Drew Middleton: ‘The Struggle for Germany’

8th December 2007

Drew Middleton was Foreign Correspondent for the New York Times during the Second World War. He wrote for the paper from 1942 until his death in 1990. During this time he covered the Dieppe Raid, the Normandy Landings and the end of the war in Germany. He spent some time in Moscow in 1946, moved to Germany in 1947, where he remained for 6 years, and was then Chief Correspondent in London for ten years from 1953-63, before returning to New York. For more details, see his obituary in the New York Times.

His book "the Struggle for Germany" was published in 1949, and provides an early view of the origins of the Cold War.

He describes Germany immediately after the war in similar terms to the "First Impressions" of other observers I’ve quoted in this blog:

"Here was destruction and chaos in a degree never before known in the world. An intricate, highly organized society had been disrupted. The invasion of Germany from west and east, heralded in the west by prolonged and intensive bombing, had brought about not only the complete defeat of the German armies but the ruin of a state. This we have forgotten. The Germans have not forgotten it, for there are very few Germans living today who are not reminded of it every day of their lives."

"The Germany of that day was silent and broken. Allied planes flew over the Ruhr. In the sunshine lay the huge plants that had fed the armies of the Kaiser and Adolf Hitler with guns and ammunition. Nothing moved on the ground. Locomotives and cars lay on their sides rusting in the sun."

The situation in Germany in 1945, was far worse than it had been in 1918, at the end of the First World War:

"In that summer [1945] very few Germans saw further ahead than the coming winter. All the standards had fallen. The national slogan seemed to be ‘eat, drink and be merry and damn the expense to your honor or your virtue.’ The Germans did not believe ‘tomorrow we die.’ They believed something far more hopeless; that tomorrow would be worse than today. So it was not surprising that millions of Allied soldiers found Germany a combination of brothel and black market."

Drew Middleton described how his own views changed from supporting a hard, revengeful peace in Germany, as Communist Russia appeared a greater threat:

"Having seen at first hand the terror and destruction and brutality of the Nazi regime from Belgium in 1940 to Holland in 1945, I was, in 1945, strongly convinced that a German desert might be a good idea. What changed my mind in the next three years was the impression gained in western Europe that a German desert now meant a general European desert and a general European war later. And, of course, in the meantime I had been in the Soviet Union for a year and had been profoundly impressed by the enormous potential strength of that country and the potential power for evil which resides there, as indeed it does in all tyrannies."

His own views reflected those of the US government:

"The policy of the United States toward Germany has oscillated between a ‘hard’ and a ‘soft’ peace. In the beginning during the last years of the war, the objective was a harsh settlement. Midway through 1946 sentiment both in Washington and Germany began to swing toward a less restrictive peace and a considerable measure of German recovery. In both instances, however, the principal governing factor was relations between the United States and other Occupying Powers. The United States hoped in 1944 and 1945 to govern Germany in harmony with the other Occupation Powers. When through the intransigence of first France and then Russia this proved impossible, the United States had to hammer out its own German policy. Russia replaced Germany as the potential enemy."

According to Middleton, in 1945, US policy towards Germany was uncertain. He quotes one US official too busy with coping with the pressure of daily events, to worry about what was official policy:

"’What’s our policy in Germany?’ I asked a Military Government officer in Bavaria in 1945. ‘Brother, I don’t know. Maybe the big wheels in Frankfort can tell you. They snow me under with all sorts of papers. How ‘m I going to read them when I’m doing forty-eleven different things to get this burg running again?’"

The Russians, on the other hand:

"… knew what they wanted. Of all the advantages enjoyed by the Soviet Union in the struggle for Germany, this is the simplest and most explanatory. The Russians want Germany, not as conquered territory, although they would certainly not disdain force if it could be used without interference by the United States, but as a political and economic vassal of the new Russian Empire. They want all Germany, not merely the 46,600 square miles of the Soviet Zone of occupation or its seventeen and a half million people. This is a fundamental of the foreign policy of the Soviet Union."

Communist Russia was a threat not only to the US in Germany, but to the capitalist world generally:

"Before we progress farther in our examination of Russian policy in Germany, account must be taken of one event which affected the Soviet policy in Germany, the entire German problem and, indeed, the entire civilized world. This was the decision taken sometime in 1945 by the political Bureau of the Communist Party, the supreme policy making group in the Soviet Union, to press and emphasize the revolutionary and destructive elements in Marxism and Leninism as they apply to the capitalist and enemy world."

The British in Germany had started out well:

"British Military Government at the outset boasted a much better-prepared personnel than that of the other powers … In the first summer after the war, traveling through the British Zone, I was impressed by the large number of experienced and able men who knew exactly why they had been sent to Germany, exactly what the local problems were and precisely how and where their particular task fitted into the whole job of Military Government."

But British influence dwindled over the next four years due to the "near collapse of the British economy in the winter of 1946-7." For the first two years of the occupation Britain had born an equal share of the costs with the US, but "from late 1947 onward, Britain began to yield some of its influence on political and economic policy making in Germany. In September of that year the British Government notified the United States that the dollar shortage would make it impossible for Britain to continue the 1946 agreement sharing costs in Western Germany. After negotiation, the two countries on December 17, 1947, signed a new agreement under which the United States undertook to finance virtually the entire cost of the British-American bizonal area and thus assumed an additional liability of about  $400,000,000 a year."

As for Germany and the Germans, rather than a revival of National Socialism, Middleton was concerned by the survival of authoritarianism, (which could be communist or fascist). This led him to the view that the greatest danger was an alliance of a nationalist Germany with Communist Russia.

Looking to the future, he thought it unlikely Germany would remain divided. Either Germany would become part of the "Western community of nations" or a united Germany would enter into an alliance with the Soviet Union becoming the most powerful of its satellite states. This could come about through either a Fascist revival in Germany reaching a deal with the Soviet Union for restoration of the lost Eastern territories, or through economic depression and popular discontent.

In summary: "Now we [ie the US] are engaged in a great contest with a totalitarian power [ie the Soviet Union] whose sources of strength are greater than those of Nazi Germany. The last four years have taught us, if they have taught us anything, that there is no retreat. The consequences of defeat are before us in eastern Europe. One of the ways in which victory can be won is to bring Germany back into the Western community of nations. But this Germany cannot be the Germany of Hitler. A Fascist Germany is a false reinforcement to the democratic powers.

We must make two efforts. The first is to see that the Germany which develops in the next five or ten years is a democratic Germany which we can trust. The second is to ensure that this Germany does not through our own mistakes fall to Communist pressure and ally itself with Russia."

This view, expressed by Drew Middleton in 1949, is generally much the same as the classic Cold War orthodoxy, which was dominant in the US and Western Europe throughout the 1950s and much of the 1960s. 

Subsequently, as David Reynolds has described in his article on "The Origins of the Cold War: The European Dimension, 1944-1951" (The Historical Journal Vol. 28, No 2, 1985), this "orthodox" view was challenged in the 1960s by "revisionist" historians who "attributed much of the blame for the Cold War to the U.S.A." and who "frequently portrayed Stalin as a cautious, flexible statesman, with limited security interests and suggested that U.S. leaders behaved in a cynical, calculating way, both in their diplomacy and in their manipulation of domestic opinion." The revisionists were then questioned by others, who used aspects of both views to form a "post revisionist synthesis" which Reynolds himself criticises for seeing the Cold War as a bi-polar struggle between the US and the Soviet Union, and for not taking sufficient account of the "European Dimension."

I am no expert on the Cold War and its origins, a subject well covered by many other historians. But as a student whose research interests are the British in Germany, I am interested in why people at the time acted the way they did, and the debate does raise some interesting questions:

When and why did British and US policy towards Germany change after the war? In my research so far, I have found that British policy and attitudes towards Germany changed in the transition from war to peace, in many ways which had little to do with fear of any threat from the Soviet Union. It seems to me that this change in policy was led as much by those on the ground, in Germany, as by the politicians and civil servants in London.

The British in Germany realised very soon after the end of the war that there was no threat of further German resistance. They were shocked at the scale of destruction they saw all around them and made great efforts to restore order and start the process of economic reconstruction. They did this partly because the need appeared self-evident, and partly to reduce the cost of occupation to the British taxpayer. In time, they came to feel and express sympathy for the suffering of Germany people as individuals. Both British and US soldiers and administrators found they could work well with German administrators and were increasingly willing to transfer responsibility for government back to local German control. All this happened well before Cold War concerns started to dominate foreign policy in Britain and the US, with the Berlin Air Lift in 1948 and the Korean War in 1950.

Why then did Drew Middleton write the way he did in 1949? Was it his time in Moscow in 1946-7 that changed his view of the Soviet Union? How realistic was his concern that a re-united nationalist Germany would become an ally and dependent satellite state of the Soviet Union?

And to what extent were his (Cold War) views (as published in 1949) shared by British soldiers and administrators in occupied Germany after the war?

British and US first impressions of Germany in 1945

1st December 2007

In previous posts I quoted some first impressions of Germany after the war, written by British soldiers, diplomats, administrators and journalists.

I’ve recently read John Gimbel’s history of the US Zone of Occupation in Germany (The American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military, 1945-1949, Stanford University Press, 1968) and was interested to find that many US administrators, soldiers and journalists, from the president downwards, expressed similar views to the British, when they first saw Germany after the war:

President Truman (to quote Gimbel): described his own sense of depression as he drove among ruined buildings in Berlin and past the "long, never-ending procession of old men, women, and children wandering aimlessly … carrying, pushing, or pulling what was left of their belongings."

Lucius D Clay, initially Deputy, then Military Governor of the US Zone, wrote to a colleague on April 26th 1945 (12 days before VE day on May 8th):

"In one of his earliest recorded observations of the scene over which he would bear primary responsibility …. Clay reported that: "retribution … is far greater than realized at home … Our planes and artillery have … carried war direct to the homes of the German people."

In his own memoirs, Decision in Germany, Clay wrote of his first visit to Berlin on June 5th 1945:

"Where-ever we looked we saw desolation. The streets were piled high with debris which left in many places only a narrow one-way passage between high mounds of rubble, and frequent detours had to be made where bridges and viaducts were destroyed. Apparently the Germans along the route, which was lined with Soviet soldiers, had been ordered to remain indoors, and it was only at the intersections that a few could be seen on the streets which crossed our route. They seemed weak, cowed, and furtive and not yet recovered from the shock of the Battle of Berlin. It was like a city of the dead. I had seen nothing quite comparable in western Germany, and I must confess that my exultation in victory was diminished as I witnessed this degradation of man. I decided than and there never to forget that we were responsible for the government of human beings."

Gimbel also quotes the US military governor of the province of Hesse describing how Americans "came into towns and cities that were deathly quiet, that smelled of death and destruction. They came into villages where white flags were draped outside every door, where faces could be felt, not seen, behind barricaded windows."

… and two journalists from the New York Herald: Walter Millis, an editorial writer, on arriving at Berlin: "This is more like the face of the moon than any city I had ever imagined," and Joseph Barnes, the foreign editor of the paper, posing the question to the authorities: "Why didn’t any of you people tell us about this."

For comparison, some other (mostly) British first impressions, quoted in earlier posts, are listed below:

Alex Cairncross
Ratchford & Ross
George Clare
Yvone Kirkpatrick
Raymond Ebsworth
Fenner Brockway
Noel Annan
William Strang
Ethel Mannin
Michael Thomas
Lieutenant-Colonel Byford-Jones

Potsdam 1945 to Western Germany 1965: A Miracle?

24th November 2007

Last week I wrote briefly about Sir Brian Robertson, probably the most influential British soldier and administrator in Germany after World War 2. He was Deputy Military Governor from 1945 to 1947 and Commander-in-Chief and Military Governor from 1947-49.

I’ve now read the article he wrote for the journal International Affairs in 1965, in which he tries to answer the question whether the British and American occupation of Germany "all worked out successfully"?

As I said in my first post on this blog two years ago, in my view, the role of the historian is not to judge the past. Who are we to say, with the benefit of hindsight, what people should or should not have done, especially when they lived and worked in places and times which were far more difficult and dangerous than our own, and which we can understand only imperfectly?

In this view I follow the great 19th century German historian Leopold von Ranke, whose words ‘how it really was’ (wie es eigentlich gewesen), I used for the name of this blog. The full quotation is worth repeating:

"Man hat der Historie das Amt, die Vergangenheit zu richten, die Mitwelt zum Nutzen zukünftiger Jahre zu belehren, beigemessen: so hoher Ämter unterwindet sich gegenwärtiger Versuch nicht: er will blos zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen."

This translates into English as:

The role, commonly attributed to History, is to judge the Past, to instruct the Present, for the benefit of the Future: such a high (noble) role is not claimed for this essay: it aims simply to show how it really was.

Rather than attempting to judge the past, what I try to do is discover and reveal, as best I can, how people in the past portrayed their work, their actions and their ideas, in their own terms and according to their own standards.

To return to Sir Brian Robertson and his article on whether the British and US Occupation of Germany was a success or not. The article was written in 1965 at the height of the Cold War. I’ve quoted a few extracts below. To my mind, they are interesting because they show, firstly, Robertson saying how the situation in Germany at the end of the war was completely different from what people in Britain and the US had expected and planned for, and secondly, looking back in 1965, his view of the ‘miracle’ that had happened in Western Germany in the previous 20 years.

"I was Field Marshal Montgomery’s deputy for Military Government in Germany in 1945. Later I succeeded to the top position. I remained in Germany for five years, becoming High Commissioner in 1949, instead of Military Governor, when the Federal German Government was set up…."

"All things being considered … [the occupation] has been surprisingly successful … When I say ‘all things being considered’, I chiefly have in mind that the plans which were made for dealing with Germany after victory had been won were based on a series of complete misrepresentations as to what the real problem would be…"

"As for the men who came from the United States and from this country to confer in Teheran, Quebec, Yalta and Potsdam, [President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill and their advisors, at the Allied summits held during and immediately after the war], they had an entirely false picture in their minds as to what the situation would be in Germany, and they were aiming at a completely wrong objective. I do not say this in criticism. I do not for a moment claim that you of I might have been wiser if we had been in their shoes. I merely state what I believe to be the fact…."

"But the first discovery which I made, and made very quickly, [when he arrived in Germany in July 1945, two months after the end of the war], was that the men on the spot had their minds on other things. Very soon I could see that the assumptions on which our policy had been based were false, and that the objectives chosen were quite irrelevant. The real menace for the future of Europe and to world peace was not Germany, but Russia. The immediate objective was not to batter Germany down – she was sprawling in the dust already – but too build her up and to do so wisely. We had to save Germany physically from starvation, squalor and penury, spiritually from despair and Communism."

"Montgomery’s agile mind had of course seen this clearly. His chief staff officer was Gerald Templer, a man whom I had always liked and respected. He was quite clear about the real state of affairs and I was glad to persuade him to join me as my Deputy…."

"Very soon we were driven by events to take action to restore the German economy in a manner that had certainly not been contemplated at Potsdam. The Germans in the British and American Zones were starving. Food had to be imported in large quantities and very obviously the German economy had to be geared to pay the bills… The war had wrecked the German economy … It was in this appalling situation that a partnership was born between the occupiers and the occupied, a partnership with a common objective – to rebuild the German economy as fast as possible…."

"Western Germany today is a prosperous and contented country with a stable and democratic governmental system. She is a loyal member of NATO, a sincere partner in the European Economic Community … There are no signs of a recrudescence of militarism of Nazi-ism…."

"If the authors of the series of agreements which culminated at Potsdam could have foreseen these days, they would no doubt have found the picture in many respects very satisfactory. In fact they deserve precious little credit for the good results, and they were greatly to blame for what was not so good. Wise statesmanship wilts in the over-heated atmosphere of victory…."

"Where then does the credit belong? Some of it should, in fairness, be ascribed to the innate decency and Christian charity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. At the sight of starving Germany their consciences rebelled and that was the start of it. Much credit must [also] go to the German people …

"National characteristics made possible miraculous results, but there will be no miracle unless the men are forthcoming to lead the nations. As I look back on the past 20 years I can see without any doubt that it has been the intervention of certain leading men that has been decisive for good…. the real miracle has been that they were found when they were most needed."

"There are those today who tell us that God does not intervene in human affairs, and that it is wrong to expect Him to do so. When with my simple mind I look back to Potsdam, 1945, and forward to Western Europe in 1965, it just seems to me that a cleverer hand has been at work than any hand of man."

Sir Brian Robertson – General Lord Robertson of Oakridge

Sir Brian Robertson, later enobled as Baron Robertson of Oakridge, was probably the most influential British soldier and administrator in Germany during the occupation. He was Deputy Military Governor from 1945 to 1947 and promoted to Commander-in-Chief and Military Governor from 1947-49. After the formation of an independent West German Government, he was the first UK High Commissioner in Germany, from 1949-50.

His career is comparable in some ways to that of Lucius D. Clay, who was initially Deputy Military Governor, then Military Governor, of the US Zone. Clay is now much better known, in part because of his role during the Berlin air lift and also because his book, Decision in Germany, first published in 1950, is still essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the period.

Unlike Clay, Robertson never published his memoirs, and, as far as I know, never wrote about his time in Germany. (Apart from a talk he gave at Chatham House in 1965, published in International Affairs, Vol. 41, No. 3)

Very little seems to have been written about him by historians, although there is an interesting oral history interview on the web, conducted in 1970 for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. The interview is worth reading in full, but I’ll quote one passage here, where Robertson compared himself to General Clay:

"General Clay was a very powerful character….  I am not such a strong character, perhaps, but maybe I have a way of getting my own way. However it may be, it is certain that policy in Germany, in fact, emanated very largely from General Clay and myself." (Oral History Interview with General Lord Robertson of Oakridge, 11th August 1970 by Theodore A. Wilson (Harry S. Truman Library & Museum)

Englishness and Empire and ‘Winning the Peace’

11th November 2007

I’ve recently read "Englishness and Empire: 1939-1965" (Oxford University Press, 2005), in which the author, Wendy Webster, describes how the way the British Empire was portrayed (in the press and films) changed during and after the Second World War.

During the war, ‘heroic’ narratives of empire, as a story of British power and conquest, were superseded by a story of a multi-racial community of (more or less) equal nations, loyal to Britain as the ‘mother country’ and united in the fight against a common enemy. Wendy Webster calls this a ‘People’s Empire’, to complement the idea of a ‘People’s War’, which united everyone within Britain regardless of wealth, class or status.

The projection of a ‘People’s Empire’ reached its high point at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953, but soon faded to be replaced (in the press and in feature films) by siege narratives of isolated British people defending their threatened homes in colonial wars in, for example, Malaya and Kenya, as the native inhabitants of these countries fought to achieve independence from Britain.

Instead of a multi-racial ‘Commonwealth of Nations’ the empire was now increasingly portrayed as a racial community of (white) people, with the British sharing ties of kinship and culture with the (white) inhabitants of the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. If this was extended to the idea, popularised by Winston Churchill, of a community of the ‘English Speaking Peoples‘, the US could also be included as part of the family.

In parallel with these changing images of empire, the Second World War was presented, not as a ‘People’s War’, but as a story of heroic individuals. (For example in numerous adventure feature films such as The Dam Busters, in contrast with high-minded documentaries such as those by Humphrey Jennings, which showed the teamwork and heroism of ordinary men and women in wartime). In Wendy Webster’s words "The idea of heroic British masculinity, transposed from an imperial to a Second World War setting, offered a far more exclusive image of the nation than the ‘People’s War’.

So what is the relevance of all this to my own research on the British Occupation of Germany after the war?

Firstly, many of the British behaved as if their Zone in Germany was an extension of the empire. Noel Annan in his memoirs ‘Changing Enemies‘ gives his chapter on  post-war Germany the title ‘Britain’s new colony’ and Donald Cameron Watt, in his book ‘Britain looks to Germany: British Opinion and Policy towards Germany since 1945’ says of the occupation: "… it will be obvious that the method of control and re-education bears a strong resemblance to the systems of indirect rule administered in the 1890s by Lord Cromer in Egypt and Lord Lugard in sub-Saharan Africa."

In the early days of the Occupation, many of the British thought they would need to stay in Germany for a long time, 25 years or more, to complete their civilising mission to make Germany a democratic country, much like Britain, but this soon changed to an overriding concern with the cost of occupation, and the transfer of government back to German control. So the withdrawal from Germany could be seen in some ways as similar to the British retreat from empire elsewhere (though there are clearly many differences as well as similarities). 

Secondly, I think Wendy Webster’s description of changing attitudes to Englishness and empire after the war helps to explain why the British Occupation of Germany has faded from popular memory. It doesn’t fit easily with any of the themes she discusses: a multi-racial ‘People’s Empire’ united against a common enemy (Germany), or a community of ‘English speaking peoples’ united by common ties of kinship and culture. In the retreat from empire, nostalgia for former British national power and glory could be preserved in heroic memories of the war, and what happened afterwards conveniently forgotten.

To some extent, I suppose, you could say the countries of western Europe after the war, including both Britain and Germany, did unite in a new People’s Empire, but this time it was a Cold War empire led by the US, against a new enemy, the Soviet Union. From a British point of view, this was a far less exciting story than that of the ‘finest hour’ when British people ‘stood alone’ to defend civilisation from barbarism.

This left no room for an alternative theme of reconstruction and reconciliation, of international fellowship and of seeing people, whoever they are, as individuals (rather than as collective members of an ethnic or racial or national group, and therefore different).

In my work, I try to restore the memory of how people, on both sides, worked to achieve reconciliation with the former enemy. Heroic war stories are not enough. What really matters is ‘Winning the Peace.’

So to finish this posting, I’d like to quote from the front page of the final issue of the British Zone Review, the quarterly journal of the Military Government and British Control Commission in Germany. This was published on September 20th, 1949, a little over four years since the end of the war and sums up how the British in Germany wished to portray their work of ‘winning the peace’ after ‘winning the war’ – as a task of reconstruction, not destruction, and of reconciliation, not revenge. To my mind it’s just as relevant now as it was then:

"We have grown and developed with the changes brought about by the reconstruction of Germany and now our task has come to an end. In this, our last issue, we should like to express our very sincere thanks to all our readers in all parts of the world and to our many contributors, whose support and co-operation has made success possible. We are glad to think that this spirit of good will and the desire shown for better understanding between British and Germans may have contributed towards a better international co-operation and fellowship which alone can ensure a lasting peace."

Finest Hour: Films by Humphrey Jennings

3rd November 2007

A few weeks ago I saw a programme of four films by Humphrey Jennings (Finest Hour: Films by Humphrey Jennings, 11th – 13th September 2007, BFI South Bank). This was part of a documentary season run by the British Film Institute (BFI) commemorating five British documentary film-makers, all of whom were born in the same year, 1907 – Humphrey Jennings, Basil Wright, Paul Rotha, Edgar Anstey and Marion Grierson.

I’ve written several posts in this blog about Humphrey Jennings’ film A Defeated People and the view it portrayed of Germany after the war. Seven of Jennings’ films were shown as part of the documentary season at the BFI, (four in ‘Finest Hour’ and three in other programmes), but not A Defeated People, and none of the programme notes made any reference to it, probably because it does not fit easily with the themes highlighted in the season – technology, nationhood and industry, the everyday heroism of ordinary men and women during Britain in wartime, technical and industrial progress, people at work and Britain as a ‘Land of Promise’.

This made me think about using film as historical evidence. On the one hand films can provide a very immediate and accessible view of place and time. Angus Calder in his classic work ‘The Myth of the Blitz’ makes extensive reference to Humphrey Jennings and his films in his last three chapters on ‘Deep England’ (on the emotive power of the English landscape), ‘Telling it to America’ and ‘Filming the Blitz.’ He refers to most of Jennings’ films in the book, but, like the BFI documentary season, completely ignores A Defeated People. Presumably this is because the film does not fit easily with his theme of ‘The Myth of the Blitz’ and how British people like to remember their role in the war and afterwards.

In my MA dissertation (on ‘Winning the peace’: Germany under British Occupation, as portrayed in Humphrey Jennings’ film A Defeated People, the British Zone Review and the exhibition Germany under Control) I argued that, if Jennings’ films are considered an accurate representation of Britain in wartime, A Defeated People should also be considered an accurate representation of post-war Germany, especially when viewed critically and compared with the treatment of similar themes in other sources.

On the other hand, different people respond to films in different ways. As I said in my dissertation "when we watch the film now, our reactions may tell us more about our own personal experiences and beliefs and about popular memories in the society in which we grew up, than what were the original intentions of the director, or whether the film reflected official policy or popular attitudes at the time."

I was therefore interested to read (in the BFI programme notes) about differences in interpreting another of Humphrey Jennings’ films ‘Spare Time’. This short, 15 minute film aimed to show  what ordinary working people did in their spare time in different parts of England: coal miners in Wales, steel workers in the North-East, and cotton workers in Lancashire. The ‘Kazoo Band’ sequence in the film, where a group of young people, dressed in uniform, practiced playing their kazoos, marching up and down an empty football pitch, has been controversial ever since the film was first released in 1939. Basil Wright, Jennings’ fellow documentary film maker, wrote in 1951:

"The Kazoo band, the wind blowing chilly through the imitation silk uniforms, the Britannia tableau tottering on its undernourished pall bearers, and the drum majorette aping, like a grey ghost, the antics of a transatlantic and different civilisation – all this is brilliantly presented. But it is presented in terms of a cold disgust; there is no sense of the human enthusiasms which must somewhere exist behind such a drab and pathetic spectacle. Humphrey was, perhaps rightly, attacked violently for this sequence when Spare Time first appeared, but the fact remains that, as a piece of movie, it is both brilliant and unforgettable." (Quoted in the BFI programme notes for ‘Finest Hour’ Films by Humphrey Jennings)

Others have different views. As the BFI programme notes said:

"All this results in a film that different viewers have quite differently interpreted. Some find it patronising: Jennings’ fellow ‘movement’ film-maker Basil Wright attacked it as ‘sneering’. Others consider it less patronising than other documentaries of the period whose concern for social improvement has sometimes dated horribly."

After watching around 20 films in the documentary season at the BFI, including programmes of films by other directors, I was in no doubt that I agreed with those who found ‘Spare Time’ less patronising than many other documentaries, a few of which had indeed dated horribly. Though all those featured were great documentary film directors, what distinguished all of Humphrey Jennings’ films (including ‘Spare Time’, his wartime films, and A Defeated People) was an overriding concern for people as individuals, sympathy and human understanding, and his ability to portray people on their own terms, without putting words into their mouth, or obviously acting out a script.

If a viewer sees a sequence in his films, such as the Kazoo Band, as ‘patronising’ or ‘sneering’, perhaps this reflects more of the attitudes of the viewer, than those of Jennings himself?

Winning the peace: The British in occupied Germany, 1945-1951

29th October 2007

I’ve not posted for a few months, as I’ve been finishing my MA dissertation on: ‘Winning the peace’: Germany under British Occupation, as portrayed in Humphrey Jennings’ film A Defeated People, the British Zone Review and the exhibition Germany under Control

The MA dissertation is now complete and I’ve enrolled on a PhD course, which will allow me to look at the same themes in greater depth, over a slightly longer period.

In my first post on this blog, on 1st October 2005, I wrote that:

"History is a process of discovery, and in this weblog I intend to record my thoughts, ideas, and, I hope, some insights and discoveries as I work my way through the course."

Let’s hope I can keep posting new ideas and discoveries over the next 6 years, as I work my way through the PhD course. (As a part time student, it will take me twice as long as a British full time student normally takes to complete a doctorate).

Thank you to everyone who has read this blog, and especially to those who have emailed me or posted comments.

So to start things rolling, here is my PhD proposal:

Winning the peace: The British in occupied Germany, 1945-1951

At the end of the First World War crowds in the streets in London were calling for the government to ‘Hang the Kaiser’. In more recent times Anglo-German relations is often trivialised as being about football hooliganism, towels on the beach and Fawlty Towers. At the end of the Second World War things were very different, and more serious, as British soldiers and administrators in occupied Germany struggled to cope, as best they could, with the challenge of winning the peace after winning the war; of occupying a country they had just defeated in battle; and of governing a country where the physical infrastructure had been destroyed and the existing political, social and moral frameworks had collapsed.

To what extent did the British and Americans succeed in ‘winning the peace’ as well as the war? And how did people, on both sides, become reconciled to the former enemy and even, in many cases, become friends, allies and partners?

For my MA dissertation, I looked at how the British Occupation of Germany was portrayed to people back home, in the eighteen month period between June 1945 and December 1946, in three official sources: Humphrey Jennings’ documentary film ‘A Defeated People’, first shown to the public in Britain in March 1946; an exhibition, ‘Germany under Control’, organised by the Ministry of Information, which opened in London in June 1946; and the British Zone Review, the official fortnightly review of the British Control Commission for Germany and Military Government. These sources show that attitudes to the former enemy were varied and complex and changed with the transition from war to peace, as the British occupying forces found they had to deal with people as individuals, rather than collectively as the enemy.
For my PhD I propose to extend the period covered to the full six year period of the occupation; from the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces in May 1945, to the announcement made by Herbert Morrison in the House of Commons on 9th July 1951 that the state of war between Britain and Germany was now formally terminated. During this period there was a transformation in British policy and attitudes to Germany; from disarmament to re-armament; from dismantling, de-nazification and dismemberment, to reconstruction, recovery, and reconciliation.

Research Objectives

The aim of the research is to achieve a better understanding of what the British in Germany thought they were doing, and why they were doing it.

It is proposed to examine the issue from both a British and a German perspective; to address issues of concern within both British and German historiographies, and so attempt to write a history that can be understood and accepted within both British and German societies and cultures.

Historical Context

Historical interpretations of the British occupation of Germany are contradictory and inconsistent. The prevailing view is that Allied policy in general, and British and US policy in particular, succeeded in creating a democratic and prosperous nation from the destruction of the Nazi dictatorship, with the former enemy nation becoming a friend, ally and partner in the subsequent Cold War struggle against new forms of totalitarianism, against communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular.

Many historians have questioned this view, from different perspectives, but without providing any coherent alternative interpretation that addresses the period as a whole. Some have highlighted intense contemporary criticism in the British press and in parliament, which portrayed the Occupation of Germany as a ‘badly managed disaster area’.  Others have claimed that the British didn’t have a clue what they were meant to do before they got there and post-war planning undertaken during the war proved inappropriate and unrealistic. Tom Bower has written an impassioned moral indictment of British economic policy in Germany in the immediate aftermath of war, as the cynical plundering of technology gained by the exploitation of slave labour and concentration camp victims, whereas Patricia Meehan, responsible for a BBC TV documentary series broadcast in 1981, is fiercely critical of British policy and personnel, describing incompetent and inebriated administrators living a life of luxury on the spoils of war. In the 1980s a new generation of German historians debated the issue of  ‘restoration or reform’ describing as ‘a tragedy’, failed British attempts to create a new start in German society and politics in areas such as land reform, nationalisation, local politics, the civil service and government administration, schools and universities. More recently there has been a debate within Germany on whether it is acceptable for Germans to remember and mourn their own suffering during and after the war. Perhaps it is therefore not surprising that there is still no single volume history of the British Occupation of Germany, although John Gimbel’s classic work on ‘The American Occupation of Germany’ was published as early as 1968, and more recently Norman Naimark has published a comprehensive study of ‘The Russians in Germany’.

Research Methods

The British Military Government and Control Commission were acutely conscious of the need to promote and publicise their activities to people back home. This is revealed in a great variety of sources including official publications such as the ‘British Zone Review’, government papers held in the National Archives, memoirs and autobiographies written by British soldiers and administrators and contemporary reports from press correspondents and other observers.

In the same way as I selected three sources I considered especially significant for my MA dissertation and examined these in some detail, I would propose to select a small number of additional sources or activities and use these to develop the story further. In this way I would aim to show how British policies, activities and attitudes in Germany changed over the course of the occupation and that what the British did in Germany can provide a different perspective, with some interesting and perhaps unexpected insights, into British culture and society as a whole.

The Battle of the Winter

23rd July 2007

One issue that intrigues me is how and why the British in Germany, after the war, transferred their efforts and energy from destruction to reconstruction.

One source which can give us an insight into this is the ‘British Zone Review’ the official publication of the British Military Government and Control Commission.

The first issue was published on 29th September 1945, nearly five months after the end of the war in Europe. In his introductory message on the front page, Field Marshal Montgomery, the Military Governor and Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Germany, spoke of entering the second phase of the occupation and how having won the war, his soldiers now had to fight a new battle to win the peace: the ‘Battle of the Winter.’

"Before launching my troops into battle it has always been my custom to issue to them a Personal Message…

Some time before hostilities came to an end in Europe five months ago, plans were being prepared for the post-war task, which may be summarised as the permanent eradication of Nazism, and the administration of Germany according to the principles which we hold to be right.

Before the task of reconstruction can be undertaken, the complicated machinery of a war making race has to be carefully pulled apart. Furthermore, twelve years of Nazi rule and nearly six years of war have resulted in more than material destruction.

For five months we have been clearing the ground, and the task of sweeping clean is still proceeding. As we approach its completion we shall be entering, in concert with our Allies, the second stage, the stage of reconstruction. Much of the responsibility for guiding and supervising this reconstruction rests with you. The defeated enemy must be made to put his house in order. He must learn to feed himself. Also he must be made to pay for the war which was of his making. At present he cannot sustain himself, far less repay what he owes. First he must be raised to his feet, and then made to work in such a way that he will not only be able to liquidate his debts but finally find his own salvation. We shall try to be wise conquerors. As we were strong in battle so we shall be just in peace.

You are here in Germany to help with the administration and reconstruction of the most ravaged country the world has known. On you will depend the shape of the future Germany."

The issues which concerned the British were simple: how to avoid starvation and disease, which could spread to the rest of Europe. Under the heading ‘Getting on with the Job’ Montgomery explained that:

"The objectives for the battle of the winter are food, work and homes. Of course, it is not quite so simple as that; everybody knows that a thousand other considerations are immediately involved, transport, raw materials, administration and , above all, coal."

Under the headline, ‘Will Germany starve this Winter: The problem of Feeding the British Zone’, the current German food ration of 1,550 calories was contrasted with the "lowest wartime civilian consumption in Britain" of about 2,800 calories, and described as "the minimum needed to forestall an economic and social collapse that would be as disastrous for Western Europe as a whole as it would be for Germany" as "epidemics need no passports."

On page 8 of the same issue, another article described the ‘Battle of the Winter’ in more detail, under the heading ‘Campaign against epidemics.’

"The war is over, but the Germans will receive a sharp reminder this winter that the terrors they unleashed in 1939 are not yet at an end. A demoralised people with inadequate housing, diet barely sufficient in some areas to prevent starvation, and little fuel for domestic heating, cannot hope to escape widespread misery and disease.

The Germans must fight the battle and bear the consequences, but in order to safeguard the occupying forces and to prevent Germany becoming a plague spot that would infect the whole of Europe we have to give whatever assistance is possible.

Unfortunately a serious strain has suddenly been thrown on this rather delicate structure. No sooner had the bulk of DPs been repatriated than a surge of hundreds of thousands of refugees threatened to pour in from the East – Germans turned out of Poland and Czechoslovakia, trekking westwards probably with little clothing and no food.

Quite apart from the general care of this mass of refugees, action must be taken to prevent them bringing fresh disease into our zone. The louse-borne scourge of typhus is a serious danger."

Germany in 1945 and Britain in 1967 as ‘super-Sweden’

14th July 2007

Some ideas seem to have a history of their own, appearing at different times in different circumstances.

A British Foreign Office document on ‘German reactions to defeat’ dated 2nd January 1945, included the following reference to ‘super-Sweden’ as a suitable role for Germany after the war:

"Germany must be encouraged to aim at being a super-Sweden, cleaner, better planned and healthier than any State ever was before, with better social, medical and educational services and a higher standard of living than any State ever had."

Encouraging Germany to become a ‘super-Sweden’, implied that the country could become prosperous, with an excellent welfare system, perhaps even a socialist government, but would have no military capability, no diplomatic influence, and should stay well clear of any possible future conflict between a communist and totalitarian East (ie the Soviet Union and Eastern European satellite states) and an individualistic and democratic West, (ie the US, Britain and Western Europe), much as Sweden had remained neutral throughout World War Two.

Last week I attended a conference on Britain and Europe in the 20th Century, and was surprised to hear a similar reference to ‘greater Sweden’, in a paper given by Helen Carr from the University of Keele, on events which took place more than twenty years later: Britain’s second application to join the European Community in 1967.

Helen Carr described how a senior official in the British Foreign Office had written a paper outlining three foreign policy options for Britain: subservience to the United States, joining the European Community, and ‘go it alone’ which was also described as the ‘Greater Sweden’ option.

The same role, of becoming a ‘super-Sweden’, which the British Foreign Office had considered right for Germany after the war, was now dismissed as undesirable for Britain in 1967, as it meant giving up a world role and the ability to influence the affairs of other countries. This was unthinkable at a time when officials in the Foreign Office and British Governments in general, both Labour and Conservative, still thought of Britain, which had only recently lost its empire, as a great power in the world.

At first I thought these two references to ‘super-Sweden’ and ‘greater Sweden’ were pure coincidence, but it then turned out that both Foreign Office papers, in 1945 and 1967, were written by the same person, Sir Con O’Neill, who was to become head of the German section of the Foreign Office and then, twenty years later, played a leading role in the British applications to join the European Community.

Does this tell us anything about British foreign policy and the mindset of Foreign Office officials? I am no expert on the British applications to join the European Community, but the 1945 paper on ‘German reactions to defeat’ is reprinted in full in a book which I have read, published in 1997: ‘Conditions of Surrender: Britains and Germans witness the end of the war’ edited by Ulrike Jordan. The paper is also discussed in an article in the book by the German historian Lothar Kettenacker, titled  ‘British Post-war Planning for Germany: Haunted by the Past.’

It is clear from reading the full paper, that Con O’Neill was already equating National Socialism in Germany with Communism in the Soviet Union, at a time when the war was not yet over, when Russia was an ally of Britain and the US, without whose support winning the war against Nazi Germany would have been far more difficult, if not impossible. His concern was that there would be a revival of German militarism, and that Germans were somehow naturally inclined, by national character and instinct, to become allied with the communist East, rather than the democratic West.

This seems strange in many ways, as for the previous three years Goebbels had been loudly publicising the view that the British and Americans should cooperate with the Germans in mutual defence against ‘Bolshevism’. The same line was taken by the short lived German interim government of Admiral Dönitz. In a speech on 1st May 1945, after saying that "The Führer has appointed me as his successor" Dönitz continues: "It is my first task to save the German people from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy. For this aim alone the military struggle continues." On 2nd May the foreign secretary in the Dönitz government, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, expressed the same views in a speech on Germany as a ‘Bulwark against Bolshevism’. This included one of the first references to an ‘iron curtain’. "In the east, the iron curtain is advancing even further, behind which the work of annihilation proceeds hidden from the eyes of the world."

As Lothar Kettenacker said in his article in the book: "Apparently it did not occur to British officials that the Germans were not at all inclined to trust the Russians, whose land they had devastated, or the Bolsheviks, against whom Goebbels had railed for the last three years."

Here is an extract from the 1945 paper by Con O’Neill. It shows how common it was for British diplomats and Foreign Office officials to think in terms of national stereotypes, their anthropomorphic tendency to attribute personal characteristics to countries, and how the actions of the government of a country were explained in terms of the supposed instincts and beliefs of the people as a whole.

"National Socialism had been no more than a special form of organization of the instincts and capacities of the German people. Other forms of totalitarian organisation almost equally unpleasant and effective may occur, for those instincts and capacities will remain largely what they are….

Moreover, future German recollections of this war will not all be tinged with defeat and disaster. Just as vividly they will remember how near they came to victory. They will remember the battles they won, the countries they struck down, the heroes who led them in success of perished in the hour of seeming triumph… Nothing will stop the Germans from believing they had the finest army in the world, and succumbed only to superiority in numbers and material. Nothing will stop them taking pride in their accomplishments in a pursuit which they so manifestly excel. Nothing, finally, will stop them wishing to re-create armed forces when they have been deprived of them…

To say that National Socialism is unlikely to remain, or become again, a popular creed in Germany does not mean that Germany is likely to become democratic. Germany will once again have the choice – or so it might seem – between the ideals of the West and of the East, between an individualist and a collectivist system.

An attempt may now be made to answer the question: would Germany, in another war crisis, be found on the side of the East or the West? Circumstances can alter in any case. But if German inclinations and calculations are to determine the matter, then the answer must be as pessimistic as most of the other conclusions so far arrived at in this paper, Germany will be found on the side of the East, because her political and social ideas and instincts will align her with the East rather than the West….

Germany must be encouraged to aim at being a super-Sweden, cleaner, better planned and healthier than any State ever was before, with better social, medical and educational services and a higher standard of living than any State ever had."

With hindsight we know that nothing came of the ‘super-Sweden’ idea. Germany was divided into the Bundesrepublik in the West, closely allied with Britain and the US in NATO, and the DDR in the East, closely allied with the Soviet Union. It is therefore all the more intriguing to find the same idea cropping up twenty years later, in another paper written by the same person, but this time as an undesirable option for Britain, instead of a desirable role for Germany.

As a postscript, I attended a lecture a year ago given by Timothy Garton Ash, who said that the same idea, this time described as ‘offshore Switzerland’ rather than ‘super-Sweden’, was now seen as a highly attractive option for Britain, among some of those on the right of British politics who were advocating leaving the European Union. Sweden itself, of course, is still prosperous, but joined the EU in 1995.

‘Winning the peace’: Germany under British occupation, as portrayed in Humphrey Jennings’ film ‘A Defeated People’ and the ‘British Zone Review’.

Next Thursday 12th July, I will be giving a paper at the Centre for Contemporary British History (CCBH) annual summer conference, on Britain and Europe in the Twentieth Century.

Here is a copy of my paper. Next week I hope to write about any comments and questions
from those attending the conference.

‘Winning the peace’: Germany under British occupation, as portrayed in
Humphrey Jennings’ film ‘A Defeated People’ and the ‘British Zone
Review’

At the end of the First World War crowds in the streets in London were calling for the government to ‘Hang the Kaiser’. In more recent times Anglo-German relations are often trivialised as being about football hooliganism, towels on the beach and Fawlty Towers. At the end of the Second World War things were very different, and more serious, as British soldiers and administrators in occupied Germany struggled to cope, as best they could, with the challenge of winning the peace after winning the war; of occupying a country they had just defeated in battle; and of governing a country where the physical infrastructure had been destroyed and the existing political, social and moral frameworks had collapsed.

The British knew only too well that, although the military conflict was over, their job had only just begun. On 4th May 1945, after receiving the unconditional surrender of German forces in North West Germany, Holland and Denmark on Lüneburg Heath, Field Marshall Montgomery issued a personal message to the troops under his command, in which he said: ‘We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.’ This message was repeated many times in the months which followed.

As there was no German government in existence any more, the British now ruled an area half the size of their own country with direct responsibility for a population of over 20 million people. With the self-confidence engendered by victory, many people expected that the occupation would last 25 years or more. Contemporary sources frequently refer to the scale and importance of  the task: “…an enterprise of great magnitude and difficulty for which there is indeed no precedent in human history” as J B Hynd, the minister responsible for Germany, said in his speech at the opening of the London exhibition ‘Germany under Control’, in June 1946. 

In this paper I intend to show how the attitudes of many British soldiers and administrators in Germany changed in the first year of the occupation, in the transition from war to peace, with particular reference to Humphrey Jennings’ documentary film ‘A Defeated People’. I’ll also refer to two other sources, the exhibition ‘Germany under Control,’ and the British Zone Review, the official fortnightly review of the activities of the British Control Commission for Germany and Military Government.

These were all official sources, and were all sponsored by either the Ministry of Information, or the British Military Government and Control Commission for Germany, or both. They therefore show, not only a personal view of the film’s director, the exhibition organisers, or the Review’s contributors, but an official British view of Germany after the war, in the first few months of Occupation.

Firstly, I would like to set the scene by describing some contrasting British attitudes to Germany and the German people at the end of the war. Attitudes in Britain are well documented by Mass Observation surveys, Gallup opinion polls and general press comment, and show that opinion hardened during the course of the war, moving from general agreement with Chamberlain’s much quoted speech on 1st September 1939 that: “We have no quarrel with the German people except that they allow themselves to be governed by a Nazi Government,” to outright hostility and a belief in the collective guilt of an entire nation. This change started as early as the Norwegian campaign in 1940, when the BBC was instructed to abandon making any distinction between Nazis and Germans, grew stronger throughout the war as people reacted to the bombing of civilians and reports of atrocities; and culminated with the newsreel films of the concentration camps shown very widely in Britain in April and May 1945. To quote historian Nicholas Pronay, writing about how a defeated Germany was presented in British newsreels: “Any lingering doubts about the thesis of the collective guilt of a whole nation were … crushed at the end of April by the footage from the concentration camps.” From now on, according to Pronay, even when German people after the war were shown as suffering and in distress, this was always presented in the context of a collectively guilty people getting their just deserts.

Similar attitudes were shown in a US training film, ‘Your Job in Germany’, originally made in 1944 by the noted director, Frank Capra, and first released in April 1945. The film was designed to be shown to troops immediately following footage from the concentration camps. The message of the film to the US soldier entering German territory for the first time was to be suspicious: “You’ll see some mighty pretty scenery. Don’t let it fool you. You are in enemy country. Be alert, suspicious of everyone. Take no chances. You are up against more than tourist scenery. You are up against German history. It isn’t good.” Somewhere in this Germany there were still SS guards, Gestapo guards, thousands of storm troopers, two million Nazi officials, and most dangerous of all, German youth. To pictures of apparently friendly, smiling people, the commentator says: “You are not being sent into Germany as educators … Every German is a potential source of trouble. Therefore there must be no fraternisation with any of the German people. Fraternisation means making friends. The German people are not our friends. You will not associate with German men, women or children. They’re not sorry they caused the war, just sorry they lost it.”

In contrast with these public and official attitudes in Britain and also in the US, as British soldiers and administrators in Germany came face to face with individual German people, and saw the scale of the destruction in the cities, far worse than anything they had experienced at home, they grappled with two contrasting emotions – should they leave the Germans to ‘stew in their own juice’ even if that meant that possibly millions would die of starvation, or should they feel pity for the suffering of the former enemy, and do what they could to alleviate it.

This was no academic discussion. Before he left London, General Templer, director of Civil Affairs for the British 21st Army Group, was told by PJ Grigg, Secretary of State for War, that: “You must resign yourself to the fact that two million are going to die of hunger in Europe this spring. You and the Army must do all you can to mitigate it, but you won’t be able to cure it.”

Field Marshal Montgomery, the British commander-in-chief was equally aware of his responsibilities. He tells in his memoirs how, following the unconditional surrender on 4th May 1945: “I had suddenly become responsible for the government and well-being of about twenty million Germans. Tremendous problems would be required to be handled and if they were not solved before the winter began, many Germans would die of starvation, exposure and disease.”

In the event, in the British Zone, despite widespread hunger and appalling living conditions, relatively few people did die of starvation and disease as, almost overnight, the British army and Military Government, transferred their attentions from destruction to re-construction, with equal energy and determination. In the former German Eastern territories, of course, it was a different story. The number of people who died as a result of the expulsion of around 12 million ethnic Germans from the East is a highly contentious topic, but was certainly substantial. Estimates vary from around 500,000 to nearly 3 million.

In the words of Noel Annan, political adviser to the British Military government, “Templer’s energy transformed the British zone.” The British Official History of the war tells the same story, of how Templer, “more than any other man saved the zone from famine and anarchy through the desperate winter of 1945-6.” Equally remarkable, the author of the official history concludes his work with a personal impression
. Although many of the regular officers he spoke to at first disliked a posting to Civil Affairs, many from Templer downwards: “made it very clear to the writer that by the time their connection with military government was to be severed, they had come to feel it was the most rewarding work they had ever undertaken.” One officer even said it was “the only really worth while thing he ever did in his life.”

‘A Defeated People’

I’d now like to return to the film, ‘A Defeated People’ and examine in more detail what it can tell us about the complex and varied, often confused and contradictory nature of British policy and attitudes to Germany in the first year of the occupation; bearing in mind that this was an official film, designed to show people at home what life was really like in Germany.

The film was made shortly after the end of the war, in the Autumn and Winter of 1945, by the Crown Film Unit, part of the Ministry of Information. The film’s director, Humphrey Jennings was probably the greatest of all the British wartime documentary film makers. Angus Calder, for example, in ‘The Myth of the Blitz’ refers to him as “Britain’s most remarkable maker of official films.” His wartime films include well known classics such as London can Take It, Listen to Britain and Fires were Started, the last of which has been described by the film historian Jeffrey Richards as “one of the key works in creating the mythic image of the London Blitz. Those heroic figures silhouetted against the blazing inferno sweeping the dockside warehouse etched themselves into history, embodying the epic of the ordinary men and women who calmly and courageously took up the defence of their city.” 

His films were remarkably popular, at a time when film was still a mass medium, and the British documentary film movement was at its peak. In 1946, at the height of its popularity, a third of the population visited the cinema at least once a week. In addition to cinema showings, the Ministry of Information arranged so called non-theatrical film shows in factories, village halls and clubs, reaching an audience of twenty million people over a two and a half year period. In the heightened emotional atmosphere of wartime, these non-theatrical audiences sometimes wept, or broke out into spontaneous applause, when they saw Jennings’ films. Helen Forman, who was second in charge of the non-theatrical distribution section of the Films division of the Ministry of Information, wrote that: “One of the … films … which was liked and applauded was Humphrey Jennings’ magical Listen to Britain. All sorts of audiences felt it to be a distillation and also a magnification of their own experience of the home front.”

It is therefore intriguing to ask what did this Englishmen, who created the mythic image of the London Blitz, and whose audiences felt his films were a distillation and magnification of their own experiences, make of Germany after the war.

The picture his film ‘A Defeated People’ shows of Germany after the war is grim. It shows not only the physical destruction at the end of the war, but its effect on the people, who were shown as stunned, dazed, as if they didn’t know what had hit them. In the words of the commentary: “Place and time meant nothing, because the people; the links between the people, were smashed too. They were just left wandering, looking for food, looking for their homes, looking for each other.”

Nicholas Pronay, the historian of British newsreels, has argued that the left-wing idealist documentary film makers in general, and  Humphrey Jennings’ film ‘A Defeated People,’ in particular, presented the same image of Germany after the war, that of a guilty people getting its just deserts, as the right wing commercial newsreels and this reflected a basic consensus in Britain about Germany. 

The thesis of my paper today is that Pronay may have been right about the newsreels but was wrong about Humphrey Jennings and his film ‘A Defeated People.’ While the script of the film tells one story, the images show a different and more complex picture. On the one hand, the voice-over commentary, accompanied by pictures of destroyed cities, factories and bridges, has no hesitation in blaming the Germans for “the war they started.” But the images also show German people as individuals, not as a collectively guilty nation; men and women looking for lost relatives, children playing in the rubble on the bomb sites, people living underground in cellars because that’s all that remains of their houses, old women sawing up logs to take home for fuel because they have no coal.

Not only, I would argue, has Pronay misunderstood the film, but he has also underplayed several important and contrasting aspects of the British view of Germany and the German people after the war, which are clearly evident in the film: firstly, awe at the scale of destruction they saw all around them, secondly, the energy and determination with which the British Military Government tackled the process of reconstruction; thirdly, their perceived need to explain to people back home that that they were doing this out of self-interest, not altruism, to prevent disease and prevent a resurgence of fascism which could lead to another war; fourthly, the unquestioned belief of the British in their own superiority and moral self-righteousness; and fifthly, and this is perhaps the most surprising aspect of the film, sympathy with the undoubted suffering of the former enemy, recognition that life goes on in the midst of destruction, and hope for the future.

What evidence is there to support this case? Of course we can watch the film, but as with all visual materials, we have to do this critically and question its value as historical evidence, because, especially when referring to images rather than the script, we are dealing with a work of art and different people will respond to it in different ways. When we watch the film now, our reactions may tell us more about our own personal experience and beliefs, and about popular memories in the society in which we grew up, than what were the original intentions of the director, or whether the film reflected official policy or popular attitudes at the time it was made.

Fortunately there is other evidence available. Firstly when the film was first shown in London in March 1946, it was extensively reviewed by the Press, which helps us understand how it was perceived when it was first released. Secondly, while filming in Germany in September and October 1945,  Jennings wrote a number of  letters to his wife and these provide an indication of his state of mind, his reactions to what he saw in Germany and the ideas he intended to convey in the film. And thirdly, we can compare how certain themes were treated in the film, with the presentation of similar themes and images in other historical sources, such as the exhibition ‘Germany under Control’ and the ‘British Zone Review’.

What the film reviews said in 1946

The film was first shown to the public at the Tivoli cinema in London on March 17th 1946, after a private press showing earlier in the week. It was reviewed in all the major papers, including The Times, Manchester Guardian, Glasgow Herald, Daily Mail, Daily Express, News Chronicle, Daily Telegraph, Daily Worker, Sunday Dispatch, Sunday Times, Sunday Express and Reynolds News.

The publicity material for the film stated that, as the “first official film record of life in Berlin and Hamburg under the British Control Commission,” it would answer the question everyone was asking: “What is it like inside Germany today?” It would show the scale of the destruction, but also how a curl of smoke emerging from the rubble showed someone, still living in the cellar of a destroyed building, was trying to make a home out o
f chaos. The role of the British Control Commission was stressed in bringing order out of ruin and despair. And in the final sentence, there was a glimmer of hope for the future as, “In the wintry sunlight the children are beginning to laugh and dance again, the horrors of war behind them.”

The reviews in all the papers, regardless of their political persuasion, were universally favourable and followed much the same line as the publicity material. It had been a week in which there was a shortage of good new feature films and the News Chronicle said: “it is left to documentaries again to bring weight and dignity to the week’s screen.” According to the Daily Worker: “the most important film of the week is A DEFEATED PEOPLE” and Reynolds News agreed that this was a “documentary film you must see.”

Some reviewers, such as the Daily Telegraph saw in the film a clear expression of sympathy: “A DEFEATED PEOPLE, made by Humphrey Jennings for the Crown Film Unit, gives a picture of life in the British Zone of Germany all the more impressive for its restraint. The tone is agreeably free from gloating, and it would need a much more vindictive race than ours to see without sympathy women cooking amid the ruins and crowds studying huge boards covered with the names of missing persons.” In summary, the reviewers recognised that the situation in Germany was grim, that conditions were bad and people were suffering. The British, as the occupying power,  had an obligation to do something about this, but there was no single answer and no easy solutions. As Joan Lester said in her review in Reynolds News, the film dealt with “the vital and complex problems arising out of the economic, political and human tangle created by Nazism in defeat. Mr Jennings has, within certain essential limitations of time and opportunity, brought to his subject understanding, intelligence and humanity.”

Humphrey Jennings’ letters to his wife while filming in Germany

Humphrey Jennings’ own reactions to the situation in Germany are revealed in the letters he wrote to his wife in September and October 1945. These show that he was initially confused and uncertain what to make of it. In his first letter, written on September 1st, he says:

“Well I have been quite overwhelmed by Germany in the past few days and can’t really say anything sensible yet – it is quite unlike anything one has been told or thought – both more alive and more dead.”

A week later he was still none the wiser:

“I am still unable to give any sort of reliable picture of Germany – even of the bits (Cologne, Essen, Hannover, Hamm) which we have seen – for the moment the contradictions are too great …”

Jennings’ mixed, complex and uncertain reactions, were perhaps best expressed in a letter he wrote on 10th September. I would like to quote from this at some length, because it illustrates both his eye for visual detail and his attempts to make sense of what he saw. Many of the sights he describes in this letter, appear as images in the film:

“At lunchtime today we were photographing a [German] family cooking their lunch on campfires in dixies on the blitzed main stair-case of the Palace of Justice at Cologne – one of the few buildings still standing in the centre of the city – outside apparently deserted – surrounded by miles of rubble and weed-covered craters – but inside voices cries of children and the smell of drifting wood-smoke – of burnt paper – the sound of people smashing up doors and windows to light fires in the corridors – the smoke itself drifting into side rooms still littered with legal documents – finally adding to the blue haze in front of the cathedral. The cathedral now with all the damage round immensely tall – a vast blue and unsafe spirit ready to crumble upon the tiny black figures in the street below … and then returning to Duesseldorf – much less knocked about – blitzed but not actually destroyed like Cologne and Essen and Aachen – still a beautiful city, returning here to tea we meet sailing through the park-like streets a mass of white Sunday-frocked German school children standing tightly together on an Army truck and singing at the tops of their voices as they are rushed through the streets  … In Essen they still fetch their water from stand-pipes and firehose in the streets and the sewers rush roaring and stinking open to the eye and the nose – seep into blitzed houses into cellars where people still live.

“Once no doubt Germany was a beautiful country and still remembers it on summer evenings in the country. For the people themselves they are willing enough or servile enough or friendly enough according to your philosophy of History and the German problem. They certainly don’t behave guilty or beaten. They have their old fatalism to fall back on: ‘Kaput’ says the housewife finding the street water pipe not working … and then looks down the streets and says ‘Kaputt … alles ist kaput.’ Everything … how right – but absolutely no suggestion that it might be their fault – her fault. ‘Why’ asks another woman fetching water ‘why do not you help us?’ ‘You’ being us. At the same time nothing is clearer straight away than that we cannot – must not leave them to stew in their own juice … well anyway it’s a hell of a tangle.”

This is not the uncompromising view, claimed by Pronay, as the consensus in Britain, of a guilty people getting its just deserts. There is no doubt in Jennings’ mind that the Germans were to blame for the war, but he also clearly is looking beyond this to the plight of people as individuals, to the obligations of the British as occupiers, and even to a Germany that once was a beautiful country, and might become so again.

The British Zone Review.

It is interesting to compare how these themes, revealed in the film, were handled in the British Zone Review, the official fortnightly review of the activities of the British Control Commission. Not surprisingly, the same themes which emerge in the film appeared in numerous articles in the early issues of the publication:

As one example, I’d like to quote from an article in the first issue, dated 29th September 1945, which described what the British had already achieved in the small town of Buxtehude, near Hamburg. Using the familiar image of life in Germany as a broken clock, the article tells the story of “what Military Government has done and is doing to restore to the British Zone the essential things of life which were swept away in the collapse of Nazi Germany….”

The article continues:

“When the British 213 Military Detachment took over the Nazi-run town on May 10, Buxtehude was like a clock with its spring unwound. There was no gas, and there was no electricity. The water was impure. The town’s small industries were at a standstill. The flour mills were idle. Road transport had stopped, and no trains ran. Today the Nazi bosses are gone, and the town has a Burgomeister, a social democrat, who was three times imprisoned by them. The public services have been restored. Trains are running, and there is a daily bus for those who have passes to say that their journeys are really necessary… How have these things happened?

‘It has just been part of the drill for dealing with such problems’, a British Army officer … told me. ‘The German people have been obedient and cooperative. We have told them what they must do and they have got on with the job.’”

A long running series on “The Price of War” catalogued the devastation in most of the major cities in the British Zone, followed by the work being done to put things right again. In article after article similar themes appear – awed descriptions of the scale and extent of the damage, usually caused by RAF bombing, followed by descriptions of the work being done by the British to repair it.

Other articles in the Review explained why reconstruction was in their own self interest. Chief of these was the fear of disease and unrest. “Epidemics need no passports” as Montgomery had said in his introductory message in the first issue; the economic and social collapse of Germany would be “as disastrous for Western Europe as a whole as it would be for Germany”.

The British in Germany clearly felt their work of reconstruction was not fully appreciated. The lead article in issue number 6, titled ‘For Those at Home’ spoke in almost biblical terms of the need to ensure that all those at home understood the enormity of the task: “The truth is that mere words and pictures cannot convey to those at home the enormity of the disaster that Germany has reaped. It must be seen and felt. …. Many of us returning from leave have remarked with some bitterness ‘They don’t seem to realise the problems we are up against.’

We must preach the gospel of information by every means …” the article continued “What sort of picture do they have in England of Germany, British Zone? London, at the height of the blitz, was well-nigh a land of plenty compared with life today in Dortmund, Munster, Hannover, Hamburg or Cologne … The mind reels when it attempts to assess the proportions of the problem…”    

But if the need for reconstruction was obvious, if unappreciated by those at home,  the same article went on to say that: “These pitifully inadequate pen-pictures which have many omissions, are not drawn in any attempt to win sympathy for the German … Sympathy for the Germans does not exist for us; our job is to see facts and evaluate them. Having helped to win the war we must strive to win the peace.”

Was it acceptable to feel sorry for the enemy or not? An extensive debate on the issue, under the headline, ‘Feeling sorry for the Germans’, was conducted in the letters pages of the Review, over five issues, from 13th October to 8th December 1945, with correspondents expressing a wide range of views.  I’d like to conclude my talk by quoting from the letter which started the debate from ‘Lucia Lawson, Subaltern, A.T.S.’

“In writing this I am probably bringing a storm of criticism down on my head, but I do not think that I am alone in my views. And I would be interested to know.

Some time ago I went to Berlin, prepared to experience the greatest satisfaction of my life, by seeing the town in ruins and the people with no place to live. I came away feeing sorry for some of the Germans …

You will say that those sweet little children with curly fair hair and blue eyes are all potential killers, but with their spindly legs and lips just turning blue from lack of food it is hardly in human nature to hate them. The old man and woman who I saw digging for tree roots in the ruins of the Tiergarten for food, surely deserve a little pity, or do they? The young girl dressed in a thin summer frock who I found sleeping under the shelter of a pile of rubble in the Kaiser Wilhelm church, is she to be hated too? Hundreds are now dying from starvation and disease. In a couple of months the number may easily be doubled.

Well, it is open to discussion, but think before you write, or get someone who has been to Berlin to tell you what conditions are like. Maybe I am too sensitive and soft hearted, but I still say I am sorry for some of them.”

Conclusion

To sum up, British policy and planning for Germany after the war is often described in terms of four D-words, denazification, decentralisation, demilitarisation and democratisation. To these are sometimes added another four D-words: destruction, disarmament, dismantling and dismemberment. But if this typifies the largely negative official policy of the British, the US, the Soviet Union and later France towards Germany, at the diplomatic level, as discussed and agreed at the numerous three and four power summits held during the war and afterwards at Potsdam, it is incomplete, even misleading, as a description of the policy, attitudes and activities of the British Military Government and personnel directly responsible for the occupation. These were often very different, and were determined, not by the official Four Power policy as agreed at Potsdam, but by their direct experience on the ground.

This paper has aimed to show that the film ‘A Defeated People’ and the ‘British Zone Review’ reveal other aspects of British policy and actions in Germany during the transition from war to peace, which are neglected or underplayed by those historians focussing on the high politics of the period. Firstly the uncertain and complex reaction of the British to the destruction they saw all around them; secondly the surprising energy and determination with which the British in Germany tackled the process of reconstruction; and thirdly despite the many voices both in Britain and Germany, expressing the view that the former enemy were a collectively guilty people receiving their just deserts, there was another strand of opinion, which showed sympathy with the undoubted suffering of  people as individuals, recognition that life goes on in the midst of destruction, and hope for the future. In summary, reconstruction not destruction and reconciliation not revenge.