Denazification in Soviet-Occupied Germany:Brandenburg 1945-1948
Timothy R. Vogt, Denazification in Soviet-Occupied Germany: Brandenburg 1945-1948. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. 336 pp. $52.50.
Timothy Vogt's book on denazification in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany (SBZ) focuses on the process of determining who was a "nominal" Nazi and thus freed of responsibility for his or her past and who was punishable for Nazi activism. Using a large sample of records from representative denazification commissions in the province of Brandenburg, Vogt explores how the Soviet and German authorities in the east vetted local Nazis and reviewed their petitions for clemency. At the same time, this is not a genuine local history of denazification, one that would reconstruct the meaning of these campaigns for individuals and families in concrete towns and communities, whether in Brandenburg or elsewhere. Moreover, Vogt does not use Russian-language archives or published documents; as a result, the book can reveal little about the Soviet authorities' intentions, expectations, or policy decisions. Vogt is also not particularly interested in broad questions of the denazification of German culture or the politics of denazification as they relate to the development of party struggles or social organizations in the zone. In short, despite the title of the book, Vogt has not produced a definitive history of denazification in the SBZ. It is, instead, a study with limited goals based on highly focused archival research.
The advantages of Vogt's strategy are as notable as its limits. The reader learns a great deal about the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and the way it attracted Germans to its ranks. With regard to the postwar period, the book analyzes interesting information about "average" Germans in the east—workers, shopkeepers, professionals—and how they thought about their involvement and that of their friends and neighbors in the Nazi party and its related organizations. In addition to exploring the mentality of former party members through their petitions, appeals, [End Page 140] and interrogations by local commission members, the book makes an important contribution to our understanding of how local politics, justice, and administration functioned in the Soviet zone. Despite pressure from provincial authorities (who in turn were pressured from the center), the local denazification commissions in Brandenburg tended to judge individual cases on their own merits. Clearly politics played a role, but not an overwhelming one. Instead, local issues made a huge difference—who denounced whom and who testified on behalf of whom; the concrete circumstances under which an individual joined the party; the behavior of party members; and the reaction of petitioners to the end of the war, the occupation of the Soviet army, and, most critically, the task of rebuilding.
In Vogt's treatment, the Soviet Military Administration and the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) seem very far away from the functioning of the local commissions. The provincial authorities carried out periodic inspections, and some of the SBZ leaders were annoyed that denazification moved at such a slow pace and had such a relatively innocuous effect. But the higher authorities could not force the commissions to abandon their generally sympathetic approach to the situation of "nominal" party members, people who by force of circumstance and pragmatism had joined the NSDAP, the Hitlerjugend, and related organizations. If, as Vogt suggests, the local commissions in Brandenburg were typical of the entire zone, the process of denazification was far less politicized and much more fair-minded than the earlier historiography has led us to believe. Vogt provides some data to back up this argument. From a sample of 2,740 cases he finds that there was no particular bias against certain professions versus others. To be sure, the critical need for physicians in postwar eastern Germany meant that their cases were handled more favorably than those of other professions. Still, middle-class shopkeepers and workers were treated largely the same by the commissions. Of course, it helped to be a member of the SED when one appeared before a denazification commission, but party membership did not necessarily determine the outcome. Youth were more favorably treated than older people; adult women were judged more leniently than men; and denazification in the agricultural sector as a whole had a "negligible effect"(p. 173).
There were several reasons that denazification had such a desultory history and was abruptly halted, at least as a formal campaign, in March 1948. Although the public was generally indifferent to the campaign, many Germans, even in the antifascist parties, felt a measure of solidarity with the "nominal" NSDAP members. Although Soviet and higher SED officials sporadically sought punishment and retribution, the bulk of German society in the east (and west) was more interested in understanding and forgetting. The members of the Brandenburg commissions, though they often belonged to antifascist parties and social organizations, were no different in this regard. Moreover, they received mixed signals from the top. According to Vogt, Walter Ulbricht's mania for rebuilding the administration, the East German infrastructure, and East German industry took priority over chasing down small-time Nazis. In Ulbricht's view, worrying about the past political affiliation of Germans was tantamount to indulging in "ancient history"(p. 235). In both phases of denazification in the Soviet zone—from 1946 to September 1947 under the influence of Allied Control [End Page 141] Council Directive 24 and from October 1947 to March 1948 in connection with Order No. 201 of the Soviet Military Administration—Ulbricht was anxious to speed up the process, punish the worst perpetrators, and get back to other work. Meanwhile, German Communists like Johannes Becher, the poet and Kulturbund leader, urged a more thoroughgoing approach to denazification, one that would turn political and social life into a permanent confrontation with Germany's terrible past. The Soviet authorities themselves were typically inconsistent in this connection. The result was a great deal of autonomy for the local commissions.
Formal denazification procedures were abandoned in the SBZ in March 1948. In May 1948 the National Democratic Party of Germany, the party of the so-called "little Nazis," was formed. In this connection denazification was declared completed, and there was to be no more talk of Nazis in government, industry, and the police. Although Erich Mielke and his secret police continued to chase down ex-Nazis, the East German regime basked in self-satisfied triumphalism about its antifascist purity. Meanwhile in West Germany, under the glare of a free press and subject to genuine oppositional politics, very similar formal processes of denazification were roundly condemned as cosmetic and were subjected to critical scrutiny. Vogt's book balances the picture. The most egregious criminals of the Third Reich were tried, interned, and removed from political and economic life; but, on the whole, the formal denazifica- tion of German society was not successful in either east or west.
Norman M. Naimark
Stanford University