Institutionalized denazification rewarded Nazi sympathizers and punished resisters
Evidence
Even if the top criminals are put on trial, if they are condemned and in some cases executed, the majority of the Germans who sympathized with Nazism are better off today than those who distanced themselves from fascism. This is true to such an extent that one can justifiably say that the institutionalization of denazification has achieved the opposite of what was intended (just like the Weimar `Law for the Protection of the Republic’). Anyone who had contacts with Nazis could have his denazification procedure speeded up, pay a fine of a few thousand worthless marks, and return to his previous post straight away. Only very few of those who had enough moral strength to risk their lives by opposing the Party are now holders of government or university posts. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 424
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the standard moral accounting of postwar justice: the system built to punish complicity structurally protected it.
- ADDENDUM: Directly extends the published article’s theme of how moral systems invert into something self-protective, here applied to postwar institutional incentives.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 424
- XREF: connects to: Postwar denazification systematically rewarded former Nazi sympathizers over resisters. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1717; Nazi-period civil servants were legally preferred over regime victims for university chairs — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1897
Broader Connections
- Postwar denazification systematically rewarded former Nazi sympathizers over resisters.
#corroborates(1.00) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1717