During Adenauer’s tenure he:

1- knowingly appointed multitudes of "former" nazis into government positions such as ministers, ambassadors, judges, police, secretaries, etc.

2- banned all socialists / communists from public service

3- outlawed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), the Free German Youth organisation (FDJ), the Federation of Victims of Fascism (VVN) and the German-Soviet Friendship Society(DSFS)

4- passed a special amendment to the constitution (Ausfuhrungs-Gesetz zu Artikel 131 des Grundgesetzes) that gave all former nazis, apart from the few top culpable individuals, the right to return to their posts in the public service. This effectively ended West Germany’s pursuit of prosecuting Nazis.

5- remilitarized West Germany by having it join NATO.

6- opposed and prevented the reunification of Germany.

7- reinstated and continued the Nazi’s persecution of communists with arrests and imprisonment. By the mid-1960s, around 250,000 judicial investigations had been undertaken against suspected communists. Of these, around 10,000 were actually imprisoned.

8- extended this program to include socialists, those opposed to a remilitarisation of Germany, and members of organisations working to promote diplomatic ties with the GDR.

9- funded the Schnez-Truppe, an illegal clandestine paramilitary organisation formed by veterans of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. Growing it from 2,000 members initially to at least 40,000 at its peak

These are just some highlights, there is so much more.

Denazification didn't actually happen in the west.

Concrete examples of this + sources in the comments.

  • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    amazing effortpost.

    West Germany’s second Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the man credited with the country’s post-war “economic miracle” and dubbed the “father of the social market economy” had previously occupied a leading position in the Nazi Reichsgruppe Industrie and the Institute for Industrial Research financed by the chemical conglomerate IG Farben that supplied Zyklon-B for the gas chambers.

    Also, this so-called economic miracle, which the west attribute to privatization, austerity, and general pivot from denazification to economic recovery, was actually the result of the Marshall Plan giving West Germany more money to rebuild after WW2 than any other European nation. They gave the USSR peanuts, which the USSR declined anyway, preferring to rebuild on its own without injections of western capital. Despite having lost 25 million people and 1/3 of its industrial capacity, the USSR did not benefit from reparations after WW2. West Germany benefited tremendously despite being the key belligerent in the war.

    Denazification didn’t actually happen in the west.

    I find America's deliberate failure to de-nazify West Germany suspiciously similar to its failure to carry out radical reconstruction in the South after the civil war.

    It is impossible for this post to contain everything nazi about post-WW2 West Germany however I would be remiss to see no mention of the curious case of the Schnez-Truppe

    • FidelCastro [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Goddamn, that is also blatant. Reading into this further and when Adenauer discovered this clandestine militia of nazis still existed and was even growing, he ordered the West German government to begin outright funding them.

      Edit: I’ve gone ahead and added a bullet about it to the post. Thank you for commenting with this.

      • Thomas_Dankara [any,comrade/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        :solidarity: you're welcome and thank you especially for making this post as it sums up a lot of things that have been bothering me lately about the post WW2 world order