May 102013
Exorcising Hitler: The Occupation and Denazification of Germany
The collapse of the Third Reich in 1945 was an event nearly unprecedented in history. Only the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years earlier compares to the destruction visited on Germany. The country’s cities lay in ruins, its economic base devastated. The German people stood at the brink of starvation, millions of them still in POW camps. This was the starting point as the Allies set out to build a humane, democratic nation on the ruins of the vanquished Nazi state-arguably the most m
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A Fascinating Study Of the Immediate Aftermath Of Germany’s Defeat,
Frederick Taylor has provided a richly detailed account of the Occupation and Partition of Germany immediately following the destruction of the Nazi regime. His book focuses on the challenges faced by the Allied countries in both administratively managing the rebuilding of a society that was in effect completely collapsed while at the same time administering justice to those who had either perpetrated war crimes or had been committed Nazis. These challenges were exacerbated by the growing distrust and rivalry between the Western countries and the USSR that was shortly to blossom into the cold war.
Taylor’s book details the hardships faced by the German population as well during this period. He doesn’t divorce this in any way from the horrors committed by the Nazis and in fact goes to great length to link the brutality of the Russian advance into Germany with the sense of revenge for the atrocities committed by the Germans during the invasion of the USSR.
The occupation period is really a fascinating subject that often gets overshadowed by the focus on the combat leading up to the final surrender of Germany. I think Mr. Taylor has provided a work that fills that gap in the popular histories of the era and does so admirably. I learned a great deal from reading this and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the post-war period.
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|Now what are we going to do?,
Usually books on the second world war against Germany end with the allies’ military victory. That’s fine, but what was the situation facing the allies after their victory as they had to decide what to do with a defeated and deflated Germany? That is the focus of this interesting study by Frederick Taylor. Just look at what the allies had to deal with:
The author first discusses the final stages of the war, principally the Russian push toward Berlin, and the resulting atrocities inflicted upon the defeated German people. This certainly did not put the German population in a cooperative mood for the postwar period. On the other hand, the allies were made nervous given rumors of Nazi resistance groups (designated “Werewolf”) who supposedly would attack after the war was lost, especially going after those Germans who cooperated with the allies. Add to this millions of refugees and displaced persons traversing across Europe–including uprooted Germans from East Prussia and survivors of concentration camps trying to head home. Factor into this that new borders were drawn shifting about 25% of Germany’s prewar territories to Poland, Russia, and elsewhere. On top of this, there was no government of Germany in existence, so with whom could negotiations on postwar issues take place?
Even more fundamental was the key issue: what is to be done with Germany? Secretary of the Treasury (and FDR Hudson Valley neighbor) Henry Morgenthau, Jr., wanted to turn Germany into a big farm, with no industrial base. The French wanted to grab key industrial areas and absorb them into France. The Russians, who already had a government ready for East Germany, wanted to use this acquisition to facilitate expansion into the rest of Eastern Europe–hence the Cold War. So a big problem was that the allies failed to cooperate with each other after Germany was divided into four zones. This was a major reason for the tremendous starvation that occurred, killing many Germans, as well as many other problems.
Eventually, the allies decided on “purifying” Germany of Nazi influences–the much heralded “denazification” program of the U.S. being a prime example. But who was really a “bad” Nazi versus only a nominal one? 8.5 million Germans had some ties to the Nazi party; how could such a large number be evaluated? Using questionnaires and interviews, a surprisingly large number of individuals were investigated. But what was to be done with the formerly bad Nazis? If all lost their jobs and positions, who else could run the factories and city governments? Finally, it was decided to just let the Germans handle it, through their regular courts, but the results were hardly impressive. Of course, the big fish ended up being tried at Nuremburg. The vigor of denazification seemed to have been tied to the intensity of the Cold War: Germany was seen as a vital roadblock to Soviet expansion, so it made no sense to render it impotent by sanctioning so many individuals. In fact, the Marshall Plan pumped large amounts of aid into postwar Germany to strengthen it against Communist subversion. So, once again yesterday’s enemies became today’s allies. In a final chapter, the author traces the story up to the point the Berlin Wall falls in 1989.
There is a lot of information contained in this book. The author also effectively from time to time focuses upon individuals and how the events impact upon them–this is always an effective device if well done, and it is here. The 380-page book rests upon a solid basis of research, including interviews, and there are ample endnotes and a brief bibliography to aid the reader. The author is to be commended for focusing attention on this critical period of history, one that is so often overlooked, and for doing it so well.
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|Cleaning Up The Mess,
Exorcising Hitler
I received several double takes from library patrons who saw the large print word “HITLER” on the cover of this book and made some assumptions about me that were, I say publicly, vastly inaccurate. Get past that because author Frederick Taylor is a great writer, and his book is a notable one.
Taylor can take a huge event (no one would disagree that World War II qualifies as a huge event) and distill its various corridors, confluences and conflagrations through the eyes of one person. He does this many, many times throughout the book and each time, a huge event becomes personalized. In that manner, it is possible to have the entire war come into focus on a single point, for example: that deportation illustrated the Soviet style of denazification, or that Germans fought so hard until the very end of the war because Hitler’s political control was so complete, or that America’s Morgenthau Plan to prevent Germany from ever again having an industrial sector in its economy stiffened German resistance and prolonged the war unnecessarily. At each point, individuals come alive, so that Exorcising Hitler isn’t a recitation of facts that are abstruse and desiccated. The book comes off as a story of individuals, the situations they found themselves in, and how they responded. There are stories of utter madness as the Nazi regime is revealed to have only one goal: bestowing, supporting and engendering chaos. There are stories of war’s opposite: incredible kindness and generosity in the midst of madness.
The carnage of World War II was, as we know, unprecedented in human history and the author never diminishes or demeans its impact. But he does intersperse gems of comic relief when, for example, he discusses Allied policy of non-fraternization with German citizens, which was undermined almost immediately because, as the author explains on page 125: “almost all the German secretaries and housekeepers at American military headquarters were very pretty and very young.” And on page 126 we get “The fine for forbidden contact with German civilians was $65, and so asking a German girl out on a date became known as the $65 question.” Or, when the war ended, and GI’s were told they could now talk to children, one magazine reported that “GIs, spotting an attractive young German woman, would wink at her and say “Good day, child.” And there is the case of “Ilse Schmidt, `a gorgeous 19 year old brunette with a figure designed to make men drool’, had been sunbathing on a local pier when asked by the same reporter for her views on fraternization, answered “I have never had any trouble. Have you a cigarette, please.”
The work of denazification was begun in an atmosphere of mistrust as American and British commanders came to believe Soviet authorities simply wanted to replace one horror with another. And it was only during the 1960′s that German youth began to question assumptions and attitudes their parents took for granted. The full results, the author makes clear, took 50 years.
One hitch: at the time competing armies were racing to occupy German territory, the book needed more maps so that readers could follow their progress. But ultimately, this is a minor impediment in an eminently readable and historically significant book.
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