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Denazification
The April 1945 Directive to Commander-in-Chief of
the United States Forces of Occupation in Germany, General Eisenhower
(JCS
1067) set forth the principal policies of denazification, aimed
at "restoring Germany's political life on democratic basis":
• Dissolving the Nazi Party, its formations, affiliated
associations and supervised organizations, and all Nazi public institutions
which were set up as instruments of Party domination, and prohibiting
their revival in any form.
• Abrogation of all laws purporting to establish the
political structure of National Socialism, and all laws, decrees
and regulations which establish discriminations on grounds of race,
nationality, political opinions, or creed.
• Removal and exclusion of all members of the Nazi
party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities
from public office and from positions of importance in quasi-public
and private enterprises such as:
(1) civic, economic and labor organizations,
(2) corporations and other organizations in which the German government
or subdivisions have a major financial interest,
(3) industry, commerce, agriculture, and finance,
(4) education,
(5) the press, publishing houses and other agencies disseminating
news and propaganda.
Persons are to be treated as more than nominal participants
in Party activities and as active supporters of Nazism or militarism
when they have
(1) held office or otherwise been active at any level from local
to national in the party and its subordinate organizations,
(2) authorized or participated affirmatively in any Nazi crimes,
racial persecutions or discriminations,
(3) been avowed believers in Nazism or racial and militaristic creeds,
or
(4) voluntarily given substantial moral or material support or political
assistance of any kind to the Nazi Party.
No such persons shall be retained in any of the categories
of employment listed above because of administrative necessity,
convenience or expediency.
• Property, real and personal, owned or controlled
by the Nazi party, its formations, affiliated associations and supervised
organizations, and by all persons subject to arrest, will be taken
under military control.
• All archives, monuments and museums of Nazi inception,
or which are devoted to the perpetuation of German militarism, will
be taken under military control.
• Special efforts will be made to preserve from destruction
and take under your control records, plans, books, documents, papers,
files, and scientific, industrial and other information and data
belonging to or controlled by the Central German Government, the
Nazi Party, its formations, affiliated associations and supervised
organizations; all police organizations, including security and
political police; important economic organizations and industrial
establishments including those controlled by the Nazi Party or its
personnel; institutes and special bureaus devoting themselves to
racial, political, militaristic or similar research or propaganda.
• Adolf Hitler, his chief associates, other war criminals
and all persons who have participated in planning or carrying out
Nazi enterprises should be search out, arrested and tried (the Directive
contains a list of the categories subject to arrest).
• No political activities will be countenanced unless
authorized by the military authority. The propagation in any form
of Nazi, militaristic or pan-German doctrines is prohibited.
• All extraordinary courts, including the People's
Court and the Special Courts, and all courts and tribunals of the
Nazi Party and of its formations, affiliated associations and supervised
organizations are to be abolished immediately, all ordinary criminal,
civil and administrative courts, except those previously re-established
by order of the military government, will be closed. After the elimination
of all Nazi features and personnel (80% of the legal profession
were Nazi party members) those which are to exercise jurisdiction
may resume operations.
• With the exception of the Criminal Police, purged
of Nazi personnel and utilized under the control and supervision
of the military government, all elements of the Security Police,
e.g., Gestapo, will be abolished.
• All educational institutions except those previously
re-established by allied authority will be closed. The closure of
Nazi educational institutions will be permanent. A coordinated system
of control over German education and an affirmative program of reorientation
will be established, designed completely to eliminate Nazi and militaristic
doctrines and to encourage the development of democratic ideas.
Reopening of elementary, middle and vocational schools will be carried
out at the earliest possible date after Nazi personnel has been
eliminated. Textbooks and curricula, which are not free of Nazi
and militaristic doctrine, shall not be used.
Pursuant to the decisions of the Potsdam Conference,
after Germany's surrender, a denazification process was launched:
the Nazi party was dissolved, its members were removed from office,
and war tribunals were set up. The Allied Forces arrested different
categories Nazis - from the top Nazi leaders to the local group
chiefs, from the Gestapo bosses to the leaders or Hitler's Youth
and the German Worker's Front. The Nazi party archives provided
sufficient information to identify its operatives.
The International War Tribunal, the so-called Nuremberg
Trial, of the Nazi leaders was held from November 1945 through October
1, 1946. They were indicted of the following counts:
1. Crimes against peace - planning, preparation, initiating
and ordering of military aggression in violation of international
law and conventions; conspiracy to perpetrate those crimes;
2. Crimes against humanity - homicide, genocide, deportation, enslavement
of non-combatant population before or in time of war; persecution
on political, racial or religious grounds, regardless of whether
they were perpetrated in violation of domestic law;
3. War crimes - violation of the laws of war, killings, deportations,
forced labor of non-combatant population and prisoners of war, destruction
of settlements without military need. The Tribunal sought individual
responsibility from the leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices
for purposeful participation in the establishment of a system of
lawlessness, injustice, and cruelty, against all legal and moral
principles of the contemporary world.
On October 1, 1946, the sentence of 21 of the 24 accused
was delivered: ten were sentenced to death by hanging, all others
are imprisoned for various terms - from life to 10 years. The Tribunal
turned down the defense's objection that states, not persons can
be help responsible for war crimes. The trial spread the word of
Nazi mass crimes to the world.
The US authorities set up 12 more trials in Nuremberg
and one in Dachau over the period 1945 - 1946. The UK authorities
hold trials in Lueneburg and Hamburg. Since then to present days
such trials have been set in West Germany, Israel, and the US, including
the publicized trials of Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk in Jerusalem.
In 1963 - 1965 in Frankfurt, a trial is conducted against 22 former
SS officers in Auschwitz.
Even before the surrender in the occupied territories
the candidates for public office fill out detailed surveys, Fragebogen,
to clarify their past: membership in the Nazi party or military
organizations, salary, jobs prior to Hitler's period. This information
is necessary to the military authority to identify the active Nazis,
but also their sympathizers, militarists, and persons who benefited
materially from Nazism. The truthfulness of the data was verified
by a US special service.
In the US zone, public officials to be removed from
office included the hierarchy from mayors and police commanders'
levels and above. All persons appointed to these or higher offices
after January 30, 1933, had to be dismissed. Persons of influence
in quasi-public and private enterprises were also subject to removal
from office. These included officials in the civic, economic and
labor organizations, corporations, industry, commerce, agriculture,
and finance institutions, the media, and education, including teachers.
Also removed from positions of influence were party members who
were department heads and had joined the party before May 1, 1937
(as of that date officials were asked to join the party or relinquish
their position) or after that date, but were more than nominal participants
in its activities. By October 1945 in the US zone, 100,000 had been
purged from the public sector and 30,000 - from the private sector.
Initially, only Nazis owing one million marks in capital,
or 250 employees, were deprived of their private businesses. Later,
the definition was extended and if it was proved that a person was
more than nominal Nazi, they had to relinquish their business irrespective
of its size, and if they were owners, the property passed under
the control of the military government. An act of the military command
of September 1945 introduced harsher limitations for hiring Nazi
party members. Technically, they had the right to menial jobs only.
An amendment to the act empowered the German courts to consider
petitions by those afflicted. In the largest percentage of the cases
these instances of appeal decided that the persons in question were
nominal, not active Nazis. In Bavaria, out of 90,000 petitions,
65,000 were granted, which meant they were restored to their property
and jobs.
For the local elections in January 1946, the military
authority checked 4,750,000 names from the voters' lists for Nazi
party membership and disqualified 326,000 of them. The candidates
also passed a new examination of the Frageboden they filed
out. In early 1946, the US military command was considering relinquishing
the responsibilities of denazification to the new German authorities.
Some controversies occurred in discussing this between the US and
German side, as in their denazification idea the Americans distinguished
between active and nominal Nazis, and the Germans introduced more
distinctions: chief offenders, offenders, small offenders, followers,
and vindicated. Whereby the Americans imposed permanent removal
of active Nazis from positions of influence in public and business
life, the Germans adopted a schedule of sanctions and see the purpose
of denazification in returning the guilty ones into society. The
US command does not object, but insist that Nazism be treated as
a felony, and that it be punished by strictly defined terms: 10
years imprisonment for chief Nazi offenders, 5 years or less for
the minor offenders, fines of 10,000 marks for the small offenders,
and fines of 1,000 marks for the followers. The Americas were aware
that the fines would be paid with inflationary money but court proceedings
in each individual case would prevent mass vindication.
Deciding on the chief offenders, too, caused argument.
For the Germans, these are the persons that occupied relatively
high positions in the Nazi party or were army generals. The Americans
specify 99 categories of persons to be considered as chief offenders,
and recommended a very careful survey of all army officers, people
of the "Prussian Junker tradition", student organization members,
and others.
On March 5, 1946, the Act on Liberation from Nazism
and Militarism entered into force. In late 1946 it became mandatory
for the other zones as well. Under this act, 13.5 million people
in the US zone, all Germans over 18 years of age, had to fill out
a shortened version of the military authority survey, the Fragebogen.
Those, whose activities could incriminate them, were tried before
local denazification courts that put them in one of the five categories
and punished them accordingly. Those who were pronounced vindicated
and those who paid the imposed fines were proclaimed denazificated
and their civil right restored. The act stipulated that the tribunal
members be locals, known as opponents of Nazism, honest and just.
The tribunals were hardly staffed due to the reluctance and fear
of the people to participate.
By late May 1946 the military authority found 314,000
persons as active Nazis subject to removal from public office and
positions of influence in the private sector. With the entry into
force of the Act on Liberation from Nazism and Militarism, the German
denazification courts tried 887,252 out of 3,623,112 persons responsible
under the act. Of them, 117,533 were convicted as Nazi offenders
in the five lower categories. 87,775 received prison terms or fines
higher than 1,000 marks.
As early as the first day of occupation a reform of
the education system and its liberation form Nazi influence was
launched. In the US zone, the majority, 70-80%, of teachers were
dismissed. The textbooks were scrutinized, and as almost all of
them propagated Nazi or pan-German ideas, they were changed.
The US military command strictly licensed and monitored
the media and puts special efforts to guarantee that persons with
anti-Nazi past would work in the press and radio. The military command
established a body of its own to control and reconstruct the German
information agencies, which was done in three phases. First, all
media were closed at the outset of the occupation. Second, the military
authority selected media as its information organs. Third, gradually,
the media were restored and returned to German hands after granting
licenses to anti-Nazi, democratically-minded Germans. Along with
these criteria, in issuing licenses the representation of various
social, political, and religious views by the different publications
was pursued as well.
One of the principal objectives was to create a new
class of journalists, and young journalists were recruited and trained
for the purpose. In recruiting journalists for the German news agency,
DANA, the Americas preferred to the experienced journalists those
younger and inexperienced, but with anti-Nazi past. From July through
the end of 1945, 130 journalists at the average age of 26 were recruited
and trained.
Artists in theatre and music were among the first
professions checked by the German organs of self-regulation. Councils
composed of local officials and citizens from March 1946 on scrutinized
surveys filed out by producers, artists, and theatre owners. After
another check by the military authority, the local authorities could
chose its theaters and orchestras.
Along with theatre, music, news agencies, and the
press, the American military authority purged from Nazi influence
and introduced the propagation of democracy in the radio, book publishing,
and film industries.
In the different zones, the denazification process
differed in scope. The procedure was most comprehensive in the US
zone. In the UK and the French zones, denazification suffered some
compromise due to economic and administrative considerations. In
the Soviet zone, denazification was used for establishing a totalitarian
communist state. For this reason, Nazis of high standing were not
affected by denazification measures when they showed willingness
to cooperate with the new regime, and even reached high positions
in the new communist ruling class. Pronouncing the level of guilt
was different in severity as well. The cases of "chief offenders"
in the US zone were 2.5% of the total number, in the UK zone - 1.3%,
and in the French zone - 0.1%.
In the Soviet zone, denazification ended in 1948,
in the other zones, differently - from 1950 to 1954.
Today, in several countries - Austria, Belgium, France,
Germany, Israel, Spain, and Switzerland -there is legislation incriminating
public denial, open belittling, approval, or vindication of Nazi
genocide and crimes against humanity. In Germany, a ban is imposed
on Nazi symbols as well. In all cases, the suits are filed by the
government, in some, anti-Nazi organizations and individuals participate
as well. It is provided for broad publicity of the court verdicts.
Penalties include imprisonment and fines but vary in severity in
the several countries.
The
U.S. Army in the occupation of Germany 1944-1946 by Earl F.
Ziemke
Mazal
Library
America's
Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq
Combating
Holocaust denial through law in the United Kingdom
Translation from Bulgarian by Dr. Neli Hadjiyska
and Dr. Valentin Hadjiyski
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