Editing Denazification (section)

==Overview==
[[File:Amtsdokument Paul Fischer 1948 Zivilist Entlastungs-Zeugnis Clearance Certificate Entnazifizierungsausschuß Stadtkreis Wattenscheid.jpg|thumb|A 1948 [[Denazification certificate|denazification clearance certificate]] from [[Wattenscheid]] in the [[Allied-occupied Germany|British Zone]]]]

About 8{{nbsp}}million Germans, or 10% of the population, had been members of the Nazi Party. Nazi-related organizations also had huge memberships, such as the [[German Labor Front]] (25{{nbsp}}million), the [[National Socialist People's Welfare]] organization (17{{nbsp}}million), the [[National Socialist Women's League|League of German Women]], and others.<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=226}} It was through the Party and these organizations that the Nazi state was run, involving as many as 45{{nbsp}}million Germans in total.<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=255}} In addition, Nazism found significant support among industrialists, who produced weapons or used slave labor, and large landowners, especially the [[Junker (Prussia)|Junker]]s in Prussia. Denazification after the surrender of Germany was thus an enormous undertaking, fraught with many difficulties.

The first difficulty was the enormous number of Germans who might have to be first investigated, then penalized if found to have supported the Nazi state to an unacceptable degree. In the early months of denazification there was a great desire to be utterly thorough, to investigate every suspect and hold every supporter of Nazism accountable; however, it was decided that the numbers simply made this goal impractical. The [[Morgenthau Plan]] had recommended that the Allies create a post-war Germany with all its industrial capacity destroyed, reduced to a level of subsistence farming; however, that plan was soon abandoned as unrealistic and, because of its excessive punitive measures, liable to give rise to German anger and aggression.<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=119-123}} As time went on, another consideration that moderated the denazification effort in the West was the concern to keep enough good will of the German population to prevent the growth of communism.<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=97-98}}

The denazification process was often completely disregarded by both the Soviets and the Western powers for German rocket scientists and other technical experts, who were taken out of Germany to work on projects in the victors' own countries or simply seized in order to prevent the other side from taking them. The US took 785 scientists and engineers from Germany to the United States, some of whom formed the backbone of the US space program (see [[Operation Paperclip]]).<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=258}}

In the case of the top-ranking Nazis, such as [[Hermann Göring|Göring]], [[Rudolf Hess|Hess]], [[Joachim von Ribbentrop|Ribbentrop]], [[Julius Streicher|Streicher]], and [[Albert Speer|Speer]], the initial proposal by the British was simply to arrest them and shoot them,<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=230}} but that course of action was replaced by putting them on trial for war crimes at the [[Nuremberg Trials]] in order to publicize their crimes while demonstrating, especially to the German people, that the trials and the sentences were just. However, the legal foundations of the trials were questioned, and many Germans were not convinced that the trials were anything more than "[[victors' justice]]".<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=231}}

Many refugees from Nazism were Germans and Austrians, and some had fought for Britain in the Second World War. Some were transferred into the [[Intelligence Corps (United Kingdom)|Intelligence Corps]] and sent back to Germany and Austria in British uniform. However, German-speakers were small in number in the British zone, which was hampered by the language deficit. Due to its large [[German-American]] population, the US authorities were able to bring a larger number of German-speakers to the task of working in the [[Allied Military Government]], although many were poorly trained.<ref name=taylor11/>{{rp|p=267, 300}} They were assigned to all aspects of military administration, the interrogation of [[Prisoner of war|prisoners of war]], collecting evidence for the War Crimes Investigation Unit, and the search for [[war criminal]]s.