Existing comment:
Purging Germany of Propaganda
Long before the war ended in May 1945, the Allies vowed to destroy German militarism and Nazism. At their postwar Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), the leaders of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France -- each occupying a portion of a Germany in ruins -- laid down the fundamental principles for Germany's "denazification": disarmament and reeducation.
The Nazi Party and all of its affiliates were immediately dissolved and banned forever in order to "prevent all Nazi and militaristic activity or propaganda." Over the next several years, the Allied Control Council, the government of occupation, issued directives aimed at purging Germany of Nazism. Libraries, bookshops, publishing houses, schools, and universities were ordered to turn over for destruction all materials containing Nazi propaganda. The Allied Control Council further directed that all posters, statues, monuments, street signs, and emblems that glorified the Nazi Party be completely destroyed, and it outlawed creating any such objects in the future. |