The confrontation with the past in divided Germany after 1945 presents one of the most complex cases of transitional justice in the postwar period. There is first the fact that at least until 1951 the reckoning with past injustice was for the most part imposed, guided, or supervised by outside conquering powers rather than by internal forces that had overthrown the previous regime. Second, the occupying powers exercised their authority in four separate occupation zones, each with its own administration and political goals, as well as its own approach to coming to terms with the Nazi era. To complicate matters further, the judicial dimension of holding Nazi Germany to account was also pursued, more or less simultaneously, on a number of different tracks:

1. Through cooperative prosecution by the four occupying powers in the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

2. Through national military war crimes tribunals of all four occupying powers under Control Council Law No. 10 and national war crimes legislation

3. Through a variety of domestic German criminal courts operating under Allied supervision, and, later, independently

Apart from prosecuting war criminals, the occupying powers sought to purge Germany of its Nazi legacy and prepare the ground for new forms of government through a series of executive, administrative, quasi-judicial, and criminal measures involving automatic arrest, internment, loss of employment, denazification, and punishment for membership in a criminal organization. Some of these measures were carried out with the participation of German personnel or institutions; others were not.