Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
The Fragebogen and Political Screening during the Allied Occupation

A grassroots history of the Allied campaign to purge Nazism from German society after the Second World War.

Mikkel Dack (Author)

9781009216357, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 August 2024

328 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.476 kg

'… the contemporary reprise of Nazi imagery and rhetoric - in Germany and elsewhere - suggests how valuable this book's reassessment of the Fragebogen's ambiguous multigenerational legacy is likely to prove.' Paul Steege, Central European History

In the wake of World War II, the victorious Allied armies implemented a radical program to purge Nazism from Germany and preserve peace in Europe. Between 1945 and 1949, 20 million political questionnaires, or Fragebögen, were distributed by American, British, French, and Soviet armies to anxious Germans who had to prove their non-Nazi status to gain employment. Drafted by university professors and social scientists, these surveys defined much of the denazification experience and were immensely consequential to the material and emotional recovery of Germans. In Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany, Mikkel Dack draws the curtain to reveal what denazification looked like on the ground and in practice and how the highly criticized vetting program impacted the lives of individual Germans and their families as they recovered from the war. Accessing recently declassified documents, this book challenges traditional interpretations by illustrating the positive elements of the denazification campaign and recounting a more comprehensive history, one of mid-level Allied planners, civil affairs soldiers, and regular German citizens. The Fragebogen functions as a window into this everyday history.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. An Army of Academics: Planning the Denazification of Germany
2. 'A Miserable Paper Substitute for a Spontaneous Revolution': Drafting the Questionnaire
3. 'Land of the Fragebogen': Screening the German Population
4. The 'Little Man's Nuremberg': Germans and Denazification
5: Writing Away Culpability: The Unintended Outcomes of Denazification
Conclusion
Appendices: The Fragebogen Questions
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Political structures: totalitarianism & dictatorship [JPHX], Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], Second World War [HBWQ], Military history [HBW], European history [HBJD]