Denazification 1 of 3
The population does not understand why their attempts to explain to American officers the difference between formerly persecuted groups and ex-Nazis are met with a laconic ‘German nix gut, all Nazis’.
US-Amerikanischer Stimmungsbericht (31 July) (our translation from a German collection of American reports on the mood)
When the US soldiers marched into Heidelberg they came across two men who had headed the city council for 20 years: Carl Neinhaus and Josef Amberger. Both had studied law in Heidelberg. After serving as officers in the First World War they returned to their work in Heidelberg, where they were elected as independents to municipal leadership positions. When the Nazis came to power, Amberger had been Deputy Mayor since 1925 and Neinhaus Lord Mayor since 1929. Neinhaus adapted more quickly and visibly by joining the NSDAP in 1933, and was able to seamlessly continue his career until 1945. Amberger, by contrast, was – due to new, Nazi appointments to the office of mayor − pushed from second to third rank, but was able to keep an important position until 1945 as council member and senior legal adviser. While they were not convinced Nazis, they both put their administrative expertise at the service of the dictatorship and hence helped to establish the Nazi regime at the local level. The occupying power made pragmatic distinctions. Because of his exposed position and his greater opportunism, they deposed Neinhaus and interned him first in the district jail, Fauler Pelz, very close to his former workplace. While Neinhaus had, in 1933, been regarded as essential to uphold a functioning administration, this was now the turn of Josef Amberger, also for lack of an alternative with a clean record.
The ceremony happened two days after the city had been taken, on Easter Sunday 1 April 1945. Haskell installed the American “military government” in the town hall. The photo shows its members on the window side of the table. The German officials sitting opposite had to clear out five rooms for them and move closer together. They were not allowed to make any direct oral or written contact with the US officers, and all petitions had first to be submitted to Amberger. He had two opposing mammoth tasks to cope with: first, the political purging of the city administration by dismissing Nazi officials, employees and workers, and second, upholding the work in the town hall and the public utilities, in order to supply the occupiers and the population with water, power and gas, to provide housing and distribute food. To cope with these assignments Amberger relied on friends and recommendations from industry. He unbureaucratically appointed corporate lawyer Albert Stappert his deputy because he spoke English.
