GERMANY POST WORLD WAR- II (1945-1949)

INTRODUCTION

At the end of the Second World War, Germany was divided by victorious allies-Britain,US,the
Soviet Union and France- into four occupied zones.This was done through agreements made
between Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at Yalta in February 1945.

It was originally intended that the country would be governed as a single entity by central
German administrations, in accordance with decisions made by the four Allies acting jointly
through the Allied Control Council in Berlin, but in practice each of the Allies ran their zone
more or less independently for the first two years of the occupation. In 1947 the British and US
zones combined economically to form the ‘Bizone’ but remained separate political entities. It
was not until 1949, four years after the end of the war, that the three western zones formally
joined together to form the Federal Republic of (West) Germany, and the Soviet zone became the
German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

Politically and diplomatically, Germany was de-nazified, disarmed as an independent military

force and the Western and Eastern parts firmly anchored within the NATO and Warsaw Pact
alliances. In the West, currency reform in 1948, free market policies and the generous terms of
Marshall Aid provided the pre-conditions for the subsequent ‘economic miracle.’ This success
story was reinforced by peaceful reunification in 1990 replacing the inconclusive and potentially
unstable situation created in 1949 of Germany divided into two separate states.

Success, however, was not a foregone conclusion. A superficial understanding of Allied policies
and actions and the German response may create unjustified complacency that once victory is
achieved and dictatorial regimes removed from power, sufficient financial investment and the
adoption of free market economic policies will be enough to create stable and prosperous
democracies. The difficult period of transition, between the end of the war in Europe in May
1945 and the creation of an independent Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, involved hard
choices. Governing the British zone of occupied Germany offers relevant lessons for
contemporary operations.

This term paper contains the detailed study of the situation in the British, US and French zones,
policies pursued and timescales varied in each zone. In the east, the German Democratic
Republic was to prove a loyal ally of the Soviet Union for over 40 years until the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989 and become, in the meantime, relatively affluent compared to other
members of the Soviet bloc.

YALTA CONFERENCE

The Yalta Conference was a meeting of British prime minister Winston Churchill, Soviet
premier Joseph Stalin, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt early in February 1945 as World War
II was winding down. The leaders agreed to require Germany’s unconditional surrender and to
set up in the conquered nation four zones of occupation to be run by their three countries and
France. They scheduled another meeting for April in San Francisco to create the United Nations.
Stalin also agreed to permit free elections in Eastern Europe and to enter the Asian war against
Japan. In turn, he was promised the return of lands lost to Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of
1904-1905. At the time, most of these agreements were kept secret.Although most of these
agreements were initially kept secret, the revelations of the conference particulars became
controversial after Soviet-American wartime cooperation degenerated into the Cold War. Stalin
broke his promise of free elections in Eastern Europe and installed governments dominated by
the Soviet Union. Then American critics charged that Roosevelt, who died two months after the
conference, had “sold out” to the Soviets at Yalta.

POTSDAM CONFERENCE

The Potsdam Conference was held at the home of ​Crown Prince Wilhelm​, in ​Potsdam​, ​occupied
Germany​, from 17 July to 2 August 1945. (In some older documents it is also referred to as the
Berlin Conference of the Three Heads of Government of the USSR, USA and UK. Participants
were the ​Soviet Union​, the ​United Kingdom and the United States. The three powers were
represented by Communist Party General Secretary Joseph Stalin, Prime Ministers Winston
Churchill and, later, Clement Attlee,and President Harry S. Truman.

Stalin, ​Churchill​, and Truman—as well as Attlee, who participated alongside Churchill while
awaiting the outcome of the 1945 general election, and then replaced Churchill as Prime Minister
after the ​Labour Party​'s defeat of the ​Conservatives​—gathered to decide how to administer the
defeated ​Nazi Germany​, which had agreed to unconditional surrender nine weeks earlier, on 8
May (​V-E Day​). The goals of the conference also included the establishment of post-war order,
peace treaty issues, and countering the effects of the war.

In the five months since the Yalta Conference, a number of changes had taken place which
would greatly affect the relationships between the leaders.

1. The Soviet Union was occupying Central and Eastern Europe

By July, the Red Army effectively controlled the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, and fearing a Stalinist take-over, refugees were fleeing from
these countries. Stalin had set up a communist government in Poland. He insisted that his control
of Eastern Europe was a defensive measure against possible future attacks and claimed that it
was a legitimate sphere of Soviet influence.

2. Britain had a new Prime Minister

The results of the British election became known during the conference. As a result of the
Labour Party victory over the Conservative Party the leadership changed hands. Consequently,
British Prime Minister Clement Attlee assumed leadership following Winston Churchill, whose
Soviet policy since the early 1940s had differed considerably from former US President
Roosevelt, with Churchill believing Stalin to be a "devil"-like tyrant leading a vile system.

3. The United States had a new president, and the war was ending.
President Roosevelt had died on 12 April 1945, and Vice-President Harry Truman assumed the
presidency; his succession saw VE Day (Victory in Europe) within a month and VJ Day (Victory
in Japan) on the horizon. During the war and in the name of Allied unity, Roosevelt had brushed
off warnings of a potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship in part of Europe. He explained
that "I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man," and reasoned, "I think that if I give
him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, 'noblesse oblige,' he won't
try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.

While inexperienced in foreign affairs, Truman had closely followed the allied progress of the
war. George Lenczowski notes "despite the contrast between his relatively modest background
and the international glamour of his aristocratic predecessor, [Truman] had the courage and
resolution to reverse the policy that appeared to him naive and dangerous," which was "in
contrast to the immediate, often ad hoc moves and solutions dictated by the demands of the war.
With the end of the war, the priority of allied unity was replaced with a new challenge, the nature
of the relationship between the two emerging superpowers.

Truman became much more suspicious of communist moves than Roosevelt had been, and he
became increasingly suspicious of Soviet intentions under Stalin. Truman and his advisers saw
Soviet actions in Eastern Europe as aggressive expansionism which was incompatible with the
agreements Stalin had committed to at Yalta the previous February. In addition, it was at the
Potsdam Conference that Truman became aware of possible complications elsewhere, when
Stalin objected to Churchill's proposal for an early Allied withdrawal from Iran, ahead of the
schedule agreed at the Tehran Conference. However, the Potsdam Conference marks the first and
only time Truman would ever meet Stalin in person.

GERMANY JUST AFTER THE END OF WW- II 1945

In May 1945 Germany was in chaos. Observers reported that the destruction in some of the
larger cities had to be seen to be believed with, for example, 66% of the houses in Cologne
destroyed, and in Düsseldorf 93% uninhabitable. The economy was at a standstill and no central
government remained to implement instructions issued by the Allies. Millions of people were
homeless, or attempting to return to homes that no longer existed. They included German
civilians evacuated from the cities or trying to escape from the fighting on both Eastern and
Western fronts, former forced labourers from across Europe (known as ‘Displaced Persons’ or
‘DPs') and ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia or from former German eastern
territories now ceded to Poland. Ivone Kirkpatrick, later appointed head of the German
Department and subsequently Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, described his
first impressions of Germany in 1945: there were ‘hundreds of thousands of Germans on foot,
trekking in all directions … as if a giant ant-heap had suddenly been disturbed.’

Although numerous plans for the occupation had been compiled during the war by officials
based in London, and a set of directives issued by the War Office in October 1944, these seemed
inappropriate for the conditions the soldiers found on the ground in Germany, once victory had
been achieved. Field-Marshal Montgomery, appointed Commander-in-Chief and Military
Governor of the British zone of occupation on 22 May 1945, later recalled the immediate
problems they faced: what to do with 1.5 million German POWs, a further million wounded
German soldiers, similar numbers of civilian German refugees and Displaced Persons of many
different nationalities, no working transport or communication services, industry and agriculture
at a standstill, a scarcity of food and the risk of starvation and epidemics of disease. He added
that: ‘I was a soldier and I had not been trained to handle anything of this nature … However
something had to be done, and done quickly.’

In his second ‘Note on the Present Situation’ in July 1945, Montgomery wrote that they had only
recently become aware of ‘the full extent of the debacle’ and ‘the magnitude of the problem that
confronts us in the rebuilding of Germany.’ Part of the problem, he continued, was ‘a tendency
to adhere too rigidly’ to earlier instructions which were now out of date and a new general
directive was required. A week later he added, ‘Our present attitude towards the German people
is negative, it must be replaced by one that is positive and holds out hope for the future.
PHYSICAL AND ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION

The Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats quickly established themselves as the major
political parties in the politics of Bizonia.The Social Democrats held to their long-standing
commitment to nationalization of basic industries and extensive government control over other
aspects of the economy. The Christian Democrats, after initially inclining to a vaguely conceived
“Christian socialism,” swung to espousal of a basically free-enterprise orientation. In March
1948 they joined with the laissez-faire Free Democrats to install as architect of Bizonia’s
economy Ludwig Erhard, a previously obscure economist who advocated a “social market
economy,” essentially a free-market economy with government regulation to prevent the
formation of monopolies or cartels and a welfare state to safeguard social needs.

When repeated meetings with the Soviets failed to produce four-power cooperation, the Western
occupying powers decided in the spring of 1948 to move on their own. They were particularly
concerned about the deteriorating economic conditions throughout occupied Germany, which
burdened their own countries and awakened fears of renewed political extremism among the
Germans. The Western powers therefore decided to extend to their occupation zones American
economic aid, which had been instituted elsewhere in western Europe a year earlier under the
Marshall Plan. To enhance the effectiveness of that aid, the Americans, British, and French
effected a currency reform in their zones that replaced Germany’s badly inflated currency (the
Reichsmark) with a new, hard deutsche mark, or DM. Western Germany’s economy responded
quickly, as goods previously unavailable for nearly worthless money came onto the market.

The new policy of reconstruction had some limited success, but fell short of achieving sustained
economic growth or more than a basic subsistence level of existence for the German civilian
population. Over a million German soldiers, captured and detained at the end of the war and held
in the British zone, were released between June and September 1945 to work on the land and
bring in the harvest, in a project named ‘Operation Barleycorn’. A similar project, ‘Operation
Coalscuttle’, was less successful, with around 30,000 former soldiers released to work in the coal
mines, far fewer than were needed to restore output to pre-war production levels. British army
engineers restored much of the transport infrastructure and the economy started to revive, but
severe shortages of labour and raw materials meant that production remained at very low levels.

Despite widespread concern over incidents of TB, Hunger Oedema and other diseases, there
were no serious epidemics in post-war Germany. The supply of food, however, was a constant
problem. Rations in the British zone had to be reduced to a near starvation level of 1,000 calories
a day in March 1946, which limited workers’ productive capacity, as they took time off from
work to travel to the countryside for additional supplies. Rations did not exceed 1,500 calories a
day until 1948-9, following a substantial increase in US financial aid and food exports to both
the US and British zones (by comparison, food consumption in ‘austerity Britain’ during the
immediate post-war years was significantly higher, averaging 2,800 calories a day). Due to the
high cost of food imports and the lack of exports to pay for these due to low levels of production,
shortages of labour and raw materials, the zone proved to be an economic liability instead of the
expected asset. It cost the British taxpayer £80 million in 1946-7, despite containing much of
West Germany’s industrial and manufacturing capacity.

The economic historian, Werner Abelshauser, and others have shown that the first stages of
German post-war economic recovery, leading to the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s,
pre-dated the currency reform of 1948 and the economic and financial stimulus offered by the
European Recovery Programme (Marshall Plan). What contribution to revival was made by
British economic policies during the first four years of occupation? There were some notable
achievements, such as restoration of transport infrastructure, and the preservation and effective
management of some enterprises taken into Military Government ownership, such as
Volkswagen. Yet the essential British contribution to future German economic revival lay in
providing a period of stability after the war, restoring order and the rule of law, and securing the
provision of basic services, even though in many areas, such as food and housing, this could only
be done at a low level. In doing so, the British provided an environment which enabled Germans
to succeed and create economic prosperity through their own efforts.
Germany, the European Union’s largest economy and most populous state, is often depicted as a
Gulliver in the foreign policy literature. After three expansionist wars in the 19th and 20th
century (1870–1871; 1914–1918, 1939–1945), neighboring states harbored serious reservations
about a unified Germany, resulting in different strategies to address the “German question.” In
the late 19th century, the German Reich under the Chancellorship of Otto von Bismarck was
enmeshed in an intricate net of alliances, the collapse of which triggered World War I.Then in
the 1920s, the continental powers and the United States tried to both contain—through
reparations and territorial revisions in the treaty of Versailles (1919)—and integrate Germany’s
first democracy, the Weimar Republic, into the League of Nations. However, the League’s
incipient system of collective security did not stand up to the challenge of German and Italian
fascism and Japanese militarism. In 1945, allied nations finally defeated the German Wehrmacht
and occupied all of the territory of the so-called “Third Reich.” After World War II, the German
Gulliver finally was tied down successfully and the German question thus temporarily resolved
when two states, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the West, and the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East, were bound in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO), respectively.

POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS BETWEEN 1945 AND 1949

Following the German military leaders’ unconditional surrender in May 1945, the country lay
prostrate. The German state had ceased to exist, and sovereign authority passed to the victorious
Allied powers. The physical devastation from Allied bombing campaigns and from ground
battles was enormous an estimated one-fourth of the country’s housing was destroyed or
damaged beyond use, and in many cities the toll exceeded 50 percent. Germany’s economic
infrastructure had largely collapsed as factories and transportation systems ceased to function.
Rampant inflation was undermining the value of the currency, and an acute shortage of food
reduced the diet of many city dwellers to the level of malnutrition. These difficulties were
compounded by the presence of millions of homeless German refugees from the former eastern
provinces. The end of the war came to be remembered as “zero hour,” a low point from which
virtually everything had to be rebuilt anew from the ground up.For purposes of occupation, the
Americans, British, French, and Soviets divided Germany into four zones. The American,
British, and French zones together made up the western two-thirds of Germany, while the Soviet
zone comprised the eastern third. Berlin, the former capital, which was surrounded by the Soviet
zone, was placed under joint four-power authority but was partitioned into four sectors for
administrative purposes. An Allied Control Council was to exercise overall joint authority over
the country.

These arrangements did not incorporate all of prewar Germany. The Soviets unilaterally severed
the German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and placed these under the direct
administrative authority of the Soviet Union and Poland, with the larger share going to the Poles
as compensation for territory they lost to the Soviet Union. The former provinces of East Prussia,
most of Pomerania, and Silesia were thus stripped from Germany. Since virtually the entire
German population of some 9.5 million in these and adjacent regions was expelled westward,
this amounted to a de facto annexation of one-fourth of Germany’s territory as of 1937, the year
before the beginning of German expansion under Hitler. The Western Allies acquiesced in these
actions by the Soviets, taking consolation in the expectation that these annexations were merely
temporary expedients that the final peace terms would soon supersede.

As a result of irreconcilable differences among the Allied powers, however, no peace conference
was ever held. The issue of German reparations proved particularly divisive. The Soviet Union,
whose population and territory had suffered terribly at the hands of the Germans, demanded
large-scale material compensation. The Western Allies initially agreed to extract reparations but
soon came to resent the Soviets’ seizures of entire German factories as well as current
production. Under the terms of inter-Allied agreements, the Soviet zone of occupation, which
encompassed much of German agriculture and was less densely populated than those of the other
Allies, was to supply foodstuffs to the rest of Germany in return for a share of reparations from
the Western occupation zones. But when the Soviets failed to deliver the requisite food, the
Western Allies found themselves forced to feed the German population in their zones at the
expense of their own taxpayers. The Americans and British therefore came to favour a revival of
German industry so as to enable the Germans to feed themselves, a step the Soviets opposed.
When the Western powers refused in 1946 to permit the Soviets to claim further reparations from
their zones, cooperation among the wartime allies deteriorated sharply. As day-by-day
cooperation became more difficult, the management of the occupation zones gradually moved in
different directions. Even before a formal break between East and West, opposing social,
political, and economic systems had begun to emerge. Despite their differences, the Allies agreed
that all traces of Nazism had to be removed from Germany. To this end, the Allies tried at 22
Nazi leaders; all but three were convicted, and 12 were sentenced to death. The Soviets
summarily removed former Nazis from office in their zone of occupation; eventually,
anti-fascism became a central element of East Germany’s ideological arsenal. But, since the East
German regime denied any connection to what happened in Germany during the Nazi era, there
was little incentive to examine Nazism’s role in German history. The relationship of Germans to
the Nazi past was more complex in West Germany. On the one hand, many former Nazis
survived and gradually returned to positions of influence in business, education, and the
professions, but West German intellectuals were also critically engaged with the burdens of the
past, which became a central theme in the novels of Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, and many
others.

Beginning in the summer of 1945, the occupation authorities permitted the formation of German
political parties in preparation for elections for new local and regional representative assemblies.
Two of the major leftist parties of the Weimar era quickly revived: the moderate Social
Democratic Party(SPD) and the German Communist Party (KPD), which was loyal to the Soviet
Union. These were soon joined by a new creation, the Christian Democratic Union
(Christlich-Demokratische Union CDU), with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social
Union (CSU). The leaders of this Christian Democratic coalition had for the most part been
active in the moderate parties of the Weimar Republic, especially the Catholic Centre Party.
They sought to win popular support on the basis of a non-denominational commitment to
Christian ethics and democratic institutions. Germans who favoured a secular state and
laissez-faire economic policies formed a new Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische
Partei; FDP) in the Western zones and a Liberal Democratic Party in the Soviet zone. Numerous
smaller parties were also launched in the Western zones.Under pressure from the occupation
authorities, in April 1946 the Social Democratic Party leaders in the Soviet zone agreed to merge
with the Communists, a step denounced by the Social Democrats in the Western zones. The
resulting Socialist Unity Party(SED) swept to victory with the ill-concealed aid of the Soviets in
the first elections for local and regional assemblies in the Soviet zone. However, when in
October 1946 elections were held under fairer conditions in Berlin, which was under four-power
occupation, the SED tallied fewer than half as many votes as the Social Democratic Party, which
had managed to preserve its independence in the old capital. Thereafter the SED, which
increasingly fell under communist domination as Social Democrats were systematically purged
from its leadership ranks, avoided free, competitive elections by forcing all other parties to join a
permanent coalition under its leadership.The occupying powers soon approved the formation of
regional governmental units called Länder (singular Land), or states. By 1947 the Land in the
Western zones had freely elected parliamentary assemblies. Institutional developments followed
a superficially similar pattern in the Soviet zone, but there the political process remained less
than free because of the dominance of the Soviet-backed SED.

Responsibility for re-establishing democratic structures and processes of government in the

British zone was devolved to the Administration and Local Government (ALG) branch of the
Control Commission. The set of directives issued by the War Office in October 1944 contained
no guidance on the issue, apart from instructions to remove all former Nazis from public office
and positions of responsibility, and a general requirement to promote decentralisation and the
development of local responsibility. None of the senior officials in the branch had previous
experience of working in local government positions in Britain. Those who did have suitable
qualifications generally preferred to stay in Britain, where there was great demand for skilled
personnel in a labour market distorted by six years of war. Harold Ingrams, the head of branch,
was a former colonial official. He reported to an army general. Soldiers and former colonial
officials, with no personal experience of democratic processes, were therefore given the job of
creating a democratic system, in a country that had been ruled by a fascist dictatorship for the
past 12 years.
Ingrams believed that the purpose of their work was to prevent another war, writing that ‘We are
trying to beat the swastika into the parish pump, and the parish council does not go to war.’ In
his view, they had to do more than remove former Nazis from positions of responsibility, disarm
what was left of the German army and destroy weapons factories. They had to create a new
political system, in a foreign country, that would prevent another Hitler coming to power. This,
he believed, could best be achieved by a policy of decentralisation, starting the process of
political renewal at local level, giving people responsibility for their own communities.

Montgomery, as Military Governor, banned all political activity for the first four months of the
occupation, while Army ‘Civil Affairs’ detachments took over direct control of civil
administration of towns and districts and assumed responsibility for the immediate needs of the
inhabitants. Ingrams and his colleagues in the ALG branch then built from the bottom up,
creating nominated representative councils for towns, cities and rural districts. British local
detachment commanders selected German council members to represent all the ‘party or
sectional’ interests in the area, which were defined widely, to include religious groups, trade
unions, political parties, farmers and industrialists, or geographically by residential areas.

During the first two years of the occupation, British policy in local government moved from
direct to indirect rule. Political parties were licensed from late 1945, initially at local, then at
regional and zonal level, and elections were held in October 1946 to select representatives for
city, district and regional councils. Following the agreed principle of decentralisation,
considerable power was devolved to the regions, the German Länder, Schleswig-Holstein, Lower
Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and the city of Hamburg. Only those functions of government
which could not be performed regionally, such as central economic planning or managing the
transport infrastructure, were retained at zonal level under Military Government control, pending
agreement between the Allies on the future governmental structure for Germany as a whole.

Over time, British officials learnt that they could not impose democracy by force. At first,
Ingrams tried to introduce a British model of democracy in Germany. He attempted to impose
British practices, such as the ‘first past the post’ method of voting in elections, and the
appointment of unpaid and non-executive chairmen of local city councils, to replace the German
or elected city mayors. These attempts were generally unsuccessful. Leading German members
of the newly formed democratic political parties argued that there had been a strong tradition of
local democracy in Germany before the Nazi seizure of power, and it was wrong to impose an
‘alien’ British system. They were supported by German exiles in London, and by John Hynd, the
Minister for Germany, who had close links with some of the exiles.

When discussing future political structures, both sides agreed on many key principles – that
individuals should be safeguarded against excessive demands from an authoritarian government,
and that the electoral system should be designed to promote stable government with an effective
but loyal opposition, and discourage extreme political parties. In many cases, the outcome was a
compromise, containing elements of both the British and pre-Nazi German systems. The
electoral system eventually adopted in Germany and still used today, for example, is an elaborate
compromise between proportional representation – choosing multiple candidates from a party list
– and the British ‘first past the post’ electoral system.

A policy of introducing democracy by persuasion, not by force or by unilateral decree, appears to

have succeeded, despite well-publicised concerns (which emerged from the 1950s and continue
to the present) that some former Nazis remained in positions of authority and influence. When
elections were held in the Federal Republic of (West) Germany in August 1949, the great
majority of people voted for the democratic parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Social
Democrats (SPD) and the Free Democrats (FDP).

Nazi Germany surrenders unconditionally in May 1945. Twelve years of Nazi dictatorship have
plunged Europe into the abyss, led to racial fanaticism and horrific crimes, and cost the lives of
almost 60 million people in the war and the extermination camps. The victorious Allies divide
Germany into four zones. The western powers foster the development of a parliamentary
democracy, while the Soviet Union opens the door for socialism in the east. The Cold War
begins. The Federal Republic of Germany is founded in the west with the promulgation of the
Basic Law on 23 May 1949. The first Bundestag ​elections are held on 14 August and Konrad
Adenauer (CDU) becomes Federal Chancellor. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) is
founded in the “eastern zone” on 7 October 1949. Germany is in effect divided into east and
west.

The young Federal Republic builds close links with the western democracies. It is one of the
founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and one of the six
countries that sign the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community – today’s
European Union – in Rome in 1957. In 1955, the Federal Republic joins NATO, the western
defense alliance. Economic and social stabilization makes rapid progress. In combination with
the currency reform of 1948 and the US Marshall Plan, the social market economy leads to an
economic upturn that is soon described as an “economic miracle”. At the same time, the Federal
Republic acknowledges its responsibility towards the victims of the Holocaust: Federal
Chancellor Adenauer and Israel’s Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett sign a reparations agreement
in 1952.

CONTEMPLATIONS REGARDING THE MILITARY OF GERMANY

As soon as the Germany surrendered in May, Montgomery and his senior staff responsible for
Military Government and the civil administration of the British zone assumed that their most
urgent task was to create order out of chaos. Writing in January 1946, his deputy, General Brian
Robertson, described the first phase of the occupation, immediately before and after the German
unconditional surrender in May 1945:

The directives were not many, and much was left to the initiative of individuals the detachments
entered into a land of desolation and bewilderment. Government above the level of the parish
council had ceased. Everything was in disorder; people were stunned and helpless “First things
first” was the motto when Military Government first raised its sign in Germany.

Montgomery had served as a young officer in the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) after the
First World War, during the occupation of the Rhineland, when British troops occupied Cologne
and surrounding areas to try to ensure that the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were
enforced. Robertson’s father, Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, had commanded the BAOR
for a time. Faced with problems which appeared alarmingly similar to those their predecessors
had faced only 25 years earlier, Montgomery, Robertson and their colleagues tried to avoid the
mistakes they believed had been made then. The lessons they drew from the failure to secure a
lasting peace after the First World War, were not only that Germany should be completely
demilitarised and its industries controlled to prevent future re-armament, but that law and order
had to be restored, steps taken to prevent epidemics of disease, and economic activity re-started,
to try to prevent the unemployment and social unrest which had, they believed, contributed to the
rise of extreme political parties and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

Montgomery decided to treat the task of governing their defeated enemy as if it were a military
operation, referring to the need to fight the ‘Battle of the Winter’, to secure food, work and
homes for the former enemies. The resources available under his direct command were the army
and the civilian Control Commission, which had been established in the final year of the war and
transferred to Germany in July and August 1945. As early as July 1945, less than three months
after the end of the war, he issued a new draft directive to British army commanders and Control
Commission heads of division, finalised on 10 September 1945. Unlike earlier wartime
directives, the new directive identified steps to be taken to reconstruct German economic and
political life, address shortages of food, fuel and housing, improve transport facilities, reopen
schools, permit freedom of assembly, licence political parties and prepare for future elections.
Con O’Neill, a senior Foreign Office official and leading authority on Germany minuted that the
new directive ‘gives me, in general, the impression that British Military Govt. has now embarked
on a policy of Full Speed Ahead for German rehabilitation.

CONCLUSION

The military occupations of Germany and Japan after the Second World War are probably the
most prominent examples in modern times of the economic and political reconstruction of a
defeated country. Historian John Dower, for example, has suggested that they were used by US
policymakers in 2002 and 2003 as examples of successful military occupations. Despite the
successful outcome, however, post-conflict reconstruction in occupied Germany should not be
seen as a direct model for countries where specific circumstances may be very different.

If there had been armed resistance in occupied Germany, requiring British troops to fight back
and possibly kill civilians, as has occurred in other post-conflict situations such as Iraq, the
outcome might have been very different. There was no armed resistance because Germany had
been completely defeated in war and the Nazi government utterly discredited. Acceptance by a
majority of both occupiers and occupied that the previous regime had been illegitimate, together
with the establishment of law and order, peace and internal security, adequate supplies of food
and measures to prevent disease, were the crucial pre-conditions for the positive work of
reconstruction.

The British experience, however, illustrates some general principles which are relevant today.
Firstly, political solutions cannot be imposed from above by force or by decree. Secondly – and
correspondingly – there is a need for flexibility. The occupying authority’s high command must
respond to the changing conditions relayed by those on the ground, as happened in Germany.
Thirdly, it is important to provide a period of stability after the end of a war and the removal of
the previous government, to give local people the space to develop political, economic, social
and cultural institutions and practices. Finally, after war a period of subsequent occupation is not,
in itself, any effective guarantee of achieving ‘regime change’, however desirable that may seem;
the outcome is always uncertain, contingent on the wishes of the occupied, and never a foregone
conclusion. Somehow studying the above content it may also be believed that the differences
between the wartime allies were caused on the grounds of Allied Occupied Germany which
contributed to the Cold War that divided the world into two major blocs.
REFERENCES:

1. RUSI Journal, December 2013, ‘The British occupation of Germany, 1945-49: A case
study in post-conflict reconstruction’, The RUSI Journal, Vol. 158, No. 6 (Dec. 2013),
pp. 78-85.
2. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25778987?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents
3. http://www.alnap.org/members/160.aspx
4. http://webpages.cs.luc.edu/~dennis/106/106-Bkgr/28-Cold-War.pdf