As the title says, I'm curious as to things like attitudes to Jews or Nazism in Germany (either East or West) post-war rather than a governmental level. (Like striking down Nuremburg Laws. How in favour of this were the Germans)
Was there continued discrimination against the Jews by Vigilantes enforcing laws removed by the Allied Occupation? Did a lot of people still fly Nazi flags despite any
laws? Did people still support Nazism even after it was made illegal?
I've always thought it didn't change overnight. Just because the Nuremburg Laws were gone, doesn't mean people would immediately drop any opinions they had generated in the last 12 years of Nazi power?
First of all, there were not that many Jews left in Germany by 1945, so there were few Jews to attempt anything against.
Secondly, the Germans were under a strict and very extensive military occupation.
Thirdly, the Germans had been completely and utterly crushed. Their cities were in ruin, their infrastructure close to non-existant, their industry devastated, their workforce dead in the Soviet Union, etc. The Germans knew very well that they had been defeated and if your best equipped strongest young men could not hold the occupiers away, what chance did civilians have? The civilian Germans were dependent on the occupiers for food and clean water and any chance to rebuilt homes, restore electrical power, gas and heating.
The Germans were also starting to learn the full extent of the crimes of the nazi government (while many had known things were happening, they were mostly turning a blind eye and knew little of the scale).
Another factor was that millions of Germans (around 6 million for the Western Allies, 2 million for the Soviets) were in POW camps and any kind of resistance could be counted as a continuation of the war and delay their release.
While there were attempts to create nationalist or even national socialist parties after the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Germany) was founded, those parties were banned under the new German constitution.
Some sentiments lived on, yes. But the average German were dependant on the allies for their survival, knew they had been defeated like no power in the history of the world, feared for their POWs and were deeply ashamed of the crimes that had been commited.
The nazi attempt to organise a guerilla movement fizzled with one or two attacks while the Third Reich still existed.