What happened to all the Nazis after World War 2?

by LeNorikoSatsume

I don't mean what happened to those convicted at Nuremberg, I mean what happened to the thousands of ordinary people who bought the Nazi line and believed the party ideology about racial purity and all that? Did they resist? Did they fall in line? Did they quickly abandon their former ideology? Was there any post-ww2 conflict between them and their occupiers?

thesaefkows_css

It's really a mixture of falling in line, abandoning the former ideology and resistance.

A lot of the hardcore believers in the Nazi ideology fled through the so called Ratlines, mostly to South American countries. Many former believers fell in line with the new, occupied Germany and the ideology of the Allied Forces. At that time, Germany was starved from the war and many of those who believed in Hitler and the NSDAP before the war changed their minds during the war already. So the largest part of the population could not even be classified as Nazi at the end of the war.

In addition, teachers (like my great-grandfathers brother) were often sent to camps for re-education, regardless of being Nazis or not.