I went to an interesting talk yesterday on “Denazification in Theory and Practice” given by Rebecca Boehling at the Center for European Studies. She opened with a discussion of how she got involved in doing more detailed research on the process of denazification in the early postwar occupation of Germany. She was apparently contacted before the occupation of Iraq by Ali Allawi, now the Iraqi Minister of Trade. Allawi knew about her research on the German occupation and wanted to get her technical consultation on policies for Iraqi de-Baathification. This is apparently well before the invasion, and they began a correspondence. He read some of her research on why the denazification process was a disaster. Initially, he showed her plans to go forward, in Iraq, with what was essentially the same flawed procedure the US used in early postwar Germany. After going back and forth, she claims that she managed to convince him why some of the US policies failed.
While at one point there was an offer for her to become a full technical consultant for an interim Iraqi government, apparently their correspondence died off after she asked his opinion about some of the infamous figures like Chalabi and others who were in the émigré community and he had replied that two of them she mentioned, including Chalabi, were relatives.
Apparently, Allawi didn’t end up in charge of the de-Baathification policy and the proposal they had worked on didn’t get implemented. However, after the invasion of Iraq, Professor Boehling discovered, “How much worse an American occupation could really get.” I wish I had some time to outline some of her critique on the post-WWII denazification process but I hope her work, which is still in progress, will soon be out in a paper or book form.