page_title: Denazification
section_title: British zone
hierarchical_section_title: Denazification / Application / British zone
caption_attribution_description: Für eine schnelle und gerechte Entnazisierung wählt CDU Plakatart: Textplakat Allgemein Drucker_Druckart_Druckort: H. Ganter AU/2 Köln, 5500, 3.47, Kl. B. Objekt-Signatur: 10-009&#160;: 17 Bestand: Landtagswahlplakate Nordrhein-Westfalen (10-009) GliederungBestand10-18: Landtagswahlplakate Nordrhein-Westfalen (10-009)&#160;» Landtagswahl am 20.4.1947&#160;» CDU&#160;» Allgemein Lizenz: KAS/ACDP 10-009&#160;: 17 CC-BY-SA 3.0 DE
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: The British prepared a plan from 1942 onwards, assigning a number of quite junior civil servants to head the administration of liberated territory in the rear of the Armies, with draconian powers to remove from their post, in both public and private domains, anyone suspected, usually on behavioural grounds, of harbouring Nazi sympathies. For the British government, the rebuilding of German economic power was more important than the imprisonment of Nazi criminals. Economically hard pressed at home after the war, they did not want the burden of feeding and otherwise administering Germany.
  In October 1945, in order to constitute a working legal system, and given that 90% of German lawyers had been members of the Nazi Party, the British decided that 50% of the German Legal Civil Service could be staffed by "nominal" Nazis. Similar pressures caused them to relax the restriction even further in April 1946. In industry, especially in the economically crucial Ruhr area, the British began by being lenient about who owned or operated businesses, turning stricter by autumn of 1945. To reduce the power of industrialists, the British expanded the role of trade unions, giving them some decision-making powers.
  They were, however, especially zealous during the early months of occupation in bringing to justice anyone, soldiers or civilians, who had committed war crimes against POWs or captured Allied aircrew. In June 1945 an
  interrogation centre at Bad Nenndorf was opened, where ex-Nazis and suspected communist agents were tortured with beatings, whippings, thumb-screws, cold, starvation, etc. A public scandal ensued but only one person was found guilty of neglect.
  The British to some extent avoided being overwhelmed by the potential numbers of denazification investigations by requiring that no one need fill in the Fragebogen unless they were applying for an official or responsible position. This difference between American and British policy was decried by the Americans and caused some Nazis to seek shelter in the British zone.
  In January 1946, the British handed over their denazification panels to the Germans.
caption: A poster from the North Rhine-Westphalia state elections 1947, with the slogan "For a quick and just denazification vote CDU"
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