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. “
And Patton was absolutely right.
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. …What effects would something like that have had? The Stormtroopers were not casual national socialists.