How it really was

Marriage with ‘ex-enemy nationals’ (continued)

24 May 2013

I’ve recently heard from Mr Harry Furness, who read my previous post on Marriage with ex-enemy nationals and told me that he believes he was the first British soldier in occupied Germany after the Second World War to marry a German woman. It’s a wonderful story:

'I first sighted my bride-to-be around the time that the Ceasefire in Europe was being negotiated in early May 1945; she was hanging washing on a line when I spotted her from a concealed position as I scouted far ahead of my infantry Battalion. I found out later that she was a refugee, having fled with her mother from their home in East Germany to escape before the attacking Russian Red Army reached anywhere near their town. She had only just arrived with her Mother to stay with distant relatives in the small West German town.

The Hallamshire Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment had been advancing fast and stopped just short of Neheim-Hüsten in Westphalia; the Battalion Commanding Officer was aware of the Ceasefire negotiations, but he did not know if this small town would be defended as a last ditch battle action by German soldiers. I was a trained Forward Scout and was sent to reconnoitre if defensive positions seemed likely, so I was definitely the first British soldier to enter this small town. I was able to report back that it appeared to be undefended, and the only German soldiers spotted were all wounded and probably under treatment at the town hospital. The Battalion then entered Neheim in ‘aircraft formation’, which meant a line of infantry on opposite sides of the streets. It was May 1945.

Shortly after, the news of the ceasefire was confirmed, and the war was over.

Close friendship blossomed between both of us, and it was soon obvious we were a perfect match together, so it was sometime around the end of 1945 that we attempted our first application to see if marriage would be permitted, but it was far too early for the authorities to consider, so it was not accepted at that time. In early 1946 we were officially engaged under German conventions, with parents on both sides in full agreement. After this we were busy collecting together all the very many relevant documents needed to obtain permission to marry. There was much confusion at that time over the type of paperwork we might need to complete. Some of the questionnaires were not relevant to either of us, but we slogged on so eventually had a very thick file to satisfy all situations.

Around the time of my birthday, 10th March 1947, my Commanding Officer told me he had been ordered to send me to an Army HQ as a very senior ranking officer wanted to talk with me. As a young Sergeant I admit I was rather overawed at the prospect of a high-ranking officer wanting to see me for I assumed it would be a high-level discouragement discussion. But it wasn’t like that at all. I travelled to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof where an army driver picked me up for my appointment with a brigadier and his aide. Now so very many years after that final interview my memory of all that took place has faded somewhat, but the high-lights still remain of what happened. The Brigadier was courteous to me, almost fatherly in fact. He was well informed of my previous applications to marry, and he knew that I’d been photographed by AFPU [the Army Film and Photograph Unit], and I’m sure that helped my application request.

I do remember it was a long discussion. He wanted to know how I had met my German fiancée and how fluent I was in German … whereupon in view of my interest in languages, he kindly offered to post me to a language school in London to study Japanese. He told me that Japanese linguists would be needed in the Far East. I very politely declined this fine offer as I wished to remain with my regiment until demobilised. He gave me a wise assessment of the resentment we could face following a major war, and he was right about that we eventually found. But before I left his office he told me he hoped that my Bride-to-be and I would have a long happy life together, so I knew right away that he was going to approve my marriage request. That particular high-level final interview had gone very well for which I was grateful. I am sure it was a one-off kind of interview, because typically soldiers applying to marry in Germany at later periods were dealt with by Lt. Colonels.

I mentioned above the Brigadier knew that I had been photographed by AFPU and he spoke about the circumstances. Briefly, in the Summer of 1945 two AFPU soldiers (an officer who did the interview and a sergeant/cameraman) came to Arnsberg Kaserne in Westphalia (a former German army barracks) and took some photographs of me for a series they had just started about soldiers who had distinguished themselves in some way during the campaign across North-West Europe 1944-5. Over the years since the war, that particular photo has been published in several military books.

That decisive interview at the Hamburg HQ gave my Battalion Commanding Officer (Lt. Col.) just sufficient time to rush through planning details for our marriage so the ceremony could take place before the Battalion entrained for our new duties in Berlin. The troop train was scheduled to leave early on the 23rd March ’47. It was packed solid with soldiers and supplies, but even so the Regimental Officers of my Battalion had done us proud, for they had arranged for us a separate compartment garlanded with flowers with a large notice ‘RESERVED FOR SERGEANT & MRS FURNESS.’

During that immediate post-war period I had held the appointment of Regimental Intelligence-Sergeant, and remained so until I left Berlin for final demobilisation. I had always been a specialist. My Wife was given all necessary British documents and later flew to the UK with her British passport. On our arrival in Berlin on the 23rd March ’47, we stayed at first in a small hotel on the Reichstrasse in Charlottenburg, but soon moved into an apartment located just near our barracks in Berlin-Spandau.

Someone must have alerted the German news media that the first marriage was about to take place between an English/German couple in Lüneburg, because they were waiting outside the Church of St Nicholas as the newly-weds came out. Amongst them was photojournalist Josef Makovec of Lüneburg. We know his name because he kindly sent us with compliments several spare prints on which his name was printed. In later years we know he became famous in his profession for his magazine reportage. It was because all our Battalion transport was packed ready for the journey to Berlin, that my Commanding Officer was gracious enough to loan me his personal Jeep for my Wife and I for the trips to Church, and rather curiously we were loaned a tracked Bren Gun Carrier with driver to transport our few wedding guests mostly my Bride’s relatives. It was thoughtful and a kindness I never forgot, for I had always received the support of my Battalion Officers. We had fought together in action and had a lot of respect for each other.

The military authorities can also move fast. By early April ‘47 I had already received a communication from the main York Infantry Depot UK that my Army pay had been increased as a married senior NCO, plus back-dated.

My later civilian work involved much travel, both UK and abroad, so I got to meet quite a few ex-soldiers who had married German girls. All of them had stories to tell, but in each case I found that all had been married months after my own at 12 Noon, 22nd March 1947, so I am inclined to think it must have been the Brigadier at Army HQ and his staff who fast-tracked my application to marry, which very probably makes us the FIRST. Whilst many soldiers had started to organise their piles of documents needed to apply for permission to marry, quite typically the general system was slow, so it was around June 1947 onwards before many got their wishes granted. My Wife and I had already been married at least four months earlier by then, for which I have to thank that Brigadier’s understanding.

At no time have my Wife and I ever sought personal publicity, we are far too reserved and prefer our privacy. Many years ago a TV documentary film company from Stuttgart contacted us and wanted to send a film crew to our home to chat on-camera about our long happy life together, plus they wanted to hear of the many resentments we once had to face (but those attitudes are long past now). We declined their reporting visit politely, not wishing to have our ’15 minutes of fame’ and although at times I have read newspaper features of veterans who had married in Germany, and many had claimed to be the first to marry, their dates were always behind ours.

At the time I’ve written these notes (May 2013) my beloved Wife and I have been together for some 68 years now, and have already celebrated our 66th Wedding Anniversary on the 22nd March 2013 and we’d readily do it all over again.'

References

Mr Furness provided the following details:

At 12 noon, on 22nd March 1947, Chaplain to the Forces: Captain C.B.G. Apivor C.E. married under British law (English-born) SERGEANT HARRY FURNESS (York and Lancaster Regiment) to ERNA MARIA KARHAN, a German-born national, The ceremony took place at the church of St Nicholas, Lüneburg. Immediately following the church ceremony there was an additional official signing under the Foreign Marriages Act; Army Form A43A. This was confirmed later by GHQ 2nd Echelon with registered number 7783 A43/3B Book of Marriages 11/03. Very soon afterwards a further ceremony took place under German law at the Berlin Hauptstandesamt, registered 249/1947. Thus all international marriage rules were in order. The Regiment moved the next morning following the Wedding to take up their duties as Garrrison Infantry in the British Sector of Berlin.  The marriage process had been fast-tracked through the system so that Sergeant Furness could take his new bride through the heavily guarded and restricted Russian Zone to Berlin.

On the Wedding Day, he was 22 years old, and it was his wife’s 20th birthday!

 

‘Hunting for Democracy’ (continued)

2 April 2013

I wrote previously on this blog about Colonel Eric Grimley, a British Kreis Resident Officer (KRO) in occupied Germany. He was a keen sportsman and wrote an article for the Shooting Times in 1965 on his earlier experiences, with the title ‘I hunted for democracy.’

Colonel Grimley was not alone in his belief that a shared interest in hunting encouraged mutual trust between British and Germans. General Gordon Macready, one of four British Regional Commissioners appointed in May 1946, responsible for all aspects of local and regional government in what is now the German Land, or region, of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), described in his memoirs how he worked together with the German ‘Prime Minister’ of his region, the social democrat Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf:

‘Co-operation with such a man was always pleasant, and on many occasions I enjoyed an excellent day’s sport with him. Inviting the Prime Minister to a shoot was always a matter of some delicacy. The control of all shooting and fishing had been taken over by the Allies, and no German was allowed to possess a firearm of any kind. Sporting guns and rifles had been collected immediately after the end of hostilities and in some localities the Allied military had senselessly destroyed piles of valuable sporting weapons by driving tanks over them. However, many remained and were kept under lock and key. When inviting Herr Kopf to a shoot, or accepting an invitation from him, I handed him one of his own guns which had fortunately been preserved, and gave him a ration of ammunition. The balance of the latter and the former were returned at the end of the shoot. We were glad when some months later, German high officials, estate owners and others who were vouched for by Military Government were allowed to resume possession of their guns.’

Hunting was a popular activity among many British army officers in the first half of the twentieth century. Here are two more examples from my researches among senior British army officers in occupied Germany:

General Alec Bishop wrote in his memoirs about life as a young British officer in India in the 1920s:

‘The big game shooting was first class, and included tiger, bison, wild boar, sambhur, cheetah and spotted deer. Serving officers could obtain … a licence entitling them to shoot one bison, one sambhur and four spotted deer in a season. The shooting of tiger and wild boar was not restricted … Life was very pleasant in those days for young officers serving in India. We were in fact a very privileged body of young men.’

General Brian Horrocks remembered his school holiday trips, before the First World War, to Gibraltar, where his father was serving as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps:

‘The Gibraltar of those days was a small boy’s paradise, much more so than today, as we had free access to Spain. Life consisted of bathing, hunting with the Calpe hounds, cricket matches, race meetings and children’s parties – all great fun.’

What did hunting symbolise and mean for men such as these, when they found themselves in occupied Germany at the end of the war? Here are a few suggestions:

- Hunting wild animals (perhaps paradoxically) symbolised peace. It was what army officers did during peace time, when they were not at war.
- Hunting, in occupied Germany, therefore meant that the war was over and they could (at last) return to activities they associated with life in peacetime.
- Inviting the former enemy to accompany them symbolised reconciliation as well as peace. It symbolised mutual trust.   
- It showed they were now on the same side. Weapons confiscated earlier were reissued and used against a common enemy (the animals they hunted together).

But it was not that simple. British officers tried, on some occasions, to justify hunting as a way of solving the new problems they faced in peacetime. For example, I came across a brief article in the British Zone Review in November 1945, with the headline:

‘Troops are hunting game as a military operation’

‘Operation Butcher’…is probably the biggest hunt ever organised. It is designed to kill as much wild pig, deer and other livestock as possible and thus supplement the meagre larder of the Germans. It is being treated as a military operation.’

The war was over. Their job as army officers had been completed. But they now faced new problems, such as shortages of food among the German population, which they did not know how to solve. They had won the war but did not know how to win the peace. So they justified hunting on the basis that it alleviated food shortages. By calling it ‘Operation Butcher’ they went about it as if it were a military operation – trying to use the methods of war to solve the problems of peace.

Of course ‘Operation Butcher’ was only one of many things the British did in occupied Germany. The practical effect of hunting on alleviating food shortages was minimal. The solution which worked in the end was to increase the volume of food imports from the USA and Canada (see my earlier posts on Bread Rationing in Britain).

Then as now, hunting (at least in Britain) was an elite activity. It created mutual trust and reconciliation between some members of a British elite of senior army officers and German administrators. In some rural areas, as Colonel Grimley described in his article, this would extend to local farmers, but Germans living in poor conditions in the big cities were no more likely than British people at home to react favourably to stories of British officers out hunting, while they went short of food.   

References

Lt-General Sir Gordon Macready, In the Wake of the Great (London: William Clowes and Sons Ltd, 1965)

Alec Bishop, Look Back with Pleasure (Beckley, Sussex: unpublished, 1971)

Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks, A Full Life (London: Leo Cooper, 1974)

British Zone Review, Vol. 1, No. 4, Saturday 10 November 1945

 

Collective biography

8 March 2013

In January 2008, I wrote on this blog that the approach I intended to adopt for my PhD research was to ‘Follow the People’. This, I believed, would be the best way of understanding what the British aimed to achieve in occupied Germany after the war, and why, at a time when official policy was unclear or seemed inappropriate for the conditions they found on the ground.

In September 2009 I wrote another post, on History and Biography, in which I outlined some of the advantages of a biographical approach, after reading the excellent collection of articles edited by Volker Berghahn and Simone Lässig, Biography between Structure and Agency.

I’ve now read an interesting article by Krista Cowman, on Collective Biography as a research method for historians, which provides further support for anyone considering this type of approach to their research. Collective biography, she wrote, has a long tradition, from classical and medieval collections of ‘lives’, to more recent social historians researching those ‘marginal to the historical mainstream.’ Despite still being seen by some historians as a ‘lightweight’ method, suitable for studies of politicians and pop stars but not for serious academic history, many historians were now, she added, ‘rediscovering an interest in individuals and their subjective experiences’.  Collective biography was, she concluded, an ‘invaluable way of attempting to recover past experiences as well as of suggesting ways in which this was shaped by the broader structures in which it was situated.’

The distinguished historian and Professor at University College London, Mary Fulbrook, has also used a biographical approach, which she called ‘history from within’, in her latest book Dissonant Lives. In what appeared to me to be an excellent description of a biographical approach to writing history, she described her book as ‘concerned with the ways in which Germans of different ages and life stages variously lived through and across the major historical ruptures [of the twentieth] century … It attempts to combine an exploration of the subjective perceptions and lived experiences of succeeding generations with an analysis of changing historical structures and developments.’

In my case, studying the British in Occupied Germany between 1945 and 1948, I originally decided to adopt a biographical approach for practical reasons, as this seemed the only way I could make sense of a mass of data in the archives. I thought I could ‘follow the people’ in the same way as Theseus used Ariadne’s ball of thread to trace a path and escape from the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. This has worked well as I tracked the twelve people I research through the archives, learning about what each of them did in Germany and why, and relating their actions to their family background and previous experience. Sometimes I was able to discover previously unknown connections between them and what they thought of each other.

I found a biographical approach helped me to understand some of the apparent contradictions in British policy. As well as explaining diversity, it also revealed what I considered to be the fundamental aims of the occupation. Once the differences between individuals were stripped away, it was possible to identify the key principles they all agreed on.

There are, of course, disadvantages as well as advantages to a biographical approach. It is good at explaining motivation, aims and intentions, and how these changed within a short period of time, but less able to explain how policies were played out in practice. As my supervisor said about one of my draft chapters, on Harold Ingrams and British attempts to reform local government in Germany, ‘Well, it is not really about local government, it is about what the British person in charge thought he was doing at the time, sometimes with hindsight.’ That was a fair comment. A focus on personal lives can make it difficult to examine any one theme or subject comprehensively over an extended period of time.

Because much of the source material was subjective, and some created with hindsight, evidence I obtained from the archives, and from reading personal papers, memoirs and autobiographies, had to be carefully validated, cross referenced, checked for consistency with other sources, and placed within its historical context. Nevertheless I would still claim that a biographical approach can offer distinct advantages for studying a relatively short period when policies and attitudes changed rapidly. It can be preferable to a structural, thematic or chronological approach, when dealing with a subject, like the British Military Government of Germany, that was essentially temporary in nature, with no consistent organisation or structure, even over the short three years of my study.

On a few occasions I could claim that specific outcomes were due to the deliberate decisions of individuals. For example, the decision by one young British officer, John Chaloner, to create the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, probably had more influence on the future of the West German media than anything else the British did during the occupation.

More generally, a biographical approach does not necessarily imply a belief in human agency, as opposed to a more deterministic view of history governed by long term social, economic or cultural structures and processes. Studying the subjective experiences of individuals often reveals the limitations and constraints which prevented them from achieving what they intended. A collective biography can be a good method for examining the aims, intentions and actions of individuals, but it can also help us understand the outcomes of their actions, and the deeper structures which characterised the society in which they lived.

 

References:

Krista Cowman, ‘Collective Biography’, in Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire (eds), Research Methods for History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), pp83-100

Mary Fulbrook, Dissonant Lives: Generations and violence through the German dictatorships (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Volker R. Berghahn and Simone Lässig (eds), Biography between Structure and Agency: Central European Lives in International Historiography (New York, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2008)

 

The Craft of Research

12 February 2013

I am coming to the end of my research and have been working on writing up my thesis, which explains why I have not posted very much here over the past few months. I hope to remedy this once the thesis is complete.

This means I have been thinking about the process of studying for a PhD. I have benefitted greatly from meeting with other students in a small ‘Reading Group’. At one of our meetings we discussed how to structure the thesis and how to turn a vague and general topic, which is what most of us start with, into a more specific set of questions, which together form a research ‘problem’, to which we propose a solution in our theses.

There are some useful books around which provide guidance on how to do this. One book I have found helpful is The Craft of Research. This provides advice on turning a broad topic into a focussed topic, a focussed topic into a set of research questions and a set of research questions into a research problem.

Wayne C. Booth, Gregry G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2008) Third edition

Some French theorists call this problematizing your topic, which is not the sort of thing we British normally do, but the authors of this book make it all seem quite simple. If you are working on a history, humanities or social science PhD, I would recommend you buy a copy, or borrow it from your library, and read it. The following is taken from my notes on the relevant chapters. (Any errors, omissions and misunderstandings are therefore mine, and not the fault of the book or the authors).

1) From a broad topic to a focused topic

A topic is probably too broad if you can state it in four or five words. Topics can be narrowed by adding words – nouns derived from verbs expressing actions or relationships - in particular conflict, description, contribution, development. This makes the topic dynamic rather than static.

2) From a focused topic to research questions

The key point here is to think about:

- What you are writing about – I am working on the topic of …
- What you don’t know about it – because I want to find out …
- Why you want your reader to know and care about it - in order to help my reader understand …

This can be simplified to:
Topic: I am studying …
    Question: because I want to find out what / why / how …
        Significance: to help my reader understand …

3) From research questions to a research problem

A conceptual problem simply means not knowing or not understanding something.

The significance or importance of a conceptual problem lies in its consequence. Because we don’t understand one thing, this means that we don’t fully understand something else of greater significance.

This aims to answer the ‘So what’ problem.

Topic: I am studying …
    Question: because I want to find out what / why / how …
        Significance: to help my readers understand …
            Consequence: so that …

I have found this very helpful in my own research, trying to make sense of the mass of data I have accumulated and thinking about how to structure it all in the final thesis.

Here is my own version:

I am studying:
- The contribution made by twelve important and influential individuals to the development and implementation of British policy in occupied Germany, in the first three years after the end of the Second World War.

Because I want to find out:
- What these twelve individuals aimed to achieve, and why and how this changed over time.
- Why British policy apparently changed from unconditional surrender, strict controls enforced by a long occupation and non-fraternisation with the German people, to physical and economic reconstruction, political renewal and personal reconciliation.

To help my readers understand:
- The reasons for some of the apparent contradictions in British policy.
- How and why British policy in occupied Germany changed very soon after the end of the war.
- How and why British attitudes towards their former enemy changed in the transition from war to peace.
- How individuals implemented, modified and interpreted official policies.
- The successes and failures of the British in occupied Germany. How can you judge success or failure without understanding the original intention(s)?

So that my readers understand better:
- The British contribution to the development of post-war Germany.
- The origins of the Cold War, in particular how former enemies became allies and vice versa.
- Some of the ways in which British people engaged with the rest of the world, through the British Empire and as a great power in Europe, what motivated them and what they were trying to achieve.
- What happens in the aftermath of war, some of the problems faced by victors when they occupy the country of their defeated enemy, and how to plan better for occupation of a defeated country, after winning the war.

 

Colonel E H D (Eric) Grimley: ‘Hunting for democracy’

7 August 2012

Dr Peter Beckmann has emailed me from Germany to say he would very much like to hear from relatives or friends of the late Colonel E H D (Eric) Grimley, who was the British Kreis Resident Officer (KRO) for the district of Bentheim in northern Germany near the Dutch border, from January 1946 until he retired from the army in 1949.

In 1945, at the end of the war, Dr Beckmann’s father, Rudolf Beckmann, was appointed by the British as Landrat, or head of the local administration for the district, and the two men worked closely together.

Dr Beckmann also sent me a German translation of an article Colonel Grimley wrote for the Shooting Times in 1965. I’ve written previously on this blog about the role played in the occupation by British Kreis Resident Officers (KROs) and was delighted to read a first-hand account, written by a KRO, of his impressions of ‘how it really was’.

Like many British army officers at the time, Colonel Grimley was a keen sportsman. In the article, under the headline ‘I hunted for democracy’, he described some of his experiences in Germany. His district included fields, meadows, woods, heath and marsh, with plenty of game, including red deer, fish, rabbits, hare, pheasants, partridge, snipe, geese, duck and even wild boar. Part of his responsibility was to oversee the transition of the local administration from totalitarian to democratic principles. Perhaps I did not understand the situation correctly, he wrote, but ‘it seemed to me that if the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the battle for democracy could be fought on the hunting grounds of the district of Bentheim.’ He and his dog became a familiar sight not only in Nordhorn, the main town in the district, but in the country villages, where many of the local inhabitants shared his interest. Hunting he believed, combined discipline and freedom, and encouraged mutual trust that could never be achieved in the office or local council chamber.

Although, he wrote, it would have been simpler to restrict his shooting parties to members of the British military government, he decided to invite Germans to accompany him, including the Landrat, Rudolf Beckmann, who was a keen huntsman. At the end of the war all weapons, including shotguns and hunting rifles, had been confiscated from the Germans; the British were afraid of armed resistance and the official penalty for a German caught in possession of a firearm was death. Allowing their former enemy the use of firearms on a joint hunting expedition was therefore a demonstrable sign of trust.  

While sorting through his father’s papers after he died, Dr Beckmann found some extracts (translated into German) from a diary that Colonel Grimley kept during his time in Bentheim and gave to the Landrat. In the extracts he described persuading the local administration to make more accommodation available for thousands of refugees, visits to the small towns and villages in the districts, and emergency measures to cope with sudden severe floods; a major problem in a low lying area.  

Colonel Grimley must have taken his diary back with him to England, as he referred to it in his article for the Shooting Times. As far as I know it has never been published, but Dr Beckmann believes he gave it the title ‘I always come back to my window’. He hopes it has been preserved and could still be in the possession of the family; perhaps Colonel Grimley’s children or grandchildren, or a family friend.

The reason for the title ‘I always come back to my window’ is apparent on reading the extracts from the diary. Colonel Grimley returns again and again to the view from his office window, of the Union Jack fluttering in the wind outside the British headquarters building and people passing in the street outside. Here is one brief extract, describing the end of a long day:

'Now I stand again at my window. It is almost like the silent films of long ago. People go past, but due to the double glazed window panes, shut tightly against the cold, the noise of their passing stays outside. The flag was lowered with the onset of the dusk. For the moment nothing moves on my silver screen. Who or what will appear next, for a few brief moments, in the evening twilight?'

Lt. Col. Eric Henry Donald Grimley was born in 1899. He was commissioned as an officer in 1916 but was too young for active service. Between the wars he served in Mesopotamia, India, China, the West Indies and Africa. From 1940-1942 he was the commanding officer for the 8th Battalion of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. He joined the army civil affairs branch and served in Norway after the war, before transferring to Germany in January 1946. Colonel Grimley died in 1969, aged 70.

 

‘Winning the peace’: attempting to explain some of the contradictions in British policy in occupied Germany, 1945-1948

1 March 2012

In a personal message to his troops issued on VE Day, 8 May 1945, Field-Marshal Montgomery wrote: ‘We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.’ This message was repeated many times in the months that followed, but what he meant by ‘winning the peace’ was never entirely clear. British policy in occupied Germany after the Second World War is full of apparent contradictions. Despite extensive planning undertaken before the end of the war, much of the work done by the occupation authorities was characterised by hasty improvisation. Firm principles, such as those embodied in the Potsdam Agreement, were interpreted flexibly and pragmatically and in some cases eventually discarded. Initial planning was based on the expectation that Germany would be occupied for at least twenty years, but no timescale was ever formalised. By the end of 1945 the priority changed to reducing the scale and cost of the occupation and a policy of direct control was replaced by one of transferring responsibility to German authorities as rapidly as possible. Economically, a policy of restricting industrial growth was pursued in parallel with one of rebuilding the physical infrastructure and promoting economic reconstruction. Though convinced of the superiority of the British way of life, the occupiers were reluctant to impose a British model of democracy by totalitarian means, preferring to allow the Germans to devise their own solutions to constitutional reform. ‘Parallel worlds’, in which occupiers and occupied could live separate lives without meeting each other, coexisted with extensive cooperation at work, numerous individual encounters through social and cultural activities and personal relationships with their former enemies that in some cases resulted in lifelong friendships and marriage. Whether examining the economic, political, social or cultural aspects of the occupation, these contradictions make it difficult to identify any logical, coherent and distinctive ‘British’ policy in occupied Germany, let alone compare this with that of the other victorious Allies: the French, Russians and Americans.

A general uncertainty as to British policy towards Germany and the German people was, of course, to be expected in the transition from war to peace, as the primary task of the Allied armies changed from achieving victory in battle to the civilian administration of a defeated enemy. Politicians in London had other priorities, not least the dissolution of the wartime coalition and the general election. The new Labour government, when it assumed office in August 1945, had an ambitious programme of domestic reform and once the Potsdam Agreement was finalised, little time or inclination to issue new guidance or instructions to the authorities in Germany. Policy directives prepared earlier did not provide for unexpected circumstances, such as the absence of any central German government, the scale of destruction in the cities, the shortage of food after initial supplies were exhausted and the influx of millions of refugees expelled from the former German territories east of the Oder-Neisse line. Those responsible for Military Government, at all levels, had to use their own initiative to decide what course of action to take in unfamiliar circumstances. Their problems were exacerbated by the temporary nature of the occupation and the need to work within a new administrative framework established to govern the twenty million people in the British Zone. The organisational structure of the occupation was in constant flux as it was changed in response to external pressures or reorganised in an attempt to achieve greater administrative efficiency. There was little staff continuity, as many of the military officers appointed early in the occupation left Germany when they were demobilised, to be replaced by civilians or other military personnel reluctant to return to civilian life in Britain. Those appointed to posts often had no relevant qualifications or previous experience of the work required of them. There was little established practice or precedent they could draw on, or organisational support.

Despite these uncertainties, the overall pattern of the occupation, from the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 to the formation of an independent West German government in September 1949, was fairly straightforward. With some differences in emphasis and timing, the same process can be observed in all three western zones. The largely negative policies agreed at Potsdam were replaced by more positive policies culminating in the European Recovery Programme, the transfer of power to elected German authorities, and the eventual inclusion of West Germany in NATO. The negative policies are often summarised as the ‘Four Ds’ of the Potsdam Agreement, though different historians have used more than four words starting with the letter ‘D’ describe these, referring variously to: Disarmament, Demilitarisation, Denazification, Decentralisation, Decartelisation, Deindustrialisation, Dismantling and Democratisation. Historians have not given the same shorthand description to the positive aspects of Allied occupation policy, but I would suggest that they could be similarly characterised as the ‘Three Rs’ of physical Reconstruction, political Renewal and personal Reconciliation, relating to the economic, political and social and cultural elements of British, US and French occupation policy respectively. (Re-education could possibly be added as a fourth ‘R’, but this was a contested term and an aspiration rather than a policy).

The reasons the Allies decided to impose the negative policies agreed at Potsdam are easy to understand and explain, based on their experience of the First World War and after and concerns for their own security. Disarmament and demilitarisation were considered essential to prevent another war and to destroy the power of the German army and officer class. Denazification was considered necessary to remove former Nazi Party members from positions of influence and to prevent another Hitler coming to power. Decentralisation and decartelization were designed to reduce the excessive power of the state and large industrial combines. Deindustrialisation and dismantling of heavy industry were aimed at reducing Germany’s economic capacity and ability to produce war plant and equipment and also to enable reparations to be paid, in the form of surplus capital equipment, to the victorious Allies and liberated countries. Democratisation was the exception among the policies agreed at Potsdam, as it cannot be described as negative. It was presented in the agreement in very general terms as a long term goal to ‘prepare for the eventual reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis’ and for the ‘eventual peaceful cooperation in international life by Germany.’ None of these policies were especially controversial or subject to disagreement in principle, although there were disputes about the detail, such as the mechanism for the payment of reparations, and significant disagreements soon emerged among the allies over the way the policies were implemented. In general, the Potsdam Agreement represented the continuation of the wartime alliance. It formalised plans made and developed at earlier war-time summits attended by Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin or their deputies at Casablanca, Tehran, Quebec, Moscow and Yalta.

The reasons for adopting the more positive policies of the ‘Three Rs’ - Reconstruction, Renewal and Reconciliation - are less easy to understand and explain. In the first year of the occupation, each of the allies operated relatively autonomously with regard to internal policy in their own zone. Apart from discussions in the Allied Control Council, there was no formal cooperation until the agreement by the British and US to unify their zones economically with effect from 1 January 1947, to form what was called the ‘Bizone.’ My research examines the position in the British Zone, in which the positive policy of the ‘Three Rs’ started to be applied very soon after the start of the occupation in the summer of 1945, under the direction of the Military Governor, Field-Marshal Montgomery, with the active support of his senior generals. These more positive policies did not replace the ‘Four D’s’ agreed at Potsdam but were implemented in parallel. Over time they superseded them, as the negative policies were considered to have been substantially achieved.

The British ‘men on the ground’ in Germany, (and they were mostly men, not women), acted largely on their own initiative, without specific direction or guidance from the politicians, civil servants or diplomats based in London. In my research, I attempt to explain why so many British officers and civilian administrators devoted so much of their time and energy to the reconstruction of their former enemy, after a very bitter war, in contrast with the negative official policies agreed at Potsdam. In the absence of clear policy direction, established practice, well understood precedents, or institutional infrastructure, my research focuses on the motivation and intentions of individuals and tries to answer the questions: what did British people in occupied Germany aim to achieve, and why, and how did this change over the first three years of the occupation. In so doing, it aims to explain some of the changes and contradictions in British policy, arguing that these were not only a pragmatic response to unexpected circumstances, changing priorities determined in London or organisational uncertainties, but a result of the ‘mental baggage’ individuals brought with them: their education, social and personal background, previous experience, historical understanding, values and religious beliefs.

International Socialists

5 January 2012

A very happy New Year to all my readers.

For the last 6 months I’ve been researching two international socialists who worked, in a senior position, for the British Control Commission for Germany after the war. I’ve been trying to make sense of what they aimed to achieve, and why, and what was the outcome of their efforts. (See my earlier post on A Collection of Individuals for more details of the method I’ve adopted for my PhD research on British people in occupied Germany after the war).

Austen Albu trained as an engineer at the City and Guilds College (now Imperial College of Science and Technology) and worked before and during the war as manager of the Aladdin Industries factory in West London. In February 1946 he was appointed on a temporary contract as head of the ‘German Political Department’ in the Political Division of the Control Commission. Three months later he was promoted to the very influential position of Deputy Chairman of the newly formed ‘Governmental Sub-Commission’. After leaving Germany in late 1947 he was able to pursue his political ambitions and was elected Member of Parliament for Edmonton in 1948, a seat he held for twenty-six years before retiring in 1974. He was briefly Minister of State at the Department of Economic Affairs from 1965-67, but spent most of his time in Parliament as a ‘Back Bench Technocrat’ and expert on science and technology. He had a long life and died in 1994 at the age of 91.

Allan Flanders succeeded Albu as head of the ‘German Political Department’ from May 1946 to the end of 1947. He could best be described before the war as a professional revolutionary socialist, but in 1943 he applied for and was offered a position as one of three research assistants at the Trades Union Congress (TUC), working on post-war reconstruction. After leaving Germany he went to the United States for a year on a Whitney Foundation fellowship. On his return to Britain he was appointed senior lecturer in Industrial Relations at Oxford University, despite not having a degree or attending any university as an undergraduate. He had a distinguished career as an academic, at Oxford, UMIST and Warwick University, becoming one of the UK’s experts on industrial relations. He died in 1973 at the relatively early age of 63.

As committed international socialists, Austen Albu and Allan Flanders had a very different outlook on life from other senior British soldiers and administrators in occupied Germany (such as those I’ve written about previously on this blog: Field Marshal Montgomery, Generals Brian Robertson, Alec Bishop and Brian Horrocks, Marshall of the Royal Air Force Sholto Douglas, or the former colonial administrator Harold Ingrams). They wanted to change the world for the better, not preserve the established social order and their own privileged position within it. They had no great desire to preserve the power and prestige of the British Empire and did not regard the Empire as a force for good in the world, or the British political, social and economic ‘way of life’ as a model for the rest of the world to follow.

Albu and Flanders were both appointed to their positions by John Hynd, the government minister with responsibility for Germany. Hynd had only recently entered Parliament, winning a by-election in 1944 and it is perhaps surprising that, as a new and inexperienced MP, he had been given such a responsible position. All three had been active in socialist politics before and during the war, in the Fabian Society and various fringe groups that attempted to influence Labour Party policy.

They were also closely associated with German socialist refugees who had fled from Nazi Germany and lived in exile in Britain during the war. Albu had close links with a small but highly influential splinter group known as Neu Beginnen, and Flanders was a founder and leading member of the Socialist Vanguard Group, the British arm of a group founded in Germany with international pretensions, known as the Internationaler Sozialistische Kampfbund, (ISK), usually translated into English as Militant Socialist International.

In my research, I am now trying to work out how these international socialist connections influenced what Austen Albu and Allan Flanders aimed to achieve in Germany and how much power and influence they were able to exert in practice. There were not many committed socialists in senior positions in the British Military Government and Control Commission for Germany, but they had grounds to be hopeful, as a new Labour Government was in power in London, and many former soldiers as well as civilians had voted Labour in the 1945 election, in the hope and belief that everyone, in both Britain and Germany, had to work together to create a new and better world, after the devastation of war.

References

Austen Albu’s personal papers, including his unpublished memoirs Back Bench Technocrat are held at the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge.

Allan Flanders’ papers and those of the Socialist Vanguard Group are held at the Modern Records Centre at Warwick University, though unfortunately there is relatively little material available on his time in Germany.

 

“We pour petrol on them”

21 July 2011

Every now and then, in my research, I find something surprising and shocking.

I’ve recently read a book first published in 1925, by Katharine Tynan on Life in the Occupied Area. I wanted to know if her view of life in the occupied parts of Germany after the First World War was similar to those given in other contemporary accounts, such Eric Gedye’s The Revolver Republic, and Violet Markham’s A Woman’s Watch on the Rhine. It was and it wasn’t.

Katharine Tynan was an Anglo-Irish writer, a prolific novelist and friend of the poet, W B Yeats. She was born in 1861 and wrote over 100 novels before she died in 1931. In 1922 she and her 21-year old daughter went to live for a little over a year in Cologne, which was then occupied by the British. She didn’t explain why she did so, but her son, Pat, had been one of the first British troops who 'made the trek' into Germany after the Armistice in November 1918 and we can assume she wanted to be near him. In any case, it seems she went as a civilian, not officially as part of the occupation.

She loved her time in Cologne, writing about the flowers in the parks and gardens and how religious the people were…

'You may walk in beauty and have beauty as far as any reasonable eye will wish to see, and if you must look beyond, why, the church-towers of Cologne dominate all the chimneys.'

Only once in Italy did she 'get the same sense of religion' as she did in Cologne.

She described how beautiful and well-behaved the children were…

'Looking at those children could one wish one of them away? They are beautiful children – as beautiful as those St. Augustine saw in the market-place, and always beautifully clean and well-kept…'

In the parks where they played: 'these children look and never touch. Yet they are not automata … They are as fearless as sparrows.'

Her first excursion away from the city to the surrounding countryside was like a trip to fairyland...

'It was an exquisite day. As we went home under the green aisles, [the trees along the roadside] by the sleeping villages, the long line of white posts marking the road brilliant in the head-lights, it was too fine for anything but Fairyland.'

She was surprised above all by the friendliness of the German people, which she found 'strikes you at first as unnatural.'

'We had come to Germany, as most people of the Allied countries must come with an expectation of enmity, open or concealed … The enmity was strangely, inexplicably absent, although we still felt that it must be there and kept saying to each other, as had been often said to us since: "You know they must hate us."'

'At first we certainly thought the friendliness too good to be true, but one got over that. A thousand kindnesses could not be prompted by policy – not the children who brought their puppies in the streets for us to handle and fondle; not the women who stood to smile at us; not the people who laughed at your ignorance of German, so that you were at least as must exhilarated as they.'

Her experience of meeting and talking to other British people in Cologne, especially the wives of officers in the occupation, made her realise that her views were not shared by all. She attributed this to two things she believed she shared with the Rhinelanders: her Catholic faith and her 'Irish temperament':

'I can believe that few of the British Occupation or the civilians of Cologne got so near the people as we did. It is the kneeling at the same altar that makes all the difference, to say nothing of the fact that there is a certain likeness in temperament between the Irish and the Rhinelander.'

None of this surprised or shocked me. The passage that did came in her description of a summer holiday at a seaside resort on the Baltic coast.

They met an American lady married to a German, with a delightful little boy who was 'fuller of the joy of life than any child I had seen up to then.'

The lady was very kind and helpful and she discussed with her how surprisingly friendly she found the Germans. The American lady replied that: 'The Germans have no hate in their hearts. They are not a hating people.'

But there was one thing the American lady was angry about: 'the use of coloured troops in the French Occupation.'

The Germans, Katharine Tynan wrote: 'regarded their presence as something intolerable and unforgivable, and no wonder,' although she personally had no objection, explaining that the French had 100,000 troops as against 8,000 British. Some were Senegalese from Africa but 'oftener the brown-skinned Algerians or Moors, very picturesque, with beautiful colouring… They are, of course, not a negroid type, but very handsome with fine features.'

Her 'American lady' she wrote, was 'very excited about the dark troops', and here is the passage that really did shock and surprise me: what she reported the American lady said next:

'"It is not Christian," she said vehemently, "It is not Christian. I’ll tell you what we do with the blacks in our country. We pour petrol on them and set them afire."'

I suppose I should have known that racial prejudice was very widespread in the 1920s, not only in Germany, but in the US, Britain and Ireland, even amongst otherwise kindly, sympathetic and well-meaning ladies, such as Katherine Tynan and her American friend. But wasn’t this murder she was talking about?

References

Katharine Tynan, Life in the Occupied Area (London: Hutchinson, 1925)

List of Posts: June 2011 - September 2009

11 July 2011

For anyone reading this blog for the first time, I am a PhD history student at the Centre for Contemporary British History at Kings College London, researching the British in occupied Germany after the end of World War Two. I am now in the fourth year of a six year part-time course. In my view, history is a process of discovery, and I try to post something new and interesting on this blog around once a week or once a month, as I work my way through the research.

I've listed below all posts on this blog since September 2009. For earlier posts, see:

The Politics of Military Occupation

4 July 2011

As a student researching British people in occupied Germany after the Second World War, I was intrigued to read a recent book by Peter Stirk on The Politics of Military Occupation. In this, he proposed the following definition of military occupation as:

“A form of government imposed by force or threat thereof that establishes a type of mutual obligation between the occupier and the occupied, but without bringing about any change in allegiance.”

If we accept this definition, (which seems reasonable to me), this implies that occupation is the de facto rule of the inhabitants of one country, by people appointed and controlled by the government(s) of another country or countries, by the use of force if necessary, usually, but not exclusively, as a result of the invasion, capture and occupation of territory in war.

- It therefore represents the conscious denial of self-government to the inhabitants of the defeated country, on a temporary basis. (There may, of course, be good reasons for this, such as self-defence while the war is in progress, or the need to avoid chaos and anarchy).

- It combines alien rule with military dictatorship and rule by force.

- Though established and maintained by force, there is still an obligation on the occupier to protect the community, arising from the responsibility that goes with assumption of the authority to govern, and a corresponding obligation on the occupied to obey, or at least not frustrate the authority of the occupier. These mutual obligations may often be violated in practice, on both sides, but this does not mean they should not be accepted as the normal standard of behaviour.

Occupation is often presumed to be inherently disreputable; an unstable and illegitimate form of government, unlike two other outcomes of war: a) conquest and annexation of territory formerly held by the defeated government or b) liberation from the rule of an oppressive regime and the restoration of self-government. Occupiers may try to describe themselves as something else - conquerors, liberators or allies - to avoid the charge of alien rule or military dictatorship.

Occupations are often described from the point of view of the occupied, as a period of oppression before liberation and the restoration of a legitimate government – for example Belgium under German occupation during the First World War.

On the other hand, where occupation was followed by a successful annexation, the period of occupation tends to be forgotten, subsumed in the subsequent history of the territory as an integral part of the victorious country – such as the conquest and annexation of California and New Mexico by the USA, following the Mexican-American war of 1846-8.

In some cases, occupation represents the period between the cessation of hostilities, the end of active conflict, and the signing of a peace treaty. However, military occupation of all or part of a country can also continue after a peace treaty is signed, such as the occupation of the Rhineland, after the First World War.

Occupation can also be followed by self-determination and independence. In these cases it comprises a continuum, not a fixed status. For example the degree of control exercised by the occupying power could range from absolute control of all aspects of government, to reserved powers agreed by treaty and enforced by a military presence stationed in a small number of bases – such as the occupation of Germany by the Allies after the Second World War.

In these circumstances, it seems to me that occupation can perhaps be best understood by a comparison with Empire, thinking of the occupied territory as a ‘temporary colony’, administered by the occupier (the imperial power) on behalf of the local inhabitants and expected in due course, by both occupiers and occupied, to acquire full independence as a separate country. That, of course, is a fairly positive way of seeing it. It could also be viewed in more negative terms as a 'temporary colony' controlled and exploited by the occupier for political, economic or strategic reasons.

Occupation is essentially temporary, though it may be prolonged over several decades. It assumes the continued existence of a country, (as a defined area of land), even if that country has no government, the government is not able to enforce its rule in the occupied territories, or the juridical authority of the government is limited to less than would be considered full independence.

Although occupation may appear harsh, the idea was originally designed to limit the arbitrary conquest and annexation of territory following victory and defeat in war, creating a distinction between temporary occupation, and the permanent assertion of authority over a conquered territory, legitimised by a peace treaty.

There have been many occasions when countries, such as France, Belgium, the Soviet Union, Germany and Japan, have both been occupied and have acted as occupiers themselves. This makes it interesting to study attempts to create a set of principles which apply generally to military occupation, and which are fair to both occupiers and occupied. One such set of principles was embodied in international law in the Hague Conventions of 1907, which remain in force today. The relevant section is headed "Military authority over the territory of the hostile state’. It defines occupation as "the authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant," and specifies some principles which limit the absolute power of the occupying authority. See articles 42-56 of the Convention.

Where does my own subject of research, the British Occupation of Germany after the Second World War, fit within a generalised understanding of Military Occupation?

Germany was not treated by the Allies as a liberated country (unlike Austria), and they had no intention of restoring the Weimar Republic as it had been prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. The British and US had no intention of annexing any part of the country (unlike the Soviet Union and arguably the French), but they did intend to control its future political and economic development, though for how long they could continue to do this, and by what means, were not clear. The declaration of assumption of supreme power by the Allied Commanders at the end of the war included the assertion that the Hague Convention did not apply and they did not consider they were bound by them. The occupation was therefore a fairly rare example of one that was clearly not perceived as liberation and restoration of the previous order, though it was expected to be followed by self-determination and independence, subject to approval of the Allies. Nowadays we would probably call this ‘regime change’. From a British perspective, it seems a good example of occupation as a ‘temporary colony’, that would eventually be allowed independence, in line with British imperial ideas at the time. Remarkably, although at first it was expected that the occupation would last twenty years or more, it all happened very quickly, with an independent West German government created and approved by the Western Allies in 1949, though still subject to the restrictions of an Occupation Statute.

According to Peter Stirk: “Military occupiers have been consistently inadequately prepared for military government, even on those occasions where they have recognised the problem in advance and made great efforts to prepare for it, such as the Allied occupation of Germany and Japan at the end of the Second World War.”

Too often, he continued, occupation has been subject to improvisation. Occupiers have been surprised at the enormity of the task, perceiving its extent as "unprecedented" and complaining about lack of resources and inadequate personnel. This certainly matches my understanding of the British in post-war Germany.

Military occupations in the aftermath of war do occur, and however difficult, there is a good case that a properly organised and regulated occupation is better than the alternatives: unnecessary conquest and annexation that might cause resentment many years into the future, the application of brute force to maintain control or enforce specific policies against the wishes of the inhabitants, or simply walking away after military intervention and doing nothing. All three options were considered suitable, by some people, for post-war Germany, but fortunately never taken further.

The dilemma for the occupier, of course, is that they may still feel threatened by the country they defeated in war, invaded and occupied, or they may dislike or disapprove of the conduct of the government there (perhaps with good reason), but fighting a war does not lead directly to the creation of a new and better government. If the country has been invaded, victory leads to military occupation, with a whole new set of problems and challenges. Peter Stirk defined Military Occupation as a form of government, which seems correct to me, but it is one that contains the seeds of its own destruction, as the purpose of the occupation must be to make itself redundant and hand over control either to the previous government or to a new, legitimate authority. Successful occupations are those that achieve this reasonably quickly. Unsuccessful occupations are those that last longest.

References

Peter Stirk, The Politics of Military Occupation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009)