In Western Germany the official apparatus was rebuilt relying extensively on mid- and sometimes high ranking Nazis. In the GDR former Nazis were kept out of higher positions, but the “denazification” was also insufficient as the problem was “solved” by decreeing that the GDR is antifascist, thereby looking deeper wasn’t necessary.
For instance the author of the Nuremberg Race laws became a close trustee of chancellor Adenauer:
The chancellor, for his part, entrusted himself and his chancellery to Hans Globke, a former official in Hitler’s interior ministry and one of the authors of the Nuremberg race laws. The man Adenauer once called “my dear Herr Globke” was the most powerful government official in Germany for a time, even though anyone who wanted to know could easily consult the abominable lawyer’s anti-Semitic concoctions
The interior intelligence was rebuilt using former SS and Gestapo:
Institutions that, unlike the Finance Ministry, were newly established in the spirit and on the foundation of the new constitution, also employed people formerly affiliated with the Nazis. As the new study shows, former SS members with Gestapo experience were employed at the BfV as wiretapping and postal surveillance experts – initially as free agents, “because, after all, they did have to respect the fact that these people were tainted,” then BfV President Hubert Schrübbers once noted. Schrübbers himself was later removed from office over allegations of his own Nazi past. But nothing against Hitler’s Gestapo. “These people were experts,” a former senior BfV official said in 1965.
The federal criminal investigators (BKA), think of it like a German FBI:
The situation was even worse at the BKA. At times, former members of the SS’s Totenkopf division held more than two-thirds of all senior positions. When the agency began looking into the past of its employees in 1960, about 100 officials, or a quarter of the entire workforce, were investigated.
This enjoyed backing by the US in particular, but the Western allies more broadly, who thought the Nazis as useful for fighting against Communism:
But the Americans did not insist that Gehlen provide them with access to the personnel files of his employees. When a critical member of the US Congress questioned then President Harry S. Truman about cooperation with Gehlen, Truman grumbled: “This guy Gehlen, I don’t care if he screws flies. If he can help us, we’ll use him.”
I recommend you to read the entire article. It goes on further about the judiciary and other aspects with strong continuity.
Another person not mentioned is Hanns Martin Schleyer. He is celebrated as a martyr nowadays and there is streets and stadiums named after him. He was assasinated by the RAF terrorists in 1977, when he was the head of the German employer association and the German industrial Federation.
As SS-Untersturmführer he was tasked with “ariazation” of the Czech economy. When Schleyer is celebrated as victim of communism in Germany of course this part is omitted to this day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Martin_Schleyer
It was more the opposite way around.
In Western Germany the official apparatus was rebuilt relying extensively on mid- and sometimes high ranking Nazis. In the GDR former Nazis were kept out of higher positions, but the “denazification” was also insufficient as the problem was “solved” by decreeing that the GDR is antifascist, thereby looking deeper wasn’t necessary.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-the-role-ex-nazis-played-in-early-west-germany-a-810207.html
For instance the author of the Nuremberg Race laws became a close trustee of chancellor Adenauer:
The interior intelligence was rebuilt using former SS and Gestapo:
The federal criminal investigators (BKA), think of it like a German FBI:
This enjoyed backing by the US in particular, but the Western allies more broadly, who thought the Nazis as useful for fighting against Communism:
I recommend you to read the entire article. It goes on further about the judiciary and other aspects with strong continuity.
Another person not mentioned is Hanns Martin Schleyer. He is celebrated as a martyr nowadays and there is streets and stadiums named after him. He was assasinated by the RAF terrorists in 1977, when he was the head of the German employer association and the German industrial Federation.
As SS-Untersturmführer he was tasked with “ariazation” of the Czech economy. When Schleyer is celebrated as victim of communism in Germany of course this part is omitted to this day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Martin_Schleyer