I try not to off-topic post too much but historians seem to agree that the more "gentle" the denazification process was, the better the outcome. Most interestingly the country that suffered the most (France) treated their slice of occupied Germany with the most lax rules. The harshest under the Soviets resulted in a hyper-paranoid culture where neighbors were reporting each other over personal disputes, corruption where higher level Nazis where able to bribe there way into good status while non-participant civilians were persecuted.
Not to discourage you from joining in our "off-topic" digression posts designed intentionally to upset Wraith as punishment for turning Tasty gay against his will, but the Soviets have a much better case as being the country that suffered the most.
The eastern front well known for being arguably being the most brutal theaters in the entire war. But the entire country of France was occupied and under enemy martial law. Russia was never occupied in the same way.
"Suffered the most" is in context to the handling of non-participant civilians. These aren't civilians working in enemy factories, or living on farm fields on the front lines. They're civilians under controlled occupation, it's a different context.
There were secret high level Nazis embedded in the Soviet elite social circles? That's news to me.
All countries kept critical Nazis around after the war, soviets were no exception to this. This goes beyond R&D stuff like operation paperclip, too.
1. Saying that the France got off better than the Russians in WW2 is fucking bullshit.
The Nazi's decided that the lands in the east were to be used as farmland, exploited for its resources and Lebensraum. They needed a few slavs to work the field the rest could be eliminated. Which is why they literally starved cities like Leningrad to death and didn't occupy or attack them. The official decree was that no major urban center was needed in the east and they didn't want to waste the bullets and soldiers so starvation was 'the solution'. In fact at the start of the war the Germans were contacted by groups who opposed the communists and said that they would help the Germans take down Stalin if they could have a deal similar to Vichy France. Outside of reprisals and battles being fought the French got off relatively 'easy' compared to many other countries. The Soviet Union, Poland and obviously China got the most raw deal in the war.
When the Red Army retreated east through Russia they used scorched earth tactics to deny the Germans anything of value (as the Russians had always done since Napoleon) but mostly kept that policy to food storages and military supplies.
The Germans on the other hand, destroyed everything when they retreated west. Often having the problem that when cities/villages changed hands they couldn't hold them because they had destroyed them in a previous drive to the east.
In any measure the civilians of the former Soviet Union and Poland suffered the most in WW2. There is no comparison. At the start of the war because Stalin let them starve because he sold his food supplies so Germany could overrun France.
During the war for destroying about 70% of the German army after staggering losses and driving them all the way back to the center of Berlin and after the war because Stalin.
If you don't count the Jews, shortages and famines (which hit everyone during the war) the west European countries that the Germans occupied were treated fairly well compared to Eastern Europe. They had to pay for their own occupation and other bullshit but
in most cases the Germans simply set-up a puppet regime that consisted of already existing nationalist and/or fascist parties.
2. The Eastern occupied zone of Germany is a strange beast in historical context. At first you had your revenge rapes, killings and whatnot. But the Soviets also turned it into a model socialist state for the European countries to be jealous of. Overall East Germany was a worse place to live than West Germany but that had more to do with the Communist system itself and less with a special shitty treatment that the Germans got. Compared to how the Germans had treated the Soviets, the Soviet controlled German zone got a fairly good deal.
