Well, first of all it’s to be noted there isn’t a single way how they reacted, and many didn’t really actively react in any way.

​

It is of note to say that those who were really responsible for it all either fled (South America was a hotspot), were judged, or were forgotten and/or taken to scientific laboratories if they were scientists, so they were never really “de-nazified”.

Let’s talk about “denazification” and the related “de-propagandization” first, and here you’ll see two totally different approaches in East and West Germany.

The Eastern government aggressively rooted out any former active Nazi they could from the very start, keen to announce they were the forefront in fighting against Fascism- a thing that was very important in contrast with West Germany, which handled things completely different. In the West, many Nazi figures were simply… forgotten after the Allies returned them sovereignty. After the initial onflux of trials, there was a visible break from them during the later years. This was mostly due to the fact that many former NS-people actively worked in the West, ranging from factory owners all the way down to the parliament as well as courts- and those people didn’t need that much attention anymore.

Now, Germans in the East were simply declared “winners over Fascism” after some time, as they had accepted Socialism- those who didn’t were usually called “Western agents”, or, ironically, “Nazis”. The issue was pretty much gone with that, and everyday troubles soon went over the things of the past. Of course, propaganda did indeed do a lot to “re-educate“ them as well as portray the West as an enemy in later years.
Now, to the West. A “re-education“ program was applied to Germany as well as the Marshall-plan together with propaganda. The Western Allies were propagated as heroes, while slowly, anti-Communist agendas were built up. Germans had to be taught the principles of Liberalism, which of course took a while. A fun fact about it is that the most hated word in 1946, according to a survey by a German newspaper, *was* “re-education”- the Germans really hated being rubbed in that they lost.

Also consider the fact there are still trials going on now: just recently, a woman who had typed up death orders at a concentration camp had to be basically dragged into court as she’d tried to flee. At court, her main defense based on her not knowing anything. Or the case of yet another man working there on a guard tower, who said he simply didn’t see anything. The trials of the survivors are made just now so the judges from the 20th century wouldn’t have to potentially dig their own graves.

Add to that the abundance that slowly crept into their lives (faster in the West than in the East though, due to multiple factors), you can see why they had an incentive to like the new regime.

So, propaganda and an enemy on the other side of the iron curtain were the biggest things that were supposed to have depropagandized people in both states, plus wealth and a despising of the former Fascists.

HOWEVER, keep in mind they never really were depropagandized in the first place; a lot of people from the generations which were raised up in the Reich were (and are) pretty right-wing-aligned, even as their children used that to break free from them into Liberalism (in the West), or Socialism (in the East). While they could very well play harmless, the 13 years left a big impact on them.

​

Now, for the shock:

First of all, shame was a very big emotion many people met the later years with- a good fictional book showing it is “the Lost” by Treichel (der Verlorene), a book about a boy whose infant brother was lost at war while he still wasn’t born, and the way his parents confronted it.

Many people basically all together decided it’d be better not to talk about it for now, not digging up the past to not feel guilty.

A popular motive of the was to blame it all on Hitler personally, with them themselves saying they were either just “young and stupid”, “mishandled”, “didn’t know” or “just bystanders” in it all. With these self-made lies, they were able to not seem guilty in any way, therefore evading the shock.

Germans were never really sorry for their crimes, despite what the German politicians tried to say later- the guilty generations just tried suppressing and forgetting it, and the younger generations, upon knowing about it, turned to forms of protest against the past (a big part of why f.e. the RAF was created or the hippie movement were so popular in Germany).

So, to sum it up: Depropagandisation was never that successful, and the people simply tried to cover it up and forget it, partly due to fear of punishment, partly of realisation, and partly because of personal trauma.

The neat thing is they didn't! Or rather, they made the decision simply not to talk about it. Time and silence was the primary tool.

For 13 years, almost all of the elite had to join the Nazi party. And many had joined before the Nazis actually took power.

On May 8th, 1945...there were 8 million Nazis in Germany. In Bonn, 102 out of 112 doctors were or had been party members." Tony Judt, Postwar

So there was a lot of "you know, just about all the Nazi policies were good" feeling out there, and after getting conquered and occupied by Stalin in the east, who then dramatically moved German borders in and expelled millions of Germans from eastern europe, a lot of Germany thought "the Nazis always said those Bolsheviks were a grave danger to Germany..." In 1952, 25% of West Germans admitted to having a "good opinion" of Hitler. In his first official address to the parliament, Chancellor Adenauer (in 1949) said "The government of the Federal Republic, in the belief that many have subjectively atoned for a guilt that was not heavy, is determined where it appears acceptable to do so to put the past behind us." The German government was generally determined to forget.

The Allies imposed denazification policies from the outside, but German politicians working with the Allies in the Christian Democratic Union generally argued that it was going too far and that confronting Germans with their crimes would provoke a nationalist backlash rather than "induce contrition."

Just because Nazism did have such deep roots in his country, the future Chancellor thought it even more prudent to allow and even encourage silence on the subject.
-Judt again

Stephan Hermlin, a German radio journalist, noted that Germans were required - by the Allies - to watch films on the concentration camps before getting their ration cards. He noted "In the half-light of the projector, I could see that most people turned their faces away after the beginning of the film, and stayed that way until the film was over...Today I think that turned-away face was indeed the attitude of many millions.”
-Volker Ullrich, Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich

In 1968, Germany had its own set of internal revolutions, where the baby boom children grew up and protested against the crimes of their fathers, so to speak. This was helped along by the fact that the actual chancellor, the third in the history of West Germany, was himself a former Nazi and a party member from 1933-1945 who served under Ribbentrop.

The German government made it illegal to continue to be a Nazi or to support Hitler, but for the most part, if you were a Nazi and said "sorry about all that Nazi stuff" the German government was fine with it. And a huge number of the people, when confronted with the various crimes of the Nazi regime, still took an attitude of "actually, we are the victim."

I would recommend reading Postwar for more info on this, both among the Germans, the Italians, and the French and Vichy. In Italy, for example, the CDU made a similar plea, stating "we have the strength to forget! Forget as soon as possible!"

I wouldn't say that history repeats itself, although there certainly are patterns. That however is a subject worth its own thread to be honest. In regards to your question. The FAQ also does have an entry on denazification with the following entries:

• How intense was 'denazification'? And how did state companies such as Volkswagen survive it? by /u/phoenixbasileus

• What sort of treatment, professionally speaking, was given to German academics whose credentials were earned during the Nazi era? by /u/kieslowskifan

• How quick of a process was the denazification of Germany after WWII? by /u/Abrytan

In addition to that these answers might also be of interest to you:

• How did Germany de-radicalize its people after the fall of the Nazi party?
• How prevalent was Nazi sympathizing in Germany in the years immediately after WWII? Was it difficult to de-program/de-nazify the populace?

In West Germany it simply did not happen, the denazification policy was repealed by 1950 by Theodor Heuss, by that date many former Nazis held high positions in the government of the German federal republic, including Heuss, a former collaborator of Goebbels's Nazi newspaper "Das Reich". "

NATO itself came to have many former Nazis within its high positions