Democratic Revisionism in Postwar Europe: Justifying Purges and Amnesty Laws in France, Austria and West Germany, 1943–1957

After the Second World War, lawmakers in the re-established democracies of Western and Central Europe set in place various judicial, administrative and political review processes. These were highly controversial as they had to manage two conflicting demands: the desire to purge former Nazis, fascists and collaborators as a means of re-democratisation, and to keep them away from power through a series of democratic restrictions such as temporary disenfranchisement. In this article, I investigate how postwar elites in France, Austria and West Germany dealt with this democratic conundrum and how their opponents used the concept of democracy in order to discredit postwar purges and achieve their revision through amnesty laws. I put forward the notion of democratic revisionism and I try to define its role within the wider framework of postwar transition and democracy.