CIC Purges Public Offices in Occupied Germany (24 JUL 1945)
The first step in the denazification process required defining exactly who was a Nazi. Although the party had kept careful records of its members, this did not account for those who had been coerced to join. The Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) G-5 (civil affairs) ultimately determined that anyone in public office who had joined the party prior to mandatory enrollment on May 1, 1937, would be placed on automatic removal and arrest lists as known or suspected security threats.
The CIC’s primary responsibility was securing occupation forces against external and internal threats and was therefore heavily involved in the automatic arrest process. To aid this process, questionnaires distributed at district levels demanded information on party activities from German officials. Their answers were forwarded to local CIC offices and compared to the CIC’s own files and those stored in the Berlin Document Center. Persons of interest were classified on a scale of I–V depending on their level of involvement with the Nazi Party, with Category I being the most serious offenders. During the early months of the occupation, the CIC rounded up numerous individuals on the automatic arrest list.
While these initial arrests did much to support denazification and removed a large percentage of public officials from office, a sizeable number with questionable affiliation with the party remained. The U.S. Military Government was determined to perform a more careful reexamination of personnel still in positions of authority to determine if they had been missed during the initial sweeps. On July 24, 1945, Seventh Army launched Operation LIFEBUOY to do just that. The operation was named for a brand of soap espoused to be “particularly effective at combating body odor,” according to historian Earl Ziemke. "The History of the Counter Intelligence Corps" outlined the operation’s objectives as being to remove Nazis from positions of authority and, as part of the general denazification efforts, work to reverse the effects of wartime era activities, propaganda, and social restrictions meant to instill fear of retribution or force compliance within the civilian populace.
As public offices were being purged—or in some cases, entirely dissolved—between July and October, the CIC also set its sights on other business and industry professionals who fell under the category of “persons of importance in quasi-public and private enterprises” outlined in the Army’s denazification policy. The 36th CIC Detachment was particularly interested in teachers who had been widely compelled to join the National Socialist Teachers Union as early as 1933. The dismissal of all teachers who had joined the union would “virtually exhaust the faculty” of many schools in Germany. While the Army’s strict denazification policies left little room for leniency, the CIC felt a “calculated risk seemed advisable.” Rather than dismiss them outright, the CIC launched individual investigations into each teacher and favored retention of older educators who “at least had had the opportunity to instruct and think ideas permitted prior to the Nazi regime,” rather than replace them with younger individuals “who had never known democracy in their lifetimes.”
As a result of the operation, U.S. Forces European Theater (USFET) reported in November 1945 that 100,000 public officials and 20,000 private professionals had been dismissed. Although the U.S. Military Government feared such widespread removals would be socially and economically damaging, the CIC reported that approximately 85 percent of public offices were refilled by approved personnel within a few months. The CIC History noted that “although operational efficiency of local governments was hampered by the LIFEBUOY cleansing, a majority of CIC teams felt that in the long run, new administrations would provide greater progress towards the achievement of Allied objectives.”
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Article by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
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