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Denazification in Soviet-Occupied Germany: Brandenburg, 1945-1948. By Timothy R. Vogt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-674-00340-3. Tables. Appendix. Notes. Sources. Index. Pp. 314. $49.95.
Historians from the German Democratic Republic claimed that East Germany broke with the Nazi past more completely than did West Germany. East Germans contended that denazification in the Soviet occupation zone put Western efforts to shame, cleansing Nazi party members from positions in government, education, the judiciary, and industry. Western academics accepted this premise, but interpreted these purges as part of a stalinization process enabling the East German Socialist Unity Party (SED) to consolidate its grip on power. Vogt asserts that both views are incorrect. Instead, denazification in the Soviet zone suffered from many of the same bureaucratic nightmares that plagued Western efforts. Far from being a monolithic, tightly controlled process manipulated by the SED in order to gain public support, denazification in the Soviet zone manifested variation, contradictions, and misunderstandings between...