“Denazification” was a complicated process and handled differently by the various occupying powers in what would eventually become East and West Germany.

The first thing to keep in mind is that there were a whole lot of low level Nazis, and trying to imprison all of them, or even remove all of them from positions of power in business and government, would not only be unfeasible but would hamstring attempts to rebuild Germany. So, efforts to prosecute Nazis tended to focus on those who were higher up in the party, or perpetrators of particularly severe atrocities such as concentration camp guards. I’m not an expert on how punishment was meted out, but among prominent figures some were imprisoned, others executed.

Generally speaking, prosecution of former Nazis was more intense in East Germany, where the communists who had been oppressed under Hitler were able to take control of the state. Many important figures in early East German history had spent time either as prisoners in the camps or as exiles in the USSR.

In West Germany, the result of limited prosecution was that many many people who had (sincerely or not) supported the Nazi party remained not just free but in the government, in universities, and running businesses.

As time passed this became a source of concern for the new generation, and the concept of the “silence of the fathers” emerged, in which young West Germans questioned their parents’ generation’s complicity in the crimes of WWII and the Holocaust. This helped fuel the generational revolt of the 1960’s, in which young people rejected the moral authority of the older generation.