Death notice of Gerhard Klopfer, Südwest Presse Ulm, 2 February 1987

Gerhard Klopfer

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The lawyer Gerhard Klopfer was a Permanent Secretary in the Nazi Party Chancellery. His remit included overcoming any opposition in the Reich ministries to pushing through the Nazi Party’s radical demands.

At the end of the war, Klopfer went into hiding but was soon found and arrested. In the course of the Nuremberg Trials, he was interrogated several times but not accused of any crime. His case was passed to a denazification tribunal. These tribunals were lay committees of vetted individuals who, in the western zones of occupation, had to decide on cases of people’s involvement in the Nazi regime. There were five categories for classifying that involvement: major offenders, offenders, lesser offenders, followers and, finally, exonerated. In March 1949, Klopfer was judged to be a ‘lesser offender’. He had to pay a fine of 2,000 Deutschmarks, and was only permitted to take on simple employment for a three-year probationary period.

Klopfer and many other Nazi perpetrators had, not least, the prevailing Cold War mood to thank for such lenient sentences. As tensions between East and West increased, the Western Allies intensified their efforts to establish a strong West Germany in the centre of Europe. Simultaneously, politicians in the early years of West Germany were keen on having specialists from the Nazi regime’s civil service rehabilitated. Ultimately, many Nazi perpetrators were re-integrated into West German society.

In the meantime, the population increasingly saw itself as being ensnared by Hitler and his innermost circle of power. At the same time, they also viewed themselves as victims – of the war, forced expulsion from the Reich’s eastern territories, and of the justice of the victorious Allies. For the few survivors of the Nazi crimes, this social climate made life difficult in the young society of West Germany.

From 1956, Gerhard Klopfer worked almost unhindered as a lawyer in Ulm. On the right of the doorway to the next room, you can see the announcement of his death in 1987. The phrasing of that announcement caused quite a stir.