Part of the trouble is that Nazism had co-opted so many people by then that to literally murder them all would be another Holocaust. At the end of hostilities, nobody had the stomach to murder like 10% of all Germans.
The third reich did have its fifth columnists however, and people too often give them short shrift in their recollections. If there were a few more in the right place, I like to think a lot of lives could have been saved, maybe the whole thing stopped earlier.
They didn’t have to punish them with death, I am against the death penalty by nation states. Just actually forbidding them from becoming party members and high roles in society would’ve been good.
Laudable of you. I’ve heard it opined but I haven’t seen the proof, that it would have been impossible to carry on as a society without allowing former party members to hold certain offices, such as judges and other positions. I don’t know if I credit that version of events personally, but it’s the one on the table that I know of.
https://www.mdr.de/geschichte/ddr/politik-gesellschaft/entnazifizierung-nazis-in-der-ddr-100.html
Denazification in East Germany was also lacking
Part of the trouble is that Nazism had co-opted so many people by then that to literally murder them all would be another Holocaust. At the end of hostilities, nobody had the stomach to murder like 10% of all Germans.
The third reich did have its fifth columnists however, and people too often give them short shrift in their recollections. If there were a few more in the right place, I like to think a lot of lives could have been saved, maybe the whole thing stopped earlier.
They didn’t have to punish them with death, I am against the death penalty by nation states. Just actually forbidding them from becoming party members and high roles in society would’ve been good.
Laudable of you. I’ve heard it opined but I haven’t seen the proof, that it would have been impossible to carry on as a society without allowing former party members to hold certain offices, such as judges and other positions. I don’t know if I credit that version of events personally, but it’s the one on the table that I know of.