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How Did Germany DeNazify So Quickly After WWII | Today I Found Out | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: How Did Germany DeNazify So Quickly After WWII
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Core Theme
Following World War II, the Allied powers faced the immense challenge of denazifying Germany and Austria, aiming to eradicate Nazi ideology and hold perpetrators accountable, but the process was significantly complicated by practical difficulties, shifting geopolitical priorities, and the perceived utility of former Nazi personnel in the emerging Cold War landscape.
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on May the 8th 1945 the German Armed
Forces signed their unconditional
surrender to the Allied Powers World War
II at least in Europe was over and now
that the guns had fallen silent the US
Britain France and the Soviet Union had
to face a daunting conundrum how to deal
with the active members of the National
Socialist Party the SS the vmark and
other organizations who had committed
some rather extreme war crimes and
crimes against humanity on top of that
how to rids the fabric of the Fallen
Third Reich Society from the pernicious
influence of an extremist ideology so
many had bought into after all in some
respects with those who had bought into
the ideology holy it would have been
like going back to the 1700s American
South and trying to convince a mass
group of slave owners to completely and
almost immediately rethink their ideas
on slavery and those of African descent
in the nation a seemingly impossible
task and then beyond ideological shifts
just from a practical standpoint how to
speed up economic recovery for the
nation and ensure nothing like this
would happen again in the country and
provide a strong buffer between the
Soviets and the rest of Europe so how
was this all accomplished and how did
they do it so fast and just how
successful was all of this in reality
just before we get back to Simon diving
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you and now back to Simon and today's
video to begin with the very top ranking
members of the Nazi party and Nazi
adjacent organizations 199 defendants in
total were tried at the famous nurenberg
trials in 1945 and 1946 of course
hundreds if not thousands of other
officials and officers wanted by Allied
authorities were able to escape to
Argentina via the numerous rat lines
through Scandinavia Spain and even
Vatican City countless more had no need
to escape entities within the Allied and
Soviet forces were more than happy to
look the other way about any they got up
to during the war owing to the knowledge
contained in their brains and we've got
more on that in just a little bit but
when looking at the more widescale
process of denazification of the
citizenry most of these efforts
consisted of special tribunals reviewing
the alleged Nazi past of German and
Austrian citizens as well as just a
general installment in the mass populace
that everything that had happened was
their fault and trying to get rid of
various works that espouse Nazi ideology
on that latter point over 30,000
different books were not not only banned
in the country after the war but also
systematically collected and destroyed
anyone who tried to keep a copy could
face legal consequences the irony of
this was not lost on anyone given this
move was more or less a tactic taken out
of the Nazi handbook when they came to P
Beyond this as alluded to there was the
General popul who were made to feel
responsible for what Germany had done
under the Nazi regime with the
psychological warfare division of
Supreme Allied headquarters
expeditionary Force taking points on
this they began efforts here seeing to
it that the media from radio to
newspapers not only strongly emphasized
the atrocities in their coverage but
also explicitly noted that it was every
single German's fault for allowing it to
happen not just the Nazis another rather
ironic page taken out of the Nazi
hanburg although to be fair in this case
strongly emphasizing educating the
German public on all the atrocities that
had actually been committed unlike much
of the things were just completely made
up by the Nazis beyond the various media
Outlets posters were put up all around
showing pictures from concentration
camps with giant text overlaid saying
things like you are guilty of this as
noted by British author James Stern in
one German Town quote a crowd gathered
around a series of photographs which
though initially seemed to depict
garbage instead reveal dead human bodies
each photograph has a heading who is
guilty The Spectators are silent
appearing hypnotized and eventually
Retreat One By One The placards are
later replaced with clearer photographs
and placards proclaiming this town is
guilty you are guilty on top of that in
towns near concentration camps the
citizenry were often made to tore them
and even help bury the dead help dig up
Mass Graves and things like this with
films also being made of this by the
American war information unit to be
shown to Germans who couldn't see for
themselves as noted by the chief of the
film division of psychological warfare
Sydney Bernstein the point of all of
this was to quote shake and humiliate
the Germans and prove to them Beyond any
possible challenge that these German
crimes against humanity were committed
and that the German people and not just
the Nazis and SS bore responsibility the
general shift in mindset to blame all
Germans and not just the na began around
1944 with before there's generally a
distinction being made by the US brass
and with the US public whereas after a
strong push to solidify in everyone's
Minds that there was little difference
between a Nazi and a non-nazi German
citizen this also seems to have been a
general mindset pushed by the military
brass to their own troops warning
soldiers that quote the majority of
Germans supported the Nazis try to make
friends with us to get information to
get favors to create Sympathy for the
poor downrod and German people to make
us disagree among ourselves or just to
get a good chance to slip a knife into
Allied soldiers speaking of the soldiers
and going back to taking Pages out of
the Nazi handbook it is also noted that
during the denotification process not
just on the Soviet side but on the US
side as well frequent random beatings
and rape of German civilians out and
about was a thing as one German
Professor noted these assaults have
become notorious among the civilian
population of marberg nobody risks going
out in the evenings and people feel as
if they were exposed to acts of
indiscriminant brutality with no means
of protection but in all to help change
the mindset of the German populace who
had bought into the Nazi ideology the
general push was to show the atrocities
that have been committed and try to make
every German citizen feel responsible
going back to the tribunals to try and
punish those more directly involved and
rid Society of them in any prominent
position very briefly the objectives of
the process were codified as early as
July of 1945 and while the tribunal
sentences dragged on into 1957 the vast
majority of the millions of card
carrying Nazi Party members had already
been reviewed and sanctioned by April
1948 but that's all at a very high level
so how was this actually accomplished
and how was it done so quickly to begin
with the process of removing national
socialism ideology from the social
fabric of Germany was conceived long
before the end of the war in Europe in
fact the term densification itself was
coined in 1943 by the Pentagon as they
began thinking about what the post-war
Germany legal system would look like and
as early as August 1944 this had all
gotten expanded with US President
Franklin Roosevelt writing in his memos
that the Allies should drive home to the
Germans that they had participated in a
lawless conspiracy the same sentiment
was expressed more formly when Roosevelt
met with Winston Churchill and Joseph
Stalin at the yta conference in February
1945 on that occasion the so-called
three greats clarified that
dentification was to be considered a
strategic War aim more precisely the
removal of all Nazi and militarist
influences from public offices and from
the cultural and economic life of the
German people the Third Reich
surrendered on May the 8th 1945 and the
drive densification was restated in the
pot Stam agreement of august 19 1945 by
that month the Western allies had
compiled a list of 178,000 Nazis to put
under arrest while the Soviets had
already proceeded to the internment of
67,000 Reich officials such a huge
Endeavor could not be conducted
willy-nilly of course Allied occupation
forces had to clearly State the den
nification objectives and parameters as
well as the categories and related
sanctions for Nazi offenders according
to a US Department of State memo of July
1945 the objectives of the
denazification program included a the
arrest of Nazi leaders support and any
other persons dangerous to the Allied
occupation or its objectives B exclusion
of members of the Nazi party who had
been more than nominal participants from
both public office and positions of
responsibility and private Enterprises C
eradication of Nazi laws and decrees D
the dissolution of the Nazi party and
all its Affiliated organizations as well
as the prevention of their Revival which
went hand inhand with e elimination of
all paraphernalia so Central to Nazi
propaganda symbols flags and anthems and
finally F complete removal of Nazi
ideology from German Information
Services schooling system and religion
having clarified what densification was
about Allied Forces had to Define how it
would be carried out the Allied control
Council reached an agreement only in
January 1946 issuing directive 24 which
contained guidelines for a coordinated
approach as we shall see later this
would be anything but coordinated in
each of the four occupation zones of
Germany the Allies set up ad hoc
densification commissions and tribunals
which involved the participation of
local vetted individuals such as union
leaders judges and opponents of Nazism
the rulings of these bodies were made on
the basis of an extensive 131 Point
questionnaire drafted by the public
safety branch of the allied military
government this was known as the Fraga
Bogan which translated from German
simply means questionnaire respondents
had to provide accurate and detailed
answers about their education their
professional training employment and
military service going even deeper those
filling in the questionaire had to
provide details on the source of their
income and asset since January 1931 as
well as their right and speeches
published since 1923 but most of all
they to provide a full account of their
membership and role within the National
Socialist Party or any other Affiliated
organization in the American occupation
sector filled in and signed
questionnaires would be evaluated by a
densification tribunal in collaboration
with the US Counter Intelligence Corp
and a special Branch section of the
military government's Public Safety
Division these bodies would then
crosscheck all the answers against
police files civil service records and
the Very Archives of the Nazi party the
purpose of this screening was not to
identify all German citizens who had
joined the party or an adjacent
organization at any point as there would
have been very few exceptions the allied
military government in fact agreed to
safeguard from sanctions the purely
nominal member of the Nazi party who was
forced to join in order to retain his
position of livelihood or escape the
Concentration Camp the point was to
ascertain if the individuals under
scrutiny had been involved in more than
just a nominal capacity in supporting
the Nazi regime if they had contributed
to perpetrating war crimes and crimes
against humanity or if they posed a
threat to the allies and the restoration
of democracy based on these factors
respondents would be classified as
follows major offenders were to be
sentenced to life imprisonment or even
to death then you had the offenders
activists militarists and others who had
profited from Germany's war of
aggression who could face after to 10
years in prison next you had the
somewhat murkier category of lesser
offenders subjected to a probationary
period of up to 3 years the rank of far
followers and supporters of Hitler's
regime with no specific active
responsibilities might encounter a fine
and be subject to surveillance and
finally exonerated individuals would
receive no sanction based on this
categorization anybody from lesser
offender and up would deemed to have had
more than a nominal participation in the
Nazi party's activities as such in
addition to the sanctions described they
would face mandatory removal from their
post be them Military Officers or public
officials all right so we've covered how
the dentification of Germany should have
worked but how did it actually turn out
well especially in the US controlled
occupation Zone military authorities
started with a bang preemptively
detaining 400,000 Germans in internment
camps before they had even started
filling in their 131 questionnaires but
when the tribunals and commissions
started applying due process it became
apparent that Discerning rank andile
party members from ler more serious
offenders was no easy task the US
military had access to excellent records
the one thing the Nazis were
unquestionably good at was recordkeeping
occupation troops in Munich in fact
discovered the party's entire registry
with the names of 12 million card
carrying members but according to earf
ZM writing for the US Army cent of
military history quote it was on the
gray fringes of denazification that the
question of who and what were Nazis
vexed military government the military
occupation Authority splatter sift
through all of those 12 million
individuals trying to identify the worst
that Humanity had to offer and it turns
out that many of those 12 million Nazis
had training experience energy
affability and not a bad political
record as reported by ZM American troops
found those under scrutiny to be on the
whole surprisingly Pleasant chaps which
made their dentification efforts the
more difficult a US high ranking officer
commented that if all the Nazis had been
exceedingly unpleasant and rude
denazification would have been easy on
the other hands many among those Germans
who were not formal members of the party
could fall into two categories those
ballsy enough not to fall for Nazi
ideology and propaganda and those who
had applied for membership but have been
rejected interestingly the former were
equally not keen to cooperate with the
allies and the latter likely did not
make for ideal members of society and
that was the problem dentification was
all well and good but the allies were
also seeking to rebuild German Society
from its ruins and as fast as possible
if they made a clean sweep of anybody
even loosely associated with national
socialism in Zena's words they were
going to have to run the country with
old men until the next Generation grew
up the number of political acceptables
between the ages of 20 and 50 who were
also trained and competent was
exceedingly small so that was the first
snag the second one was that the whole
program required a huge bureaucratic
apparatus which the Allies simply could
not manage in the US controlled Zone
alone the commissions and tribunals had
to review a whopping 10 million
questionnaires sure they had enrolled
local Personnel to run the tribunals but
even so trained Manpower was scarce and
even those Germans who were willing to
participate were reluctant to dish out
harsh sanctions on their fellow citizens
the third snag was that defendants in
these tribunals had found a convenient
way out they could easily obtain signed
sworn affidavits from priests or even
just from friends and neighbors
attesting that the defendant was a mere
rank andf far follower or that he or she
could be altogether exonerated naturally
a cottage industry emerged putting these
affidavits on sale they later became
colloquially known as perial shine after
the popular pural brand of detergent in
other words they would leave a
defendant's reputation squeaky clean
eventually us authorities could not cope
with the red tape associated with
dentification in their controlled areas
and with tensions Rising between the
Soviets and the US their focus also
somewhat shifted in particular they were
now much more concerned with Germany's
rapid economic recovery rather than
trying to make sure everyone paid for
their crimes and weren't allowed to be
in prominent positions a similar thing
happens over in Japan with the now
termed reverse course policies but back
in Germany with this shift on March the
5th 1946 they formerly transferred all
such duties to reconstituted German
authorities something that the British
had done a few months earlier as well on
that note with the British and French
occupation zones local military
governments took an even more pragmatic
approach both prioritized the efficiency
of local Administration and economy to
quickly cope with housing and food
shortages thus they were even less
scrupulous when it came to into allowing
former high ranking officials to hold or
resume important positions French
authorities were most lacks of all even
allowing Nazis residing in other zones
to move and resume work in their
occupied areas with no hindrance as
another example given the Nazis had
placed individuals whose beliefs aligned
with their ideologies in prominent
teaching positions around three quarters
of teachers in the country were
immediately fired after the war only for
the vast majority in the French Zone to
be quickly rehired and given their
positions back this was reflected in
most Industries in the French Zone in
the end in total the French only labeled
13 Al individuals in their region as
major offenders finally moving to the
Soviet occupation Zone the removal of
Nazi personnel and ideology appeared to
be more Resolute than in the zones
governed by the Western allies in fact
denotification proceeded hand inhand
with the sovietization of Eastern
Germany that is extensive land reforms
and nationalization of Industry moreover
while Western allies strove to replace
Nazi officials with political
representatives from a broad spectrum
Moscow had a preference for the kbd or
Communist Party of Germany later the
Socialist United party or SED however
according to historian Timothy rvot the
dentification in the Soviet held area
was not as thorough as it initially
appeared thanks to the cooperation of
the KPD Soviet authorities were able to
delegate most densification processes to
the Germans themselves in the form of
local anti-nazi committees and newly
formed provincial governments these
bodies enacted their measures
inconsistently and were prone to caving
in when meeting local resistance and
objections moreover they appeared to
follow the general principle that if
former Nazis were willing to Rebrand
themselves as Communists they would not
be removed from public life as you might
have guessed from all of this as early
as 1948 it had become apparent that the
densification of Germany had not
resulted in the indended restructure of
society in December of that year
international relations scholar John H
Herz a member of the US delegation of
the nurenberg trials published an
article with a self-explanatory title of
the Fiasco of dentification in Germany
hers focused on the American occupation
Zone reporting our trials conducted
there were frequently hindered by
intimidation on the part of Nazi
sympathizers even without intimidation
prosecutors based their indictments of
the answers provided in the
questionnaire without verifying their
veracity thus most defendants were
categorized as mere followers moreover
after dentification efforts have been
handed over to German authorities in
March 1946 they had issued two amnesties
one in August one in December
exonerating members of the Hitler Youth
persons of low income and disabled
citizens herds pointed out our such
amnesties allowed even war criminals to
escape prosecution The Scholar also
Unearthed a major procedural FL La until
October 1947 dentification processes had
vetted some 50,000 individuals a month
which is quite a good number but the
tribunals had given precedence to those
who had been classified as followers on
the basis of their questionnaire by the
time the tribunals finally worked their
stash of paperwork to those classified
as offenders a legislative amendment
allowed prosecutors to recategorize them
as followers with the exception of
members of the SS such recategorization
still required approval from the allied
military government thus in January 1948
this procedural step was removed moved
by the enactment of an Expediting
procedure now all offenders could be
rubber stamped as follow as wholesale a
further relaxation of Standards took
place in March of 1948 with the almost
total removal of the exception clause
for members of the SS and other criminal
organizations Affiliated to the Nazi
party now only those belonging to the
category of the major offenders could
expect major sanctions everybody else
was deemed a follower and was free to go
after paying a fine as for the numbers
on all of this some 12, 753 th000
Germans were expected to undergo the
densification procedure more than 9
million were found not chargeable the
remaining 3.2 million were processed by
the end of April 1948 and of these more
than 2.3 million were amnestied without
trial that left 836 th000 to be tried a
mere 6.5% more than onethird of these
were exonerated and more than half were
classified as followers of the remainder
10.7% were classed as lesser offenders
2.1% were class two offenders and only
0.1% were found to be major offenders
that's 836 individuals from the nearly
13 million person pool and even those
who were sentenced as offenders in any
degree of severity most received lenient
sanctions such as Community work payment
of fines or short prison sentences hers
proceeded to compile several examples of
such lenient treatments of which we
shall report only a few an active
propagandist and publisher of
anti-Semitic writings was ranked as a
follower and find a mere 50 marks a dean
of Bor University active member of the s
and their intelligence Services the SD
was fully exonerated a high ranking
member of the Gustavo was found to only
be a follower and received a minor fine
another Garo Man head of a station in
the town of fer was also a follower and
the former deputy chief of police in
nurenberg and one of the men responsible
for the infamous Crystal KN also a
follower and find 800 Marks One
physician responsible for carrying out
the sterilization law against undesir
bles well you guessed it he was just a
follower please pay your 500 marks and
then leave finally an aeronautical Eng
and industrialist he made a Fortune of
36 million marks thanks to slave labor
well you get the gist by now he was
fined 2,000 marks moving on toward the
end of the 1940s across all areas of
occupation leniency gave way to amnesty
and a strategy of integration the chief
proponent of this approach was the first
Chancellor of the new federal republic
of Germany or West Germany Conrad adenau
after his election in September 1949
adenau advocated for West Germany to
forge strong bonds with Western Europe
against the Communist block this
strategy also included for old Nazi
cardr to be integrated into the new
Republic in order to move forward
towards that ending all this in May 1951
adona's government passed the first
amnesty law which reintegrated into
their position some 150,000 officials
and civil servants previously removed by
the Allied denotification efforts the
following year the chancellor reported
to the Parliament that 2third of German
diplomats were in fact former Nazis the
Armed Forces Security Services and even
the private sector were similarly
replete with former Reich personnel sir
ivone Kirk Patrick British High
Commissioner in Germany commented
whenever I traveled I ran into ghosts of
Hitler's Reich men who had occupied
positions in the administration in
industry or the Society of the day they
were either living in retirement or were
taking jobs in Banks Commerce or
industry despite the amnesty adona's
regime also took steps the other way for
example in August of 1952 his cabinet
banned the Neo-Nazi socialist Reich
party and in September he agreed to pay
the state of Israel reparation of three
billion German marks the equivalent of
$8.3 billion in today's value but Aron's
intention was to leave the past behind
nonetheless and in 1954 his government
issued the second amnesty law which this
time benefited around 400,000 German
citizens a similar dentification process
culminating in widespread amnesty was
followed in Austria this country is
often excluded from English-speaking
accounts of denotification but we should
not forget that Austria was annexed to
the Third Reich before the start of
World War II nor that Austrian citizens
actively joined the vmark the SS and the
Nazi party and therefore the country was
occupied by the Allies at the end of the
conflict the Austrian Den nazification
process was led by before occupying
Powers the UK France us and USSR in
collaboration with three local parties
the Social Democratic party the Austrian
peoples party and the Communist Party
according to historian deeta stifel the
Austrian denotification can be divided
into five phases during the military
security phase from April 1945 to June
1945 the four Allied occupation Powers
worked in coordination to intern an
initial batch of prominent SS and Nazi
Party members such potentially dangerous
individuals were hunted down and
detained on the basis of blacklists
compiled by the Allied High
Commissioners the next phase from June
1945 to February 1946 is labeled as
autonomous densification now the four
allies plus the Austrian government
carried out dentification efforts
independently from each other which
resulted in contradictory measures and
decisions for example the US occupation
used a seven-page questionnaire similar
to the Fraga bden the British and French
used did too but only in part while the
Soviets ditched it completely in fact
the Soviets acted relatively chill in
their zone of occupation delegating the
densification process to local
authorities they intervened directly
only when they identified someone guilty
of war crimes committed on Soviet soil
or when they selected a promising
scientist for let's say relocation under
pressure and again more on that later in
February 1946 the Allies devolved all
densification activities to the Austrian
government ushering in the third oronas
phase local authorities followed three
laws promulgated to this purpose the
prohibition act the economic cleansing
Act and the war crimes act in order to
enforce these laws the government
created adhoc people's courts consisting
of two professional judges and three lay
judges nominated amongst the general
public these tribunals were set up to
take very direct action as no appeal was
allowed against their verdicts
nonetheless alled authorities took note
that the Austrian Judiciary introduced
it at a very slow pace and pressured for
a quicker uptake in February 1947 the
government issued a new National
Socialist law regulating the removal of
the older I vestages thus kicking off
the fourth phase which lasted less than
one year the fifth and Final Phase from
1948 to 1957 is known as the time of
amnesties the first of these involved
the so-called minda Bell which can be
translated as lesser incriminated or
lesser offenders this amnesty was
applied to 90% of all registered members
of the Austrian National Socialist Party
the minderella estator amnesty
effectively put an end to all major
attempts at densifying Austrian society
which is not surprising much like in a
divided German after the onset of the
Cold War each Allied Power sought to
consolidate local authorities under
their sphere of influence the Austrian
people's courts however continued to
operate until December 1955 up to that
13,676 to 195 seven period Austrian
courts issued a total of 39 verdicts of
which only 18 were guilty sentences as
the dentification efforts and further
whittel down the Austrian Parliament
voted in favor of a final amnesty in
1957 besides widespread amnesties it's
no secret that hundreds of former Nazi
officials entirely escaped from
sanctions thanks to their military
scientific or technical expertise they
were simply deemed too useful to the
Allies in Ally countries this seems to
be something history paints as
completely acceptable though when other
countries like Argentina essentially did
the same thing thing it's more vilified
for various reasons you can see our
video why did so many Nazis choose to go
to Argentina after World War II for more
on that but as for the United States
according to the US Nazi war criminal
records in agency working group as early
as May the 10th 1945 The Joint Chiefs of
Staff advised the commander of US forces
in Europe General Eisenhower to make
some exceptions when it came to
arresting war criminals quoting in your
discretion you may make such exceptions
as you deem advisable for intelligence
and other military reasons throughout
the summer of 94 45 the US Army Counter
Intelligence Corps cic and the office of
strategic Services OSS did employ former
German military and Intelligence
Officers as informants but this was a
necessity to identify more dangerous
Nazi criminals or suppress anti- Allied
resistance but as friction mounted
across the Iron Curtain American and
other Western Allied Services took to
using German military personnel as a
source of intelligence about Soviet
military strategy equipment and tactics
toward this end the cic collaborated
closely with General ryanard Gan former
head of the foreign armies East founded
in 1938 and responsible for collecting
Intelligence on the Soviet Union but the
core also recruited Personnel whose
resumés ER on the criminal side such as
SS officer clouse Barbie charmingly
known as The Butcher of leyon Barbie The
Butcher and other war criminals were
eventually protected from prosecution
and smuggled out of Europe with the
complicity of the cic OSS and other
Allied Services many many more former
nzi and SS officials would Escape via
rat line set up by Argentinian
intelligence and even the Vatican the US
joint chief of staffs however were not
interested in simply knowing more about
the Soviets they were interested in
gaining a technological Edge over them
as early as July 1945 they explicitly
authorized a program to exploit chosen
rare Minds whose continuing intellectual
productivity we wish to use those R
mines were 350 German and Austrian
scientists and technicians to be brought
immediately to America under operation
overcast by 1946 the department of
defenses joint intelligence objectives
agency sought to expand overcast to
recruit a further thous former enemy
brains and even grant them American
citizenship this was a complicated
Endeavor as some of those chosen
thousand were high ranking members of
the Nazi party at least one of them
rocket scientist Verna Von braa had been
an SS officer the plan required
presidential blessing which president
Tran granted in September 1946 insisting
that only so-called nominal Nazis should
be allowed in the program the term
indicated German and Austrian citizens
who had joined the party out of
convenience or coercion but had not
actively supported the Reich the new
expanded Pro prog took the name of
Operation Paperclip in early 1947 a
panel constituted by the Departments of
Justice and state began combing dossier
of perspective scientists for relocation
to the US which were based on cic
investigations the panel initially
rejected several applications as the
individuals in question have been
identified as potential threats on the
basis of their Nazi past this did not
sit well with the joint intelligence
objectives agency according to the Nazi
war criminal records inter agency
working group they ordered American
intelligence in Europe to revise the
scientist dosier days so they could make
it through the paperclip panel thus from
1945 to 1955 operations overcast and
paperclip helped relocate 765 scientists
engineers and technician to the United
States the inter agency working group
estimates that as many as 80% of them
were former Nazi Party members now
Operation Paperclip is a well-known
episode of the Cold War what is less
wellknown is that the Soviet Union had
their own version of this project known
as operation oo ofakim or the for
relocation of more than 2,500 German
sists to the USSR however an interesting
thing about the name is that it's
actually a misnomer the term oo aim is
an acronym which stands for Union of
societies for assistance to defense and
Aviation chemical construction of the
USSR this was a paramilitary and
sporting organization founded in 1927 it
had absolutely nothing to do with the
Soviet equivalent of paperclip but
apparently a German radio incorrectly
used this word to refer to the brain
drain in 1946 and US intelligence
Services adopted the term the plan was
initiated in April 1946 when the Soviet
minister of aeronautical industry mik
krev issued an order for the relocation
of the German aeronautical and engine
industry this was followed by a May 13th
1946 resolution decreed by the ministry
of internal affairs or MBD which ordered
the transfer of 2,000 German Specialists
by the end of the year and not just
Specialists of any kind the Soviet zone
of occupation included facilities which
were replete with scientists and
technicians involved in aviation and
Rocket engineering projects initially
the Soviets found founded institutions
such as the Nord Housen Institute or the
Berlin Institute to resume work
initiated by the reich's best and
brightest for example the Nord hous was
put under the direction of helmet gotb a
former collaborator of Verna Von Brawn
on the V2 program but the agreement
signed amongst the Allies at the pot
Stam conference prohibited the
development of weapons on German soil
and so Moscow planned the relocation of
these programs elsewhere following the
mvds resolution of May 1946 the Soviet
forces started to gather hundreds of
experts in atomic research Electronics
navigation equipment Rockets jet engines
and even color video on October the 22nd
1946 operation osim was effectively
initiated under the leadership of Ivan
serov later a chairman of the KGB by
date serov had organized 92 freight
trains transporting the necessary
equipment of the USSR By Night the Army
and MVD police swooped in to arrest the
German scientists and their families for
a total of 6,500 individuals after being
made to see that their lives would be
much better doing what the Soviet regime
wanted and it would be a shame if
anything happened to themselves or their
families they were offered a regular
contract and paid salaries which were
higher than that of their Soviet
counterparts as you might imagine only a
fraction of the German scientific
contingent refused to cooperate with
Moscow and those that refused were
intered at gag the oso viim scientists
were gradually allowed to return to
Germany after 1950 with the vast
majority leaving after Stalin's death in
March 1943 but in the end at the start
of this video we asked the question how
did Germany and Austria Den naify so
quickly after World War II especially
given that the ideology behind their
former regime was so embedded into every
facet of society to some up on one hand
we can very simplistically state that
both societies needed to move on quickly
to both rebuild their economies and to
face the political challenges posed by
the Cold War and so everyone was
incentivized to do so and so did and on
top of this the extreme atrocities
committed by the Nazis during the war
helped convince those who had bought
into what the Nazis were selling that
maybe they should rethink their
decision-making Paradigm on the other
hand we can cynically acknowledge that
the process was quick because it failed
overall on a huge percentage of what it
was meant to accomplish wiping the Slate
clean in such a perversive regime was a
logistically daunting task one which the
allies and the local institutions were
ill-prepared and little motivated to
accomplish at a certain point the Nazi
party was finished the Soviets with a
new threat West Germany much like Japan
needed to be strong to help counter this
and to help facilitate this former
prominent Nazis and many prominent
individuals in Jaan would better serve
those goals in their positions that they
were experts in rather than sitting in
prison or executed and for more on the
Japanese side of this do see our
documentary swept under the rug the
truth about the Japanese Holocaust [Music]
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