Denazification Terminated in West Germany; Ex-nazis Benefited

In Bavaria, the last of West Germany’s nine constituent states where legislation providing for denazification is still on the books, the Cabinet has approved a bill that will, in effect, put an end to denazification.

Although little use has been made of this legislation in the past few years, its existence had a deterrent effect upon the lunatic fringe of unreconstructed bitter-end Hitlerites and avowed Jew-baiters, In a few cases, it was applied to particularly Nazi “major offenders.”

“Denazification” was originally designed to signify the elimination of Nazis from public life, but over the years its meaning was perverted to denote the formalistic and almost automatic cleansing of ex-Nazis from their Nazi taint. The new bill carries this farcical development to its illogical extreme by prohibiting the initiation of new denazification proceedings directed against a Nazi, but permitting him to institute proceedings himself, if he so desires, in order to acquire a clean record. Similarly, pending prosecution appeals are automatically quashed.

If the appeal was filed by a convicted Nazi, however, it will be processed and, in most cases, granted. Nazis so heavily incriminated that, in spite of the prevalent leniency, were sentenced after having exhausted all appeal channels, are virtually invited to have their sentences expunged by a proviso of the new bill giving them until December, 1955 to ask for a “retrial.” Another section of the new bill provides for the cancellation of fines imposed by Denazification Courts. Small though they were, they have, as a gesture of contempt, not been paid in about half the cases.

In the sense in which the term is understood abroad, denazification–one of the primary Allied objectives in the postwar period–has now come to an end throughout West Germany.