page_title: Denazification
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Denazification / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: A clearance Certificate issued to Paul Fischer under the provisions of Military Ordinance number 79 (previously 42), by the Wattenscheid Denazification Authority.Details: Number: 0028/WAT/25/4 2559Personal ID Number: FAM/AW 084199Form: PDU. CCG. 1044 3,000,000 9.46* Deutsch: Entlastungszeugnis 0028/WAT/25/4 2559 für Paul Fischer, Personalausweis Nummer FAM/AW 084199 unter den Bestimmungen der Verordnung Nummer 79 (zuvor 42) vom Entnazifizierungsausschuß des Stadtkreises Wattenscheid vo 13. April 1948; Formblatt PDU. CCG. 1044 3,000,000 9.46*
context_page_description: Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the National Socialist ideology. It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Party or SS members from positions of power and influence and by disbanding or rendering impotent the organisations associated with Nazism. The programme of denazification was launched after the end of the Second World War and was solidified by the Potsdam Agreement in August 1945.
  The term denazification was first coined as a technical term in 1943 in the Pentagon, intended to be applied in a narrow sense with reference to the post-war German legal system. Soon afterwards, it took on a general meaning. From 1945 to 1950, the Allied powers detained over 400,000 Germans in internment camps in extrajudicial fashion in the name of denazification.
  In late 1945 and early 1946, the emergence of the Cold War, the economic importance of Germany and a lack of Allied manpower to run the denazification effort caused the western powers and the United States in particular to lose interest in the programme.
context_section_description: Denazification in Germany was attempted through a series of directives issued by the Allied Control Council, seated in Berlin, beginning in January 1946. "Denazification directives" identified specific people and groups and outlined judicial procedures and guidelines for handling them. Though all the occupying forces had agreed on the initiative, the methods used for denazification and the intensity with which they were applied differed between the occupation zones.
  The term "denazification" also refers to the removal of the physical symbols of the Nazi regime. For example, in 1957 the West German government re-issued World War II Iron Cross medals, among other decorations, without the swastika in the centre.
  About 8.5 million Germans, or 10% of the population, had been members of the Nazi Party. Nazi-related organisations also had huge memberships, such as the German Labour Front (25 million), the National Socialist People's Welfare organisation (17 million), the League of German Women, Hitler Youth, the Doctors' League, and others. It was through the Party and these organisations that the Nazi state was run, involving as many as 45 million Germans in total. In addition, Nazism found significant support among industrialists, who produced weapons or used slave labour, and large landowners, especially the Junkers in Prussia.  Denazification after the surrender of Germany was thus an enormous undertaking, fraught with many difficulties.
  The first difficulty was the enormous number of Germans who might have to be first investigated, then penalised if found to have supported the Nazi state to an unacceptable degree. In the early months of denazification there was a great desire to be utterly thorough, to investigate every suspect and hold every supporter of Nazism accountable; however, it was decided that the numbers simply made this goal impractical. It soon became evident, further, that pursuing denazification too scrupulously would make it impossible to create a functioning, economically-efficient democratic society in Germany. Enforcing the strictest sanctions against lesser offenders would prevent too many talented people from participating in the reconstruction process. The Morgenthau Plan had recommended that the Allies create a post-war Germany with all its industrial capacity destroyed, reduced to a level of subsistence farming; however, that plan was soon abandoned as unrealistic and, because of its excessive punitive measures, liable to give rise to German anger and aggressiveness. As time went on, another consideration that moderated the denazification effort in the West was the concern to keep enough good will of the German population to prevent the growth of communism.
  The denazification process was often completely disregarded by both the Soviets and the Western powers for German rocket scientists and other technical experts, who were taken out of Germany to work on projects in the victors' own countries or simply seized in order to prevent the other side from taking them. The U.S. took 785 scientists and engineers from Germany to the United States, some of whom formed the backbone of the U.S. space rocket design cadre (see Operation Paperclip).
  In the case of the top-ranking Nazis, such as Göring, Hess, von Ribbentrop, Streicher, and Speer, the initial proposal by the British was to simply arrest them and shoot them, but that course of action was replaced by putting them on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials in order to publicise their crimes while demonstrating that the trials and the sentences were just, especially to the German people. However, the legal foundations of the trials were questioned, and many Germans were not convinced that the trials were anything more than "victors' justice".
  Many refugees from Nazism were Germans and Austrians, and some had fought for Britain in the Second World War. Some were transferred into the Intelligence Corps and sent back to Germany and Austria in British uniform. However, German-speakers were small in number in the British zone, which was hampered by the 
caption: A 1948 denazification clearance certificate from Wattenscheid in the British Zone.
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