Cold War anti-communism whitewashed ordoliberals’ Nazi-era roles

Evidence

Their decisive advantage over other intellectual trends in the immediate postwar period lay in the ordoliberal nucleus, namely, the Freiburger Schule, which had been able to continue their work during the National Socialist era. Left-wing oppositional economists either had emigrated or been eliminated. … It was the Cold War constellation, however, that cleared the way for the prevailing one-sided representation of ordoliberal opposition to Nazi rulers: nearly everyone was welcome in the alliance against the widely perceived communist threat. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 544

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader historiography of West German amnesia about Nazi complicity and how the Cold War empowered former regime figures across institutions. — connects to: Ordoliberalism’s Christian moral turn was a response to its leaders’ Nazi entanglement — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 537; Ordoliberal and Nazi critiques of democracy, unions, and communism overlapped considerably. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 542; Ordoliberals viewed the Third Reich as the product of anti-liberal policy — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1172 (+1 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how the Cold War functioned as a moral amnesty mechanism for intellectual elites in postwar Germany — the anticommunist alliance as a de facto de-Nazification waiver.

Broader Connections

• Ordoliberal constitution of the economy was a compromise accommodating Nazi political supremacy #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 585
• Ordoliberals viewed the Third Reich as the product of anti-liberal policy #responds-to (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1172