Uplifting News

The modern German government is very good at going against Nazis, but that is not because of Denazification, which turned into just filing paperwork.

Very soon after the program started, due to the emergence of the Cold War, the western powers and the United States in particular began to lose interest in the program, somewhat mirroring the Reverse Course in American-occupied Japan. Denazification was carried out in an increasingly lenient and lukewarm way until being officially abolished in 1951. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive. 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,[4] who declared that ending the process was necessary for West German rearmament.[5]

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 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.[3]: 283 

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 the laundry and whitening detergent Persil.[13] 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.[3]: 290  While the military government was aware of the fines' nominal cost, requiring a hearing for each case prevented mass acquittals of many individuals.[9] In Bavaria, the Denazification Minister, Anton Pfeiffer, bridled under the "victor's justice", and presided over a system that reinstated 75% of officials the Americans had dismissed and reclassified 60% of senior Nazis.[3]: 284  The denazification process lost a great deal of credibility, and there was often local hostility against Germans who helped administer the tribunals. Threats and even violence against tribunal members had become fairly commonplace.[3]: 285-288 

It became the anti-Nazism force it is today due to the 60s Vergangenheitsbewältigung movement and popular programming bringing the issues to the forefront, such as the TV series that popularized the term "Holocaust".

We can't rely on a similar stroke of luck to have the Israeli culture just confront itself, too.