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5 - Writing Away Culpability

The Unintended Outcomes of Denazification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2023

Mikkel Dack
Affiliation:
Rowan University, New Jersey
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Summary

The book’s final chapter is a nuanced study of how political screening engaged with and altered German memory, identity, and community, as well as the national process of coming to terms with the Nazi past. This research challenges the traditional single-frame interpretation of denazification by revealing how many respondents, especially those complicit with Nazism, actively used political screening for their own benefit. It views the questionnaire as a rich and revealing record of autobiography. The emotional annotations written into Fragebögen are a window into the mind of the common German citizen and a means to understand individual mental processing of the Nazi era. This chapter argues that men and women undergoing political investigation were not passive subjects of a mandatory denazification program, but active and engaged participants who used the questionnaire, consciously and subconsciously, for their own benefit. The Fragebogen was therefore not simply a bureaucratic screening instrument of the occupying armies, but also an unintended emancipatory device that gave voice to Germans, inviting them to participate in the determination of their own fate.

Type
Chapter
Information
Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
The Fragebogen and Political Screening during the Allied Occupation
, pp. 209 - 252
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Writing Away Culpability
  • Mikkel Dack, Rowan University, New Jersey
  • Book: Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
  • Online publication: 23 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216326.007
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  • Writing Away Culpability
  • Mikkel Dack, Rowan University, New Jersey
  • Book: Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
  • Online publication: 23 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216326.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Writing Away Culpability
  • Mikkel Dack, Rowan University, New Jersey
  • Book: Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany
  • Online publication: 23 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216326.007
Available formats
×