The Führer went - the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in northern Germany

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Movie
Original title The Führer went - the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in northern Germany
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2001
length 43 minutes
Age rating FSK unchecked
Rod
Director Niels Grevsen ,
Wolfgang Mönninghoff
camera Volker Mach ,
Lars Hinrichs
cut Alice Harthus
occupation

Der Führer went - the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in northern Germany is a television documentary by NDR from 2001.

As the attached subtitle makes clear, the film deals with the post-war careers of former National Socialists in Schleswig-Holstein .

content

After Hitler's suicide , the last Reich government under Karl Dönitz withdrew to Flensburg - Mürwik in May 1945 . It was followed by the elites of the NSDAP , Heinrich Himmler , the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss , his colleagues from Majdanek (camp commandant Arthur Liebehenschel ), Stutthof (camp commandant Max Pauly ) and Ravensbrück (camp commandant Fritz Suhren , for which there are assumptions that he actually reached Flensburg), Furthermore, high SS and police leaders as well as entire Gestapo offices. When they arrived in Flensburg, they organized themselves with false papers and then went underground with a “faultless past” (see Rattenlinie Nord ).

An inoperative administration, 1.5 million beaten soldiers, and more than a million refugees made people go into hiding. The Nazi perpetrators nevertheless feared the victor's revenge. But many Nazi perpetrators who were heavily burdened survived the bureaucratic denazification process without any major problems. The old Nazi comrades managed to cover one another with false testimony, so-called Persil notes. 406,000 people in Schleswig-Holstein had to go through the denazification process. Over 98 percent of them were ultimately classified as followers. 2,200 people were punished with limited sanctions, in the form of small monetary requirements or professional consequences. The British occupiers of Schleswig-Holstein had to proceed pragmatically. There was a housing shortage, hunger, black market crime. In the post-war period, many NSDAP members and Nazi perpetrators in Schleswig-Holstein succeeded in re-entering professional life. Administrative skills were required in town halls and authorities. Old clans and networks were able to expand again.

As supposedly innocent citizens, they again took on tasks in public administration, politics, the judiciary and within the medical profession. The euthanasia perpetrator Werner Heyde practiced under a false name as a doctor and expert in Flensburg until his public exposure . Similar cases were those of the concentration camp doctor Herta Oberheuser , who despite her conviction only lost her license to practice after massive international protests , and that of the euthanasia expert Werner Catel , who was appointed head of the Kiel University Children's Clinic in the post-war period.

The old staff also remained in the Schleswig-Holstein judiciary. A former special prosecutor was given the post of chief public prosecutor in the post-war period. So the Nazi perpetrators became judges over the victims again. Gauleiter Hinrich Lohse, who had been classified as a fellow traveler by the Kiel denazification committee, even tried to assert pension claims for himself in court. In 1962 he threatened the public prosecutor's office with the fact that it would be possible for him to unpack the Schleswig-Holstein public prosecutor's office with regard to the NS history.

The state election in Schleswig-Holstein in 1950 was won by an alliance of the BHE and CDU , which had spoken out against denazification in the election campaign. The denazification process, which is extremely broad in terms of the number of people, was felt by many in the population to be unjust. In the Nazi era to Wehrwirtschaftsführer appointed Walter Bartram became prime minister. In 1951, the law to end denazification was passed. The government Bartram was except one person (CDU Interior Minister Paul Pagel ) of former NSDAP members. A school friend of Bartrams, the ex-Nazi mayor Ernst Kracht , whose local administration was involved in the crimes of the Nazi system, became head of the state chancellery. Kracht served under three CDU Prime Ministers. Another incriminated member of the government was the Minister of Social Affairs Hans-Adolf Asbach . At the beginning of the 1960s, during the time of Prime Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel , there were still questionable former NSDAP members in the public service.

At the end of the film, the voiceover emphasizes that the examples given in the film are only the tip of the iceberg. The elites of the Nazi era were among the elites in the Federal Republic of Germany . Even if many still evolved into democrats, some remained unteachable.

background

The film by the two documentary filmmakers Niels Grevsen and Wolfgang Mönninghoff was made with the support of the former SPD politician and historian Uwe Danker , who is one of the two board members of the Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History (IZRG). The IZRG was founded in 1992 under the SPD government by Björn Engholm and was initially intended to primarily research the Nazi period in Schleswig-Holstein. The documentary, made at the beginning of the century , is one of the few films that deals extensively with this very subject. By Interview - Einspieler come next Uwe Danker to speak: the Spiegelredakteuer Rudolf Asmus (as a witness and chronicler of the immediate postwar period), the medical professor Annette Grewe, the Itzehoer judge and author Klaus Detlev Godau-Schuettke, former SSW -Landtagsabgeordnete Karl Otto Meyer as well as the judge Fritz Vilmar.

The television documentary was apparently broadcast for the first time in 2001 in the third program of the NDR and was then repeated several times on television, including on the 3sat channel . In a program announcement from 2001, Thomas Wübker from the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung recommended the documentation and rated it as worth seeing. The film is now in the holdings of various libraries.

Wolfgang Mönninghoff also published the book: Expropriation of Jews in 2001 . Miracle of the economy, legacy of the Germans , the last chapter of which is called: Der Führer went - the Nazis remain and again takes up the theme of the film. In the documentary series The Legacy of the Nazis , in the fourth part, with the title: We Didn't Know About This , parts of the film material were obviously reused. In the aforementioned documentation from 2016, the circumstances and events in Schleswig-Holstein are summarized much more briefly.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Der Spiegel : Hinrich Lohse , from: October 31, 1951; accessed on: June 15, 2018
  2. ↑ See Die Zeit : Das brown Schleswig-Holstein , p. 2; dated: January 26, 1990; accessed on: June 15, 2018
  3. ↑ See Kieler Nachrichten : Nazi Influence To Be Researched , from: November 20, 2013; accessed on: June 15, 2018
  4. ↑ IMDb Wolfgang Mönninghoff , Sic IMDb Nils Grevsen (first name is misspelled)
  5. ^ Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History. Directory , accessed on June 8, 2018
  6. ^ The Institute for Schleswig-Holstein Contemporary and Regional History. Founding and development , accessed on: June 8, 2018
  7. ↑ See Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung : How old Nazis made new careers in the north , from: November 13, 2014; Retrieved on: June 8, 2018 and: Der Spiegel : Schleswig-Holstein und seine Nazis , from: May 10, 1961; accessed on: June 8, 2018
  8. ↑ The first broadcast possibly took place on October 14, 2001. See Heise online - Telepolis : The traditional war trauma , from: November 17, 2001; The film was obviously broadcast on November 14, 2001 on NDR: Justizfreund. "The Führer left, the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in Northern Germany" N3, Wednesday, November 14th, 2001, 23.05-23.50 and on August 6, 2003 on the NDR: Underground Forum for Underground, History and Technology. NDR 06.08. 11 p.m. (2003) - The Führer left - the Nazis stayed or there , each accessed on: June 8, 2018
  9. ↑ Der Standard : More TV tips for Tuesday, May 14, 2003. 1:15 p.m. The Führer left - the Nazis stayed , accessed on: November 4, 2018
  10. ^ Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung : How old Nazis made new careers in the north , from: November 13, 2014; accessed on: June 8, 2018
  11. ^ Karl Cervik : Kindermord in der Ostmark: Child Euthanasia in National Socialism 1938-1945 , Münster 2004, p. 98
  12. ↑ WorldCat : Entries on: Der Führer went - the Nazis stayed: Post-war careers in Northern Germany as well as Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog : Query for: Der Führer went, the Nazis stayed. , accessed on: June 14, 2018
  13. ↑ Die Welt : A Dark Chapter in Economic History , from: August 31, 2001; accessed on: June 14, 2018
  14. ↑ Freiburg circular : Uwe Westphal. Ehrenfried & Cohn. A historical novel , 2015, No. 3, pp. 226–227; accessed on: June 14, 2016
  15. ↑ Peter Nowak : The Aryans stayed. Expropriation of the Jews and economic miracle (alternatively also there ), from: January 25, 2002; accessed on: June 14, 2018
  16. ↑ TV series. The legacy of the Nazis. We didn't know about this , accessed on: June 12, 2018
  17. ↑ This can be seen, among other things, due to a cutting error. In the documentation Der Fuehrer went - the Nazis stayed - post-war careers in northern Germany, reference is made to Werner Heyde's work in the marine sports school. This is followed by an explanation of the Germans' feelings at the time at 9.30 am. Images from the post-war Kiel are displayed. The fact that these pictures come from Kiel is not mentioned. The Kiel Opera House , for example, is clearly visible. However, based on the previous pictures from Flensburg, one could assume that there are also pictures from Flensburg. In the fourth part of the legacy of the Nazis, the images have been rearranged and given new accompanying text. In the minute 8.35 the pictures from Kiel are presented explicitly as pictures from Flensburg. Apparently because the images from the previous documentation were misunderstood and classified when they were re-cut.