Chapter 2 introduces the Fragebogen to analytical review and delivers the first history of the project’s origins. Here, analytical focus moves away from the policymaking architecture to the rudimentary construction of a functioning screening system. Tracing the questionnaire’s origins to 1943 Allied-occupied Italy, this chapter analyzes and compares the independent Fragebogen projects that emerged under American, British, French, and Soviet administrations and corrects previous interpretations about the scope and character of denazification. The decision to adopt a self-administered questionnaire was bold and experimental, but the Fragebogen was an inadequate mechanism for the complex task of judging Germans. The form was hastily written and contained both punitive and redemptive features, and by today’s standards, included undemocratic and arguably immoral questions. While trumpeted as a device for objective screening, the program allowed for subjective responses and discretionary evaluation. The development of the project did not show clarity and confidence, but stumbled forward out of necessity, indecision, and because of the absence of any alternative strategy.

Chapter 1 traces the ideological and practical origins of the inter-Allied denazification campaign and the unorthodox questionnaire program that it proposed. It surveys the wartime planning landscape in 1943 and 1944 and introduces the individuals and institutions that created the Fragebogen. Hundreds of civilian experts, including college professors, police officers, lawyers, and Jewish refugees, were employed to build denazification policy and to overhaul military civil affairs programs. This army of academics brought with them innovative social scientific approaches and instruments, as well as new perspectives and concepts regarding ideological, sociological, and political transformation. This was the rich civilian-engaged environment that permitted the adoption of an experimental political questionnaire. However, the civilian planners were continuously challenged by an inherent contradiction in all strands of occupation policy: the pursuit of both punitive and restorative goals. The result was that a practical strategy for the occupation was never produced by the Allied powers, nor was there a shared consensus on political screening.