Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany

by Frederick Taylor

The collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 was an event nearly unprecedented in history. Only the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years earlier compares to the destruction visited on Germany. The country's cities lay in ruins, its economic base devastated. The German people stood at the brink of starvation, millions of them still in POW camps. This was the starting point as the Allies set out to build a humane, democratic nation on the ruins of the vanquished Nazi state-arguably the most monstrous regime the world has ever seen.

In Exorcising Hitler, master historian Frederick Taylor tells the story of Germany's Year Zero and what came next. He describes the bitter endgame of war, the murderous Nazi resistance, the vast displacement of people in Central and Eastern Europe, and the nascent cold war struggle between Soviet and Western occupiers. The occupation was a tale of rivalries, cynical realpolitik, and blunders, but also of heroism, ingenuity, and determination-not least that of the German people, who shook off the nightmare of Nazism and rebuilt their battered country.

Weaving together accounts of occupiers and Germans, high and low alike Exorcising Hitler is a tour de force of both scholarship and storytelling, the first comprehensive account of this critical episode in modern history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Germany, War, European History, Historical

480 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

Frederick Taylor is a British novelist and historian specialising in modern German history.

He was educated at Aylesbury Grammar School and read History and Modern Languages at Oxford University. He did postgraduate work at Sussex University on the rise of the extreme right in Germany in the early twentieth century. Before embarking on the series of historical monographs for which he is best known, he translated The Goebbels Diaries 1939–1941 into English and wrote novels set in Germany.

Reviews

[Mikey B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers primarily the period starting from 1944, when the Allies and Soviet Union first entered Germany, to 1948.

There are many interesting anecdotes provided. Here is one summarized – and it would make a great movie (from page 249):
The entire Nazi membership records of over 12 million members were kept in an office in Munich. With the approach of the U.S. army in April 1945 a high-ranked Nazi official approached Hanns Huber, who was running what today we would call a shredding factory. The Nazi official ordered Huber to put aside whatever he was doing and destroy the boxes that would be brought over by several trucks in the next few days. Huber said “No problem” (well the German equivalent) and pretended to do the job; but instead kept all this data and subsequently handed it off to U.S. forces. It took some time for U.S. Intelligence to realize exactly what they had – but once they did, it became an everlasting guidepost to the history of the Nazi Party.

Mr. Taylor delineates well the enormous problems faced by the Allies when entering Germany. For one thing their priority was on helping the millions of “Displaced Persons” from other countries who had served as slave labour (or worse) in Germany, in other words not the German people. And there was also the close to 4 million Germans who fled the Soviet invasion path to settle in what became West Germany in 1945. And even after that over 2 million people fled what was East Germany to reach a more hospitable West Germany.

So until 1947 the German people were left to fend for themselves – which brought them a sense of victimhood. The primary struggle to find food gave them little time to reflect on the serious crimes against humanity that they had committed prior to May 1945.

The Allies tried in various ways to de-Nazify Germany, but one cannot simply imprison all the lawyers, doctors, railroad workers... who were Nazi Party members. The economy and infra-structure was in ruins and had to be re-built.

As the author mentions the German world-view of themselves was shattered in April-May of 1945. They had thought of themselves as the masters – and here were foreign armies with superior weapons and troops destroying their homeland. They were a beaten people.

We are given many perspectives with the views of the occupiers – the U.S., Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Significantly U.S. troops were down to two hundred thousand by the end of 1947 – from millions in 1945.

Aside from trials the German people had not done much exorcizing. This only began in the late 1950’s – and continues to this day.

Although highly interesting I did find this book lacked unity – maybe there was too much material to cover. And it did not really answer the books title.

[Emmett Hoops · Rating 5 out of 5]

Occasionally I read a book that changes the way I think about an important subject in history. Frederick Taylor's excellent Exorcising Hitler is that kind of book.

The National Socialist dictatorship that lasted from 1933 to 1945 in Germany was one of the most noxious, but also one of the most socially integrated political movements in history. Being a Party member had its advantages; indeed, some professions required Party membership, especially after 1937. So how on Earth were the victorious Allies to determine, after the war, who was a Nazi deserving of prison time and who wasn't? How'd you like to sift through 1.5 million applications? When you try to imagine the logistical nightmares of caring for over a million prisoners of war in a landscape that has no transportation infrastructure, no airports, and no food, it becomes apparent that we either had geniuses working there or that we didn't do a particularly good job. -4

This book reflects on that post-war time. It considers the policy of Denazification, which, for most of my life, has been mentioned as being a great success.

Taylor writes with an immensely readable style. He is scrupulously fair to all sides that worked in the ultimate disaster of 1945 - 46 - 47. This is a book that deserves to be read by anyone who thinks Debaathification was a good idea, among other people. You, for instance, who knows but little about this time. Don't you feel a certain curiosity? Well, here's your book!

[Wanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an extremely well written and accessible history of the aftermath of WW II in Germany and what that country experienced on the road to "normality." This was truly a fascinating read, and very well written. I learned a good deal that I had known only through a great deal of the U.S. post WW II narrative, that conveniently glossed over the poor actions of some of the U.S. G.I.s and the attitude of many in the U.S. spearheaded by Robert Morgenthau (FDR's Secy of Treasury) that was punitive and vindictive toward the German people. To have grown up reading U.S. history, it seemed as though the Allies had all learned not to take this attitude after WW I and its disasterous consequences.
To the U.S. and Britain's credit, they abandoned this stance and reason did prevail.
Another surprise -- well maybe not -- was that the French (who were not privy to the Pottsdam agreement or any other negotiations among the Allies) turned out to be almost as bad in terms of enslaving and killing Germans as the Soviets. Again, the French narrative lauds the Free French (a minority) and completely ignores their collaboration and their quisling government (Vichy)that sucked up to Hitler's Nazis during the war. Taylor debunks that narrative and shows them to be petty, cruel, vindictive, and demanding (despite having not much to demand!), as well as arrogant.
I read a review on Amazon to see what others thought before I ordered it from the library and was chagrined to see someone said "Who cares what the Germans went through?" With lingering attitudes like that, when will we ever see a lasting peace?
Highly recommend this book.

[Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "Exorcising Hitler", author Frederick Taylor provides a very in depth look at the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, and what the Allies did to maintain law and order in Germany. I bought this book because this was a part of the war that I knew so little about. I had often asked the questions 'how did the Allies deal with the tens of millions of Nazis in Germany after the war?" How did they make them 'fall in line'? How did they purge the ghost of Hitler from an entire nation?

In short, the Allied forces were greatly aided when they stumbled upon the files containing data cards for each member of the Nazi party. This allowed them to catalog their prisoners after the war and ultimately establish 5 levels of complicity among the captured Nazis. The stratification went from hard core war criminals all the way down to opportunists who joined the party simply to move careers forward. With so many Nazis in detention centers, so few Allies to process each case, and so little food available for the masses, the Allies were forced to make many compromises in an effort to merely keep Germany from complete collapse. This is just a very brief summary of the situation; the book is filled with both stories about individuals surviving the post war era as well as some very cut and dry narrative about the events of the day.

To my knowledge, this is not a topic that has seen much light of day in the media, films, TV or other books. But, it's a very compelling story and well worth reading for any WWII buff.

[Dschreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sanitized story goes like this: After surrendering unconditionally in May of 1945, the German armies put down their arms, the country was occupied by the Allied forces, and the worst of the Nazi leaders were put on trial. Then Britain and the U.S. showed the Germans how to create a democratic government and, through the admirable Marshall Plan, the U.S. bankrolled an “economic miracle” for the defeated nation We victors really were jolly good-hearted. It’s a story that warm the cockles of one’s heart.

However, what really happened in Germany in 1944-46, as told in Frederick Taylor’s Exorcising Hitler, the picture that emerges is not quite so inspiring. We often forget the fury of the armies that fought their way into Germany, how enraged they were, at the years of war, but also at the stubbornness of the final resistance, with so much unnecessary blood spilled after D-Day. Then there were the revelations of the concentration camps. For the French, vengeance was the goal after their brutal occupation by the Nazis. On the eastern front vengeance was, if possible, an even deeper driving force, all-consuming, a reflection of Hitler’s truly hideous “war of annihilation” against Russia. Spurred on by their commanders, the Soviet armies committed murder, rape and unspeakable atrocities on a vast scale along the entire trail from Stalingrad to Berlin and beyond, upon all Germans, both soldiers and civilians. Rape was hardly unknown among American and British soldiers. During the spring and summer of 1945, even after the surrender, on both eastern and western fronts, looting, robbery and rape were everyday occurrences.

The occupying powers did not come to liberate the German people or to put Germany on its feet; their clear and stated goal was punishment. All Germans, whatever their activities and attitudes under Hitler, were going to suffer as others had suffered under them. An early American proposal known as the Morgenthau Plan recommended the total degradation of Germany, breaking the nation into pieces and reducing it to a permanent state of subsistence agriculture. By the time of the actual occupation that plan had been moderated, but its harsh spirit remained. Thousands of German industries were either shut down, destroyed, or dismantled and carted off to Russia and France as reparations. The French marched 740,000 POWs back into France for 2-3 years of forced servitude. The Soviets took hundreds of thousands of POWs back to Russia, most of whom never returned. The Americans, faced with the difficulty of caring for 5 million POWs and utterly fixed on the idea of not releasing a single war criminal, simply strung barbed wire around vast fields next to the Rhine, and left half a million prisoners to face the frosty nights, cold spring rains and disease without protection, some 50,000 of them dying. Because the Geneva Convention required that POWs be fed at the same level as one’s own troops, German POWs were given a newly invented classification, “disarmed enemy forces,” allowing rations to be kept miserably low. In the worst of the “Rhine cages” some prisoners deteriorated into skeletal figures like inmates of Nazi concentration camps. The British set up an interrogation centre at Bad Nenndorf that used Gestapo tactics, complete with thumb screws and shin screws. For civilians, hunger was used as a cudgel. One year after the end of the war the calorie allocation for Germans was less than half of what a person needs for a life of light activity. “Non-productive” adults, such as housewives and the unemployed, were issued a ration card that became known as “the death card.”

It was the Soviets who were quickest to establish democracy—Soviet-style democracy. German communist organizations provided them with ready-made political infrastructure, and as other parties were allowed to form, the Communist Party maintained dominance until finally all parties were merged into one. East Germany was born. Denazification was easy for the Soviets: since Nazism was regarded as an extreme form of capitalism, they simply killed the “class enemies,” such as industrialists and large landowners, or shipped them off to the gulag. As for lower-level Nazis, the Soviets were more tolerant than the British and Americans because, suggests Taylor, they were quite familiar with how little party membership could mean for people who joined just to advance their careers.

In the Western zones, denazification was an enormous problem, especially for the Americans, who took the hardest line. With a population in the tens of millions under their administration, they required every adult, under penalty of prison, to fill out a lengthy form about their activities during the Third Reich, with their answers subjected to cross-checks, investigations, interviews, and tribunals. It was a slow, impossible task that slowly unraveled under the pressure of numbers, aggravated by inconsistency and incompetence. Denazification was eventually turned over to German courts, partly out of pragmatism, partly to reduce the resentment that might breed communism. But by then everyone had become so cynical about the many injustices, as well as the overall policies of collective guilt and collective punishment, that the German courts allowed the process to degenerate into corruption and farce. Another approach might have cultivated a mood of self-reflection among the Germans, but the opportunity was lost, and the Hitler generation entered a period of denial and “the sleep cure.” It took the next generation to ask probing questions about the past. Denazification was judged an enormous failure on all sides.

Did Germany need to be guided by the Western Allies in creating a functioning democracy? Probably not. Nazism was a spent force, and Germany reverted easily to the democratic system that had preceded the Third Reich. Was the Marshal Plan a major factor in driving Germany’s economic recovery? Scholars are no longer certain about that, either.

After 1945 the transition from war to peace was far more chaotic and ugly than is commonly believed. Mistakes were made, feelings ran high, few saints appeared on the stage, suffering was widespread. Exorcising Hitler shows only too clearly how, once the devils of war are set loose, they are not easily put away.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another look at post-war Germany and the problems of survival for the population, the calls for denazification and the attendant difficulties. An interesting review of the working of the "Trizones" in the west. Lot's of nice things like the "Fressenwelle". The economic miracle is also dealt with somewhat cursorily, but it is not really the important bit. Well worth a read.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is much more about the conquest and allied occupation of Germany than about the process of denazification, which it draws mostly from Perry Biddiscombe, without much of the nuance. What he offers that Biddiscombe doesn't is many colorful passages drawn from people's diaries and letters, so it's much more interesting to read and is less academic. The book's main flaw is its anti-left bias, which can be noted in dismissive commentary about even former SPD activists as "vengeful" in contrast to the somehow always wrongly accused "regular" Germans. Like Biddiscombe, he criticizes the Frankfurt School role in American denazification, but doesn't really discuss them in any depth. The author does include some important passages about the anti-Semitism that caused occuaption governments to be more favorable to former Nazis than Jewish refugees, but the conservative approach means the author can't fully explain why and how this was beyond describing such individual "bad" people as Patton. It would have been interesting if he had included the post-war experience of someone like Fritz Bauer, the Jewish SPD activist who prosecuted the Auschwitz trial in 1965, and who helped the IDF capture Eichmann (secretly because of the Nazis w/in the German judiciary at the time). In the epilogue, he mentions the importance of both the Eichmann and Auschwitz trials for the real beginning of "regular Germans" examining the Nazi past, but doesn't mention the German (Jewish, socialist) person in government who made both happen! He also fails to include much about the rehabilitation and reeducation efforts of the period that are written about by scholars such as James Tent. This book began reminding me of those accounts that blame Trumpism on liberals or leftists who "go too far" - as if denazification is what made people sympathetic to Nazism, instead of their being Nazis or sympathetic to Nazism in the first place. As the Frankfurt school scholars had described Nazism as like a "virus" that had spread throughout German society, not just an imposition from the top, they were correct. That's what made denazification difficult, and it explains why many people resisted and resented the process, and why the left thought denazification didn't go far enough.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I've read a good deal of German history up to and including WWII, this is the first major work I've read on the post-war years. It's exceptionally well-written and does an excellent job of covering the varying attitudes and actions of the Allies in their zones of occupation. I also appreciated the introductory material about the last year or so of combat and how those horrific months influenced how the various Allied forces and the various parts of the German population viewed each other in the period following the end of hostilities. Although the detailed analysis ends with the establishment of the Federal Republic in 1949, there is also an extended and excellent epilogue that discusses events up to Angela Merkel's chancellorship. (The book was published in 2011.)

[Michael Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever wanted to know what happened in Germany after the years that followed the end of World War II. What happened to the countless Nazi party members, the men who bank rolled the Reich, the everyday soldier and citizens then this book is for you. The author deliver an easy read book covering all the political intrigue and the day to day life in post war Germany. The birth of the cold war is also well covered in this intriguing book.

[Liz B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this for ages, and finally read it.

I expected it to be more about the actual process of the German people's rejection of Hitler and his ideals. Not a reasonable expectation, given the title. It was still interesting, coming on the heels of my reading of a biography of Leni Riefenstahl. In fact, it was that impressive combination of interesting/boring that some nonfiction books attain...so many facts, with just enough narrative to keep a reader hooked.

[Ellie Midwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used it as a research source for one of my novels and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a detailed study that discusses every aspect of Germany’s post-war life in great detail yet doesn’t read like a dry historical account. The author clearly knows his subject, did some major research, and it shows in every detail. Through the eyes of eyewitnesses, through multiple historical documents, he explains exactly how four-zone occupation came about; what plans did the Allies have for the Germans and why some of them were rejected as impossible to implement; what was the attitude of the occupying forces and the local population towards each other and how it gradually changed and why, and many more. I appreciated how thoroughly the differences between different zones of occupation were shown and how the differences in policies eventually led to the Cold War and the so-called Iron Curtain. I also found it extremely interesting reading about certain events through the eyes of witnesses themselves, which made history truly come alive before my eyes. The process of the Denazification, the first elections, the rationing, and the black market - this historical study is a truly invaluable source of information for any history buff who wants to learn more about post-war Germany. Highly recommended!

[Nina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn’t live up to its promise.

The premise is a fascinating one: how did German institutions and the German people exorcise (what a great word choice) the Third Reich and become the modern country we know today? To what extent can/should this process be managed by outsiders (to keep everyone accountable) versus locals (so that society takes ownership over the process)? Given what Germany has become, the Allied occupation would appear to have been “successful” – so why have other occupations (Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) been so unsuccessful? To what extent were the new governments set up by the Allies reminiscent of colonial administrations – and how did the fact that the Germans are European and not persons of color affect those decisions/relationships?

Lots of interesting and new-to-me information – much of the German experience in the immediate aftermath of WW2 is not included in the Western lore from the era. The book spoke extensively to the mass refugee displacements from the East, the hunger, the Allied POW camps reminiscent of something out of the U.S. Civil War, the inhuman atrocities committed by the Red Army (though not exclusively). I’d never thought about Breslau before – take a city the size of St Louis and force 95% of its population to move hundreds of miles west, because you want it to be inhabited by Poles and not Germans. How can you balance the need to rebuild the country immediately -- because people were starving -- with the need to bring Nazis to justice, when a majority of the educated and managerial class were Nazis (teachers, administrators, railroad workers, etc)? And what a great quote from Brecht, translated roughly as "The grub comes first, and only then - morals;" aka, communal guilt and soul-searching can't happen until a modicum standard of living has been reached.

But there was so much that was only gestured at. The author spent almost no time on the French zone, despite alluding to how different and irresponsible it was compared to the Anglo zones. He spends a whole chapter discussing how the Third Reich tried to set up a Nazi resistance for after the fall… but no time discussing anything that the resistance did (if anything). The book is very anecdotal in nature, repetitive, and poorly structured. He spends a lot of time on statistics of the percent of potential Nazis brought to trial in the various zones, and the proportion that were acquitted, without taking the deeper view of whether these trials were appropriate, a distraction, a miscarriage of justice, or what. Frankly, it wasn’t until the epilogue that the author admitted that the immediate 2-3 postwar years were insufficient for delivering on the book’s premise (the exorcism of Nazism), which actually took place in several stages between 1945 and, frankly, Angela Merkel. It reads a little bit like a graduate student who bit off more than he could chew.

The topic is fascinating. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for a book that does a better job of covering it.

[David Lowther · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a terrific book which deals with the collapse of Germany in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945. Although the Russian sector is frequently mentioned, the main emphasis is on what happened in the zones of occupation governed by Great Britain and the United States.

The narrative ends more or less with the end of denazification and the beginnings of self-government in 1947. There is, however, an excellent epilogue which takes the reader through the establishment of the FRG in 1949, the economic miracle of the 50s and 60s right through to the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the re-unification of Germany. I would like to have learnt more about the Berlin airlift and the setting up of the FRG but that, I guess, is a topic for another book.

Taylor's book is brilliantly written and painstakingly researched with invaluable notes and bibliography. There appears to be much new and fascinating material. It left me feeling rather uneasy about some of the immediate post-war attitudes towards the Germans, especially from one or two American hawks. As Bob Dylan once said "the Germans now too have God on their side." Should they? Read the book and make up your own mind.

David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil
davidlowtherblog.wordpress.com

[Brendan Newport · Rating 4 out of 5]

My knowledge of post-War Germany was previously limited to reading of the accounts of those, notably in the British Military Police and SAS (Special Air Service) dedicated to the hunting-down and arrest of German former military and civilians accused of indiscriminate murders of British servicemen (and some women, notably serving in the SOE) who crossed their path.

Exorcising Hitler was read principally because of the growing recognition of the return of neo-Nazism is the Western world.

Did neo-Nazism ever really go away? I reckon yes, in the 1980s it was bing confronted in numerous Western countries and neo-Nazism's spectre has returned, and in recent years, become emboldened.

The roots of Nazism have long been the source of heated debates. National Socialism, as many leftists claim, is a fascist ideology, more akin to the fascism of Mussolini than the socialism of Marx. Others of course point to the pact between the Nazi's and communist Russia, which saw Russian goods trains supplying goods to the German military cause crossing the border even during the morning of the 22nd June 1941, the very day Germany launched its surprise attack on Russia (Operation Barbarrosa).

Some countries and institutions have never shaken-off the association with National Socialism. Eire's current President, Michael Higgins, has gained an unfortunate association with anti-semitism, reinforced by his behaviour at 2025's Holocaust Remembrance Day. Yet he has continued a 'tradition' that goes back to his predecessor, Douglas Hyde, Ireland's president during WWII. On hearing of Hitler's suicide in his bunker, Hyde attended the German embassy in Dublin with a wreath, and offered his condolences on behalf of Eire.

In the US, universities, such as Harvard, have seen and sometimes been accused of encouraging, anti-semitic behaviour of late. Yet Harvard can claim that it is simply continuing a well-documented 'tradition', which saw demonstrations in support of National Socialism on its grounds before the US entered the War.

So is National Socialism of the right; a branch of fascism, or is it an extremist ideology rooted in the left and socialism? In recent years, many leftists, particularly in academia, have dedicated themselves to try to make it associated with the latter.

I digress though. What's all this to do with Exorcising Hitler you might ask? Well, principally because the experiences gained in denazifying Germany might have to be employed in-the-future, not least in universities and other institutions.

Taylor's history though suggests that this first effort was largely unsuccessful, not least because, well, it was a first go. No-one had ever contemplated purging a sovereign nation of a deeply-held ideology, without simply killing its inhabitants, Genghis Khan-style.

So the victorious Allies - the US, Russia, Britain (and The Commonwealth) and France, approached the subject in different ways, reflecting their own concerns and to a significant degree, their own ideologies.

The French, strangely-enough, were probably the most successful at the subject, though they perhaps pursued it with less vigour than the others, but with a Gaullist flair that was...well, French. Their policies would pay off through the solidarity of the Franco-German pact which saw the birth of The European Union, and a friendship that remains solid today. The British did things in the usual British way, sometimes crassly, sometimes efficiently, and never ever consistently. The US, aware of the need to demob the hundreds-of-thousands of US servicemen in Germany and get them returned home, approached the subject with an almost religious fervour, but thanks in part to one particular Senator and an nspired US Army officer, changed track in a policy change that would manifest itself in The Marshall Plan.

The Russians? Well, they had plans for eastern Germany, and the other nations that came under their control, and an accusation of being a Nazi was used equally against those who were, and who weren't.

The splitting-up of Germany into four Zones of economic, social and political control, at first the only practical solution, became a burden on all the occupying powers after just a year. Being unable to trade internally and with no agreed form of administration between them, the structure rapidly became cumbersome and expensive. With Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' speech, events moved rapidly to the desire of returning the (west) German people to self-government, with the establishment of the Federal government. Russia oversaw a sort of mirror image, with the DDR - the German Democratic Republic, which was neither democratic, nor a republic.

Taylor documents all of this in a very readable, almost journalistic style. The disparities between the occupying western Powers moral certainty and how they enacted that morality are laid bare, not least in their treatment of POW's, though Russia was always capable of far worse. Throughout the early years there was a sense of floundering in the policies enacted, and the denazification process became wearisome for both the victorious Allies, and the Germans themselves.

Ultimately it was successful, visible in the manner that Germany managed to shake-off its past and become the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe from the 1950s onwards. Yet the spectre of National Socialism, as I mentioned earlier, still threatens. It's unlikely it will have to be practised on an entire nation again, but the lessons learned may have to be applied to those who have allowed it to thrive in their midst of late.

[Riet · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Al weer" een boek over de tweede wereldoorlog, maar dit keer toch anders, omdat het gaat over de afwikkeling van de "vrede" na de nederlaag van de Duitsers. Ik had daar nog niet veel over gelezen en in dit boek kom ik veel tegen waar ik niets van wist. Het was in ieder geval een uiterst rommelige periode en lang niet alles liep zoals het moest.
Vooral de laksheid bij het de-nazificatie programma valt op. Nieuw voor mij was het gedrag van de Fransen zo kort na de oorlog. Zij hadden toch zelf ook niet bepaald een schoon blazoen met Vichy etc.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading an epic amount about Nazi Germany this year, the thing that I kept searching for was something that broke out what the allies did after they occupied. This book did the trick, it outlines the politics and the social aspects of the occupation and backs up the harshness of the Russians at the time that were only briefly mentioned in other titles I read.

When you compare how our leaders then handled things compared to how we handled Iraq it becomes quite striking.

[Susan Paxton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Several books on the occupation of Germany have come out lately; this is actually one of the more readable ones although all have something to offer. The process was not as orderly as we've been led to believe; it was brutal and ugly, and incredibly led to a powerful, peaceful German state.

[victor harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. Likely the best book on the Occupation I have read. Untangles the intricate diplomatic, political, and social dimensions that made DeNazification such a complex undertaking. Excellent commentary on Nuremberg Trials, the food crises, and the territorial squabbling in the post-war.

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the Hitler porn on the cover, this book provides a fantastic look at how Germany put itself back together (with the help of squabbling, infantile and warring allies).

[Brian Manville · Rating 3 out of 5]

World War 2 was a large endeavor of many nations banding together to fight the Axis Powers. War is easy; peace, when it comes, struggles in the details. The decision of what to do with Germany after the war is the subject of this book.

The thinking behind what to do came as early as 1943. There were a couple of schools of thought; the most prevalent was Secretary of the Treasury's Henry Morgenthau (buttressed by JCS 1067) to treat Germany as a conquered country and to carve it up into multiple regions to prevent it from waging war again. This is what being 0-2 in world wars gets you. Once published in September 1944, German propaganda seized upon it and used it to convince their countrymen to fight to the bitter end. Today, there would be concern about the optics of a American Jew proposing a post-war future for a nation sworn to their destruction as a race.

Once the war ends, the preeminent problem was how to "denatzify" the country. The disadvantage to having 4 zones of control was that each of the US, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union had their own ideas on how to do that. The Soviets were the most straightforward - they simply brought in trained German communists, installed them as leaders and shot anyone associated with the Nazis.

True to American hair-splitting, they devised five levels of Nazi and had all Germans in their zone answer questionnaires (yes, we loved our paperwork in the 1940s). Trials were brought forth, but after a while the "need" for trials overwhelmed the occupying forces and were largely handed over to local Germans. These local tribunals declared most of the people innocent and sent them on their way, infuriating the military. It was a case of the local population having both a better sense of who the true Nazis were and the fact that most of these men were needed to rebuild the nation.

Eventually the Morgenthau plan was deemed unsuitable, mostly for its cruelty (Herbert Hoover determined that an estimated 25 million Germans would have died from starvation) as well as its impracticality. The demilitarization, partitioning, and deindustrialization would have created a permanent welfare state - a state that literally could not stand on its own. This would have made occupation and rehabilitation far worse and far longer than it needed to be.

What Frederick Taylor does here is look at the process as it occurred in each zone, and weigh each as to its effectiveness. What comes out in the end is something akin to Mike Tyson's adage that "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face". The idealists like Morgenthau had no conception of what effect their plans would have wrought; all they saw was getting revenge. Such idealism would merely have repeated the errors of World War 1. At some point, it is necessary for a conquered nation to be answer for its actions. In the end, though, it is necessary to rehabilitate and bring that country back to the family of nations and given another chance. West Germany got its chance by being an ally in the Korean War. East Germany had to wait another generation when the Berlin Wall came down.

The lesson I took from this is that we can have plans, but sometimes we have to cast them aside when the reality on the ground doesn't line up with your presuppositions. In the end, Germany was made whole and they made good by being a positive force in this crazy world.

BOTTOM LINE: Curing a nation of a toxic ideology cannot be based on revenge.

[Richard Olney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becoming more and more interested in the Second World War, apparently it's one of the hazards of middle-age, i think i'm still more interested in what happened next than the drama and horror of individual battles and campaigns. Having read Ian Kershaw's wonderful yet disturbing "The End" as well as Guy Walters' equally wonderful and disturbing "Hunting Evil" i chose this book as it seems to be a good detailed study of the immediate consequences on Germany and its populations in the first few years after the surrender of Germany.

I knew very little about what had happened to Germany post-war, other than the bullet points; four zones of occupation, Berlin Airlift, the Cold War, economic miracle, European Union, German reunification; this book while devoting almost all of its time to the first few years covers in more detail all of these and fills in a lot of gaps for me.

It would be difficult perhaps to say i enjoyed this book, being filled with so many tales of suffering, and neglect bordering on atrocities committed by the occupying powers but i'm glad i now know more. Not for the first time, though it was by no means easy in the UK of my parent's generation - i learn via this book that both my parents would have spent the first thirteen years of their life with food heavily rationed - it could have been a lot worse.

I had to put the book down more than twice as the weight of what i'd just read bore down on me, and as with Kershaw's "The End" more than a few parts of this book will stay with me for a long time. Fortunately there is a happy ending of sorts in how Germany is now.

[Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never thought I would have to read a book seeking to learn how to turn people away from Fascism. But this is 2023 in America and here we are. I have been disturbed of late to hear and see so much racism and anti-semitism in a society that calls itself a "melting pot".

This book was an excellent guide of the history of de-nazification, flaws and all. People in Germany started becoming disillusioned with Hitler after the Battle of Stalingrad, a battle on paper they should have handily won. This was the turning point of WW2. The Soviets refused to give it up, and even though the city was left in more ruins than Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the Russians halted the German advance and sent them into retreat. People became further disillusioned with the Third Reich after the frequent allied bombing campaigns of their cities. Hard to believe you are the "master race" when all your cities are getting leveled by a man in a wheel chair. Pain and humiliation was the first step in the Denazification of Germany.

Furthermore, the decades long occupation split between 2 different forces really broke the hard right's spirit. Fascism was replaced with liberal democracy in the west and socialism in the east.

Children born during and shortly after WW2 in Germany had to ask many hard questions of their parents and grandparents once they learned the history.

The Nuremberg trials did not go far enough, and many Nazi war criminals slipped thru it's cracks if they just stayed out of the spotlight long enough or were rocket scientists that were useful to America's or the USSR's ambitions.

Decades later, Nazism is almost completely eradicated in Germany and most of it's citizens would rather not talk about it because of the deep sense of shame it brings to their people. Makes me wish the North had done that to the South after America's Civil War.

[Sam Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taylor paints a bleak but fair depiction of Allied treatment of Germany post-World War Two. I would similarity contend that the contemporary powers have a lot to reconcile with, especially for its disregard towards the innocent civilian population. It is also important, as Taylor stipulates multiple times throughout the book, not to paint a false equivalency. It's a difficult tightrope to cross but all the more necessary.

The only thing I would have liked to have read more about - out of personal preference - is the socio-cultural thought of the German people during and after denazifcation; I primarily started this book out of interest into how, when and to what extent the German people condemned the Third Reich on humanitarian grounds, and, while Taylor explores this to a certain degree, it is not focused upon with the same concern and fastidiousness as the Allies' practical military policy.

[A L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book covering an interesting and (in Britain at least) often ignored part of history. It is not an academic read but is well researched and very fair in its presentation. The reason it is only three stars is that the writing is not always great: often the anecdotes or assertions are repeated despite only having been introduced a few pages before. The narrative also jumps around in time, I think this is because the author is trying to deal with themes rather than provide a linear account, however it was not always done smoothly and this did make it quite confusing to follow in places. It may have benefited from better editing, but on the whole it is a very well-handled treatment of the subject matter.

[Ddoddmccue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exorcising Hitler served as an insightful view of the complicated aftermath of WW2 (1944 -), a reading journey I started earlier this year with Larson’s The Splendid and The Vile (Churchill’s struggles, 1939-1941).

A complex and densely researched book, it highlights the often conflicted motivations and activities pursued by the Allies in seeking to balance German retribution and German recovery. in doing so it offers insights on current international relations, including the status of contemporary Germany. Hovering in the background is what might be learned from this history to better inform remedies for rising neo Nazi activities as well as Russian interference into Western democracies.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a very well researched book and it was written quite decently. There were a lot of personal stories woven into the book that made it definitely a lot more engaging than what would otherwise probably be fairly dry. It was quite interesting how after 1945 the different Allied powers had their own goals and ways of dealing with the defeated nation.

Overall I think it's a good read if you are interested in history and want to know the aftermath of WW2. How hard it is to rebuild a country where such a large percentage of the population was part of the Nazi-machine.

Definitely learned quite a bit from this book as well.

[Shawn Fettig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't seem to have a linear or coherent narrative. It read like individual anecdotes strung together, alluding to some unformed thesis. It feels as if the idea stemmed from someone who possesses a lot of knowledge in this general area - World War II, Germany, etc - and decided to write this book based on that established knowledge without doing any more, specific research. The epilogue was the best part.

[Alessandro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deeply fascinating read, particularly as an Italian who sometimes came upon comparisons between our botched handling of fascist responsibilities and a mythological "German denazification process" that purpotedly went smoothly. I just wish the book was not so focused on Germany's Year Zero, because the final chapter was very promising.

[Amanda Souto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muito interessante, recebemos muita informação sobre o período da guerra, mas pouco se fala de como foi o período inicial de ocupação nos meios de comunicação atuais.

O livro trata justamente dessa questão e nos traz informações importantes sobre aquele período.

Impossível não perceber alguns paralelos com a atualidade.

[Carol Storm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better than average history of the Allied occupation of Germany in 1945. Great background on how Germans from all backgrounds coped with defeat, guilt, starvation, and much worse. If you've ever read Salt To The Sea by Ruta Sepetys or The Berkut by Joseph Heywood this is vital background!