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110-882: The Shanghai massacre of 1927 in China and the Night of the Long Knives of 1934 in Nazi Germany, in which the leader of a political party turns against a particular section or group within the party and kills its members, are commonly called "purges". Mass expulsions of populations on the grounds of racism and xenophobia , such as the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in the Soviet Union, are not. Though sudden and violent purges are notable, most purges do not involve immediate execution or imprisonment, for example

220-446: A Nazi and Militarist Nature". All confiscated literature was reduced to pulp instead of burning. It was also directed by Directive No. 30, "Liquidation of German Military and Nazi Memorials and Museums". An exception was made for tombstones "erected at the places where members of regular formations died on the field of battle". Artworks were under the same censorship as other media: "all collections of works of art related or dedicated to

330-582: A crime. Even before denazification was officially abandoned in West Germany , East German propaganda frequently portrayed itself as the only true anti-fascist state, and argued that the West German state was simply a continuation of the Nazi regime, employing the same officials that had administered the government during the Nazi dictatorship. From the 1950s, reasoning for these accusations focused on

440-570: A failure; in 1951 the provisional West German government granted amnesties to lesser offenders and ended the program. While judicial efforts were handed over to German authorities, the US Army continued its efforts to denazify Germany through control of German media. The Information Control Division of the US Army had by July 1946 taken control of 37 German newspapers, six radio stations, 314 theaters, 642 cinemas, 101 magazines, 237 book publishers, and 7,384 book dealers and printers. Its main mission

550-614: A network of unions with allegiance to the Kuomintang and under the control of Du Yuesheng. Some sources say that over 1,000 Communists and KMT leftists were arrested, some 300 were executed and more than 5,000 went missing; some state that 5,000 Communists and leftists were killed while others claim up to 10,000 were killed. Western news reports later nicknamed Gen. Bai "The Hewer of Communist Heads". Some National Revolutionary Army commanders with Communist backgrounds who were graduates of Whampoa Military Academy kept their sympathies for

660-463: A new publisher, but Der Skorpion was blocked and not widely distributed. Unable to publish his works, Richter founded Group 47 . The Allied costs for occupation were charged to the German people. A newspaper which revealed the charges (including, among other things, thirty thousand bras ) was banned by the occupation authorities for revealing this information. From the beginning, denazification in

770-528: A number of reasons, than the other Western powers, not even using the term "denazification", instead calling it "épuration" (purification). At the same time, some French occupational commanders had served in the collaborationist Vichy regime during the war where they had formed friendly relationships with Germans. As a result, in the French zone mere membership in the Nazi Party was much less important than in

880-693: A political party set up by East German authorities upon the encouragement of Stalin explicitly to appeal to former Nazi members and sympathisers, and which functioned as a loyal satellite of the Socialist Unity Party . The British prepared a plan from 1942 onwards, assigning a number of quite junior civil servants to head the administration of liberated territory in the rear of the Armies, with draconian powers to remove from their post, in both public and private domains, anyone suspected, usually on behavioral grounds, of harboring Nazi sympathies. For

990-707: A psychological propaganda campaign for the purpose of developing a German sense of collective responsibility. In 1945, the Public Relations and Information Services Control Group of the British Element (CCG/BE) of the Allied Control Commission for Germany began in to issue directives to officers in charge of producing newspapers and radio broadcasts for the German population to emphasize "the moral responsibility of all Germans for Nazi crimes". Similarly, among US authorities, such

1100-672: A result of these various pressures, and following a January 15, 1946, report of the Military Government decrying the efficiency of denazification, saying, "The present procedure fails in practice to reach a substantial number of persons who supported or assisted the Nazis", it was decided to involve Germans in the process. In March 1946 the Law for Liberation from National Socialism and Militarism (German: Befreiungsgesetz ) came into effect, turning over responsibility for denazification to

1210-555: A single day to await processing. By December 1945, even though a full 500,000 forms had been processed, there remained a backlog of 4,000,000 forms from POWs and a potential case load of 7,000,000. The Fragebögen were, of course, filled out in German. The number of Americans working on denazification was inadequate to handle the workload, partly as a result of the demand in the US by families to have soldiers returned home. Replacements were mostly unskilled and poorly trained. In addition, there

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1320-471: A small town". Artists were also restricted in which new art they were allowed to create; " OMGUS was setting explicit political limits on art and representation". The publication Der Ruf ( The Call ) was a popular literary magazine first published in 1945 by Alfred Andersch and edited by Hans Werner Richter . Der Ruf , also called Independent Pages of the New Generation , claimed to have

1430-489: Is brown ) was published in the GDR. The ideas of collective guilt and collective punishment originated not with the US and British people, but on higher policy levels. Not until late in the war did the US public assign collective responsibility to the German people. The most notable policy document containing elements of collective guilt and collective punishment is JCS 1067 from early 1945. Eventually horrific footage from

1540-812: The April 12 Purge or the April 12 Incident as it is commonly known in China, was the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) organizations and leftist elements in Shanghai by forces supporting General Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party or KMT). Following the incident, conservative KMT elements carried out a full-scale purge of communists in all areas under their control, and violent suppression occurred in Guangzhou and Changsha . The purge led to an open split between left-wing and right-wing factions in

1650-686: The Beiyang government 's capital of Beijing, leading to the nominal unification of China and worldwide recognition of the Republic as the legal government of China. [REDACTED] Communist Party / [REDACTED] Soviet Republic ( [REDACTED] Red Army ) → Liberated Area ( [REDACTED] 8th Route Army , New Fourth Army , etc. → [REDACTED] People's Liberation Army ) → [REDACTED]   People's Republic of China Denazification Final solution Parties Denazification (German: Entnazifizierung )

1760-651: The Foreign Office and of embassies and consulates in leading position, 297 high police officers and officers of the Verfassungsschutz . The first brown book was seized in West Germany – on Frankfurt Book Fair – by judicial resolution. The contents of this book received substantial attention in West Germany and other countries. The West German government stated, at that time, that it was "all falsification". Later on, however, it became clear that

1870-789: The Japanese government and private corporations with the aid and encouragement of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), the Red Purge resulted in tens of thousands of alleged members, supporters, or sympathizers of left-wing groups, especially those said to be affiliated with the Japanese Communist Party , removed from their jobs in government, the private sector, universities, and schools. The Red Purge emerged from rising Cold War tensions and

1980-664: The Liberal Democratic Party of Germany , three from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany , and three from political mass organizations (who were typically also supportive of the Socialist Unity Party). Former Nazi officials quickly realized that they would face fewer obstacles and investigations in the zones controlled by the Western Allies. Many of them saw a chance to defect to the West on

2090-735: The National Socialist People's Welfare organization (17   million), the League of German Women , and others. It was through the Party and these organizations that the Nazi state was run, involving as many as 45   million Germans in total. In addition, Nazism found significant support among industrialists, who produced weapons or used slave labor, and large landowners, especially the Junkers in Prussia. Denazification after

2200-781: The New Model Army . The Parliament of England would suffer subsequent purges under Oliver Cromwell 's Commonwealth of England , including the purge of the entire House of Lords . Counter-revolutionaries such as royalists and more radical revolutionaries such as the Levellers were purged. After the Stuart Restoration , obstinate republicans were purged while some fled to the New England Colonies in British America . Purges were frequent in

2310-649: The Nuremberg trials of 1946. The program of denazification was launched after the end of the war and was solidified by the Potsdam Agreement in August 1945. The term denazification was first coined as a legal term in 1943 by the Pentagon , intended to be applied in a narrow sense with reference to the post-war German legal system. However, it later took on a broader meaning. In late 1945 and early 1946,

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2420-586: The Red Scare after World War II, and was a significant element within a broader " Reverse Course " in Occupation policies. The Red Purge reached a peak following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, when communist China supported North Korea. It began to ease after General Douglas MacArthur was replaced as commander of the Occupation by General Matthew Ridgway in 1951, and came to a conclusion with

2530-581: The anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping to be a purge. A far-reaching campaign against corruption began in China following the conclusion of the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012. The campaign, carried out under the aegis of Xi Jinping , General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party , was the largest organized purported anti-graft effort in the history of Communist rule in China. The Supreme Council of

2640-607: The Americans had dismissed and reclassified 60% of senior Nazis. The denazification process lost a great deal of credibility, and there was often local hostility against Germans who helped administer the tribunals. By early 1947, the Allies held 90,000 Nazis in detention ; another 1,900,000 were forbidden to work as anything but manual laborers. From 1945 to 1950, the Allied powers detained over 400,000 Germans in internment camps in

2750-522: The Americans relinquishing responsibility for denazification and handing it over to the Germans arose from the fact that many of the American denazifiers were German Jews, former refugees returning to administer justice against the tormentors and killers of their relatives. It was felt, both among Germans and top American officials, that their objectivity might be contaminated by a desire for revenge. As

2860-659: The April 12 Incident go back to the Kuomintang's alliance with the Soviet Union , formally initiated by the KMT founder Sun Yat-sen after discussions with Soviet diplomat Adolph Joffe in January 1923. The alliance included both financial and military aid and a small but important group of Soviet political and military advisors, headed by Mikhail Borodin . The Soviet Union's conditions for alliance and aid included co-operation with

2970-580: The Ba'ath Party were to be removed from their positions and to be banned from any future employment in the public sector. It is estimated that, before 2007, 50,000 civil government employees, as well as employees of other organizations listed in Annex A of Order No. 2 , were removed from their positions as a result of de-Ba'athification. Another estimate places the number, also before 2007, at "100,000 civil servants, doctors, and teachers", who were forcibly removed from

3080-592: The British and US governments, both before and immediately after Germany's surrender , indicate that the German nation as a whole was to be held responsible for the actions of the Nazi regime, often using the terms "collective guilt" and " collective responsibility ". To that end, as the Allies began their post-war denazification efforts, the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force undertook

3190-422: The British government, the rebuilding of German economic power was more important than the imprisonment of Nazi criminals. Economically hard pressed at home after the war, they did not want the burden of feeding and otherwise administering Germany. In October 1945, in order to constitute a working legal system, and given that 90% of German lawyers had been members of the Nazi Party, the British decided that 50% of

3300-482: The British, French, and Soviets, interpreted this to apply to every German over the age of eighteen in their zone. Eisenhower initially estimated that the denazification process would take 50 years. When the nearly complete list of Nazi Party memberships was turned over to the Allies (by a German anti-Nazi who had rescued it from destruction in April 1945 as American troops advanced on Munich), it became possible to verify claims about participation or non-participation in

3410-729: The Communists hidden and were not arrested, and many switched their allegiance to the CCP after the start of the Chinese Civil War . During the White Terror , local Kuomintang officials specifically targeted short-haired women who had not been subjected to foot binding . These officials presumed that women who rejected foot binding and traditional hair styles were radicals. Kuomintang forces would cut off their breasts and shave their heads, displaying their mutilated corpses to cow

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3520-564: The Cultural Revolution of the Iranian government purged universities. In August 2023, the government reportedly had a program to hire 15,000 replacements for people in universities and to place clerics in schools. It also removed Tehran University of Art ’s major curricula for sculpting, music and cinematography/filmmaking. The government added Islamic studies even more so. Many academics were terminated/fired. On 14 December 2023

3630-520: The Federal Republic: State, Economy, Administration, Army, Justice, Science ) is a book written by Albert Norden in 1965. In this book Norden detailed 1,800 Nazis who maintained high-ranking positions in postwar West Germany . Altogether 1,800 West German persons and their past were covered: especially 15 Ministers and state secretaries, 100 admirals and generals, 828 judges or state lawyers and high law officers, 245 officials of

3740-581: The German Legal Civil Service could be staffed by "nominal" Nazis. Similar pressures caused them to relax the restriction even further in April 1946. In industry, especially in the economically crucial Ruhr area, the British began by being lenient about who owned or operated businesses, turning stricter by autumn of 1945. To reduce the power of industrialists, the British expanded the role of trade unions, giving them some decision-making powers. They were, however, especially zealous during

3850-569: The Germans to a fundamental revision of their recent political philosophy." The United States military pursued denazification in a zealous and bureaucratic fashion, especially during the first months of the occupation. It had been agreed among the Allies that denazification would begin by requiring Germans to fill in a questionnaire (German: Fragebogen ) about their activities and memberships during Nazi rule. Five categories were established: Major Offenders , Offenders , Lesser Offenders , Followers , and Exonerated Persons . The Americans, unlike

3960-423: The Germans. Each zone had a Minister of Denazification. On April 1, 1946, a special law established 545 civilian tribunals under German administration (German: Spruchkammern ), with a staff of 22,000 of mostly lay judges, enough, perhaps, to start to work but too many for all the staff themselves to be thoroughly investigated and cleared. They had a case load of 900,000. Several new regulations came into effect in

4070-405: The KMT, were discredited and lost their leadership roles in the CCP. Chen was personally blamed, forced to resign and replaced by Qu Qiubai , who did not change Chen's policies in any fundamental way. The CCP planned for worker uprisings and revolutions in the urban areas. The White Terror completely routed the Communists, and only 10,000 party members out of 60,000 survived. The first battles of

4180-651: The KMT, with Chiang Kai-shek establishing himself as the leader of the right-wing faction based in Nanjing , in opposition to the original left-wing KMT government based in Wuhan , which was led by Wang Jingwei . By 15 July 1927, the Wuhan regime had expelled the Communists in its ranks, effectively ending the First United Front , a working alliance of both the KMT and CCP under the tutelage of Comintern agents. For

4290-588: The Kuomintang, 39 members of the Kuomintang Central Committee in Wuhan publicly denounced Chiang Kai-shek as a traitor to Sun Yat-sen, including Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling immediately after the purge. However, Chiang was defiant, forming a brand new Nationalist Government to rival the Communist-tolerant Nationalist Government in Wuhan controlled by Wang Jingwei on 18 April. The purges garnered

4400-716: The Ministry of Education announced that it would hire 7000 clerics instead of teachers. De-Ba'athification was undertaken by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and subsequent Iraqi governments to remove the Ba'ath Party 's influence in the new Iraqi political system after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. It was first outlined in CPA Order 1 which entered into force on 16 May 2003. The order declared that all public sector employees affiliated with

4510-653: The Nanjing government the support of much of the NRA, the Chinese merchant class, and foreign businesses, bolstering its economic and military position. The twin rival KMT governments, known as the Ninghan Split ( simplified Chinese : 宁汉分裂 ; traditional Chinese : 寧漢分裂 ; pinyin : Nínghàn Fēnliè ; Wade–Giles : Ning -han Fen -lie ), did not last long. In May 1927, Communists and peasant leaders in

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4620-710: The Nationalist government reorganized the Military Commission and placed Chiang under its jurisdiction while it secretly plotted to arrest him. Chiang found out about the plot, which most likely led to his determination to purge the CCP from the KMT. In response to the advances of the NRA, Communists in Shanghai began to plan uprisings against the warlord forces controlling the city. On 21–22 March, KMT and CCP union workers, led by Zhou Enlai and Chen Duxiu , launched an armed uprising in Shanghai and defeated

4730-409: The Nazi Party. Notable ex-Nazis who eventually became prominent East German politicians included Kurt Nier , a deputy minister for foreign affairs, and Arno Von Lenski , a parliamentarian and major-general in the East German army who had worked in Roland Freisler 's notorious Volksgerichthof trying opponents of the Nazi government as an effective "kangaroo court". Von Lenski was a member of the NPPD ,

4840-405: The Party. The 1.5   million Germans who had joined before Hitler came to power were deemed to be hard-core Nazis. Progress was slowed by the overwhelming numbers of Germans to be processed, but also by difficulties such as incompatible power systems and power outages, as with the Hollerith IBM data machine that held the American vetting list in Paris. As many as 40,000 forms could arrive in

4950-520: The Second World War. Some were transferred into the Intelligence Corps and sent back to Germany and Austria in British uniform. However, German-speakers were small in number in the British zone, which was hampered by the language deficit. Due to its large German-American population, the US authorities were able to bring a larger number of German-speakers to the task of working in the Allied Military Government , although many were poorly trained. They were assigned to all aspects of military administration,

5060-537: The Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, military and internal security elites were more likely to be detained than civilian elites. The term "purge" is often associated with Stalinism . While leading the USSR, Joseph Stalin carried out repeated purges which resulted in tens of thousands of people sentenced to Gulag labor camps and the outright executions of rival communists, military officers, ethnic minorities , wreckers , and citizens accused of plotting against communism . Stalin together with Nikolai Yezhov initiated

5170-549: The Soviet zone was considered a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society and was quickly and effectively put into practice. Members of the Nazi Party and its organizations were arrested and interned. The NKVD was directly in charge of this process, and oversaw the camps. In 1948, the camps were placed under the same administration as the gulag in the Soviet government. According to official records, 122,600 people were interned. 34,700 of those interned in this process were considered to be Soviet citizens, with

5280-411: The Wuhan Nationalist Government's policy of cooperation with the CCP. On 11 April, Chiang issued a secret order to all provinces under the control of his forces to purge Communists from the KMT. Before dawn on 12 April, gang members began to attack district offices controlled by the union workers, including Zhabei , Nanshi , and Pudong . Under an emergency decree, Chiang ordered the 26th Army to disarm

5390-403: The Wuhan area were repeatedly attacked by Nationalist generals. On 1 June, Joseph Stalin sent a telegram to the Communists in Wuhan, calling for mobilisation of an army of workers and peasants. This alarmed Wang Jingwei, who decided to break with the Communists and come to terms with Chiang Kai-shek. On the Communists' side, Chen Duxiu and his Soviet advisers, who had promoted cooperation with

5500-461: The aim of educating the German people about democracy. In 1947 its publication was blocked by the American forces for being overly critical of occupational government. Richter attempted to print many of the controversial pieces in a volume entitled Der Skorpion ( The Scorpion ). The occupational government blocked publication of Der Skorpion before it began, saying that the volume was too "nihilistic". Publication of Der Ruf resumed in 1948 under

5610-441: The alliance among prominent KMT members. Internal conflicts between left- and right-wing leaders of the KMT with regards to the United Front with the CCP continued right up to the launch of the Northern Expedition . Plans for a Northern Expedition originated with Sun Yat-sen. After his expulsion from the government in Peking , he had by 1920 made a military comeback and gained control of some parts of Guangdong province. His goal

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5720-511: The business of denazification in the French zone was considered a "golden mean between an excessive degree of severity and an inadequate standard of leniency", laying the groundwork for an enduring reconciliation between France and Germany. In the French zone only thirteen Germans were categorized as "major offenders". Braunbuch – Kriegs- und Naziverbrecher in der Bundesrepublik: Staat – Wirtschaft – Verwaltung – Armee – Justiz – Wissenschaft (English title: Brown Book – War and Nazi Criminals in

5830-422: The careers of many individuals, particularly in the entertainment industry, where HUAC attempted to purge left-wing voices entirely from the industry through the Hollywood blacklist . While not part of HUAC, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a major driver of efforts to purge perceived communist sympathizers through the 1940s and 1950s, which ended in his condemnation and censure in 1954. Some observers consider

5940-426: The concentration camps would serve to harden public opinion and bring it more in line with that of policymakers. As early as 1944, prominent US opinion makers had initiated a domestic propaganda campaign (which was to continue until 1948) arguing for a harsh peace for Germany, with a particular aim to end the apparent habit in the US of viewing the Nazis and the German people as separate entities. Statements made by

6050-426: The data of the book were largely correct. Hanns Martin Schleyer , for example, really had been a member of the SS . The book was translated into 10 languages. Amongst the reactions to it was also a similar West German book of the same name, covering the topic of Nazis re-emerging in high-level positions in the GDR. In addition to the Braunbuch the educational booklet Das ganze System ist braun ( The whole system

6160-420: The denazification effort in the West was the concern to keep enough good will of the German population to prevent the growth of communism. The denazification process was often completely disregarded by both the Soviets and the Western powers for German rocket scientists and other technical experts, who were taken out of Germany to work on projects in the victors' own countries or simply seized in order to prevent

6270-467: The early months of occupation in bringing to justice anyone, soldiers or civilians, who had committed war crimes against POWs or captured Allied aircrew. In June 1945 an interrogation center at Bad Nenndorf was opened, where detainees were allegedly tortured via buckets of cold water, beatings, being burnt with lit cigarettes, etc. A public scandal ensued, with the center eventually being closed down. The British to some extent avoided being overwhelmed by

6380-403: The emergence of the Cold War and the economic importance of Germany caused the United States in particular to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan . The British handed over denazification panels to the Germans in January 1946, while the Americans did likewise in March 1946. The French ran the mildest denazification effort. Denazification

6490-446: The end of the Occupation in 1952. After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro of Cuba often purged those who had previously been involved with the Batista regime . Purges usually involved the execution of the condemned. Castro periodically carried out purges in the Communist Party of Cuba thereafter. One prominent purge was carried out in 1989 when a high-ranking Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces general named Arnaldo Ochoa

6600-400: The event as either the April 12 Counter-revolutionary Coup ( simplified Chinese : 四一二反革命政变 ; traditional Chinese : 四一二反革命政變 ; pinyin : Sìyī'èr Fǎngémìng Zhèngbiàn ; Wade–Giles : Ssu -i -erh Fan -ko -ming Cheng -pien ) or the April 12 Massacre ( Chinese : 四一二慘案 ; pinyin : Sìyī'èr Cǎn'àn ; Wade–Giles : Ssu -i -erh Ts'an -an ). The roots of

6710-448: The fact that many former functionaries of Nazi regime were employed in positions in the West German government. However, East German propaganda also attempted to denounce as Nazis even politicians such as Kurt Schumacher , who had been imprisoned by the Nazi regime himself. Such allegations appeared frequently in the official Socialist Unity Party of Germany newspaper, the Neues Deutschland . The East German uprising of 1953 in Berlin

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6820-411: The first elements of what would become the People's Liberation Army . By the time the CCP Central Committee was forced to flee Shanghai in 1933, Mao had established peasant-based soviets in Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, turning the Communist's base of support from urban proletariat to the countryside , where the People's War would be fought. In June 1928, the National Revolutionary Army captured

6930-530: The first federal politicians to be denounced in the GDR. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia by the GDR in April 1960, and in July 1963. The president of West Germany Heinrich Lübke , in particular, was denounced during the official commemorations of the liberation of the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen held at the GDR's National Memorials. However, in reality substantial numbers of former Nazis rose to senior levels in East Germany. For example, those who had collaborated after

7040-408: The former's first years in power, including, most prominently, his uncle Jang Song-thaek . After the failed 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt , the Government of Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan began a purge against members of its civil service and the Turkish Armed Forces . The purge ostensibly focused mainly on public servants and soldiers alleged to be part of the Gülen movement , the group

7150-468: The government blamed for the coup. As part of the purge, about 200,000 public officials, including thousands of judges, were dismissed and detained. Politicized Kurds in Turkey have also been a major target of the Justice and Development Party -led purge. Shanghai massacre of 1927 [REDACTED] Republic of China [REDACTED] Chinese Communist Party [REDACTED] China portal The Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927,

7260-444: The growth of KMT authority and military strength, the struggle for control of the Party's direction and leadership intensified. In January 1927, the NRA, commanded by Chiang Kai-shek captured Wuhan and went on to attack Nanchang , and KMT leader Wang Jingwei and his left-wing allies, along with the Chinese Communists and the Soviet agent Borodin, transferred the seat of the Nationalist Government from Guangzhou to Wuhan. On 1 March,

7370-429: The growth of the influence of the Communists, who continued to organize daily mass student protests and labor strikes to demand the return of Shanghai international settlements to Chinese control. With Bai's army firmly in control of Shanghai, on 2 April the Central Control Commission of KMT, led by former Chancellor of Peking University Cai Yuanpei , determined that the CCP actions were anti-revolutionary and undermined

7480-420: The interrogation of prisoners of war , collecting evidence for the War Crimes Investigation Unit, and the search for war criminals . The Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 directed US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower 's policy of denazification. A report of the Institute on Re-education of the Axis Countries in June 1945 recommended: "Only an inflexible long-term occupation authority will be able to lead

7590-438: The laundry and whitening detergent Persil . There was corruption in the system, with Nazis buying and selling denazification certificates on the black market. Nazis who were found guilty were often punished with fines assessed in Reichsmarks , which had become nearly worthless. In Bavaria, the Denazification Minister, Anton Pfeiffer, bridled under the "victor's justice", and presided over a system that reinstated 75% of officials

7700-409: The leaders termed the Cultural Revolution . In Maoist states, sentences usually involved hard labor in laogai camps and executions. Deng Xiaoping acquired a reputation for returning to power after he had been purged several times. The earliest use of the term dates back to the English Civil War 's Pride's Purge . In 1648–1650, the moderate members of the English Long Parliament were purged by

7810-542: The millions of copies of these books were to be confiscated and destroyed; the possession of a book on the list was made a punishable offense. The representative of the Military Directorate admitted that the order was in principle no different from the Nazi book burnings . The censorship in the US zone was regulated by the occupation directive JCS 1067 (valid until July 1947) and in the May 1946 order valid for all zones (rescinded in 1950), Allied Control Authority Order No. 4, "No. 4 – Confiscation of Literature and Material of

7920-611: The most notable cases involved Wernher von Braun , who was among other German scientists recruited by the United States through Operation Paperclip and later occupied key positions in the American space program . About 8   million Germans, or 10% of the population, had been members of the Nazi Party. Nazi-related organizations also had huge memberships, such as the German Labor Front (25   million),

8030-866: The most notorious of the CPSU purges , the Great Purge , during the mid to late 1930s. In 1934, Chancellor Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of Ernst Röhm , other leaders of the Sturmabteilung militia, and political opponents. After France's liberation by the Allies in 1944, the Provisional Government of the French Republic and particularly the French Resistance carried out purges of former collaborationists ,

8140-587: The name of denazification. By 1948, the Cold War was clearly in progress and the US began to worry more about a threat from the Eastern Bloc rather than the latent Nazism within occupied Germany. The delicate task of distinguishing those truly complicit in or responsible for Nazi activities from mere "followers" made the work of the courts yet more difficult. US President Harry S. Truman alluded to this problem: "though all Germans might not be guilty for

8250-442: The national interest of China, and it voted unanimously to purge the Communists from the KMT. On 5 April, Wang Jingwei arrived in Shanghai from overseas and met with the CCP leader Chen Duxiu. After their meeting they issued a joint declaration re-affirming the principle of cooperation between the KMT and the CCP, despite urgent pleas from Chiang and other KMT elders to eliminate Communist influence. When Wang left Shanghai for Wuhan

8360-501: The necessity of a slow trial in open court, which was required for those belonging to the most serious categories, more than 90% of cases were judged not to belong to the serious categories and therefore were dealt with more quickly. More "efficiencies" followed. The tribunals accepted statements from other people regarding the accused's involvement in Nazism. These statements earned the nickname of Persilscheine , after advertisements for

8470-634: The next day, Chiang asked Green Gang leader Du Yuesheng and other gang leaders in Shanghai to form a rival union to oppose the Shanghai labor union controlled by the Communists, and made final preparations for purging CCP members. On 9 April, Chiang declared martial law in Shanghai and the Central Control Commission issued the "Party Protection and National Salvation" proclamation ( simplified Chinese : 保党救国 ; traditional Chinese : 保黨救國 ; pinyin : Bǎo dǎng jiùguó ; Wade–Giles : Pao tang chiu -kuo ), denouncing

8580-406: The other side from taking them. The US took 785 scientists and engineers from Germany to the United States, some of whom formed the backbone of the US space program (see Operation Paperclip ). In the case of the top-ranking Nazis, such as Göring , Hess , Ribbentrop , Streicher , and Speer , the initial proposal by the British was simply to arrest them and shoot them, but that course of action

8690-456: The other zones. Because teachers had been strongly Nazified, the French began by removing three-quarters of all teachers from their jobs. However, finding that the schools could not be run without them, they were soon rehired, although subject to easy dismissal. A similar process governed technical experts. The French were the first to turn over the vetting process to Germans, while maintaining French power to reverse any German decision. Overall,

8800-660: The periodic massive purges of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia on grounds of apathy or dereliction, or the purge of Jews and political dissenters from the German Civil Service in 1933–1934. Beginning in 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong and his associates purged much of the Chinese Communist Party 's leadership , including the head of state , President Liu Shaoqi and the then- Secretary-General , Deng Xiaoping , as part of what

8910-413: The perpetuation of German militarism or Nazism will be closed permanently and taken into custody." The directives were very broadly interpreted, leading to the destruction of thousands of paintings and thousands more were shipped to deposits in the US. Those confiscated paintings still surviving in US custody include for example a painting "depicting a couple of middle aged women talking in a sunlit street in

9020-519: The populace. During the White Terror, the Kuomintang killed more than one million people, primarily peasants. More than 10,000 communists were executed in Changsha within 20 days. The Soviet Union officially terminated its cooperation with the KMT while Wang, fearing retribution as a Communist sympathizer, fled to Europe. The Wuhan Nationalist government soon disintegrated, leaving Chiang as

9130-500: The potential numbers of denazification investigations by requiring that no one need fill in the Fragebogen unless they were applying for an official or responsible position. This difference between American and British policy was decried by the Americans and caused some Nazis to seek shelter in the British zone. In January 1946, the British handed over their denazification panels to the Germans. The French were less vigorous, for

9240-572: The pretext of anti-communism . Conditions in the internment camps were terrible, and between 42,000 and 80,000 prisoners died. When the camps were closed in 1950, prisoners were handed over to the East German government. Because many of the functionaries of the Soviet occupation zone were themselves formerly prosecuted by the Nazi regime, mere former membership in the NSDAP was initially judged as

9350-530: The pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese Yanan factions of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) attempted to depose Kim. Most of those involved in the plot were executed while some others fled to the USSR and China. While some purges were carried out under Kim Jong Il , they were not as common as they were under his father/son. Kim Jong Un purged several high-ranking officials and generals installed by his father Kim Jong Il in

9460-476: The public sector due to low-level affiliation. Members of the Kim family have each periodically purged their political rivals or perceived threats since consolidating their control over North Korea , beginning in the 1950s. The most senior Kim purged those who opposed his son's succession to the supreme leadership of North Korea. Kim Il Sung 's most prominent purge occurred during the " August Incident " in 1956, when

9570-553: The punishments for Nazi involvement was to be barred from public office and/or restricted to manual labor or "simple work". At the end of 1945, 3.5   million former Nazis awaited classification, many of them barred from work in the meantime. By the end of the winter of 1945–1946, 42% of public officials had been dismissed. Malnutrition was widespread, and the economy needed leaders and workers to help clear away debris, rebuild infrastructure, and get foreign exchange to buy food and other essential resources. Another concern leading to

9680-516: The rest being German. This process happened at the same time as the expropriation of large landowners and Junkers , who were also often former Nazi supporters. Because part of the intended goal of denazification in the Soviet zone was also the removal of anti-socialist sentiment, the committees in charge of the process were politically skewed. A typical panel would have one member from the Christian Democratic Union , one from

9790-711: The rest of 1927, the CCP would fight to regain power, beginning the Autumn Harvest Uprising . With the failure and the crushing of the Guangzhou Uprising at Guangzhou however, the power of the Communists was largely diminished, unable to launch another major urban offensive. In KMT historiography, the event is occasionally referred to as the April 12 Purge ( simplified Chinese : 四一二清党 ; traditional Chinese : 四一二清黨 ; pinyin : Sìyī'èr Qīng Dǎng ; Wade–Giles : Ssu -i -erh Ch'ing Tang ), while Communist historiography refers to

9900-480: The setting up of the German-run tribunals, including the idea that the aim of denazification was now rehabilitation rather than merely punishment, and that someone whose guilt might meet the formal criteria could also have their specific actions taken into consideration for mitigation. Efficiency thus improved, while rigor declined. Many people had to fill in a new background form, called a Meldebogen (replacing

10010-402: The small Chinese Communist Party . Sun agreed to let the Communists join the KMT as individuals but ruled out an alliance with them or their participation as an organized bloc. In addition, he demanded that the Communists, upon joining the KMT, adhere to KMT ideology and observe party discipline. Following their admission to the KMT, Communist activities, often covert, soon attracted opposition to

10120-476: The so-called " vichystes ". The process became known in legal terms as épuration légale ("legal purging"). Similar processes in other countries and on other occasions included denazification in Allied-occupied Germany and decommunization in post-communist states . The Red Purge was an anticommunist movement in occupied Japan from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. Carried out by

10230-525: The sole legitimate leader of the Kuomintang. In the years after April 1927, 300,000 people were killed in Hunan in three years of warfare against the Communists while many Hakkas and She people 's whole families killed in the mountains, including infants, while young women were sold to prostitution. About 80,000 people were killed in Hunan's Liling and about 300,000 Hunanese civilians were killed in Hunan's Chaling County, Leiyang, Liuyang and Pingjiang. For

10340-449: The surrender of Germany was thus an enormous undertaking, fraught with many difficulties. The first difficulty was the enormous number of Germans who might have to be first investigated, then penalized if found to have supported the Nazi state to an unacceptable degree. In the early months of denazification there was a great desire to be utterly thorough, to investigate every suspect and hold every supporter of Nazism accountable; however, it

10450-564: The ten-year Chinese Civil War began with armed Communist insurrections in Changsha, Nanchang, and Guangzhou. During the Nanchang Uprising in August, Communist troops under Zhu De were defeated but escaped from Kuomintang forces by withdrawing to the mountains of Jiangxi. In September Mao led a small peasant army in the Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan. It was brutally crushed and the survivors retreated to Jiangxi as well, forming

10560-535: The war with the Soviet occupation forces could protect Nazi members from prosecution, enabling them to continue working. Having special connections with the occupiers in order to have someone vouch for them could also shield a person from the denazification laws. In particular, the districts of Gera , Erfurt , and Suhl had significant amounts of former Nazi Party members in their government, whilst 13.6% of senior SED officials in Thuringia were former members of

10670-578: The war, it would be too difficult to try to single out for better treatment those who had nothing to do with the Nazi regime and its crimes." Denazification was from then on supervised by special German ministers, like the Social Democrat Gottlob Kamm in Baden-Württemberg, with the support of the US occupation forces. Contemporary American critics of denazification denounced it as a "counterproductive witch hunt " and

10780-539: The warlord forces of the Zhili clique . The victorious union workers occupied and governed urban Shanghai except for the international settlements prior to the arrival of the NRA's Eastern Route Army, led by Generals Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren . After the Nanking Incident in which foreign concessions in Nanjing were attacked and looted, both the right wing of the Kuomintang and Western powers became alarmed by

10890-446: The widely disliked Fragebogen ), and were given over to justice under a Spruchkammer , which assigned them to one of five categories: Again because the caseload was impossibly large, the German tribunals began to look for ways to speed up the process. Unless their crimes were serious, members of the Nazi Party born after 1919 were exempted on the grounds that they had been brainwashed . Disabled veterans were also exempted. To avoid

11000-480: The workers' militias; that resulted in more than 300 people being killed and wounded. The union workers organized a mass meeting denouncing Chiang Kai-shek on 13 April, and thousands of workers and students went to the headquarters of the 2nd Division of the 26th Army to protest. Soldiers opened fire, killing 100 and wounding many more. Chiang dissolved the provisional government of Shanghai, labor unions and all other organizations under Communist control, and reorganized

11110-531: Was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War . It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Party or SS members from positions of power and influence, by disbanding or rendering impotent the organizations associated with Nazism, and by trying prominent Nazis for war crimes in

11220-492: Was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. Additionally, the program was hugely unpopular in West Germany , where many Nazis maintained positions of power. Denazification was opposed by the new West German government of Konrad Adenauer , who declared that ending the process was necessary for West German rearmament . On the other hand, denazification in East Germany

11330-420: Was considered a critical element of the transformation into a socialist society , and the country was stricter in opposing Nazism than its counterpart. However, not all former Nazis faced judgment. Doing special tasks for the occupation governments could protect Nazi members from prosecution, enabling them to continue working and in some cases reach prominence, as did special connections with the occupiers. One of

11440-439: Was decided that the numbers simply made this goal impractical. The Morgenthau Plan had recommended that the Allies create a post-war Germany with all its industrial capacity destroyed, reduced to a level of subsistence farming; however, that plan was soon abandoned as unrealistic and, because of its excessive punitive measures, liable to give rise to German anger and aggression. As time went on, another consideration that moderated

11550-486: Was democratization but part of the agenda was also the prohibition of any criticism of the Allied occupation forces. In addition, on May 13, 1946, the Allied Control Council issued a directive for the confiscation of all media that could contribute to Nazism or militarism . As a consequence a list was drawn up of over 30,000 book titles, ranging from school textbooks to poetry, which were then banned. All

11660-856: Was officially blamed on Nazi agents provocateurs from West Berlin , who the Neues Deutschland alleged were then working in collaboration with the Western government with the ultimate aim of restoring Nazi rule throughout Germany. The Berlin Wall was officially called the Anti-Fascist Security Wall (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall ) by the East German government. As part of the propagandistic campaign against West Germany, Theodor Oberländer and Hans Globke , both former Nazi leaders involved in genocide, were among

11770-530: Was replaced by putting them on trial for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials in order to publicize their crimes while demonstrating, especially to the German people, that the trials and the sentences were just. However, the legal foundations of the trials were questioned, and many Germans were not convinced that the trials were anything more than " victors' justice ". Many refugees from Nazism were Germans and Austrians, and some had fought for Britain in

11880-665: Was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on charges of drug trafficking . Purges became less common in Cuba during the 1990s and 2000s. In the period 1938–1975, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives , carried out a campaign of purging alleged "communist sympathizers" from positions in public life. While non-violent, HUAC's campaign destroyed

11990-762: Was to extend his control over all of China, particularly Peking. After Sun's death from cancer in March 1925, KMT leaders continued to push the plan, and after they had purged Guangzhou's Communists and Soviet advisors during the " Canton Coup " on 20 May 1926, they finally launched the Expedition that June. Initial successes in the first months of the Expedition soon saw the KMT National Revolutionary Army (NRA) in control of Guangdong and large areas in Hunan , Hubei , Jiangxi and Fujian . With

12100-482: Was too much work to be done to complete the process of denazification by 1947, the year American troops were expected to be completely withdrawn from Europe. Pressure also came from the need to find Germans to run their own country. In January 1946 a directive came from the Control Council entitled "Removal from Office and from Positions of Responsibility of Nazis and Persons Hostile to Allied Purposes". One of

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