Adenauer's Germany and the Nazi Past : The Politics of Amnesty and Integration

How did West German politicians of the 1950s deal with the problem of recovering from the Nazi past?

Largely by stopping the punishment for Nazi crimes, according to Norbert Frei.

This provocative book shows that both the government of Konrad Adenauer and the Social Democratic opposition hastened to fulfill the massive societal demand to put an end to the denazification process begun in 1945.Frei chronicles how amnesty laws were passed unanimously, civil servants who had been dismissed in 1945 were reinstated liberally and a massive movement called for the release of war criminals who had been condemned by the Allies.

Frei argues that these events formed the crux of a politics of the past which, to a large degree, revoked the consequences of the previous political expurgation.

Thus the era of Adenauer devolved into a scandal-ridden period of reintegration at any cost - which has had enormous consequences reaching into the present.