Denazification

1. Lead

Denazification (in German, Entnazifizierung) was the programme carried out by the victorious Allies after the Second World War to remove the influence of National Socialism from German public life, to punish those responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime, and to rebuild Germany as a democratic state.

The programme was agreed at the Potsdam Conference in July–August 1945, and it was applied in the four zones of occupation — American, British, French and Soviet — in different ways and with different degrees of severity. It included the trial of the major war criminals at Nuremberg, the trial of thousands of lesser criminals in the Allied military courts, the removal of Nazis from public office, the questionnaire (the Fragebogen) that every adult German was required to complete, and the system of denazification tribunals (the Spruchkammern) that classified Germans according to their degree of involvement with the regime.

The programme was, by the early 1950s, largely abandoned, and it is remembered as a partial success and a partial failure.

Denazification is one of the most debated subjects in the history of post-war Germany, and the debate has never been settled. Its defenders argue that it removed the Nazi leadership, that it established the principle that crimes would be punished, and that it made possible the rebuilding of Germany as a democracy. Its critics argue that it punished the small and spared the great, that it was applied inconsistently, and that it was abandoned too soon, allowing former Nazis to return to positions of power in the new West Germany. Both judgements are supported by the record, and this article presents both, distinguishing between what denazification achieved and what it failed to achieve.

2. Key Facts

What	The Allied programme to remove National Socialism from German public life and to punish Nazi crimes, 1945–1951
Where	Germany and Austria, in the four zones of occupation (American, British, French, Soviet)
When	Agreed at Potsdam, July–August 1945; the main phase ran from 1945 to 1949; formally ended in the early 1950s
How	The Nuremberg Trials; Allied military courts; the Fragebogen questionnaire; the Spruchkammern tribunals; removal from public office
Scale	About 13 million questionnaires were completed in the Western zones; more than 3 million Germans were investigated by the tribunals
Results	The major war criminals were tried at Nuremberg; thousands of lesser criminals were tried; most Germans were classified as followers or exonerated
End	The programme was wound down from 1949, as the Cold War made West Germany an ally; the last denazification laws were repealed in 1951
Today	The records are preserved in German archives; the subject is taught in German schools as part of the history of the Federal Republic

3. Background

Potsdam and the four Ds

The policy of denazification was agreed at the Potsdam Conference, held in July–August 1945, where the leaders of the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union — Harry Truman, Winston Churchill (replaced during the conference by Clement Attlee) and Joseph Stalin — decided the future of Germany. The Potsdam Agreement set out the “four Ds” that were to govern the occupation: demilitarisation, denazification, decentralisation and democratisation.

Denazification was defined as the removal of Nazis from public office, the dissolution of the Nazi Party and its organisations, the trial of war criminals, and the re-education of the German people. The Agreement was, in principle, common to all four zones, but in practice each zone applied it differently, and the differences became greater as the Cold War developed.

The scale of the task

The scale of denazification was enormous, and it was, from the start, beyond the capacity of the Allies to carry it out thoroughly. The Nazi Party had about 8 million members in 1945, and its organisations — the SS, the SA, the Hitler Youth, the Labour Front — had tens of millions of members.

The German civil service, the judiciary, the universities, the schools and the police were all staffed by men who had, in one way or another, been part of the regime. To remove them all would have meant the collapse of German administration, and the Allies, who needed Germany to function, could not do it.

The programme therefore had to distinguish between the leaders and the followers, between those who had committed crimes and those who had merely joined the Party, and the distinction was, in practice, very difficult to draw.

4. What Happened

The Nuremberg Trials / Phiên tòa Nuremberg

The most famous part of denazification was the trial of the major war criminals at Nuremberg, held from November 1945 to October 1946, in which 22 leading Nazis were tried by the International Military Tribunal. Twelve were sentenced to death, seven were sentenced to imprisonment, and three were acquitted.

The trials established the principle that individuals could be held responsible for crimes against peace, for war crimes and for crimes against humanity, and they created a record of the Nazi regime that historians still use. The Nuremberg Trials were followed by 12 further trials at Nuremberg, held by the Americans, in which doctors, judges, industrialists, generals and SS officers were tried, and by thousands of trials in the Allied military courts.

In the British zone, in the French zone and in the Soviet zone, war criminals were tried in separate proceedings, and the Soviet trials were, in general, the harshest.

The Fragebogen and the Spruchkammern

The main instrument of denazification in the Western zones was the Fragebogen, a questionnaire of 131 questions that every adult German was required to complete. The questionnaire asked about membership of the Nazi Party and its organisations, about service in the SS and the SA, about employment in the civil service, and about income and property.

About 13 million questionnaires were completed in the Western zones, and they were used to decide who should be removed from public office and who should be tried. Those who were investigated were brought before the Spruchkammern, the denazification tribunals, which classified them into five categories: I, Major Offenders; II, Offenders; III, Lesser Offenders; IV, Followers; and V, Exonerated Persons.

The tribunals were, in the American zone, run by Germans under American supervision, and they were, in the judgement of historians, overwhelmed by the scale of the task: more than 3 million Germans were investigated, and the tribunals could not deal with them all.

5. The Site Today

Nuremberg and the archives

The most visible legacy of denazification is at Nuremberg, where the Palace of Justice, in which the International Military Tribunal sat, is preserved as a museum, the Memorium Nuremberg Trials. Visitors can see the courtroom, Courtroom 600, in which the major war criminals were tried, and the exhibition that explains the trials and their significance.

The courtroom is, in the judgement of historians, one of the most important sites in the history of international law, and it is visited by thousands of people every year. The records of denazification — the Fragebogen, the Spruchkammern files, the trial records — are preserved in the German Federal Archives and in the state archives, and they are available to researchers.

The files are, in the judgement of historians, an invaluable source for the social history of Germany after the war, because they record, in detail, the lives of millions of ordinary Germans.

The absence of a memorial

There is no memorial to denazification as such in Germany, and the subject is not commemorated in the way that the resistance to Hitler or the victims of the regime are commemorated. The absence is, in the judgement of historians, a reflection of the ambivalence with which Germans remember denazification: it was imposed by the Allies, it was applied inconsistently, and it was abandoned too soon, and it is, for many Germans, a subject that is best left to the historians. The records are preserved, and the subject is taught in schools, but it is not celebrated, and it is not, in the way that the Nuremberg Trials are, a site of public memory.

6. Survivors and Testimony

The victims’ testimony

Denazification was, in part, a response to the testimony of the victims of the Nazi regime, and the trials at Nuremberg and in the military courts heard testimony from survivors of the concentration camps, from forced labourers, and from the families of those who had been murdered.

The testimony was, in the judgement of historians, one of the most important parts of the trials, because it gave a human face to the crimes of the regime, and because it established, in a court of law, what had happened. The testimony of the survivors is preserved in the trial records, and it has been used by historians to reconstruct the history of the camps and of the persecution.

The survivors themselves, many of whom had lost their families, were, in general, disappointed by the results of denazification: they had hoped for a thorough reckoning, and they got, in their judgement, a partial one.

The Germans’ own accounts

The Fragebogen and the Spruchkammern files contain the accounts of millions of Germans about their own involvement with the regime, and they are, in the judgement of historians, a remarkable source for the social history of the Third Reich. The files show how Germans explained their membership of the Party, their service in the SS, and their work in the civil service: many claimed that they had joined the Party for career reasons, that they had not known about the crimes, and that they had been “followers” rather than “offenders”.

The files also contain the “Persilschein” — the “Persil certificate”, named after a brand of washing powder — the whitewashing certificates issued by priests, by employers and by former victims, testifying that the holder had been a good person. The Persilschein became a symbol of denazification’s failure: it showed how easily the system could be manipulated, and how many Germans were able to present themselves as innocent.

7. Trials and Justice

The Nuremberg verdicts

The Nuremberg Trials, held from November 1945 to October 1946, were the centrepiece of denazification as a judicial process. The International Military Tribunal tried 22 leading Nazis, and it sentenced 12 to death, 7 to imprisonment, and acquitted 3. The trials were followed by 12 further trials at Nuremberg, held by the Americans, in which 177 defendants were tried, including doctors who had conducted medical experiments, judges who had enforced Nazi law, industrialists who had used slave labour, and generals and SS officers who had commanded the killing.

The trials established the principles of international criminal law, and they created a record that has never been equalled. They were also, in the judgement of historians, incomplete: many of those responsible for the crimes were never tried, and many of those who were tried received sentences that were, in the event, commuted.

The limits of justice

The limits of denazification as a judicial process became clear in the years after Nuremberg. The Spruchkammern, which were supposed to try millions of Germans, classified most of them as Followers or as Exonerated, and only a small number as Major Offenders or Offenders. The military courts tried thousands of lesser criminals, but many of them received light sentences, and many of those sentences were commuted.

By 1951, when the denazification laws were repealed, most of those who had been convicted had been released, and many of them had returned to public life. The failure of denazification as a judicial process was, in the judgement of historians, a consequence of its scale: the Allies could not try millions of people, and they could not, in the end, distinguish between the guilty and the merely complicit.

8. Visiting Information

The Memorium Nuremberg Trials / Memorium Nuremberg Trials

Visitors to Germany who wish to learn about denazification can visit the Memorium Nuremberg Trials, in the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, where Courtroom 600 is preserved and where an exhibition explains the trials and their significance. The museum is open to the public, and guided tours are available in German and in English. The German Federal Archives in Koblenz and the state archives hold the records of denazification, and they are open to researchers. There is no museum dedicated to denazification as such, and the subject is, in general, taught in schools rather than commemorated in public. Visitors should allow at least two hours for the Memorium, and they should check the museum’s official site for current opening hours.

The archives

The records of denazification are preserved in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz and in the state archives of the Länder, and they are open to researchers. The Fragebogen, the Spruchkammern files, and the trial records together form one of the largest archives of its kind in the world, and they are, in the judgement of historians, an invaluable source for the social history of Germany after the war.

The files record, in detail, the lives of millions of ordinary Germans: what they did during the war, what they said about it afterwards, and how they explained themselves to the tribunals. They are also, for the descendants of those Germans, a source of family history, and many Germans have consulted the files to learn about their grandparents.

The archives are, for that reason, not only a scholarly resource but a part of Germany’s public memory. The Fragebogen themselves are, in the judgement of historians, one of the most revealing sources for the everyday life of Nazi Germany, because they show how ordinary people presented themselves to the tribunals after the war.

The records have also been used by the descendants of those who filled them in, and by the historians who have studied the social history of the Third Reich, and they are, for that reason, a source that continues to be consulted.

9. Commemoration and Education

Teaching denazification

Denazification is taught in German schools as part of the history of the Federal Republic, and it is presented, in general, as a partial success and a partial failure. School textbooks explain the Potsdam Agreement, the Nuremberg Trials, the Fragebogen and the Spruchkammern, and they discuss the reasons why denazification was abandoned: the scale of the task, the onset of the Cold War, and the need for West Germany as an ally.

The subject is, in the judgement of educators, a difficult one to teach, because it raises questions about guilt and responsibility that have no easy answers, and because it involves the grandparents and great-grandparents of the students. The teaching of denazification is, for that reason, often combined with the teaching of the resistance to Hitler and of the victims of the regime.

The debate continues

The debate about denazification continues in Germany, and it is, in part, a debate about the present as well as about the past. The question of how a society should deal with the crimes of a previous regime — whether to punish, to forgive, or to forget — is a question that Germany has faced since 1945, and that other countries have faced since then.

The German experience of denazification is cited in the literature on transitional justice, and it is studied by historians and by lawyers as an example of what can go wrong when a programme is too ambitious, too inconsistent, and abandoned too soon. The debate is unlikely to be settled, because it turns on questions of justice and of practicality that have no certain answer.

10. Legacy

What denazification achieved

Denazification achieved several things that should not be forgotten. It removed the Nazi leadership, it dissolved the Nazi Party and its organisations, it tried the major war criminals at Nuremberg, and it established the principle that crimes would be punished. It made possible the rebuilding of Germany as a democracy, by removing the men who had run the Nazi state and by creating a new civil service, a new judiciary and a new political system. The Federal Republic of Germany, founded in 1949, was built on the foundations laid by denazification, even though denazification itself was incomplete. The success of the Federal Republic — its democracy, its prosperity, its integration into Europe — is, in part, a legacy of denazification.

What it failed to achieve

Denazification also failed in important respects, and the failures should not be forgotten either. It punished the small and spared the great: the major war criminals were tried, but many of those who had run the regime — the civil servants, the judges, the industrialists, the generals — returned to public life, and some of them rose to high office in the Federal Republic.

It was applied inconsistently: the Soviet zone was harsher than the Western zones, and the American zone was harsher than the British and French zones. And it was abandoned too soon: by 1951, when the denazification laws were repealed, the programme was effectively over, and the Cold War had made West Germany an ally whose past was best forgotten.

The failure of denazification is a reminder that justice after a war is always incomplete, and that the rebuilding of a country requires compromises that are, in retrospect, difficult to defend.

The failure of denazification also had a long-term consequence that is still felt in Germany today: the men who returned to public life in the 1950s brought with them the habits and the attitudes of the Third Reich, and they shaped the institutions of the Federal Republic in ways that took decades to undo.

The judiciary, in particular, was slow to change: many of the judges who had enforced Nazi law remained in office, and it was not until the 1960s, with the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, that the German judiciary began to confront the crimes of the regime in earnest.

The failure of denazification is therefore not only a matter of history but a matter of the present, and it is a reminder that the rebuilding of a country after a dictatorship is a task that takes more than a generation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was denazification?
Denazification was the Allied programme after the Second World War to remove National Socialism from German public life, to punish those responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime, and to rebuild Germany as a democracy. It was agreed at Potsdam in 1945 and applied in the four zones of occupation.

What was the Fragebogen?
The Fragebogen was a questionnaire of 131 questions that every adult German was required to complete. It asked about membership of the Nazi Party and its organisations, about service in the SS and the SA, and about employment in the civil service. About 13 million questionnaires were completed in the Western zones.

What were the Spruchkammern?
The Spruchkammern were the denazification tribunals, which classified Germans into five categories: I, Major Offenders; II, Offenders; III, Lesser Offenders; IV, Followers; and V, Exonerated Persons. More than 3 million Germans were investigated by the tribunals, and most of them were classified as Followers or as Exonerated.

Why was denazification abandoned?
It was wound down from 1949, as the Cold War developed and West Germany became an ally of the United States and Britain. The Allies needed West Germany to function, and they could not remove all former Nazis from public life without crippling the administration. The last denazification laws were repealed in 1951.

Was denazification a success or a failure?
It was both. It removed the Nazi leadership, dissolved the Party, tried the major war criminals at Nuremberg, and made possible the rebuilding of Germany as a democracy. But it punished the small and spared the great, it was applied inconsistently, and it was abandoned too soon, allowing many former Nazis to return to public life.

What is a Persilschein?
A Persilschein, or “Persil certificate”, named after a brand of washing powder, was a whitewashing certificate issued by a priest, an employer or a former victim, testifying that the holder had been a good person. It became a symbol of denazification’s failure, because it showed how easily the system could be manipulated.

Related articles

• East vs West Germany
• Red Ball Express
• Tokyo Trials

Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Denazification” — Potsdam, the Fragebogen, the Spruchkammern, the five categories, 13 million questionnaires, the end of the programme in 1951.
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Denazification” (britannica.com) — the Allied programme, Nuremberg, the tribunals.
3. Frederick Taylor, Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany (Bloomsbury, 2011) — the standard history; Potsdam, the Fragebogen, the Spruchkammern, the Persilschein.
4. Perry Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany: A History, 1945–1950 (Tempus, 2007) — the programme in the four zones, its successes and failures.
5. Norbert Frei, Adenauer’s Germany and the Nazi Past: The Politics of Amnesty and Integration (Columbia University Press, 2002) — the abandonment of denazification, the return of former Nazis to public life.
6. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin, 2005) — Germany after the war, denazification, the Cold War.