Tina Rosenberg

In the U.S. Zone ofOccupation, which had 15 million inhabitants, 4 million weresummoned.

In the end, only 2.5 percent of Ger-mans were removed from their jobs.

The term"denazification," which had once meant purging German societyof Nazi influence, now meant the opposite: to be "denazified" wasto be whitewashed.

Thephilosopher Karl Jaspers said that perhaps a half-million Germanshad not collaborated in some way with national socialism, andthese tended to be residents of big cities.

Alfried Krupp, sentenced totwelve years' imprisonment for the Krupp empire's use of slavelabor at Auschwitz, was released after three years, his holdingslargely untouched. On the morning of his release he held a cham-pagne breakfast. In 1957 he would appear on the cover of Time,named as the "wealthiest man in Europe—and perhaps theworld."

Reparations paid to individ-ual Nazi victims, however, did not match the generosity of the pen-sions paid to Nazi officials and their families.

Families of anti-Nazi resistancefighters received nothing, as did most non-Jewish camp survivorssuch as Gypsies, who lacked the political clout of Jews.

In total Germany has brought 85,882 cases to trial for Nazicrimes since the war but obtained fewer than 7,000 convictions.Only 157 defendants received life sentences, and 12 were executed

any got just a few years for horrible massacres, often averaging aday or two in jail for each murder.

In May 1951 West Germanyinstituted the "131 Law," a de facto amnesty