Nazis at the Watercooler
War Criminals in Postwar German Government Agencies
by Terrence Petty
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Pub Date Nov 01 2024 | Archive Date Oct 31 2024
University of Nebraska Press | Potomac Books
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Description
Ex-Nazis—people who had been involved in mass murder, drafting antisemitic laws, and the persecution of Hitler’s opponents, as well as other depravities—resumed their careers without consequence in the newly created Federal Republic of Germany. Former Nazis who had established an early foothold in postwar government agencies helped each other get government work by writing letters of recommendation called Persilscheine. These “Persil Certificates,” named after a popular detergent, made an ex-Nazi’s recorded past just as clean as fresh laundry, and a whole generation of German government officials with Nazi pasts was never brought to account.
Ex-Nazis were given preference for government jobs even over victims of Nazi policies and anti-Hitler resisters. They swapped Nazi uniforms for suits, Hitler salutes for handshakes. And with help from the highest levels of West German government and even the CIA, they swept their crimes under the carpet and resurrected their careers. Nazis at the Watercooler illuminates the network of ex–Third Reich loyalists and the U.S. government’s complicity that enabled this mass impunity.
Advance Praise
"A sharp-eyed look at a troubling past that still reverberates in modern Germany."—Kirkus Reviews
“A vivid, engaging, and well-researched exposé of the pervasive presence of former Nazis in the postwar administration of West Germany, especially its police and intelligence branches. Petty shows that the implicit conspiracy that implicated much of German society in Nazi crimes had a very long tail.”—Peter Hayes, professor emeritus of history and Holocaust studies, Northwestern University
“Nazis at the Watercooler is a book long overdue to shed some light on how Third Reich killers and their accomplices blended into the emerging postwar society of (West) Germany. It’s a well-seasoned mix of personal histories and historical facts. . . . Petty’s flowing narrative style makes intricate facts easy to comprehend and guides the reader through a maze of bureaucratic and legal interactions between German and American operatives.”—Peter M. Gehrig, retired chief editor of the German Service of the Associated Press
“In the decades after 1945, many former Nazis worked for West German government ministries and agencies, including the diplomatic corps, the police, and the intelligence service. Drawing on recent investigations, Terrence Petty has written a highly readable account of how that regrettable situation came to be. This book helps readers understand the ethical compromises that German society deemed acceptable as it attempted to move into a post-Nazi future in an environment shaped by the politics of the Cold War.”—Alan E. Steinweis, Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont
“Former Associated Press foreign correspondent Terrence Petty developed a keen understanding of the Nazi era and its impact on contemporary Germany, becoming a kind of William Shirer of his generation during many years of tenacious and dogged reporting there. In this book, written with anger but also love, he has pieced together a disturbing chronicle of Germany’s postwar security apparatus, which was seeded with, and at times led by, Nazis guilty of the most appalling wartime actions.”—Arthur Allen, senior correspondent of KFF Health News
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781640125698 |
| PRICE | $34.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 320 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 862825
Terrence Petty's Nazis at the Watercooler: War Criminals in Postwar German Government Agencies is a damning and wide-ranging investigation into post world war II Germany's penchant for placing former Nazis in high positions in various German government agencies.
Other books have taken up the subject of the American blind eye to war crimes when it was to the benefit of the space race or the cold war against the Soviet Union, here it is centered specifically on the dawn of a new democratic age in Germany. Post war there was supposed to be a process of denazification, that was rapidly moved from US and Allied control, to German control. Already weak, it became farcical. Instead Germany embraced a forgetting of the bad times, leading to a generational "amnesia" or avoidance to search to hard into a candidates background.
Across the chapters Petty explores important and tainted figures within different governmental agencies, compromised figures forced or willingly serving as Soviet or double agents and the careers of anti Hitler dissidents who should have had more opportunity in the post war government. There are a lot of figures named and biographed, and at times this can feel like something of a recitation. The 15 chapters are semi-chronologically, divided into two sections. The first, American Culpability, lays out the process by which outside the Nuremberg trials most Nazis were let off the hook for their crimes. Part 2, "Second Guilt" narrates the upending of the Cold War fueled amnesia and the long delayed reckoning with those guilty of war crimes and the attempts to seek justice.
Petty brings it to the present discussing more recent operations against extremist elements in the German police and military and the ongoing alarming inward focus of nationalist parties. It is a hard read, though very timely.
Recommended for readers and researchers of Post wwII Europe, history, German History or the Cold War.
Mary C, Reviewer
Thank you to NetGalley for this e-copy of Nazis at the Watercooler by Terrence Petty in exchange for a honest review this is is a well-researched and well -written non- fiction account of how numerous ex-Nazis were able to infiltrate various departments of the East and mostly West German government and hold jobs without being held to account for the numerous wartime atrocities they had committed .It is shocking there was so much collusion as Germany tried to bury its past in hopes that people would forget.about all the havoc the Nazis had wreaked When many of these officials were finally charged in the 1960s they were given light sentences and when these people were again investigated in the early 2000s most of these officials had passed away or were physically or mentally unable to stand trial.This book casts a bad light on the German government and how they were unable to accept responsibility for their wartime actions.
