers love to turn civil unrest into uprisings and attempted coups.
  
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  - Transform2942@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Gotta hand it to them, though, sometimes they do call balls and strikes.
    
    What materialist analysis does to a MF
    
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Formfiller@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Probably why German born peter thiel is destroying the world now

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quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Many of them started a new Socialist project with a focus on ethic Nationalism in the Middle East.

It became known as Israel.

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adeoxymus@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I recently read the book aftermath from Harald Jähner. In the last chapter he argues that this sort of “clemency” for the nazis was necessary to recreate the German society. After the war there were still 6 million Nazis, and one way or another these had to be integrated in society. That way was to start with a new beginning for everyone. According to the author it was mainly the children of that generation that did wanted to deal with the crimes and horrors of their parents past. Years later, in the 60s and 70s.

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- quick_snail@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Think of all the jobs that would have been provided by building prisons to house those 6 million Nazis and give them therapy until the antifascist psychologists declare them safe to return to society?
  
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- bearboiblake@pawb.social ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Pure, unadulterated copium. Sorry. There is no excuse. I’d say that denazification efforts were abandoned because the Western powers were themselves fascist. Look at our society now.
  
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