What changed the Germans? Myths and reality of denazification and ‘coming to terms with the past’

Unlike Nazi Germany, Putin’s Russia, having embarked on a war of aggression, is far from defeat. However, the debate over the boundaries and extent of responsibility borne by society and the nation has already become one of the most acute and divisive. The intensity of this debate stems from the fact that it is directly linked to how Russia’s future is understood: is a return to a path of development, modernisation and democratisation possible, and under what conditions?

Yet when we appeal to the experience of post-war Germany’s denazification, often presented as a model of a nation overcoming the crimes of its past, we frequently rely on an overly simplified and schematic picture of this process. In essence, it was only the post-war generation of Germans that succeeded in developing enough moral and historical distance from Nazism to articulate a narrative of guilt and responsibility, which became the foundation of a new democratic German identity. By contrast, the 'generation of defeat' distanced itself from Nazism largely by seeing itself as a victim rather than an accomplice. In reality, the denazification process, which stretched over at least 20 years, was marked by intense internal drama and tactical retreats, and its eventual success was to a considerable extent underpinned by the economic breakthrough achieved by West Germany by that time.

An understanding of the historical circumstances and political contradictions of the denazification process can play an important role in developing realistic assessments and strategies for mobilising an 'anti-war coalition' in Russia.

This article by Nikolai Ilyin, written for the partner project 'What Is To Be Done?. An Action Plan for the Future of Russia', addresses these issues. The author’s name has been changed for security reasons.

Are Germans capable of democracy? Can they live peacefully in a law-based state? Or has historical destiny condemned them to an eternal striving for dictatorship and conquest? Eighty years ago, these questions seemed entirely legitimate. As the final salvos of World War II thundered, fierce debates raged. Many believed that only a miracle could change the Germans.

Today, the debates continue, but no longer about whether Germans can become democrats. By the beginning of the 21st century, the very formulation of such a question had come to seem absurd. The subject of debate is how and why German society changed within a historically short period of time, and whether the German experience can be applied to similar situations.

Popular legends suggest that Germans were instantly transformed by the shock of defeat, or that they were re-educated by the victors. This may well have been true for some individuals. But if one looks at society as a whole, the picture is far more complex and uneven. The process of change took more than one decade. The key question is what set these changes in motion and made them irreversible.

The first point that must be made is that not all Germans were Nazis. Yes, Goebbels showed the world images of mass and fanatical support for the regime. We should not fall for propaganda. There were many people in the Third Reich who disliked what was happening. Only a few heroes attempted to assassinate Hitler or saved Jews at the risk of their lives. But thousands upon thousands retreated into what became known as 'internal exile', refused to join the party, distanced themselves from all forms of demonstrative loyalty, or simply retained a healthy critical judgement. The very concept of 'internal exile' dates back to a polemic between the German writers Thomas Mann and Frank Thiess. Mann, having emigrated, believed that everything remaining in Hitler’s Germany was to some degree 'infected' by Nazism, while Thiess defended the value of resistance by those who 'did not abandon our sick mother Germany' (→ Mann: Listen, Germany!).

At the end of the war, only a minority consciously desired democratic change. This group would remain a minority for many years, albeit a critically important one without which no change would have occurred at all. The shock of defeat and disillusionment with a bankrupt regime did not in themselves turn people into supporters of a new system. The average German wanted above all order, stability and material well-being, entirely natural human desires. Even in the early 1950s, almost half of West German citizens described the 1930s as the best period in German history (→ Smith: Germany; Merritt, Merritt: Public opinion in occupied Germany).

This answers the question of the extent to which the victors were able to 're-educate' the Germans. It would be foolish to deny the contribution of the Allied powers. They destroyed Nazism and created the conditions to prevent its resurgence. But changing the worldview of millions of people is a task of a completely different order.

What is imposed from outside is often rejected, and a new authority is judged by most people primarily by whether their quality of life improves. In Germany in the first post-war years, living standards were poor, and resentment quickly began to take root. Moreover, the victors faced a dilemma reminiscent of squaring the circle: how to compel Germans to stop blindly obeying orders, and how to teach them to take responsibility without their active participation. The dilemma soon became clear. Either force Germans to do what the occupying powers wanted, effectively reproducing the same authoritarian model with new 'masters', or allow them to act independently, accepting that far from all of their decisions would please their 'teachers'. To the victors’ credit, they ultimately chose the second path.

No less complex was the question of how to deal with former Nazis: criminals, accomplices, fellow travellers. With the principal monsters, things were relatively straightforward. They were tried and hanged at Nuremberg. But what was to be done with the vast shoal of 'small fry'? With those who carried party membership cards, informed on their neighbours, or enthusiastically carried out criminal orders? There were, unfortunately, many such people. They had little desire to reconsider their views and saw what had happened to them as a monstrous injustice in which they bore not a shred of personal guilt.

The titanic attempt to examine the past of each of the millions of adult Germans and, where necessary, mete out precisely calibrated punishment predictably ended in failure. There were insufficient personnel, information and time. As a result, people with blood on their hands sometimes escaped with symbolic penalties, while for many Germans the entire process appeared chaotic and arbitrary. From the very first months of occupation, the Western Allies also discovered that people with dubious pasts made up a large share of qualified specialists without whom the normal functioning of many systems was simply impossible. From the outset, it was necessary to turn a blind eye repeatedly and accept unappealing but practically unavoidable compromises (→ Taylor: Exorcising Hitler; Fulbrook: Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice).

Over time, the number of such compromises only grew. As one contemporary observer aptly put it, 'former Nazis can either be killed or turned into democrats'. Since the physical destruction of millions of people would have made the victors no better than the defeated, the second option remained. First the Western occupying powers, and later the leadership of the young Federal Republic, set a course towards integrating former Nazis into society. This did not mean silence about past crimes. They were discussed from parliamentary rostrums and in the press. But the villains were always portrayed as an abstract regime or a small clique led by Hitler. As a result, in the words of a modern historian, a paradoxical picture emerged of 'crimes without criminals'.

But what about the victims? Most Germans considered themselves to be the victims. Victims of the regime, of the war, of the bombings. This may seem outrageous and sacrilegious. And it was. Yet this perception did far more to push people to distance themselves from the collapsed regime, to break with it both externally and internally, than declarations of collective guilt ever could.

The compromise consisted in a tacit promise of oblivion regarding their personal past in exchange for loyalty to the new system, extended to rank-and-file Nazis and even to those who were not entirely marginal figures. If they were prepared to demonstrate such loyalty, they were left alone. At the same time, all open expressions of sympathy for the Third Reich, and all attempts to create new far-right parties, were swiftly and harshly suppressed. Any public call to 'turn back the clock' inevitably amounted to political suicide.

This compromise can hardly be described as elegant, nor does it sit easily with widely held notions of justice. But its architects were forced to choose where to look, to the past or to the future. First the victorious powers, and later Adenauer and his team, sought above all to prevent the emergence of a multi-million-strong 'parallel society' of the discontented, one that would view the new system with hatred and serve as a ready-made mass base for a new Hitler, should one appear. Until a democratic majority had formed in West German society, this was critically important. Only decades later, when change had already become irreversible, did it become possible to engage in a genuinely profound and high-quality process of 'coming to terms with the past', to raise the question of the guilt and responsibility of 'ordinary people' and to name perpetrators individually.

In the meantime, the political elite of the Federal Republic did not attempt to remake citizens, but instead largely accommodated their expectations. You do not wish to see yourselves as accomplices to crimes? Very well, let us recognise you as victims of the regime and the war. You long for order and stability? Then Adenauer advances the slogan 'No experiments!', which repeatedly secured him electoral victories. At the same time, however, the glorification of the Nazi past in any form remained an absolute taboo.

Of course, politics alone did not account for the success of the entire endeavour. A well-known joke has it that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. This holds true for many people more generally. In the 1950s, the stomachs of West Germans were rapidly being filled. The famous 'economic miracle' was perhaps the main engine of change. Millions chose not political activism, but hard work in pursuit of personal prosperity. Average GDP growth in West Germany in the 1950s exceeded 8% per year. Living standards rose, and with them the popularity of the new authorities. People saw for themselves that a democratic system did not mean permanent crises and instability, as had been the case in the Weimar Republic, but real economic growth. There was no longer any reason to yearn for the 1930s. By the end of the 1950s, the majority of West Germans confidently stated that the best period in German history was the here and now (→ Jarausch: After Hitler; Winkler: Der lange Weg nach Westen).

These, then, were the main components of the post-war 'German miracle': the presence within society of healthy forces seeking change; an emphasis not on retribution for the old, but on building and consolidating the new, even at the cost of unattractive and uncomfortable compromises; and economic growth that brought prosperity, stability and confidence in the future. The visible success of the new political and economic system led to slow, gradual, but irreversible changes in West German society.

Finally, a word on whether practical lessons can be drawn from the German experience. One often hears the claim that post-war West Germany was an absolutely unique and unrepeatable case. Formally, this is true. Every situation is unique in its own way and is never reproduced exactly, down to the smallest detail. Yet for some reason, those who passionately defend the thesis that historical experience is useless themselves prefer, when the need arises, to turn to experienced doctors, experienced tutors, experienced tilers. History is necessary for us precisely in order to learn from it. The point is that its lessons offer important clues rather than ready-made recipes. These clues are not always simple, and with sufficient determination one can find in them confirmation of very different views. But this does not mean that they are useless.