Oh, but the Allies did make Naziism illegal (the Soviets of course went further and made most other political speech illegal in their half of Germany)
Not only did West Germany have denazification programmes, but things like denying the holocaust are still illegal in Germany today, as the article discusses.
It's a bold claim to argue this was "futile" or "likely drove some to extremism" when the context was a reaction to the last war so extreme that it resulted in mass public support for a guy who blamed the Jews and geared up for a second war. Failing to defeat those arguments with logic drove an entire country to extremism, and there were a lot more people who still believed in those extremes in 1946 (even after suffering for them) than express sympathy for Germany's much watered down far right today. I doubt that would radically alter if they relaxed holocaust denial laws today, but there was certainly a time when public debate about whether the Holocaust was real or a big lie would have been useful to anyone wanting to follow in Hitler's footsteps and cast Germany as the victim.
Of course, on the other side the GDR absolutely failed in its attempts to force people to love its state and not realise their friends and family in the West were richer and free-er than them. There were limits to the effectiveness of censorship in achieving those goals, even when the censorship itself was almost unparalleled in its pervasiveness and harshness.
But sometimes not facilitating the discussion terrible niche ideas is much more effective at preventing them from going mainstream than debating them
You can be a Nazi in the US, UK and I'm sure pretty much anywhere in the world (except Germany) - and not go to jail, etc. So no, the Allies did not make Nazism illegal. Instead, they attempted to squash Nazism through propaganda (both domestic and foreign), and through spreading the truth about what Nazism had accomplished (Holocaust, among other atrocities). There's Holocaust Deniers roaming the streets of the US today - although they are in the extreme minority due overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In the end, the evils of Nazism led to it's demise, and the free trade of that information championed over censorship.
As an aside, making Holocaust Denial illegal has accomplished nothing - we have Genocide occurring around the world today, including openly in China - the very same country US companies like the NBA and Disney are falling over each other to do business in. China, of course, denies it's a Genocide...
With all the relevant criticism against German denazification, the policies and laws worked. Not just in Germany, but also in the other countries in Europe wih similar laws. That German laws failed to prevent genozid in other continents is to be expected, I guess.
I can buy Nazi paraphernalia today, read about Nazism on Wikipedia, purchase newly printed copies of Mein Kumpf, watch Hitler's speeches on Youtube, and more.
The ideals of Nazism were defeated by openly exposing, and combating them with freely available information.
Censorship would have been to pretend Nazism never happened, and banning of anything that might encroach upon "Right Think".
And think what would happen if someone made Nazism illegal? What would that mean? What about some new group that calls themselves Izan's, but shares all the same ideas of Nazism? Would that be illegal too?
You cannot ban ideas - someone else, at some point in time, will have the very same idea even if they do not know someone else had it first.
Instead, you must fight with logic and exposure - expose bad ideas for what they are, and prove them wrong with logic.
Modern day Germany is censoring Nazism as far as I'm aware (it's illegal to call yourself a Nazi in Germany, no?).
The parent post asserted the Allies propaganda campaign after the war was censorship - it's flatly not, particularly since everywhere else in the world you can freely call yourself a Nazi with no repercussions. At no point was it illegal anywhere outside Germany to possess a copy of Mein Kumpf, even if it was signed by Hitler himself.
I don't think outlawing Nazism in Germany was a good thing, nor productive. Nazism could be (and very successfully was) destroyed through exposing it's ideals for what they were.
We often forget there was a Nazi movement here in the US leading up to the war - that was also stamped out not by censorship, but through exposing the evils of the Nazi regime.
Not only did West Germany have denazification programmes, but things like denying the holocaust are still illegal in Germany today, as the article discusses.
It's a bold claim to argue this was "futile" or "likely drove some to extremism" when the context was a reaction to the last war so extreme that it resulted in mass public support for a guy who blamed the Jews and geared up for a second war. Failing to defeat those arguments with logic drove an entire country to extremism, and there were a lot more people who still believed in those extremes in 1946 (even after suffering for them) than express sympathy for Germany's much watered down far right today. I doubt that would radically alter if they relaxed holocaust denial laws today, but there was certainly a time when public debate about whether the Holocaust was real or a big lie would have been useful to anyone wanting to follow in Hitler's footsteps and cast Germany as the victim.
Of course, on the other side the GDR absolutely failed in its attempts to force people to love its state and not realise their friends and family in the West were richer and free-er than them. There were limits to the effectiveness of censorship in achieving those goals, even when the censorship itself was almost unparalleled in its pervasiveness and harshness.
But sometimes not facilitating the discussion terrible niche ideas is much more effective at preventing them from going mainstream than debating them