Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany: The Fragebogen Questionnaire and Political Screening During the Allied Occupation

In the wake of the Second World War, the victorious Allied armies implemented a radical programme to purge Nazism from Germany and preserve peace in Europe. Between 1945 and 1949, twenty million political questionnaires, or Frageboegen, were distributed by American, British, French, and Soviet armies to anxious Germans in positions of influence who had to prove their non-Nazi status to gain employment. Drafted by idealistic university professors and social scientists, these surveys came to define much of the denazification experience and were immensely consequential to the material and emotional recovery of Germans. In Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany, Mikkel Dack draws the curtain to reveal what denazification looked like on the ground and in practice and how the highly criticised vetting programme impacted the lives of individual Germans and their families as they recovered from dictatorship and war. Accessing recently declassified documents, this book challenges traditional interpretations by recounting a more comprehensive history of denazification, one of mid-level planners, civil affairs soldiers, and regular German citizens. The Fragebogen functions as a window into this everyday history.