After the fall of the Third Reich, how did Germany eradicate the ideologies that were so passionately preached by the Nazis?

by DVM422

I look at modern issues such as gay marriage and there is such a passionate divide that seems as if it can never be eliminated. I can only imagine how difficult it was in Germany to convince people what they have been told was wrong.

zspitfire04

This wasn't an overnight process. After the liberations and the countless horror stories were told, after the trials and convictions, after most of the world wide media displayed the distastefulness, the views started to shift. Laws were emplaced that prevented things such as propaganda posters and other signs of support. Lots of articles containing anything pro-Nazi were destroyed. Over time, the nations views slowly shifted into something of embarrassment for a lot. Today, there are still a lot of supporters of the old Nazi ideology, however they would be bashed by the public if they were to speak up. Rarely around Germany, you may be able to find an actual WWII Vet who still holds a lot of pride in what his nation had accomplished. As for the families however, thousands were affected and a lot of the stories are not something to brag of. They keep them secrets among eachother and don't like to share that part of their past generally. You can still find many things related to WWII Militaria in small pawn shops/thrift stores, but you'd never see them displayed out front.

Spoonfeedme

Richard Evans' amazing 'Third Reich' trilogy is an amazing place to look for attitude shifts, at least among anecdotal narrative histories. The general consensus seems to have been a very deep retrenchment against Nazi ideology, even among many hardcore supporters. It's really difficult to put in perspective how much the Nazis and their ideology screwed over Germany, but let's try to place ourselves in a hypothetical German person's shoes circa 1945/46. Maybe you are a member of the Nazi party, maybe not. There weren't that many actual die-hard members of course, but it really is irrelevant in our little hypothetical. What you have just seen is half a decade of war. Your cities bombed. Your people, who you have been constantly told are the chosen race, smashed by the combined forces of the East and West. Even prior to the end of the war, many began to despair and grow angry at Hitler and the Nazi Party. I've posted this before, but Evans has a particularly good series of journal entries by a female Nazi Party member who was a die-hard believer. The general gyst of her entries is, early war "Hitler is going to take us to the promised land!", Mid-War "It's happening! We'll crush the Bolsheviks!", post-Stalingrad: "I'm sure Hitler will lead us through this!", Late War (during the Battle for Berlin, if I recall): "Fuck Hitler".

During the post-war period, Germany undertook 'de-Nazification" but the actual devotion to those ideals were fundamentally altered in post-war Germany. Some people turned to communism, but ultimately, there was a societal revolt against what was seen as Prussian warmongering going back more than two centuries. After having everything promised to them smashed in front of their eyes, the Germans after WW2 were a defeated people struggling to survive, and the blame was often laid square on the shoulders of the Nazi Party.