The long shadow of collaboration. Comparative approaches to the dealing with former communist and social democratic informers of the Gestapo in East and West Germany and Austria after World War Two

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Udo Grashoff
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 495955739

Dozens of communists and social democrats who collaborated with the Gestapo, partly voluntarily and partly under duress, lived in the GDR, the FRG and Austria after the end of World War Two. This project examines how the legacy of this collaboration was dealt with in the three successor states of the “Third Reich”. The concept of collaboration is limited to collaboration with the Gestapo. This creates a clear basis for comparisons between communist and social democratic Gestapo collaborators. Comparison is the central analytical tool. The project uses both comparison and the analysis of entanglements. This opens up the possibility of a more in-depth analysis. Only when you consider all the successor states of the Nazi state and how these states reacted to each other can you properly classify the dealings with Gestapo collaborators.The investigation proceeds in three steps.a) Relation to the past: previous studies, for example on communist party purges, have focused on politically motivated proceedings, with convictions of agents and traitors often appearing as overreactions. However, our own research indicates that (in contrast to the generally questionable methods of internal party purge) most of the allegations of informing the Gestapo were justified. In order to enable a deeper understanding of this partial aspect of the campaigns for the “purity of the party”, the investigation should be combined with detailed research on the prehistory. In this way, in a first step of the analysis, the extent to which episodes of collaboration with the Gestapo have been clarified or concealed in communist and social democratic parties in all three states can be determined.b) Contemporary references: In order to understand the changing handling of Gestapo collaboration, various domestic and foreign policy factors (development processes of the parties in the three states, political structures, the course of denazification, conflicts of the Cold War) must be taken into account.c) Comparison and interwoven history: The topic connects in particular the history of East and West Germany. Former Gestapo informants had to face their own past despite the various political systems. The comparative perspective and the analysis of controversies should help to understand the concrete handling of individual cases (if that played a role) as a result of transnational communication. Austria presumably played a lesser role as a reference point, but is nonetheless of central importance for a comparison because, according to the preliminary working hypothesis, the way collaborators were dealt with initially was more similar to that in the Soviet occupation zone / GDR.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants