In many cases, the West German government actually had more nazis after WW2 than during the Third Reich
Fully 77 percent of senior ministry officials in 1957 were former members of Adolf Hitler's Nazi party, a higher proportion even than during the 1933-45 Third Reich, the study found.
From 1949 to 1973, 90 of the 170 leading lawyers and judges in the then-West German Justice Ministry had been members of the Nazi Party.
Of those 90 officials, 34 had been members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), Nazi Party paramilitaries who aided Hitler's rise and took part in Kristallnacht, a night of violence that is believed to have left 91 Jewish people dead.