My maternal grandfather was I believe a Nazi in Germany during WW2(I am unclear on the division between nazi and German military at the time) I had a picture of him in full uniform with family but cannot locate it, I meant to post it curious about rank and all I can remember if he had a light color trench coat. (I would not be disturbed either way, I don’t believe in genetic evil or sin)
My mom was born in 1943 and after the war he was legally or assumed dead, there was no contact to my maternal grandmother. She eventually met and married a US soldier post WW2 and moved to the USA.
My mom at some point long after her mom had died through relatives in Germany found out her bio dad was alive and had survived the war, when she was there at one point she tracked him down but found he had died an elderly man. He had an entire new family with daughters not much younger than my mom, they were hostile assuming she was wanting inheritance but she did not and never pursued anything.
Anyway I give that info to ask how common was this? Nazi soldiers remaining in Germany post WW2 but assuming new identities and gaining new wives/families? My mom and her relatives did not make it seem like it was some dramatic thing, just mundane almost.
Many known Nazi sympathisers were allowed to go back to civilian life. Known war criminals were supposed to be tried but not all Nazis were criminals. By 1950 there were more urgent things to worry about than a few Germans. It was also conceded that in order for Germany to continue functioning as a country, many senior figures whose past might not bear close scrutiny, would have to be allowed to take up positions of authority in Germany.
Germany was in chaos at the end of the war due to the massive influx of ethnic Germans fleeing ahead of the Soviets from eastern Europe before the surrender or exiled to Germany by the Soviets after the surrender. There was lots of opportunity to get lost and assume a new identity either stolen or fabricated. It seems like only the most infamous Nazis really had to flee to S. America.
Don’t know the significance of the light colored trench coat but not everyone in the German military was a Nazi. As already mentioned, if they didn’t commit a war crime they could go back to their lives and didn’t need new identities. I assume a lot of them claimed they were not Nazis, just regular army after the war.
This would indeed have been the most likely scenario because the records in places like East Prussia and Silesia were either destroyed or not accessible any more and many Germans had no papers on them when they were driven out or fled. I really doubt, though, that there were really that many cases.
Can you imagine the uproar that would have occurred if PBS Finding Your Roots had not only discovered that Ben Affleck’s ancestor had owned slaves but that his bio great grand father had also been a Nazi!!
This would be my guess - you could be anyone you wanted, and there would be no checking. I assume Germans, like English, came in a variety of flavours and the key was to know a little bit about your “new” background and be able to convincingly fake a regional accent long enough to acquire papers stating your new provenance.
However, was this necessary? AFAIK there was nobody searching for bottom rung soldiers. The concept of war crimes and trials was new; presumably they expected the Stalin attitude, simply round up and kill the upper echelons of the regime. So unless you were pretty high rank or had doe something truly heinous, no need to hide.
More likely the guy was not motivated to come home and decided a fresh start suited him better. Maybe he met someone new and decided the grass was greener - especially if the kids are not much older that his first family.
Well, I wouldn’t say it was quite that easy. There still were some paper trails and facts could be checked. Also keep in mind that after the war Germany, you couldn’t just show up in some place and get a job or be issued ration stamps without being properly registered. The occupying powers also didn’t like shady figures with a dubious past (I guess).
That’s true. The Soviets, of course, snatched people off the street left and right for no apparent reason and sent them to Siberia, never to be heard of again.
That’s the OP’s scenario and I think that this could basically have happened, although, again, not a common story. The case of the man I mentioned in my earlier post is quite interesting. Here, his wife conspired and she had him declared legally dead, obviously by giving a false affidavit to the court.
I want to ask the OP (& any other interested posters) what the term “A Nazi” means to them?
Is that any German who lived under the Nazi regime? Kids too or just adults? Any German who took a paycheck from the government while it was Nazi-controlled? Only military members & police-agency employees, or did postmen & city government clerks count? What about folks who got a pension check?
Any German who was ever a member of the Nazi political party (NSDAP)? Any German who voted for a NSDAP candidate in the election that brought Hitler to power? Any German who at one point in his/her life thought that, on balance, Hitler was a good thing for Germany vs. the alternative of the day? Or is it just True Believers who bought the whole Nazi ideology hook, line, & sinker?
Or is it Germans who held a government post above a certain level (what level?) or who personally ordered or performed some evil deeds (which? how many?) in the furtherance of the Nazi government’s goals?
I’m not trying to troll here, nor to minimize the enormity of the Nazi era via salami-slicing; I’m actually curious what the OP thinks was/is/ought to be the criteria for being “A Nazi.”
A nazi in my view is someone committed to nazi ideology. This was not more than a small minority of Germans, or even apparatchiks; most people were along for the ride. As they are in any regime, let alone a quasi-totalitarian regime. [ The nazis tried to be totalitarian, but they weren’t very good at it. Partly through structural faults, partly because they were the most inefficient buggers on earth. ] Their role-models, the soviet bolsheviks never permitted most citizens to join the Communist Party, and chucked people out almost at random, because only the Vanguard knows the True Path, and ordinary people get in the way.
However, defining Nazi Ideology is not as simple as with bolshevism, which has the gospels of Marxist Leninist Theory to explain all things needful ( although even those answers can be changed on demand ). The Nazi Party starts off with the simple rhetoric of socialist truths in the 25 Points, ditches them in power; hates Communism, allies with Communism; hates Capitalism, allies with Capitalism; is devoted to the fuhrerprinzip ( popular enough in most of Europe between the wars ), maintains a parliamentary structure; is nationalist, but crushes the Nationalists; is not nationalist, but racialist instead, but not all the leaders take that racialism seriously; likes it’s scapegoats; mass-murders randomly, mostly for money; likes big rallies; devoted to vulgar populism — ‘The People’: basically it’s a hotch-potch of wildly disparate beliefs, and the only definition of a nazi is one who admires the nazis.
Timing is not that important in joining the party, one who joined the rebel party in 1925 may be innocent because he didn’t know where it would lead; one who joined the official party in 1942 may have joined solely for career, or to keep alive. Intent is the only key: did he join to protect himself or did he join to kill the enemies of the people ?
It was a dizzying time, and there are no simple blanket condemnations except for those proved to commit atrocities. However, there are two major points left:
1/ Anything on earth may be said about the Nazis, especially their leader. Nothing is too weird for people to believe, and no exaggeration is unbelievable.
The were very dull people actually.
2/ Their raison d’etre was loot. Just as Hitler consciously modelled himself on Cromwell and his party on Cromwell’s gang, so too in the final analysis they were also ultimately nothing but bandits.
Your questions were very real issues to the post-war occupiers. Here’s a good book on the subject: Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany by Frederick Taylor 2013
The occupiers divided the Germans into 3 categories: “real” Nazis who joined out of belief in the party; folks who were “along for the ride” who joined under pressure but otherwise did not participate in party activities or express belief in Nazi values; and non-Nazis. The middle category was the most difficult since the party out and out forced people in important positions (to varying degrees) to join the party. If you were mayor or postmaster of a city or town, you had to join or get replaced by someone who would. Incidentally, this was one of the things regular Germans hated about the Nazis. The Party was taking over the country by creating a good 'ol Boy network of party members who were often corrupt.
Well I HAD a photo(that I also scanned and cleaned up and reprinted for my mom) that had my bio gdad and bio gmom in it.
I barely remember my grandmother, I do remember my step-grandfather so that checks out(he was a US army vet and had tats and medals and such). My most memorable experience of him was telling me at age 6 real men don’t hug.
To add to the OP my bio gdad may have contacted relatives near the end of his life and that is how my mom found out, I know German relatives in Germany told her hey your dad is alive under another name. Then when she was there she tracked down where he was, met his daughters, and saw his grave. To be clear yes it was not his birth name, and his daughters did not deny it just assumed it was a money hunt.
This was just background stuff when I was a kid, my wife is more fascinated by the story than I am.
EDIT:I hesitate to post the original name of my bio gdad because someone living still carries it although he is old.
For that time-frame, a Nazi-looking uniform doesn’t mean he was a Party member or a war criminal who went into hiding. Or for that matter even a soldier. I knew someone else who thought they had found a “Stormtrooper” in their family tree but as soon as I saw the picture, I recognized the insignia on that trenchcoat as being for a Railways Worker. OK - possible very bad guy there if he was involved in the transportation of people to the Death Camps. But also possible he was just some normal working guy. In the Third Reich almost everyone had at least a chance at a uniform of some kind. It was part of Hitler’s plan to build and reinforce a sense of “German identity and nationalism” among the people. And for the most part it really seemed to work.
How common it was for someone in Germany to use the end of the war to start a new life? Not very common, I would imagine, but not even close to unique. The country was split East and West, parts were heavily devastated, and the number of missing soldiers and civilians was easily in the tens of thousands and maybe more. Some soldiers returned from POW camps to find their families had made new lives for themselves and decided to go hidden rather than complicated the lives of those they loved. Remember, some were not released by the Soviets (and some captured by the US and other Allies were turned over to the Soviets) until like 1950. And for any country in any war you are going to have cases of what we would now call PTSD and related problems.
I can understand someone, at the end of any war, saying to themselves “Here’s my chance at a fresh start” and making it happen. You can find cases of soldiers returning and/or disappearing from almost any country and almost any war.
