Posted on 11/07/2015 4:20:33 PM PST by Olog-hai
For two decades after the Second World War, over half of all employees of the West German interior ministry were ex-Nazis, a new study shows.
The research, carried out by the Center for Contemporary Historical Studies with the blessing of the Interior Ministry, shows that the number of ex-Nazi party members in both the West and East German postwar administrations was much higher than previously thought.
In exact figures, an average of 54 percent of civil servants in the West German interior ministry were former Nazis, although at its high point between 1966 and 1961, two-thirds of all employees at the ministry had been Nazi party members during the war. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.de ...
Ex-Nazis
As in not Nazis
Or NINOs.
Uh, when you have a totalitarian police state, and if you were to work for that government, the odds were the vast majority were members of the nazi party. I suspect the same is for Putin’s crew when they were part of the the old Soviet Union. Wbo else better to run a government than government workers with experience, even if they were part of an evil former system? Welcome to the way the world works under socialism/communism. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Yup. Were’ Nazis but who gives an obama. A number of the NASA scientists in the 50’s were “ex Nazi’s” too
Was Merkel part of this?
Explain it to me like I am a five year old.
When it came to Putin, past was prologue. Are you saying the same applies here?
After WWII, Germany was a county of ex Nazis. Is this some kind of guilt trip being laid on Germany?
I would think in a pragmatic sense that after the war in Germany it would have been awfully hard to find anyone who was an adult who was not a Nazi Party member to work the government. No, party membership was not compulsory, but it certainly would have kept them out of your business if you were. Sort of like the Communist Party in Russia was not compulsory, but strongly recommended.
I don’t find this story remarkable unless they had a high party official with blood on his hands and uniform working there, and the article does not say that.
Merkel was East Germany. She wasn’t involved in politics until just before reunification; she was a research chemist before that.
After the original de-Nazificiation frenzy of 1945-47, pragmatists realized that management needed to be handed over to competent leadership.
Patton understood earlier than most (before he was liquidated).
“It is no more possible for a man to be a civil servant in Germany and not have paid lip service to the Nazi’s than it is for a man to be a postmaster in America and not have paid at least lip service to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party when they are in power.”
“I had never heard that we fought to “de-Nazify” Germany. Live and learn. What we are doing is to utterly destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe so that Russians can swallow the whole.”
“It is my belief that when the catchword “De-Nazification” has worn itself out and when people see that it is merely a form of stimulating Bolshevism, there will be a flop of the pendulum in the opposite direction.”
“The point which I was and am still trying to bring out is that in Germany practically all or at least a very large percentage of the trades people, small businessmen, and even professional men such as doctors and lawyers were beholden to the Nazi party. Without the patronage of the Nazi party, they could not carry on their business and work at their professions. Therefore, many of them were forced to give lip service to the party. I would extend this to mean that any dues paying by them was nothing but a form of blackmail and a means of holding onto their jobs. If we kick out these people, we will retard the reorganization of Bavaria to the extent that we will certainly be guilty of the deaths by starvation and freezing, of many women, children, and old men this winter.”
” I stated that if we took all of the small Nazi’s out of every job, chaos would result, and it did. “
Nazis were evil. They infected many decent things around the world in the post war era.
Yeah, so? All civil servants in Germany were required to be Nazi party members under Hitler. Patton got in trouble for keeping ex-Party members in their jobs, but who was going to replace them. One of my college professors was a kid in 1945 Germany. He said the Americans appointed a random concentration camp inmate as mayor of his town. The guy turned out to be a wife-murderer who set himself up in a mansion with a bunch of whores. But, hey, at least he (probably) wasn’t a Nazi, right?
Well, that's DIFFERENT. Somehow.
;-)
Well heck we had a Nazi for UN Secretary General.
Gee, like Soviet Communists?
“Who else better to run a government than government workers with experience, even if they were part of an evil former system?”
The people they oppressed? Their victims? Decent people? There are so many choices.
The number of ex-members of Hitler’s personal militia, the SA, was also surprisingly high, the report found, reaching a peak of 45 percent in 1961. …Remember that the USA did a mere two years of de-Nazification of Germany. They handed the process over to Konrad Adenauer, who declared it to be over three years after that. What resulted may certainly be speculated on. Lady Thatcher’s opinion still counts, from my POV, although one must make up one’s own mind as to whether there is some correlation.
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