On 20 September 1949, five days after his election as Chancellor of the newly created German Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer addressed the Bundestag: ‘Much unhappiness and much damage’, he told the deputies, ‘has been caused by denazification .
On 20 September 1949, five days after his election as Chancellor of the newly created German Federal Republic, Konrad Adenauer addressed the Bundestag: ‘Much unhappiness and much damage’, he told the deputies, ‘has been caused by denazification . . . many have atoned for a guilt that was subjectively not heavy.’ The division of Germany’s population into ‘the politically flawless and the politically flawed’ had to disappear and ‘the government of the Federal Republic is determined . . . to put the past behind us.’
Adenauer spoke with the full backing of the US and British governments, and in accordance with the new imperatives of an emergent Cold War. Tribunals organised by the Allied occupying powers had established five categories for the German population ranging from the innocent to major offenders — the war criminals, and Nazi militants along with war profiteers.
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