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Exorcising Hitler

The Occupation and Denazification of Germany
by Frederick Taylor
Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany. Bloomsbury Pr., dist. by Macmillan. May 2011. c.464p. illus. maps. bibliog. index. ISBN 9781596915367. $30. HIST
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Although it seems as if a new book comes out on either World War II or the Cold War every week, the same cannot be said for Taylor's (The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961–1989) subject. For Germany, the early years after World War II were a frightful mix of chaos, a terrible economy, and the wrath of the victors (especially the Soviets). The country was divided into two parts, with two governments of opposing ideologies. The fear of a revival of the hated Nazi Party drove the occupying nations to relentlessly identify, convict, and remove all vestiges of the Nazi regime. Of course, doing so was much more difficult in practice; thus many former Nazis escaped punishment and resumed their prewar lives.
VERDICT Taylor expands on such previous books as Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich and Perry Biddiscombe's The Denazification of Germany and provides a smoothly written and well-researched history of this tumultuous period in the middle of the 20th-century. Recommended for all 20th-century history collections.
Reviewed by Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames , Mar 15, 2011
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