In the aftermath of the 1933 Reichstag fire, the Nazis began detaining their political adversaries in prisons and concentration camps. Political offenses ranged from ideological, political, and religious resistance to minor dissent and complaining. After the Nazis’ defeat in 1945, thousands of former political prisoners were liberated, free to restart their lives. The social, political, and economic reintegration of formerly incarcerated victims of National Socialism into society was an important part of the post-war years. Yet these processes have not been traced extensively, despite the prevalence of former political prisoners in both Germanys after 1945.

This talk explores how victims of National Socialism, specifically those who were accused of political crimes, were reintegrated into society between 1945 and the early 1950s. First, this paper traces the rapidly changing and contested meanings of “victim” in the immediate post-war period. Second, taking localities in North Rhine-Westphalia (then under British military occupation) as case studies, it examines how former political prisoners and their dependents navigated the complex matrix of occupation bureaucracy in hopes of recognition in the early postwar years. Initially celebrated as living proof that fascism had been defeated, former political prisoners gradually came to be seen as a financial and social burden, viewed with suspicion, and silenced. Their status as victims of fascism, this talk argues, was more contingent on the contemporary circumstances of western Germany in the 1940s and 1950s than recognition of their past experiences and traumas, which continued to haunt them daily.