American Denazification and German Local Politics, 1945–1949: A Case Study in Marburg

Reviewing the accomplishments of three years of American occupation in Hessen the military governor wrote in 1948 that “the time is not yet ripe for a final appraisal of the effects of Denazification. There can be no doubt, however, that…it was not as effective in its ultimate objective—weeding out anti-democratic elements—as it should have been.” Although the quotation implies a basically negative purpose for denazification, American military government had a positive purpose as well: to provide conditions under which a more democratic life could grow and flourish. To achieve the positive aim, political parties, trade unions, and other democratic institutions were encouraged to develop, with the enforced condition that they be, and stay, purged of Nazis. To achieve the negative goal, military government liquidated the Nazi Party and its affiliated organizations; arrested and detained influential Nazis and “other dangerous persons”; removed and excluded Nazi Party members “of more than nominal importance” from schools, public offices and private enterprises; eradicated Nazi symbols from public places; seized and blocked Nazi property; eliminated Nazi teaching materials from the schools; and punished those Nazis who had taken an active part in the organizations declared to have been criminal by the Nuremberg Tribunal. Both a transfer of power and a transformation of the political climate were intended; each seemed a necessary condition for the other. Studies of the American program of denazification that have so far appeared are devoted chiefly to top-level analyses of the policy and its administration. The present study complements these by examining its impact at the lowest level in the military government's administrative hierarchy, in a single locality.