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> The Soviets fired more than 500,000 ex-Nazis from administrative positions in their zone of occupation after the war, only to allow the German communist autho

> The Soviets fired more than 500,000 ex-Nazis from administrative positions in their zone of occupation after the war, only to allow the German communist authorities to take them back if their public record wasn’t too awful. Citation needed.

flohofwoe 4y ago
Here's a fairly recent article about the topic: https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entna... While East Germany was indeed more serious about the de-nazification process than the West, in reality it wasn't as strict as the propaganda would want to make the world believe. It's also fairly well known by now that the National People's Army (or rather its shadowy predecessor 'Kasernierte Volkspolizei') was also built up with the help of experienced WW2 officers while turning a blind eye on their political past. Eventually the NVA dismissed at least the highest-ranking nazis (during the mid to late 50's), but it's naive to believe that East Germany didn't have its share of tolerated 'old nazi bureaucrats'.
watwut 4y ago
It is kinda shaky, because everyone and his brother suddenly realized Stalin was not angel in WWII due to Russian latest invasion. But generally, among other things, it would be hard to impossible to find enough completely clean Germans after war. That country was thoroughly ideologized and engaged in very violent systematic opposition suppression for over a decade. For starts, and the myth of clean Wehrmacht is exactly that - myth. It was not as elite as SS, but ethnical cleansing was part of their mandate. (That includes both Holocaust with camps and all and campaigns against non-Jewish ethicities.) Russians were originally blaming everyone who did not took arms against Nazi as cooperators. Initially, if you was not partisan you was enemy. Germany had no partisans. They also distrusted own captured people cause those were supposedly under German influence or allowed themselves to be captured. Any German man over 14 was supposed to be member of some fighting unit by law by the end of the war. (Badly armed and incapable of fight, but still)
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  > ...because everyone and his brother suddenly realized Stalin was not angel in WWII due to Russian latest invasion. Erm, that was pretty much clear and official since Stalin's death right? Even the Soviet Union had its own de-Stalinization process, as well as the Eastern European countries under Soviet rule. If anything, the behaviour of the Russian army in Ukraine makes the excesses of the Red Army in WW2 in the 'liberated' areas more believable (this was very much a taboo in East Germany for instance, while Stalin's crimes could at least be discussed).
  - watwut 4y ago
    A bit offtopic, but in Russia, Stalin victims were not rehabilitated like they were in other countries. And lately in Russia, Stalin was getting framed as good maligned manager. Purges kinda just happened, as natural disasters happen, not that someone is responsible. Even years before this war, the Russian archives were closed to researchers and memoir organizations dedicated to communists crimes persecuted. But here, I am referring to popular discussions where people really liked to ignore that Stalin was in alliance and that purges and such happened already before WWII. Claiming that WWII was real world example of clear good aliance vs clear bad. I mean, Germany was clear bad sure. And East and Russia were victim, absolutely. And also, German behavior in East was more brutal then their behavior in West - the colonization and quest for living space were different then quest for dominance. Nevertheless, it the whole good vs bad framing here is kinda funny, cause one of good guys is Stalin.
    - badpun 4y ago
      I'm not sure how much about purges was known in the West at the time (USSR was pretty well cut-off from the rest of the world), but by 1940, the West already knew about the Katyń Massacre. I think it was clear for leadership there that they're allying with one monster to defeat another one, and they could very well do the same thing in reverse order if circumstances called for that. It was just that, at the time, it was Hitler who was bombing London and not Stalin, so he had to go first.
rjzzleep 4y ago
My mother used to go swimming with a woman who's dad was a Nazi officer who became the police chief in Hamburg. Who do you think took all the administrative positions in Germany after the war? The biggest part of the population was in favour of the Nazis. They didn't suddenly change their minds. Part of what the Stasi(the east German secret police) did in eastern Germany was to hunt Nazis. Now you can say how horrible the Stasi was and you might be right about it, but there is no denying that a significant part of their work was hunting Nazis and Nazi collaborators. But given the demographics of the country I'd be surprised if a big portion of the Stasi weren't Nazis at some point themselves. The western German BND(Bundesnachrichtendienst) which is Germany's intelligence agency was founded with the help of the CIA by Reinhard Gehlen who was a general major in the Wehrmacht. The Spiegel - one of Germany's major newspapers - actually had very close ties to the BND and was instrumental to whitewashing the institutions history. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bnd-gehlen-illegal-erich-kaestner-1.4399255 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bnd-gehlen-illegal-erich...
- hef19898 4y ago
  Gehlen was also in Fremde Heere Ost, military intelligence geared against the USSR. And we all know just how good the German intelligence assessment of the USSR was during WW2. And yes, that the Spiegel was closer to ex-Nazis than they care to admit today. Same with Stern and Nannen (famour publisher in post-war Germany, founder of a renowned prize for journalism and a journalism school), that guy actively served in a joint SS-Airforce propaganda unit in Italy.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    I feel like sometimes the US(the CIA or both?) is so clouded by their fear of USSR communism that they blindly ignored and funded extremely dangerous entities. Let's not forget that Gehlen got greenlit to feed Nazi groups in an effort to counter soviet influence. Similarly the strong support of China was done in order to counter the soviets. In the end the Soviet-Union collapsed and China ended up being a much stronger adversary than the Russian would ever be.
    - 4y ago
refurb 4y ago
This is quite well established. Nazi party membership was huge and trying to vet former Nazi's post-war while there wasn't enough food to go around was pretty quickly dropped. In person interviews at the start became "this guy says he never did anything wrong and hates the Nazi party now". "DeNazified" papers were just rubber stamped at that point. After the war, it was pretty much the UK who fought the hardest to "de-Nazify" the new Germany - from high level all the way down to anyone who had a smug of blood on their hands. France was eager at first, but drama at home (and lack of funds for the occupation) made them drop the idea pretty quickly. Plus they had their own "cleansing" immediately after liberation so quenched their thirst for vengeance pretty early on. Americans were focused on a strong Western Germany to counter the USSR. The centuries old European bad blood meant nothing to them, so once they skim off the worst of the Nazi's it was more about creating a functioning country. Russia made a good showing at first, but like the Americans realized "the juice wasn't worth the squeeze" and if faced with a choice of "we can't fill this important position" and "we can just fill it with a low level Nazi who pinky promises not to do it again", the chose the 2nd option. Eventually the UK gave up as well. They just held out the longest.
gumby 4y ago
> Citation needed. Indeed. The Soviets touted their more comprehensive denazification vs the greater “rehabilitation” / whitewash by the west as an example of western hypocrisy. Of course they were better at propaganda. But from the outside it looked like one of the reasons for the incompetence of the DDR was that they had purged everyone of any skill and experience. But despite the large body of writing on this subject it still feels like a broadly unexamined subject to me, at least in Germany and France.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  There were many more important reasons than just the de-nazification: - Companies and specialists moved to the West (before 1961) because many saw the writing on the wall (living under the Soviet yoke vs living a comfortable life in the 'free West'). As a result, Bavaria and Saxony essentially switched places in terms of industrialization. - The East had to endure crushing war reparations, the Russians dismantled and moved entire factories to the Soviet Union, while the West was rebuilt through the Marshall plan. - Despite all that, up until around the mid-60's the East German industry was actually still somewhat competitive, and many people still believed in 'the system'. The apathy and economic downturn mostly set in during the early 70's. Under the hood, the East German authorities were well aware that they couldn't just get rid of all nazi sympathizers, there would simply be no population left to build a country on after all. So essentially if you were not an obvious war criminal, and pinky sweared that you saw the light and had converted into a good communist, the authorities didn't have much of a choice than forget about the past. It basically became a game of "don't ask, don't tell".

flohofwoe 4y ago

Here's a fairly recent article about the topic: https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entna... While East Germany was indeed more serious about the de-nazification process than the West, in reality it wasn't as strict as the propaganda would want to make the world believe. It's also fairly well known by now that the National People's Army (or rather its shadowy predecessor 'Kasernierte Volkspolizei') was also built up with the help of experienced WW2 officers while turning a blind eye on their political past. Eventually the NVA dismissed at least the highest-ranking nazis (during the mid to late 50's), but it's naive to believe that East Germany didn't have its share of tolerated 'old nazi bureaucrats'.

watwut 4y ago

It is kinda shaky, because everyone and his brother suddenly realized Stalin was not angel in WWII due to Russian latest invasion. But generally, among other things, it would be hard to impossible to find enough completely clean Germans after war. That country was thoroughly ideologized and engaged in very violent systematic opposition suppression for over a decade. For starts, and the myth of clean Wehrmacht is exactly that - myth. It was not as elite as SS, but ethnical cleansing was part of their mandate. (That includes both Holocaust with camps and all and campaigns against non-Jewish ethicities.) Russians were originally blaming everyone who did not took arms against Nazi as cooperators. Initially, if you was not partisan you was enemy. Germany had no partisans. They also distrusted own captured people cause those were supposedly under German influence or allowed themselves to be captured. Any German man over 14 was supposed to be member of some fighting unit by law by the end of the war. (Badly armed and incapable of fight, but still)

flohofwoe 4y ago
> ...because everyone and his brother suddenly realized Stalin was not angel in WWII due to Russian latest invasion. Erm, that was pretty much clear and official since Stalin's death right? Even the Soviet Union had its own de-Stalinization process, as well as the Eastern European countries under Soviet rule. If anything, the behaviour of the Russian army in Ukraine makes the excesses of the Red Army in WW2 in the 'liberated' areas more believable (this was very much a taboo in East Germany for instance, while Stalin's crimes could at least be discussed).
- watwut 4y ago
  A bit offtopic, but in Russia, Stalin victims were not rehabilitated like they were in other countries. And lately in Russia, Stalin was getting framed as good maligned manager. Purges kinda just happened, as natural disasters happen, not that someone is responsible. Even years before this war, the Russian archives were closed to researchers and memoir organizations dedicated to communists crimes persecuted. But here, I am referring to popular discussions where people really liked to ignore that Stalin was in alliance and that purges and such happened already before WWII. Claiming that WWII was real world example of clear good aliance vs clear bad. I mean, Germany was clear bad sure. And East and Russia were victim, absolutely. And also, German behavior in East was more brutal then their behavior in West - the colonization and quest for living space were different then quest for dominance. Nevertheless, it the whole good vs bad framing here is kinda funny, cause one of good guys is Stalin.
  - badpun 4y ago
    I'm not sure how much about purges was known in the West at the time (USSR was pretty well cut-off from the rest of the world), but by 1940, the West already knew about the Katyń Massacre. I think it was clear for leadership there that they're allying with one monster to defeat another one, and they could very well do the same thing in reverse order if circumstances called for that. It was just that, at the time, it was Hitler who was bombing London and not Stalin, so he had to go first.

rjzzleep 4y ago

My mother used to go swimming with a woman who's dad was a Nazi officer who became the police chief in Hamburg. Who do you think took all the administrative positions in Germany after the war? The biggest part of the population was in favour of the Nazis. They didn't suddenly change their minds. Part of what the Stasi(the east German secret police) did in eastern Germany was to hunt Nazis. Now you can say how horrible the Stasi was and you might be right about it, but there is no denying that a significant part of their work was hunting Nazis and Nazi collaborators. But given the demographics of the country I'd be surprised if a big portion of the Stasi weren't Nazis at some point themselves. The western German BND(Bundesnachrichtendienst) which is Germany's intelligence agency was founded with the help of the CIA by Reinhard Gehlen who was a general major in the Wehrmacht. The Spiegel - one of Germany's major newspapers - actually had very close ties to the BND and was instrumental to whitewashing the institutions history. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bnd-gehlen-illegal-erich-kaestner-1.4399255 https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/bnd-gehlen-illegal-erich...

hef19898 4y ago
Gehlen was also in Fremde Heere Ost, military intelligence geared against the USSR. And we all know just how good the German intelligence assessment of the USSR was during WW2. And yes, that the Spiegel was closer to ex-Nazis than they care to admit today. Same with Stern and Nannen (famour publisher in post-war Germany, founder of a renowned prize for journalism and a journalism school), that guy actively served in a joint SS-Airforce propaganda unit in Italy.
- rjzzleep 4y ago
  I feel like sometimes the US(the CIA or both?) is so clouded by their fear of USSR communism that they blindly ignored and funded extremely dangerous entities. Let's not forget that Gehlen got greenlit to feed Nazi groups in an effort to counter soviet influence. Similarly the strong support of China was done in order to counter the soviets. In the end the Soviet-Union collapsed and China ended up being a much stronger adversary than the Russian would ever be.
  - 4y ago

refurb 4y ago

This is quite well established. Nazi party membership was huge and trying to vet former Nazi's post-war while there wasn't enough food to go around was pretty quickly dropped. In person interviews at the start became "this guy says he never did anything wrong and hates the Nazi party now". "DeNazified" papers were just rubber stamped at that point. After the war, it was pretty much the UK who fought the hardest to "de-Nazify" the new Germany - from high level all the way down to anyone who had a smug of blood on their hands. France was eager at first, but drama at home (and lack of funds for the occupation) made them drop the idea pretty quickly. Plus they had their own "cleansing" immediately after liberation so quenched their thirst for vengeance pretty early on. Americans were focused on a strong Western Germany to counter the USSR. The centuries old European bad blood meant nothing to them, so once they skim off the worst of the Nazi's it was more about creating a functioning country. Russia made a good showing at first, but like the Americans realized "the juice wasn't worth the squeeze" and if faced with a choice of "we can't fill this important position" and "we can just fill it with a low level Nazi who pinky promises not to do it again", the chose the 2nd option. Eventually the UK gave up as well. They just held out the longest.

gumby 4y ago

> Citation needed. Indeed. The Soviets touted their more comprehensive denazification vs the greater “rehabilitation” / whitewash by the west as an example of western hypocrisy. Of course they were better at propaganda. But from the outside it looked like one of the reasons for the incompetence of the DDR was that they had purged everyone of any skill and experience. But despite the large body of writing on this subject it still feels like a broadly unexamined subject to me, at least in Germany and France.

flohofwoe 4y ago
There were many more important reasons than just the de-nazification: - Companies and specialists moved to the West (before 1961) because many saw the writing on the wall (living under the Soviet yoke vs living a comfortable life in the 'free West'). As a result, Bavaria and Saxony essentially switched places in terms of industrialization. - The East had to endure crushing war reparations, the Russians dismantled and moved entire factories to the Soviet Union, while the West was rebuilt through the Marshall plan. - Despite all that, up until around the mid-60's the East German industry was actually still somewhat competitive, and many people still believed in 'the system'. The apathy and economic downturn mostly set in during the early 70's. Under the hood, the East German authorities were well aware that they couldn't just get rid of all nazi sympathizers, there would simply be no population left to build a country on after all. So essentially if you were not an obvious war criminal, and pinky sweared that you saw the light and had converted into a good communist, the authorities didn't have much of a choice than forget about the past. It basically became a game of "don't ask, don't tell".