Part I: Denazification

Firstly, denazification was neither very effective nor particularly thorough. Although each of the four occupation occupation powers had different imperatives and intnetions, their denazification efforts shared a set of broad common methods. The Allied military governments would break up explicitly ideological organizations such as the Hitler Jugend, identify the major offenders and remand them to justice, and sponsor boards mostly run by Germans which would winnow out the true believers in the NSDAP from fellow travelers and bystanders. Of these three tactics, the various military governments only really accomplished the first one. The disestablishment of various NSDAP organizations was relatively easy to accomplish because the many of them were in the process of self-dissolution by their own members during the chaotic last days of the war. Accomplishing the other two goals proved quite problematic for the military governments.

Although the International Military Tribunals (IMT) at Nuremberg loom large in the collective memory of the postwar period, the reality was that the various tribunals were often marred over issues of jurisdiction, quibbling over legal norms, and tainted by the emerging Cold War. In the latter case, the growing chillness between the two superpowers precluded continuing international tribunals and they were instead carried out by each of the military governments. Although these subsequent trials did bring some Nazi perpetrators to justice, they lacked the cachet of the IMT and often had to cut legal corners to achieve justice. Prosecutors also found it increasingly difficult to elicit the support of the various military governments' chiefs who were under tremendous pressure to get Germany back on its feat in light of the emerging Cold War.

The fizzling out of prosecution and the dismantling of German industry in the Western zone illustrated the gradual disenchantment with prosecution of non-Party offenders. Going into 1945, there was common consensus among US policymakers that German business leaders had both profited under Hitler and German firms like Alkett, Rheinmetall, and Krupp were intertwined with German militarism and thus had no place in the new Germany. Although not as extreme as the Morgenthau Plan to deindustrialize Germany, Joint Chiefs of Staff policy directive (JCS 1067) of May 1945 called for the breakup of cartels and companies explicitly connected to Nazism, as well as the punishment of business leaders for their various crimes. Between 1945-47, the US military government (OMGUS) did take steps to enact JCS 1067 such as the breakup of IG Farben and the start of tribunals against Alfried Krupp as part of a wider series of trials against business leaders. But these various industrial leaders fought back casting themselves as patriotic entrepreneurs that only reluctantly dealt with Hitler to avoid a Communist takeover of Germany during the Depression. This public relations campaign dovetailed with the nascent FRG political establishment that sought to draw a fine distinction between true Nazis and those patriots who had no choice. Preserving the business elite from prosecution both served to economically restore the country as well as be a clear sign that Germany had regained its sovereignty. OMGUS's leadership proved quite receptive to these arguments when US General John McCloy replaced Lucius Clay and was more amenable to placating West German opinion and restoring the economy. As the Korean War heated up and the reconstruction of the Western European economies was starting to bear fruit, American leaders were much less concerned with breaking up West German heavy industry and instead wanted to reestablish it. The Ruhr steel industry played an important role in these plans, as reflected in the Schuman Plan which sought to reintegrate Western European coal and steel industries into a pan-European trading network. This strengthened network would render the Marshall Plan more effective and inoculate Western Europe's working classes against communism. Even though Alfried Krupp received a relatively mild sentence in his tribunal, he received both clemency and a restoration of assets seized in 1950. The Advisory Board on Clemency for War Criminals advised in 1950 that Alfried's sentence was unduly harsh and the disestablishment of Krupp's fortune was not in keeping with Allied policy towards other industrialists.

McCloy, a staunch anticommunist, portrayed clemency as in keeping with core American values. He characterized the confiscation of the Krupp fortune as "generally repugnant to American concepts of justice," and strongly denied that Cold War considerations played a part in his support of the Clemency Board's recommendations. However, clemency really fit within both the Adenauer's policy of normalizing and reintegration of the FRG into a wider Western European community and America's Cold War concerns that a strong European economy would act as a firewall against Communist political parties. The consciously selective histories perpetrated by Krupp played into these contexts as they minimized its involvement in the Third Reich and created an image of the German industrialist as an responsible bedrock for anticommunism.

The integrity of the denazification procedures were likewise sacrificed for reasons of both expedience and restoring Germany to normalcy to better fight the Cold War. The AmZone had the most ambitious and structured denazification process, with five tiers gauging political involvement with the regime and its ideology (in sequential order- major offenders, offenders/incriminated, lesser offenders, fellow-travelers/followers, exonerated). This clear structure became one of the models for the rest of the military governments for their own denazification process, but with some variations. The burden of proof often landed on these Germans themselves, and naturally they portrayed their own actions as politically neutral. In theory, the tribunals were supposed to investigate these claims to political innocence, but in practice, the denazification tribunals were woefully understaffed and overworked. Nor were the tribunals run evenly, some districts could be more lax than other, and naturally most Germans flocked to the lenient tribunals to gain their Persilschein. Even though Leni Riefenstahl's was far from a typical German, her case exemplified a number of the problems inherent to the denazification process. The filmmaker and propagandist went through three denazification tribunals in the French zone, which had a more lenient system, the first two of which declared her exonerated, and the third, conducted in absentia, as a fellow traveler. These decisions created a miniature scandal in the German press and pressure for a fourth denazification hearing in Berlin reaffirmed the first ruling. Although the director clearly did benefit from the regime's patronage, it became incredibly hard for the tribunals to prove any real wrong-doing. Witnesses who testified of a woman recruiting exotic looking extras at a concentration camp could not prove the woman in question was Riefenstahl. Her decision to be tried in the French zone illustrated how some Germans were able to game the system, and the four separate trials fed into a wider sense among Germans that the tribunals were an onerous form of victor's justice. Denazification became for many Germans an unwelcome and intrusive burden for a society struggling to return to normal. There was a widespread sentiment that the tribunals punished the small fry while letting the big fish go free. Tellingly, Western zone Germans who pursued an active and stringent denazification were often defeated in FRG elections in 1949.

This is not to say that denazification did not have some victories. The Eastern zone's Neue Lehrer policy brought in a generation of new instructors with anitfascist credentials at the primary school level and these new teachers later became one of the bedrocks of the SED's corps of functionaries. Some Germans also found it hard to completely erase evidence of their malfeasance and the did sort of familiarize postwar Germans into what was to be acceptable ideological behavior in the postwar period. However, the efficacy of the program as a whole was undercut by from both the wider German public's resistance and the military government's own hypocrisies which often gave sanction to assigning lower levels of responsibility to individuals whose professional skills were needed for reconstruction. By the standards the denazification program set up for itself in its rhetoric, the program was largely a collective failure as it failed to sift out various Nazi officials and inculcated patterns of alibi-making and blame-shifting among the wartime generation that proved to be quite durable.

On the top of my head there are the Heilpraktikergesetz (1939), which is essentially unchanged today and the Handwerksverordnung (1935) was valid in essential parts until 2004.

The Heilpraktikergesetz is a law regulating the German type of naturopathic medicine. The Nazis had ideologic (and monetary) reasons for supporting a new medicine. It didn't work that well.

The Handwerksverordnung is a regulation about craft, including a compulsion to be Meister (officially sanctioned master of a craft) to start an own business.

As you may think, both laws had also the intended use to exclude Jewish people from employment, both created the compulsion for approval from the authorities in their respective fields.

As you wrote yourself, the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz(1935) is the foundation of the later laws in the BRD.

Then there is the regulation which made the First of May a holiday, which it still is.

I must warn, btw, to see the Reichsnaturschutzgesetz (the law for enviromental protection) or the Reichstierschutzgesetz(1933) as a proof that the Nazis were adamant in their call for enviromental and animal protection. The Tierschutzgesetz was used to outlaw the practise of shechita, obviously aimed at Jews. Also, the supposed prohibition of vivisection wasn't really implemented, the Nazis just gave everyone "special" permissions, especially their new "Zentralinstitut für Krebsforschung" (Centralinstitute for Cancerresearch, in reality a Institute for the research of chemical and biological weapons) and other institutes. And, of course, making the Naturschutzgesetz completely useless, they aimed to expand industrial agriculture in an unpreceded degree while subordinating the enviromental protection.

The more relevant question is whether there was any serious "Nazification" of the industry to begin with. While the industry might have supported and joined the NSDAP for political reasons it was as far as I am concerned the same industry that existed in WW1 and before - which was one of the reasons for its ultimate failure to deliver in WW2. One of the major failures of German strategy was not establishing a proper wartime economy. NSDAP despite instituting a totalitarian model of society never had a complete control of its society and economy to the same extent that the Communist party had and a lot of it hung on the early compromise between huge portions of society and industry before the war started. When the war started it was arguably already too late to restructure the economy. Restructuring of economies takes years and can't be done at the same time as mass mobilization. However if they pressed for mass mobilization necessary to take on the entire world (which at the time wasn't even intended seriously) people might resist "guns and not butter" which was what Hitler wanted all along...but was forced to drop the "not" part.

The Allies conducted a extremely effective denazification and economic assistance policies post-war.

You should question that. Politics after WW2 was massive influenced by the cold war. Germans invented the word Persilschein for a good reason. While the eastern zone was controlled by german communists, which were reckless prosecuting alleged Nazis, many Nazis were able to make a career in the west. Example

The reason for this was the fight against communism which was a common goal between US politicians and Nazis and the problem that someone had to organize the administration. As early as 1950 1 million former employees of the state were rehabilitated. The legal system in Germany started not before the 1960s with serious prosecutions of war crimes and concentration camp personnel.

Economy:

While a large part of the housings in the cities were destroyed, the industry was not. There are numbers that a little as 15% was destroyed in the bombings. Because of the higher efficiency gained in the war times and despite the reparations , the industrial output raised fast over the numbers of 1939. A huge problem after 1945 was the access for raw material and markets.

While the US gave loans to Germany another factor is mostly forgotten, which is the war in Korea. Germany delivered a lot to the US which correlates good with the economical success in these day.

While the Beetle was a success almost nobody in Germany was able to buy one until the 2nd half of the 1960s. The network of freeways was build after 1960.

One item which the Fascists introduced and which has survived to this very day is the "I.D Card" (Personalausweis in German).

The first form was introduced in 1938 (and all Jewish citizens were required to have it at all times). And finally in September 1939 (just after the start of the war), the I.D. requirement was introduced to all citizens.

After the war, both the FRG (West Germany) and the GDR (East Germany) kept their versions of the Personalausweis. Both cards (or really, little bookets) looked exactly the same, the only difference was the colour: the FRG one was grey/green, the GDR one was blue. The GDR kept its Personalausweis until 1990. And for West-Berlin (West-Berlin was not a part of the FRG until 1990), it was green.

In the 1980's, the FRG government introduced the first version of the current 'digital' Personalausweis. Newer versions have come out since.

Thus, most people in Germany don't even know that the Personalausweis was an invention of the Fascists which is still used in Germany to this very day.