Book contents
- Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
- Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 An Army of Academics
- 2 “A Miserable Paper Substitute for a Spontaneous Revolution”
- 3 “Land of the Fragebogen”
- 4 The “Little Man’s Nuremberg”
- 5 Writing Away Culpability
- Conclusion
- Appendix The Fragebogen Questions
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Writing Away Culpability
The Unintended Outcomes of Denazification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2023
- Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
- Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Maps
- Introduction
- 1 An Army of Academics
- 2 “A Miserable Paper Substitute for a Spontaneous Revolution”
- 3 “Land of the Fragebogen”
- 4 The “Little Man’s Nuremberg”
- 5 Writing Away Culpability
- Conclusion
- Appendix The Fragebogen Questions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The book’s final chapter is a nuanced study of how political screening engaged with and altered German memory, identity, and community, as well as the national process of coming to terms with the Nazi past. This research challenges the traditional single-frame interpretation of denazification by revealing how many respondents, especially those complicit with Nazism, actively used political screening for their own benefit. It views the questionnaire as a rich and revealing record of autobiography. The emotional annotations written into Fragebögen are a window into the mind of the common German citizen and a means to understand individual mental processing of the Nazi era. This chapter argues that men and women undergoing political investigation were not passive subjects of a mandatory denazification program, but active and engaged participants who used the questionnaire, consciously and subconsciously, for their own benefit. The Fragebogen was therefore not simply a bureaucratic screening instrument of the occupying armies, but also an unintended emancipatory device that gave voice to Germans, inviting them to participate in the determination of their own fate.
Keywords
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- Everyday Denazification in Postwar GermanyThe Fragebogen and Political Screening during the Allied Occupation, pp. 209 - 252Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023