Introduction: The Challenge of Mass Accountability
Following the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allied powers faced an unprecedented legal and administrative dilemma:
The Architecture and Breakdown of Denazification
To evaluate every citizen, Allied occupation authorities distributed the Fragebogen—an exhaustive questionnaire designed to categorize over 13 million Germans into five legal tiers (from Major Offenders down to Mitläufer / Followers and Exonerated Persons):
Cold War Realpolitik and the 1951 Amnesty
The primary catalyst for abandoning total denazification was the rapid onset of the Cold War:
The ’68 Generation and the Delayed Confrontation with History
For two decades, West German society operated under an implicit “pact of silence,” choosing collective amnesia over uncomfortable moral reckonings:
Conclusion: The Triumph of Pragmatism Over Idealism
The post-war treatment of German Nazi collaborators reveals a stark historical truth regarding mass accountability:
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