Holocaust victim

How successful was the denazification in Germany?

There were two completely different denazifications in Germany, one in the west and another in the east. One was a stellar success, the other a dismal failure.

Adolf Heusinger was the Chief of General staff of Wehrmacht who eventually became the Chairman of NATO Military Committe

To the Soviets, denazification meant the complete and utter destruction of the Nazi party. They pursued them to hell and back, arresting everyone who had any sort of notable connection to Hitler. This was widely successful and the Nazi party members in the former East Germany found themselves locked out of centers of power. Never again would the NSADP rise its head, the beast was slain.

To the Western powers, formed Nazis were seen as potential assets. Those who weren’t involved in too severe war crimes were often employed as vital political or military assets by the West. This is why denazification in the west is often seen as a bit of a joke, often it amounted to nothing more than renouncing your membership in the Party.

The West did something else however. Soviets were only after the Nazi party itself, the organization that brought untold doom and destruction to Europe. They did that and then some, then called it a day, mission accomplished. On the other hand the West went after the system of ideas and values that enabled the Nazi party to rise in the first place. The organization itself was of little importance, it was the very ideas of racial superiority and xenophobia that fed it that was utterly demolished by the West.

The result is that now, the far-right xenophobes exist mainly in the territory of the former DDR. The Nazi party has been destroyed in both halves of Germany, yet the ideas that led to their creation have all but died out in the West, while they remain strong in the East. If another Nazi party was to rise in Germany, their center of power would be Dresden and Munich a key part of resistance to it.

That’s why it was the Western denazification that was the stellar success and the Soviet denazification that was the dismal failure.

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