Why Were 10,000 Nazis Given Safe Haven in US? Kinda creepy, where are they now?

[Xithras]

10. Because everyone of any consequence in Germany was a Nazi.

Nazi Germany was a lot like the USSR. It wasn't just military types in the party. If you wanted to be a mailman, a teacher, an actor, a newspaper reporter, or hold pretty much any other job that was either government funded, or exerted some sort of social influence on the people, you were essentially required to join the Nazi Party. Countless Germans signed the cards and became "Nazi's" simply because it was the only way they could keep their jobs. If you're a first grade teacher in rural Bavaria, and the local party head walks in and says that you're going to be fired and banned from teaching if you don't sign the membership card and take the oath, a lot of people will just cave and do it.

When the Soviets took over East Germany, countless academics and other "paper Nazi's" fled west to escape them. It had been less than 15 years since the Soviet Union had completed its last Great Purge and killed thousands of its OWN academics, and deported tens of thousands more to the gulags. They knew that, as German academics, they faced an even grimmer fate. So they fled. Most just ended up in West Germany, but many fled the country entirely. Because the rest of Europe didn't want anything to do with Germans at the time, they ended up here in the U.S.

This is also why a general amnesty was granted to Germans who had been members of the party, if they had not personally profited from it, been involved in its leadership or administration, or worked for its military.