Hüter der Ordnung: Die Innenministerien in Bonn und Ost-Berlin nach dem Nationalsozialismus

Extract

This book is the first in a new series on the history of the Federal Ministry of the Interior in West Germany (BMI) and the Ministry of the Interior in East Germany (MdI). Produced by a team of scholars associated with the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, this volume describes the development of the two ministries, responsible for domestic order and security, from 1945 to around 1970. The authors primarily focus on how the ministries were reconstituted following dictatorship and occupation, their personnel policies, their internal organization, and the different ‘administrative cultures’ that developed in east and west. The story as a whole unfolds within the context of the Cold War and the perceived existential threat of a war.

The largest portion of the volume is given over to describing how civil servants with a National Socialist background came to predominate in the BMI. Personnel issues dominated in the years after the Allied occupation. The National Socialist dictatorship had broken the career patterns of Jews, leftists, women and regime opponents; those who remained in administrative positions were very likely to have been involved in the regime’s misdeeds. The West German BMI would ultimately open their doors to many of these collaborators, while the MdI in the East would reject them, at least from sensitive positions related to internal security. In both East and West, Social Democrats and women were the losers.