Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
The Fragebogen and Political Screening During the Allied Occupation. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
In the wake of World War II, the victorious Allied armies implemented a radical program to purge Nazism from German society and to preserve peace in Europe. Between 1945 and 1949, 20 million political questionnaires, or Fragebögen, were distributed by American, British, French, and Soviet armies to anxious Germans who had to prove their non-Nazi status to gain employment. Drafted by university professors and social scientists, these surveys defined much of the denazification experience and were immensely consequential to the material and emotional recovery of Germans.
In Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany, Mikkel Dack draws the curtain to reveal what denazification looked like on the ground and in practice and how the highly criticized vetting program impacted the lives of individual Germans and their families as they recovered from dictatorship and war. Accessing recently declassified archival materials, this book challenges traditional interpretations by illustrating the positive elements of the denazification campaign and recounting a more comprehensive history, one of mid-level Allied planners, civil affairs soldiers, and regular German citizens. The Fragebogen functions as a window into this everyday history.
*Winner of the 2024 David Barclay Book Prize (German Studies Association)*