Denazification After WWII: Challenges and Outcomes

On May 8, 1945, the German armed forces signed their unconditional surrender to the Allied powers. World War II, at least in Europe, was over. But now that the guns had fallen silent, the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union had to face a daunting conundrum, how to deal with the active members of the National Socialist Party, the SS, the Wehrmacht, and other organizations who had committed some rather extreme war crimes and crimes against humanity. how to rid the fabric of the fallen third reich society from the pernicious influence of an extremist ideology so many had bought into after all in some respects with those who had bought into the ideology wholly it would have been like going back to the 1700s american south and trying to convince a mass group of slave owners to completely and almost immediately rethink their ideas on slavery and those of african descent in the nation a seemingly impossible task and then beyond ideological shifts just from a practical standpoint how to speed up economic recovery recovery for the nation and ensure nothing like this would happen again in the country and provide a strong buffer between the Soviets and the rest of Europe. So how was this all accomplished and how did they do it so fast and just how successful was all of this in reality? Just before we get back to Simon diving into today's video, let's talk about something that keeps our authors going during those long writing sessions locked in Simon's basement. Our sponsor today, Soylent, which totally and in no way is made of people as you might expect, but rather a plant-based product. Soylent is plants. I tell you, Soylent is plants. Which by a happy coincidence dovetails nicely into our vegetarian author's favorite hobby of plant murder. With Soylent, it's all about five things. Nutrition, convenience, taste, sustainability, and putting plants in their rightful place. As for the nutrition, Soylent has done all the research, formulations, and clinical trials, including a ton of third-party studies, all so you don't have to. They don't chase fad diets or anything like that, just hard, well-known nutrition science. 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And now back to Simon and today's video. to begin with the very top ranking members of the nazi party and nazi adjacent organizations 199 defendants in total were tried at the famous nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946. of course hundreds if not thousands of other officials and officers wanted by allied authorities were able to escape to argentina via the numerous rat lines through scandinavia spain and even vatican city countless more had no need to escape entities within the allied and soviet forces were more than happy to look the other way about anything they got up to during the war owing to the knowledge in their brains and we've got more on that in just a little bit but when looking at the more wide scale process of denazification of the citizenry most of these efforts consisted of special tribunals reviewing the alleged Nazi past of German and Austrian citizens as well as just a general installment in the mass populace that everything that had happened was their fault and trying to get rid of various works that espouse Nazi ideology on that latter point over 30,000 different books were not only banned in the country after the war but also systematically collected and destroyed anyone who tried to keep a copy could face legal consequences the irony of this was not lost on anyone given this move was more or less a tactic taken out of the nazi handbook when they came to power beyond this as alluded to there was the general populace who were made to feel responsible for what germany had done under the nazi regime with the psychological warfare division of supreme allied headquarters expeditionary force taking points on this they began efforts here seeing to it that the media from radio newspapers not only strongly emphasized the atrocities in their coverage but also explicitly noted that it was every single german's fault for allowing it to happen not just the nazis another rather ironic page taken out of the nazi handbook although to be fair in this case strongly emphasizing educating the German public on all the atrocities that had actually been committed unlike Much of the things which is completely made up by the Nazis Beyond the various media outlets posters were put up all around showing pictures from concentration camps with giant text overlaid Saying things like you are guilty of this as noted by British author James Stern in one German town quote a crowd gathered around a series Of photographs which though initially seemed to depict garbage instead reveal dead human bodies Each photograph has a heading. Who is guilty? The spectators are silent, appearing hypnotized, and eventually retreat one by one. The placards are later replaced with clearer photographs, and placards proclaiming, This town is guilty. You are guilty. On top of that, in towns near concentration camps, the citizenry were often made to tour them and even help bury the dead, help dig up mass graves, and things like this, with films also being made of this by the American War Information Unit to be shown to Germans who couldn't see for themselves. As noted by the Chief of the Film Division of psychological warfare sydney bernstein the point of all of this was to quote shake and humiliate the germans and prove to them beyond any possible challenge that these german crimes against humanity were committed and that the german people and not just the nazis and ss bore responsibility the general shift in mindset to blame all germans and not just the nazis began around 1944 with before this generally a distinction being made by the us brass and with the us public whereas after a strong push to solidify in everyone's minds that there was little difference between a nazi and a non-nazi german citizen this also seems to have been a general mindset pushed by the military brass to their own troops warning soldiers that quote the majority of germans supported the nazis try to make friends with us to get information to get favors to create sympathy for the poor downtrodden german people to make us disagree among ourselves or just to get a good chance to slip a knife into allied soldiers speaking of the soldiers and going back to taking pages out of the nazi handbook it is also noted that during the denazification process, not just on the Soviet side but on the US side as well, frequent random beatings and rape of German civilians out and about was a thing. As one German professor noted, these assaults have become notorious among the civilian population of Marburg. Nobody risks going out in the evenings and people feel as if they were exposed to acts of indiscriminate brutality with no means of protection. But in all, to help change the mindset of the German populace who had bought into the Nazi ideology, the general push was to show the atrocities that had been committed and try to make every German citizen feel responsible. Going back to the tribunals to try and punish those more directly involved and rid society of them in any prominent position, very briefly, the objectives of the process were codified as early as July of 1945, and while the tribunal sentences dragged on into 1957, the vast majority of the millions of card-carrying Nazi Party members had already been reviewed and sanctioned by April 1948. But that's all at a very high level. So how was this actually accomplished, and how was it done so quickly? To begin with, the process of removing National Socialism ideology from the social fabric of Germany was conceived long before the end of the war in Europe. In fact, the term denazification itself was coined in 1943 by the Pentagon as they began thinking about what the post-war Germany legal system would look like. And as early as August 1944, this had all gone unexpanded with US President Franklin Roosevelt writing in his memos that the Allies should drive home to the Germans that they had participated in a lawless conspiracy. The same sentiment was expressed more formally when Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. On that occasion, In the occasion, the so-called Three Greats clarified that denazification was to be considered a strategic war aim. More precisely, the removal of all Nazi and militarist influences from public offices and from the cultural and economic life of the German people. The Third Reich surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the drive for denazification was restated in the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945. By that month, the Western Allies had compiled a list of 178,000 Nazis to put under arrest while the Soviets had already proceeded to the internment of 67,000 Reich officials. officials. Such a huge endeavor could not be conducted willy-nilly. Allied occupation forces had to clearly state the denazification objectives and parameters, as well as the categories and related sanctions for Nazi offenders. According to a U.S. Department of State memo of July 1945, the objectives of the denazification program included the arrest of Nazi leaders, supporters, and any other persons dangerous to the Allied occupation or its objectives, exclusion of members of the Nazi Party who had been more than nominal participants from both public office and positions of responsibility. responsibility, and private enterprises. c. The eradication of Nazi laws and decrees. d. The dissolution of the Nazi Party and all its affiliated organizations, as well as the prevention of their revival, which went hand in hand with e. Elimination of all paraphernalia so central to Nazi propaganda. Symbols, flags, and anthems. And finally, f. Complete removal of Nazi ideology from Germany. information services schooling system and religion having clarified what dean artsification was about allied forces had to define how it would be carried out the allied control council reached an agreement only in january 1946 issuing directive 24 which contained guidelines for coordinated approach as we shall see later this would be anything but coordinated in each of the four occupation zones of germany the allies set up ad hoc denazification commissions and tribunals which involved the participation of local vetted individuals such as union leaders judges, and opponents of Nazism. The rulings of these bodies were made on the basis of an extensive 131-point questionnaire drafted by the public safety branch of the Allied military government. This was known as the Fragerbogen, which translated from German simply means questionnaire. Respondents had to provide accurate and detailed answers about their education, their professional training, employment, and military service. Going even deeper, those filling in the questionnaire had to provide details on the source of their income and assets since January 1931, as well as their writings and speeches. speeches published since 1923. But most of all, they had to provide a full account of their membership and role within the National Socialist Party or any other affiliated organization. In the American occupation sector, filled-in and signed questionnaires would be evaluated by a denazification tribunal in collaboration with the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps and a special branch section of the military government's Public Safety Division. These bodies would then cross-check all the answers against police files, civil service records and the very archives of the Nazi Party. The purpose of this screening was not to to identify all German citizens who had joined the party or an adjacent organization at any point as there would have been very few exceptions. The Allied military government, in fact, agreed to safeguard from sanctions the purely nominal member of the Nazi party who was forced to join in order to retain his position of livelihood or escape the concentration camp. The point was to ascertain if the individuals under scrutiny had been involved in more than just a nominal capacity in supporting the Nazi regime, if they had contributed to perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity, or if they posed a threat to the Allies and the rest of the world. restoration of democracy. Based on these factors, respondents would be classified as follows. Major offenders were to be sentenced to life imprisonment or even to death. Then you had the offenders activists, militarists, and others who had profited from Germany's war of aggression, who could face up to 10 years in prison. Next you had the somewhat murkier category of lesser offenders subjected to a probationary period of up to three years. The rank-and-file followers and supporters of Hitler's regime with no specific active responsibilities might encounter a fine and be subject to surveillance. Finally, exonerated individuals. individuals would receive no sanction based on this categorization anybody from lesser offender and up were deemed to have had more than a nominal participation in the nazi party's activities as such in addition to the sanctions described they would face mandatory removal from their post be them military officers or public officials all right so we've covered how the denazification of germany should have worked but how did it actually turn out well especially in the u.s controlled occupation zone military authorities started with a bang preemptively detaining 400 000 germans in internment camps before they had even started filling in their 131 point questionnaires but when the tribunals and commissions started applying due process it became apparent that discerning rank and file party members from lesser or more serious offenders was no easy task the u.s military had access to excellent records the one thing the nazis were unquestionably good at was record keeping occupation troops in munich in fact discovered the party's entire registry with the names of 12 million card-carrying members but according to earl fziemka writing for the u.s army center center of military history, quote, it was on the gray fringes of denazification that the question of who and what were Nazis vexed military governments. The military occupation authorities still had to sift through all of those 12 million individuals trying to identify the worst that humanity had to offer. And it turns out that many of those 12 million Nazis had training, experience, energy, affability, and not a bad political record. As reported by Ziemke, American troops found those under scrutiny to be, on the whole, surprisingly pleasant chaps, which made their denazification a success. efforts all the more difficult a u.s high-ranking officer commented that if all the nazis had been exceedingly unpleasant and rude denazification would have been easy on the other hand many among those germans who were not formal members of the party could fall into two categories those ballsy enough not to fall for nazi ideology and propaganda are those who had applied for membership but have been rejected interestingly the former were equally not keen to cooperate with the allies since the latter likely did not make for ideal members of society and that was the problem denazification was all well and good but the Allies were also seeking to rebuild German society from its ruins and as fast as possible. If they made a clean sweep of anybody even loosely associated with National Socialism, in Ziemke's words, they were going to have to run the country with old men until the next generation grew up. The number of political acceptables between the ages of 20 and 50, who were also trained and competent, was exceedingly small. So that was the first snag. The second one was that the whole program required a huge bureaucratic apparatus which the Allies simply could not manage. In the US controlled, zone alone, the commissions and tribes tribunals had to review a whopping 10 million questionnaires sure they had enrolled local personnel to run the tribunals but even so trained manpower was scarce and even those germans who were willing to participate were reluctant to dish out harsh sanctions on their fellow citizens the third snap The other nag was that defendants in these tribunals had found a convenient way out. They could easily obtain signed, sworn affidavits from priests, or even just from friends and neighbors attesting that the defendant was a mere rank-and-file follower, or that he or she could be altogether exonerated. cottage industry emerged putting these affidavits on sale. They later became colloquially known as Persil Shine, after the popular Persil brand of detergents. In other words, they would leave a defendant's reputation squeaky clean. Eventually, US authorities could not cope with the red tape associated with denazification in their controlled areas, and with tensions rising between the Soviets and the US, their focus also somewhat shifted. In particular, they were now much more concerned with Germany's rapid economic recovery rather than trying to make sure everyone paid for their crimes and weren't allowed to pay for their crimes. be in prominent positions. A similar thing happened over in Japan with the now termed reverse course policies. But back in Germany, with this shift on March 5, 1946, they formally transferred all such duties to reconstituted German authorities, something that the British had done a few months earlier as well. On that note, with the British and French occupation zones, local military governments took an even more pragmatic approach. Both prioritized the efficiency of local administration and economy to quickly cope with housing and food shortages. Thus, they were even less scrupulous when it came to allowing foreign former high-ranking officials to hold or resume important positions. French authorities were most lax of all, even allowing Nazis residing in other zones to move and resume work in their occupied areas with no hindrance. As another example, given the Nazis had placed individuals whose beliefs aligned with their ideologies in prominent teaching positions, around three-quarters of teachers in the country were immediately fired after the war, only for the vast majority in the French zone to be quickly rehired and given their positions back. This was reflected in most industries in the French zone. In the end, in total, the French only labelled 13 total individuals. individuals in their region as major offenders. Finally, moving to the Soviet occupation zone, the removal of Nazi personnel and ideology appeared to be more resolute than in the zones governed by the Western Allies. In fact, denazification proceeded hand in hand with the Sovietization of Eastern Germany, that is, extensive land reforms and nationalization of industry. Moreover, while Western Allies strove to replace Nazi officials with political representatives from a broad spectrum, Moscow had a preference for the KPD or Communist Party of Germany, or later, the Socialist United Party or SE. However, according to historian Timothy R. Vought, the denazification in the Soviet-held area was not as thorough as it initially appeared. Thanks to the cooperation of the KPD, Soviet authorities were able to delegate most denazification processes to the Germans themselves in the form of local anti-Nazi committees and newly-formed provincial governments. These bodies enacted their measures inconsistently and were prone to caving in when meeting local resistance and objections. Moreover, they appeared to follow the general principle that if former Nazis were willing to rebrand themselves as communists, they would not be removed from public life. As you might have guessed from all of this, as early as 1948, it had become apparent that the denazification of Germany had not resulted in the indented restructure of society. In December of that year, international relations scholar John H. Herz, a member of the U.S. delegation at the Nuremberg trials, published an article with the self-explanatory title of The Fiasco of Denazification in Germany. Herz focused on the American occupation zone, reporting how trials conducted there were frequently hindered by intimidation on the part of Nazi symbols. sympathizers, even without intimidation. Prosecutors based their indictments of the answers provided in the questionnaire without verifying their veracity. Thus, most defendants were categorized as mere followers. Moreover, after denazification efforts had been handed over to German authorities in March 1946, they had issued two amnesties, one in August, one in December, exonerating members of the Hitler Youth, persons of low income, and disabled citizens. Hertz pointed out how such amnesties allowed even war criminals to escape prosecution. The scholar also unearthed a major procedural flaw. floor. Until October 1947, denazification processes had vetted some 50,000 individuals a month, which is quite a good number, but the tribunals had given precedence to those who had been classified as followers on the basis of their questionnaire. By the time the tribunals finally worked their stash of paperwork to those classified as offenders, a legislative amendment allowed prosecutors to re-categorize them as followers, with the exception of members of the SS. Such re-categorization still required approval from the Allied military government, but in January 1948 this procedural step was re-categorized. removed by the enactment of an expediting procedure now all offenders could be rubber stamped as followers wholesale a further relaxation of standards took place in march of 1948 with the almost total removal of the exception clause for members of the ss and other criminal organizations affiliated to the nazi party now only those belonging to the category of the major offenders could expect major sanctions everybody else was deemed a follower and was free to go after paying a fine as for the numbers on all of this some 12 million 750 53,000 Germans were expected to undergo the denazification procedure more than 9 million were found not chargeable the remaining 3.2 million or processed by the end of april 1948 and of these more than 2.3 million were amnestied without trial that left 836 000 to be tried a mere 6.5 percent more than one-third of these were exonerated and more than half were classified as followers of the remainder 10.7 were classed as lesser offenders 2.1 percent were class 2 offenders and only 0.1 were found to be major offenders That's 836 individuals from the nearly 13 million person pool. And even those who were sentenced as offenders, in any degree of severity, most received lenient sanctions such as community work, payment of fines, or short prison sentences. Herzberg proceeded to compile several examples of such lenient treatments, of which we shall report only a few. An active propagandist and publisher of anti-Semitic writings was ranked as a follower and fined a mere 50 marks. A dean at Bonn University, active member of the SS, and their intelligence services the sd was fully exonerated a high-ranking member of the gestapo was found to only be a follower and received a minor fine another gestapo man head of a station in the town of fulda was also a follower and the former deputy chief of police in nuremberg and one of the men responsible for the infamous crystal nacht also a follower and find 800 marks one physician responsible for carrying out the sterilization law against undesirables well you guessed it he was just a follower please pay your 500 marks and then leave finally an aeronautical engineer and industrialist he made a fortune of 36 million marks thanks to slave labor well you get the gist by now he was fined 2 000 marks moving on toward the end of the 1940s across all areas of occupation leniency gave way to amnesty and a strategy of integration the chief proponent of this approach was the first chancellor of the new federal republic of germany or west germany conrad adenauer after his election in september 1949 adenauer advocated for west germany to forge strong bonds with western europe against the communist bloc this strategy also includes for old Nazi cadres to be integrated into the new republic in order to move forward. Towards that end in all this, in May 1951, Adenauer's government passed the first amnesty law, which reintegrated into their position some 150,000 officials and civil servants previously removed by the Allied denazification efforts. The following year, the Chancellor reported to the Parliament that two-thirds of German diplomats were, in fact, former Nazis. The armed forces, security services, and even the private sector were similarly replete with former Reich personnel. Sir Ivo and Kirkpatrick, British High Commissioner in Germany, commented, Whenever I travelled, I ran into ghosts of Hitler's Reich, men who had occupied positions in the administration, in industry, or the society of the day. They were either living in retirement or were taking jobs in banks, commerce, or industry. Despite the amnesty, Adenauer's regime also took steps the other way. For example, in August of 1952, his cabinet banned the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party, and in September, he agreed to pay the State of Israel reparation of 3 billion German marks, the equivalent of 8.3 billion dollars in today's value but aranau's intention was to leave the past behind nonetheless and in 1954 his government issued the second amnesty law which this time benefited around 400 000 german citizens a similar denazification process culminating in widespread amnesty was followed in austria this country is often excluded from english-speaking accounts of denazification but we should not forget that austria was annexed to the third reich before the start of world war ii nor that austrian citizens actively joined the wehrmacht the s and the Nazi Party, and therefore the country was occupied by the Allies at the end of the conflict. The Austrian denazification process was led by the four occupying powers the UK, France, US, and USSR in collaboration with three local parties the Social Democratic Party, the Austrian People's Party, and the Communist Party. According to historian Dieter Stiefel, the Austrian denazification can be divided into five phases. During the military security phase from April 1945 to June 1945, the four Allied occupation powers worked in cooperation with the German army. coordination to intern an initial batch of prominent SS and Nazi Party members. Such potentially dangerous individuals were hunted down and detained on the basis of blacklists compiled by the Allied High Commissioners. The next phase, from June 1945 to February 1946, is labeled as Autonomous Denazification. The four Allies plus the Austrian government carried out denazification efforts independently from each other, which resulted in contradictory measures and decisions. For example, the US occupation used a seven-page questionnaire similar to the Fragerboden. did too, but only in part while the Soviets ditched it completely. In fact, the Soviets acted relatively chill in their zone of occupation, delegating the denazification process to local authorities. They intervened directly only when they identified someone guilty of war crimes committed on Soviet soil, or when they selected a promising scientist for, let's say, a relocation under pressure. In February 1946, the Allies devolved all denazification activities into the Austrian government, ushering in the Third Autochronous Phase. Local authorities followed three laws promulgated to this purpose. the prohibition act the economic cleansing act and the war crimes act in order to enforce these laws the government created ad hoc people's courts consisting of two professional judges and three lay judges nominated amongst the general public these tribunals were set up to take very direct action as no appeal was allowed against their verdicts. Nonetheless, Allied authorities took note that the Austrian judiciary introduced it at a very slow pace and pressured for a quicker uptake. In February 1947, the government issued a new National Socialist Law regulating the removal of the old Reich's vestiges, thus kicking off the Fourth Reich. fourth phase, which lasted less than one year. The fifth and final phase, from 1948 to 1957, is known as the Time of Amnesties. The first of these involved the so-called Minderbella Stata, which can be translated as lesser incriminated or lesser offenders. This amnesty was applied to 90% of all registered members of the Austrian National Socialist Party. The Minderbella Stata Amnesty effectively put an end to all major attempts at denazifying Austrian society. Which is not surprising. Much like in a divided Germany, after the onset of the Cold War, each allied party was power sought to consolidate local authorities under their sphere of influence. The Austrian People's Courts, however, continued to operate until December 1955. Up to that point, these tribunals had issued 13,607 guilty verdicts, but following the withdrawal of occupation forces from the country, a new constitutional law abolished the People's Courts, transferring their duties to standard jury trials. Denazification trials continued for another couple of years, but to a much lesser degree of intensity. Within the 1956-1957 period, Austrian courts issued a total of 39 guilty verdicts. nine verdicts, of which only 18 were guilty sentences. As the denazification efforts and fervor whittled down, the Austrian parliament voted in favor of a final amnesty in 1957. Besides widespread amnesties, it's no secret that hundreds of former Nazi officials entirely escaped from sanctions thanks to their military, scientific, or technical expertise. They were simply deemed too useful to the Allies. In other countries, this seems to be something history paints as completely acceptable, though when other countries like Argentina essentially did the same thing, it's more vilified for various reasons. reasons. You can see our video, Why Did So Many Nazis Choose to Go to Argentina After World War II, for more on that. But as for the United States, according to the US Nazi War Criminal Records Intra-Agency Working Group, as early as May 10, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised the commander of US forces in Europe, General Eisenhower, to make some exceptions when it came to arresting war criminals, quoting, In your discretion, you may make such exceptions as you deem advisable for intelligence and other military reasons. Throughout the summer of 1945, the US Army Counterintelligence Corps Corps, CIC, and the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, did employ former German military and intelligence officers as informants, but this was a necessity to identify more dangerous Nazi criminals or suppress anti-Allied resistance. But, as friction mounted across the Iron Curtain, American and other Western Allied services took to using German military personnel as a source of intelligence about Soviet military strategy, equipment, and tactics. Toward this end, the CIC collaborated closely with General Reinhard Gerland, former head of the Foreign Army's East, founded in 1938. and responsible for collecting intelligence on the Soviet Union. But the Corps also recruited personnel whose resumes erred on the criminal side, such as SS officer Klaus Barbie, charmingly known as the Butcher of Lyon. Barbie the Butcher and other war criminals were eventually protected from prosecution and smuggled out of Europe with the complicity of the CIC, OSS, and other Allied services. Many, many more former Nazi and SS officials would escape via ratlines set up by Argentinian intelligence and even the Vatican. The US Joint Chief of Staffs, however, were not interested in the possibility of a possible interested in simply knowing more about the Soviets. They were interested in gaining a technological edge over them. As early as July 1945, they explicitly authorized a program to exploit chosen rare mines whose continuing intellectual productivity we wish to use. Those rare mines were 350 German and Austrian scientists and technicians to be brought immediately to America under Operation Overcast. By 1946, the Department of Defense's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency sought to expand Overcast to recruit a further 1,000 former enemy brains and even grant them American citizenship. This was a complicated endeavor, as some of those chosen thousand were high-ranking members of the Nazi Party. At least one of them, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, had been an SS officer. The plan required presidential blessing, which President Truman granted in September 1946, insisting that only so-called nominal Nazis should be allowed in the program. The term indicated German and Austrian citizens who had joined the party out of convenience or coercion but had not actively supported the Reich. The new expanded program took the name of Operation Pestilence. paperclip. In early 1947, a panel constituted by the Departments of Justice and State began combing dossiers of prospective scientists for relocation to the US, which were based on CIC investigations. The panel initially rejected several applications, as the individuals in question had been identified as potential threats on the basis of their Nazi past. This did not sit well with the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. According to the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, they ordered American intelligence in Europe to revise the scientists'dossiers so they could make it through. through the paper. Thus, from 1945 to 1955, Operations Overcast and Paperclip helped relocate 765 scientists, engineers and technicians to the United States. The interagency working group estimates that as many as 80% of them were former Nazi Party members. Operation Paperclip is a well-known episode of the Cold War. What is less well-known is that the Soviet Union had their own version of this project, known as Operation Ozovayakim, or the forced relocation of more than 2,500 German scientists to the USSR. However, the Soviet Union was not the only one to have a version of this project. The Soviet Union was also the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim, which was the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim. However, the Soviet Union was not the only one to have a version of this project. The Soviet Union was also the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim, which was the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim, which was the first to have a version an interesting thing about the name is that it's actually a misnomer the term ozoavir is an acronym which stands for union of societies for assistance to defense and aviation chemical construction of the ussr this was a paramilitary and sporting organization founded in 1927. it had absolutely nothing to do with the soviet equivalent of paperclip but apparently a german radio incorrectly used this word to refer to the brain drain in 1946 and u.s intelligence services adopted the term the plan was initiated in april 1946, when the Soviet Minister of Aeronautical Industry, Mikhail Krunashev, issued an order for the relocation of the German aeronautical and engine industry. This was followed by a May 13, 1946 resolution decreed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or MBD, which ordered the transfer of 2,000 German specialists by the end of the year. And not just specialists of any kind, the Soviet zone of occupation included facilities which were replete with scientists and technicians involved in aviation and rocket engineering projects. The Soviets founded institutions such as the Nordhalle Institute, the Nordhalle Institute hausen institute or the berlin institute to resume work initiated by the reich's best and brightest for example the nordhausen was put under the direction of helmet gottrup a former collaborator of verna von braun on the v2 program but the agreement signed amongst the allies at the potsdam conference prohibited the development of weapons on german soil and so moscow planned the relocation of these programs elsewhere following the mvd's resolution of may 1946 the soviet forces started to gather hundreds of experts in atomic research electronics navigation equipment equipment, rockets, jet engines, and even color video. On October 22, 1946, Operation Osservahim was effectively initiated, under the leadership of Ivan Serov, later a chairman of the KGB. By day, Serov had organized 92 freight trains transporting the necessary equipment to the USSR. By night, the army and MVD police swooped in to arrest the German scientists and their families for a total of 6,500 individuals. After being made to see that their lives would be much better doing what the Soviet regime wanted and it would be a shame if anything happened to themselves or their families they were offered a regular contract and paid salaries which were higher than that of their soviet counterparts as you might imagine only a fraction of the german scientific contingent refused to cooperate with moscow and those that refused or interned at gulag the oswe via kim scientists were gradually allowed to return to germany after 1950 with the vast majority leaving after stalin's death in march 1943 but in the end at the start of this video we asked the question how did germany and austria dean art suffice so quick quickly after World War II, especially given that the ideology behind their former regime was so embedded into every facet of society. To sum up, on one hand, we can very simplistically state that both societies needed to move on quickly, to both rebuild their economies and to face the political challenges posed by the Cold War. And so everyone was incentivized to do so. And so did. And on top of this, the extreme atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war helped convince those who had bought into what the Nazis were selling that maybe they should rethink their decision-making paradigm. On the other hand, we can cynically acknowledge that the process was quick because it failed overall on a huge percentage of what it was meant to accomplish. Wiping the slate clean in such a pervasive regime was a logistically daunting task, one which the Allies and the local institutions were ill-prepared and little motivated to accomplish at a certain point. The Nazi Party was finished, the Soviets with a new threat. West Germany, much like Japan, needed to be strong to help counter this. And to help facilitate this, prominent Nazis and many prominent individuals in Japan would be. better serve those goals in their positions that they were experts in rather than sitting in prison or executed. And for more on the Japanese side of this, do see our documentary swept under the rug, The Truth About the Japanese Holocaust.

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So if you'd like to conveniently improve your nutrition without breaking the bank, the first 500 people to use the link in the description and code TIFO25 will get 25% off their first subscription with Soylent. Good for this channel, and it's good for you. And now back to Simon and today's video. to begin with the very top ranking members of the nazi party and nazi adjacent organizations 199 defendants in total were tried at the famous nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946. of course hundreds if not thousands of other officials and officers wanted by allied authorities were able to escape to argentina via the numerous rat lines through scandinavia spain and even vatican city countless more had no need to escape entities within the allied and soviet forces were more than happy to look the other way about anything they got up to during the war owing to the knowledge in their brains and we've got more on that in just a little bit but when looking at the more wide scale process of denazification of the citizenry most of these efforts consisted of special tribunals reviewing the alleged Nazi past of German and Austrian citizens as well as just a general installment in the mass populace that everything that had happened was their fault and trying to get rid of various works that espouse Nazi ideology on that latter point over 30,000 different books were not only banned in the country after the war but also systematically collected and destroyed anyone who tried to keep a copy could face legal consequences the irony of this was not lost on anyone given this move was more or less a tactic taken out of the nazi handbook when they came to power beyond this as alluded to there was the general populace who were made to feel responsible for what germany had done under the nazi regime with the psychological warfare division of supreme allied headquarters expeditionary force taking points on this they began efforts here seeing to it that the media from radio newspapers not only strongly emphasized the atrocities in their coverage but also explicitly noted that it was every single german's fault for allowing it to happen not just the nazis another rather ironic page taken out of the nazi handbook although to be fair in this case strongly emphasizing educating the German public on all the atrocities that had actually been committed unlike Much of the things which is completely made up by the Nazis Beyond the various media outlets posters were put up all around showing pictures from concentration camps with giant text overlaid Saying things like you are guilty of this as noted by British author James Stern in one German town quote a crowd gathered around a series Of photographs which though initially seemed to depict garbage instead reveal dead human bodies Each photograph has a heading.

Who is guilty? The spectators are silent, appearing hypnotized, and eventually retreat one by one. The placards are later replaced with clearer photographs, and placards proclaiming, This town is guilty.

You are guilty. On top of that, in towns near concentration camps, the citizenry were often made to tour them and even help bury the dead, help dig up mass graves, and things like this, with films also being made of this by the American War Information Unit to be shown to Germans who couldn't see for themselves. As noted by the Chief of the Film Division of psychological warfare sydney bernstein the point of all of this was to quote shake and humiliate the germans and prove to them beyond any possible challenge that these german crimes against humanity were committed and that the german people and not just the nazis and ss bore responsibility the general shift in mindset to blame all germans and not just the nazis began around 1944 with before this generally a distinction being made by the us brass and with the us public whereas after a strong push to solidify in everyone's minds that there was little difference between a nazi and a non-nazi german citizen this also seems to have been a general mindset pushed by the military brass to their own troops warning soldiers that quote the majority of germans supported the nazis try to make friends with us to get information to get favors to create sympathy for the poor downtrodden german people to make us disagree among ourselves or just to get a good chance to slip a knife into allied soldiers speaking of the soldiers and going back to taking pages out of the nazi handbook it is also noted that during the denazification process, not just on the Soviet side but on the US side as well, frequent random beatings and rape of German civilians out and about was a thing. As one German professor noted, these assaults have become notorious among the civilian population of Marburg. Nobody risks going out in the evenings and people feel as if they were exposed to acts of indiscriminate brutality with no means of protection.

But in all, to help change the mindset of the German populace who had bought into the Nazi ideology, the general push was to show the atrocities that had been committed and try to make every German citizen feel responsible. Going back to the tribunals to try and punish those more directly involved and rid society of them in any prominent position, very briefly, the objectives of the process were codified as early as July of 1945, and while the tribunal sentences dragged on into 1957, the vast majority of the millions of card-carrying Nazi Party members had already been reviewed and sanctioned by April 1948. But that's all at a very high level. So how was this actually accomplished, and how was it done so quickly? To begin with, the process of removing National Socialism ideology from the social fabric of Germany was conceived long before the end of the war in Europe.

In fact, the term denazification itself was coined in 1943 by the Pentagon as they began thinking about what the post-war Germany legal system would look like. And as early as August 1944, this had all gone unexpanded with US President Franklin Roosevelt writing in his memos that the Allies should drive home to the Germans that they had participated in a lawless conspiracy. The same sentiment was expressed more formally when Roosevelt met with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. On that occasion, In the occasion, the so-called Three Greats clarified that denazification was to be considered a strategic war aim. More precisely, the removal of all Nazi and militarist influences from public offices and from the cultural and economic life of the German people. The Third Reich surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the drive for denazification was restated in the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945. By that month, the Western Allies had compiled a list of 178,000 Nazis to put under arrest while the Soviets had already proceeded to the internment of 67,000 Reich officials.

officials. Such a huge endeavor could not be conducted willy-nilly. Allied occupation forces had to clearly state the denazification objectives and parameters, as well as the categories and related sanctions for Nazi offenders.

According to a U.S. Department of State memo of July 1945, the objectives of the denazification program included the arrest of Nazi leaders, supporters, and any other persons dangerous to the Allied occupation or its objectives, exclusion of members of the Nazi Party who had been more than nominal participants from both public office and positions of responsibility. responsibility, and private enterprises.

c. The eradication of Nazi laws and decrees. d.

The dissolution of the Nazi Party and all its affiliated organizations, as well as the prevention of their revival, which went hand in hand with e. Elimination of all paraphernalia so central to Nazi propaganda. Symbols, flags, and anthems.

And finally, f. Complete removal of Nazi ideology from Germany. information services schooling system and religion having clarified what dean artsification was about allied forces had to define how it would be carried out the allied control council reached an agreement only in january 1946 issuing directive 24 which contained guidelines for coordinated approach as we shall see later this would be anything but coordinated in each of the four occupation zones of germany the allies set up ad hoc denazification commissions and tribunals which involved the participation of local vetted individuals such as union leaders judges, and opponents of Nazism.

The rulings of these bodies were made on the basis of an extensive 131-point questionnaire drafted by the public safety branch of the Allied military government. This was known as the Fragerbogen, which translated from German simply means questionnaire. Respondents had to provide accurate and detailed answers about their education, their professional training, employment, and military service.

Going even deeper, those filling in the questionnaire had to provide details on the source of their income and assets since January 1931, as well as their writings and speeches. speeches published since 1923. But most of all, they had to provide a full account of their membership and role within the National Socialist Party or any other affiliated organization. In the American occupation sector, filled-in and signed questionnaires would be evaluated by a denazification tribunal in collaboration with the U.S.

Counterintelligence Corps and a special branch section of the military government's Public Safety Division. These bodies would then cross-check all the answers against police files, civil service records and the very archives of the Nazi Party. The purpose of this screening was not to to identify all German citizens who had joined the party or an adjacent organization at any point as there would have been very few exceptions.

The Allied military government, in fact, agreed to safeguard from sanctions the purely nominal member of the Nazi party who was forced to join in order to retain his position of livelihood or escape the concentration camp. The point was to ascertain if the individuals under scrutiny had been involved in more than just a nominal capacity in supporting the Nazi regime, if they had contributed to perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity, or if they posed a threat to the Allies and the rest of the world. restoration of democracy.

Based on these factors, respondents would be classified as follows. Major offenders were to be sentenced to life imprisonment or even to death. Then you had the offenders activists, militarists, and others who had profited from Germany's war of aggression, who could face up to 10 years in prison.

Next you had the somewhat murkier category of lesser offenders subjected to a probationary period of up to three years. The rank-and-file followers and supporters of Hitler's regime with no specific active responsibilities might encounter a fine and be subject to surveillance. Finally, exonerated individuals. individuals would receive no sanction based on this categorization anybody from lesser offender and up were deemed to have had more than a nominal participation in the nazi party's activities as such in addition to the sanctions described they would face mandatory removal from their post be them military officers or public officials all right so we've covered how the denazification of germany should have worked but how did it actually turn out well especially in the u.s controlled occupation zone military authorities started with a bang preemptively detaining 400 000 germans in internment camps before they had even started filling in their 131 point questionnaires but when the tribunals and commissions started applying due process it became apparent that discerning rank and file party members from lesser or more serious offenders was no easy task the u.s military had access to excellent records the one thing the nazis were unquestionably good at was record keeping occupation troops in munich in fact discovered the party's entire registry with the names of 12 million card-carrying members but according to earl fziemka writing for the u.s army center center of military history, quote, it was on the gray fringes of denazification that the question of who and what were Nazis vexed military governments. The military occupation authorities still had to sift through all of those 12 million individuals trying to identify the worst that humanity had to offer.

And it turns out that many of those 12 million Nazis had training, experience, energy, affability, and not a bad political record. As reported by Ziemke, American troops found those under scrutiny to be, on the whole, surprisingly pleasant chaps, which made their denazification a success. efforts all the more difficult a u.s high-ranking officer commented that if all the nazis had been exceedingly unpleasant and rude denazification would have been easy on the other hand many among those germans who were not formal members of the party could fall into two categories those ballsy enough not to fall for nazi ideology and propaganda are those who had applied for membership but have been rejected interestingly the former were equally not keen to cooperate with the allies since the latter likely did not make for ideal members of society and that was the problem denazification was all well and good but the Allies were also seeking to rebuild German society from its ruins and as fast as possible. If they made a clean sweep of anybody even loosely associated with National Socialism, in Ziemke's words, they were going to have to run the country with old men until the next generation grew up.

The number of political acceptables between the ages of 20 and 50, who were also trained and competent, was exceedingly small. So that was the first snag. The second one was that the whole program required a huge bureaucratic apparatus which the Allies simply could not manage. In the US controlled, zone alone, the commissions and tribes tribunals had to review a whopping 10 million questionnaires sure they had enrolled local personnel to run the tribunals but even so trained manpower was scarce and even those germans who were willing to participate were reluctant to dish out harsh sanctions on their fellow citizens the third snap The other nag was that defendants in these tribunals had found a convenient way out. They could easily obtain signed, sworn affidavits from priests, or even just from friends and neighbors attesting that the defendant was a mere rank-and-file follower, or that he or she could be altogether exonerated.

cottage industry emerged putting these affidavits on sale. They later became colloquially known as Persil Shine, after the popular Persil brand of detergents. In other words, they would leave a defendant's reputation squeaky clean. Eventually, US authorities could not cope with the red tape associated with denazification in their controlled areas, and with tensions rising between the Soviets and the US, their focus also somewhat shifted. In particular, they were now much more concerned with Germany's rapid economic recovery rather than trying to make sure everyone paid for their crimes and weren't allowed to pay for their crimes.

be in prominent positions. A similar thing happened over in Japan with the now termed reverse course policies. But back in Germany, with this shift on March 5, 1946, they formally transferred all such duties to reconstituted German authorities, something that the British had done a few months earlier as well. On that note, with the British and French occupation zones, local military governments took an even more pragmatic approach.

Both prioritized the efficiency of local administration and economy to quickly cope with housing and food shortages. Thus, they were even less scrupulous when it came to allowing foreign former high-ranking officials to hold or resume important positions. French authorities were most lax of all, even allowing Nazis residing in other zones to move and resume work in their occupied areas with no hindrance. As another example, given the Nazis had placed individuals whose beliefs aligned with their ideologies in prominent teaching positions, around three-quarters of teachers in the country were immediately fired after the war, only for the vast majority in the French zone to be quickly rehired and given their positions back.

This was reflected in most industries in the French zone. In the end, in total, the French only labelled 13 total individuals. individuals in their region as major offenders.

Finally, moving to the Soviet occupation zone, the removal of Nazi personnel and ideology appeared to be more resolute than in the zones governed by the Western Allies. In fact, denazification proceeded hand in hand with the Sovietization of Eastern Germany, that is, extensive land reforms and nationalization of industry. Moreover, while Western Allies strove to replace Nazi officials with political representatives from a broad spectrum, Moscow had a preference for the KPD or Communist Party of Germany, or later, the Socialist United Party or SE.

However, according to historian Timothy R. Vought, the denazification in the Soviet-held area was not as thorough as it initially appeared. Thanks to the cooperation of the KPD, Soviet authorities were able to delegate most denazification processes to the Germans themselves in the form of local anti-Nazi committees and newly-formed provincial governments. These bodies enacted their measures inconsistently and were prone to caving in when meeting local resistance and objections. Moreover, they appeared to follow the general principle that if former Nazis were willing to rebrand themselves as communists, they would not be removed from public life. As you might have guessed from all of this, as early as 1948, it had become apparent that the denazification of Germany had not resulted in the indented restructure of society.

In December of that year, international relations scholar John H. Herz, a member of the U.S. delegation at the Nuremberg trials, published an article with the self-explanatory title of The Fiasco of Denazification in Germany. Herz focused on the American occupation zone, reporting how trials conducted there were frequently hindered by intimidation on the part of Nazi symbols. sympathizers, even without intimidation. Prosecutors based their indictments of the answers provided in the questionnaire without verifying their veracity. Thus, most defendants were categorized as mere followers.

Moreover, after denazification efforts had been handed over to German authorities in March 1946, they had issued two amnesties, one in August, one in December, exonerating members of the Hitler Youth, persons of low income, and disabled citizens. Hertz pointed out how such amnesties allowed even war criminals to escape prosecution. The scholar also unearthed a major procedural flaw. floor.

Until October 1947, denazification processes had vetted some 50,000 individuals a month, which is quite a good number, but the tribunals had given precedence to those who had been classified as followers on the basis of their questionnaire. By the time the tribunals finally worked their stash of paperwork to those classified as offenders, a legislative amendment allowed prosecutors to re-categorize them as followers, with the exception of members of the SS. Such re-categorization still required approval from the Allied military government, but in January 1948 this procedural step was re-categorized.

removed by the enactment of an expediting procedure now all offenders could be rubber stamped as followers wholesale a further relaxation of standards took place in march of 1948 with the almost total removal of the exception clause for members of the ss and other criminal organizations affiliated to the nazi party now only those belonging to the category of the major offenders could expect major sanctions everybody else was deemed a follower and was free to go after paying a fine as for the numbers on all of this some 12 million 750 53,000 Germans were expected to undergo the denazification procedure more than 9 million were found not chargeable the remaining 3.2 million or processed by the end of april 1948 and of these more than 2.3 million were amnestied without trial that left 836 000 to be tried a mere 6.5 percent more than one-third of these were exonerated and more than half were classified as followers of the remainder 10.7 were classed as lesser offenders 2.1 percent were class 2 offenders and only 0.1 were found to be major offenders That's 836 individuals from the nearly 13 million person pool. And even those who were sentenced as offenders, in any degree of severity, most received lenient sanctions such as community work, payment of fines, or short prison sentences. Herzberg proceeded to compile several examples of such lenient treatments, of which we shall report only a few. An active propagandist and publisher of anti-Semitic writings was ranked as a follower and fined a mere 50 marks. A dean at Bonn University, active member of the SS, and their intelligence services the sd was fully exonerated a high-ranking member of the gestapo was found to only be a follower and received a minor fine another gestapo man head of a station in the town of fulda was also a follower and the former deputy chief of police in nuremberg and one of the men responsible for the infamous crystal nacht also a follower and find 800 marks one physician responsible for carrying out the sterilization law against undesirables well you guessed it he was just a follower please pay your 500 marks and then leave finally an aeronautical engineer and industrialist he made a fortune of 36 million marks thanks to slave labor well you get the gist by now he was fined 2 000 marks moving on toward the end of the 1940s across all areas of occupation leniency gave way to amnesty and a strategy of integration the chief proponent of this approach was the first chancellor of the new federal republic of germany or west germany conrad adenauer after his election in september 1949 adenauer advocated for west germany to forge strong bonds with western europe against the communist bloc this strategy also includes for old Nazi cadres to be integrated into the new republic in order to move forward.

Towards that end in all this, in May 1951, Adenauer's government passed the first amnesty law, which reintegrated into their position some 150,000 officials and civil servants previously removed by the Allied denazification efforts. The following year, the Chancellor reported to the Parliament that two-thirds of German diplomats were, in fact, former Nazis. The armed forces, security services, and even the private sector were similarly replete with former Reich personnel.

Sir Ivo and Kirkpatrick, British High Commissioner in Germany, commented, Whenever I travelled, I ran into ghosts of Hitler's Reich, men who had occupied positions in the administration, in industry, or the society of the day. They were either living in retirement or were taking jobs in banks, commerce, or industry. Despite the amnesty, Adenauer's regime also took steps the other way.

For example, in August of 1952, his cabinet banned the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party, and in September, he agreed to pay the State of Israel reparation of 3 billion German marks, the equivalent of 8.3 billion dollars in today's value but aranau's intention was to leave the past behind nonetheless and in 1954 his government issued the second amnesty law which this time benefited around 400 000 german citizens a similar denazification process culminating in widespread amnesty was followed in austria this country is often excluded from english-speaking accounts of denazification but we should not forget that austria was annexed to the third reich before the start of world war ii nor that austrian citizens actively joined the wehrmacht the s and the Nazi Party, and therefore the country was occupied by the Allies at the end of the conflict. The Austrian denazification process was led by the four occupying powers the UK, France, US, and USSR in collaboration with three local parties the Social Democratic Party, the Austrian People's Party, and the Communist Party. According to historian Dieter Stiefel, the Austrian denazification can be divided into five phases.

During the military security phase from April 1945 to June 1945, the four Allied occupation powers worked in cooperation with the German army. coordination to intern an initial batch of prominent SS and Nazi Party members. Such potentially dangerous individuals were hunted down and detained on the basis of blacklists compiled by the Allied High Commissioners.

The next phase, from June 1945 to February 1946, is labeled as Autonomous Denazification. The four Allies plus the Austrian government carried out denazification efforts independently from each other, which resulted in contradictory measures and decisions. For example, the US occupation used a seven-page questionnaire similar to the Fragerboden.

did too, but only in part while the Soviets ditched it completely. In fact, the Soviets acted relatively chill in their zone of occupation, delegating the denazification process to local authorities. They intervened directly only when they identified someone guilty of war crimes committed on Soviet soil, or when they selected a promising scientist for, let's say, a relocation under pressure.

In February 1946, the Allies devolved all denazification activities into the Austrian government, ushering in the Third Autochronous Phase. Local authorities followed three laws promulgated to this purpose. the prohibition act the economic cleansing act and the war crimes act in order to enforce these laws the government created ad hoc people's courts consisting of two professional judges and three lay judges nominated amongst the general public these tribunals were set up to take very direct action as no appeal was allowed against their verdicts.

Nonetheless, Allied authorities took note that the Austrian judiciary introduced it at a very slow pace and pressured for a quicker uptake. In February 1947, the government issued a new National Socialist Law regulating the removal of the old Reich's vestiges, thus kicking off the Fourth Reich. fourth phase, which lasted less than one year.

The fifth and final phase, from 1948 to 1957, is known as the Time of Amnesties. The first of these involved the so-called Minderbella Stata, which can be translated as lesser incriminated or lesser offenders. This amnesty was applied to 90% of all registered members of the Austrian National Socialist Party.

The Minderbella Stata Amnesty effectively put an end to all major attempts at denazifying Austrian society. Which is not surprising. Much like in a divided Germany, after the onset of the Cold War, each allied party was power sought to consolidate local authorities under their sphere of influence. The Austrian People's Courts, however, continued to operate until December 1955. Up to that point, these tribunals had issued 13,607 guilty verdicts, but following the withdrawal of occupation forces from the country, a new constitutional law abolished the People's Courts, transferring their duties to standard jury trials. Denazification trials continued for another couple of years, but to a much lesser degree of intensity.

Within the 1956-1957 period, Austrian courts issued a total of 39 guilty verdicts. nine verdicts, of which only 18 were guilty sentences. As the denazification efforts and fervor whittled down, the Austrian parliament voted in favor of a final amnesty in 1957. Besides widespread amnesties, it's no secret that hundreds of former Nazi officials entirely escaped from sanctions thanks to their military, scientific, or technical expertise. They were simply deemed too useful to the Allies. In other countries, this seems to be something history paints as completely acceptable, though when other countries like Argentina essentially did the same thing, it's more vilified for various reasons.

reasons. You can see our video, Why Did So Many Nazis Choose to Go to Argentina After World War II, for more on that. But as for the United States, according to the US Nazi War Criminal Records Intra-Agency Working Group, as early as May 10, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff advised the commander of US forces in Europe, General Eisenhower, to make some exceptions when it came to arresting war criminals, quoting, In your discretion, you may make such exceptions as you deem advisable for intelligence and other military reasons. Throughout the summer of 1945, the US Army Counterintelligence Corps Corps, CIC, and the Office of Strategic Services, OSS, did employ former German military and intelligence officers as informants, but this was a necessity to identify more dangerous Nazi criminals or suppress anti-Allied resistance.

But, as friction mounted across the Iron Curtain, American and other Western Allied services took to using German military personnel as a source of intelligence about Soviet military strategy, equipment, and tactics. Toward this end, the CIC collaborated closely with General Reinhard Gerland, former head of the Foreign Army's East, founded in 1938. and responsible for collecting intelligence on the Soviet Union. But the Corps also recruited personnel whose resumes erred on the criminal side, such as SS officer Klaus Barbie, charmingly known as the Butcher of Lyon. Barbie the Butcher and other war criminals were eventually protected from prosecution and smuggled out of Europe with the complicity of the CIC, OSS, and other Allied services.

Many, many more former Nazi and SS officials would escape via ratlines set up by Argentinian intelligence and even the Vatican. The US Joint Chief of Staffs, however, were not interested in the possibility of a possible interested in simply knowing more about the Soviets. They were interested in gaining a technological edge over them. As early as July 1945, they explicitly authorized a program to exploit chosen rare mines whose continuing intellectual productivity we wish to use. Those rare mines were 350 German and Austrian scientists and technicians to be brought immediately to America under Operation Overcast.

By 1946, the Department of Defense's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency sought to expand Overcast to recruit a further 1,000 former enemy brains and even grant them American citizenship. This was a complicated endeavor, as some of those chosen thousand were high-ranking members of the Nazi Party. At least one of them, rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, had been an SS officer.

The plan required presidential blessing, which President Truman granted in September 1946, insisting that only so-called nominal Nazis should be allowed in the program. The term indicated German and Austrian citizens who had joined the party out of convenience or coercion but had not actively supported the Reich. The new expanded program took the name of Operation Pestilence.

paperclip. In early 1947, a panel constituted by the Departments of Justice and State began combing dossiers of prospective scientists for relocation to the US, which were based on CIC investigations. The panel initially rejected several applications, as the individuals in question had been identified as potential threats on the basis of their Nazi past. This did not sit well with the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency. According to the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, they ordered American intelligence in Europe to revise the scientists'dossiers so they could make it through.

through the paper. Thus, from 1945 to 1955, Operations Overcast and Paperclip helped relocate 765 scientists, engineers and technicians to the United States. The interagency working group estimates that as many as 80% of them were former Nazi Party members.

Operation Paperclip is a well-known episode of the Cold War. What is less well-known is that the Soviet Union had their own version of this project, known as Operation Ozovayakim, or the forced relocation of more than 2,500 German scientists to the USSR. However, the Soviet Union was not the only one to have a version of this project. The Soviet Union was also the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim, which was the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim. However, the Soviet Union was not the only one to have a version of this project.

The Soviet Union was also the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim, which was the first to have a version of the Operation Ozovayakim, which was the first to have a version an interesting thing about the name is that it's actually a misnomer the term ozoavir is an acronym which stands for union of societies for assistance to defense and aviation chemical construction of the ussr this was a paramilitary and sporting organization founded in 1927. it had absolutely nothing to do with the soviet equivalent of paperclip but apparently a german radio incorrectly used this word to refer to the brain drain in 1946 and u.s intelligence services adopted the term the plan was initiated in april 1946, when the Soviet Minister of Aeronautical Industry, Mikhail Krunashev, issued an order for the relocation of the German aeronautical and engine industry. This was followed by a May 13, 1946 resolution decreed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or MBD, which ordered the transfer of 2,000 German specialists by the end of the year. And not just specialists of any kind, the Soviet zone of occupation included facilities which were replete with scientists and technicians involved in aviation and rocket engineering projects. The Soviets founded institutions such as the Nordhalle Institute, the Nordhalle Institute hausen institute or the berlin institute to resume work initiated by the reich's best and brightest for example the nordhausen was put under the direction of helmet gottrup a former collaborator of verna von braun on the v2 program but the agreement signed amongst the allies at the potsdam conference prohibited the development of weapons on german soil and so moscow planned the relocation of these programs elsewhere following the mvd's resolution of may 1946 the soviet forces started to gather hundreds of experts in atomic research electronics navigation equipment equipment, rockets, jet engines, and even color video.

On October 22, 1946, Operation Osservahim was effectively initiated, under the leadership of Ivan Serov, later a chairman of the KGB. By day, Serov had organized 92 freight trains transporting the necessary equipment to the USSR. By night, the army and MVD police swooped in to arrest the German scientists and their families for a total of 6,500 individuals. After being made to see that their lives would be much better doing what the Soviet regime wanted and it would be a shame if anything happened to themselves or their families they were offered a regular contract and paid salaries which were higher than that of their soviet counterparts as you might imagine only a fraction of the german scientific contingent refused to cooperate with moscow and those that refused or interned at gulag the oswe via kim scientists were gradually allowed to return to germany after 1950 with the vast majority leaving after stalin's death in march 1943 but in the end at the start of this video we asked the question how did germany and austria dean art suffice so quick quickly after World War II, especially given that the ideology behind their former regime was so embedded into every facet of society.

To sum up, on one hand, we can very simplistically state that both societies needed to move on quickly, to both rebuild their economies and to face the political challenges posed by the Cold War. And so everyone was incentivized to do so. And so did. And on top of this, the extreme atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war helped convince those who had bought into what the Nazis were selling that maybe they should rethink their decision-making paradigm. On the other hand, we can cynically acknowledge that the process was quick because it failed overall on a huge percentage of what it was meant to accomplish.

Wiping the slate clean in such a pervasive regime was a logistically daunting task, one which the Allies and the local institutions were ill-prepared and little motivated to accomplish at a certain point. The Nazi Party was finished, the Soviets with a new threat. West Germany, much like Japan, needed to be strong to help counter this.

And to help facilitate this, prominent Nazis and many prominent individuals in Japan would be. better serve those goals in their positions that they were experts in rather than sitting in prison or executed. And for more on the Japanese side of this, do see our documentary swept under the rug, The Truth About the Japanese Holocaust.

Transcript for:Denazification After WWII: Challenges and Outcomes

Transcript for:
Denazification After WWII: Challenges and Outcomes