Nazi legacy and the Allies

• The Nuremberg trials started on the 20th November 1945, and 22 of the leader members of the Nazi regime were indicted. While 12 leaders were sentenced to death, only 10 were actually executed.
• The Nazi Party was declared illegal in Germany and the vast majority of the 6.5 million members in 1945 threw away their membership cards in the hope of distancing themselves from the regime.
• In the US zone, all those who were Nazi Party members before 1937 were dismissed from office
• British zone: tended to work on a a case-by-case basis. They soon allowed ex-party members to return to their positions and ex-Nazis were often permitted to assume leadership roles in the zone, something which the US policies prohibited
• In the French zone, denazification was a relatively low priority compared to concerns about defence and security
• Soviet zone:

  • blamed the capitalist system for the development of Nazism
  • leading Nazi functionaries had been imprisoned and punished
  • Nazi property had been confiscated and redistributed by the Soviet authorities
  • 450,000 ex-Nazi party members had been dismissed from office, including teachers
  • de-Nazification served more as a way to remove opposition
• German opposition to de-Nazification increased because of the introduction of questionnaires and the inconsistencies of the whole process
• In 1947-48, the Allies' interests moved away from de-Nazification and towards the Cold War
• It became very clear that the zones were not in agreement over how to pursue de-Nazification, making it harder to implement and more inconsistent
• The Allies created the task of de-Nazification which grew out of hand and they simply did not have the staff to pursue