How successful was denazification in West Germany 1945-60?

Konrad Adenauer, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), took various actions in support of denazification. Firstly, in August 1952, the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party was banned. This was followed by an important agreement signed on 10th September 1952, agreeing to pay the new state of Israel 3 billion German marks in compensation for the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Adenauer maintained that such compensation was only the first step in dealing with unspeakable crimes committed in the name of the German people. Moreover, Adenauer focused on rehabilitation of Nazi party members in government administration and FRG society. In this way, members of his government were in no way Nazi sympathisers, and thousands of the most high-ranking Nazi war criminals faced imprisonment for their actions.Nevertheless, Adenauer did introduce some controversial policies, believing that the survival of the FRG was of more importance. In May 1951, Adenauer's government passed the first amnesty law, which allowed 150,000 German officials who had been removed from their positions due to the allied denazification programme to return to government administration. Even more controversially, in 1954, his government passed the second amnesty law that annulled the British process of denazification. This law led to some 400,000 Germans being granted amnesty after previously being declared Nazi criminals, thereby having important implications in weakening the legal focus on the investigation and prosecution of Nazi criminals in the FRG. There was also political gain for Adenauer, as these policies allowed him to gain the support of more right wing Germans. This point is significant as Adenauer was reliant in the Bundestag on coalitions with right wing parties which controversially, justified right wing politics in the 1920s and 1930s as a reaction against communism and the possible breakup of the German nation. In 1952, for example, Adenauer told the Bundestag that 66% of foreign office diplomatics in high positions were former Nazis. Perhaps most controversially, former members of the Reich main security office and SS department aimed at fighting all enemies of the Reich were able to take up these positions again in the police and security forces. So much so, the British High commissioner from 1951 to 1953, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, once wrote, ‘whenever I travelled, I ran into ghosts of Hitler's Reich, men who had occupied positions in administration, in industry, or the society of the day. They were either living in retirement or were taking jobs in banks, commerce or industry.’ As a result, Adenauer’s approach meant that the FRG was built on a morally questionable basis that undermined its supposed democratic values. In fact, by the mid 1950s, the focus on denazification had come to an end. It was only in the 1960s that a cultural revolution led by young West German citizens challenged the policies of forgetting and the high position of many former Nazis in government positions, and brought about a new democratic movement that openly faced, discussed and deliberated the legacy of Germany’s Nazi past.