How it really was

25th February 2007

Many of my previous postings have quoted extracts from contemporary British observers who were highly critical of many aspects of the British occupation of Germany after the Second Word War. (See Ethel Mannin, Germany Journey; Fenner Brockway, German Diary; Byford-Jones, Berlin Twilight; and Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany.)

As always, there is another side to the picture, and this week I will quote a few extracts from a book written in 1960 by Raymond Ebsworth, who was a member of the British Military Government administration local government division. (Raymond Ebsworth, Restoring Democracy in Germany: The British Contribution. London: Stevens & Sons Limited, 1960).

The forward to the book is written by Robert Birley, who was Educational Adviser to the Military Governor and head of the Control Commission Education Branch.

Three interesting themes emerge from the forward. Firstly many of those directly involved at the time believed that the British military government of Germany after the war was a qualified success and something they had reason to be proud of.  Secondly, if the British aims were to change German government, society and politics, to become less authoritarian, this could not done by force. Totalitarian means could not be used to make a totalitarian society more democratic. Change had to come from within, and the role of the British was to advise, influence and persuade, not to compel. And thirdly, for many British administrators, their time in Germany after the war was one of the most rewarding, stimulating and exciting periods of their lives.

Here are some extracts from Birley’s forward to the book:

"If the work of such an organisation as the Administration and Local Government section of the Commission, whose story the author tells, was successful – and to my mind its success was remarkable – this was very largely due to some instinctive realisation on the part of its members that to use control to replace a totalitarian system would be a contradiction in terms…. A description of an experiment of this kind could only be written by someone who actually took part in it…. And what a stimulating and exciting time it was for those of us engaged in this work in Germany in those years just after the war…. This is a book which needed to be written lest a piece of work of which our country can afford to be proud should be forgotten."

Ebsworth himself makes many interesting observations on his time in Germany and the work done by the British. Here are a few extracts:

In the preface he describes four phases of the British occupation:
– a short period in 1945 when "many Germans welcomed the Allied armies as liberators rather than victors"
– "…disillusionment, when it became clear that Germany’s wartime enemies could not forgive and forget as quickly as she had hoped"
– "complete economic breakdown, food shortages and a general deterioration in health"
– the "fantastic economic recovery"

He describes the British Control Commission in the following terms: "that hastily recruited and unwieldy organisation which in its early period came in for severe criticism in our own national Press. The criticism was partially justified in that a few members, after several years of wartime privations, found the temptation of tax-free alcohol too much for them, and succumbed."

But whilst a few members of the Control Commission were succumbing to tax-free alcohol, this was by no means representative of the majority. Ebsworth describes the work of the Administration and Local Government section, the subject of his book, as follows: "…this was an inspiring task, which meant that it attracted the conscientious amateur rather than the expert. Many joined it because they were deeply interested in the German problem, and were prepared, in spite of the very uncertain tenure of their posts, to devote some years of their life to working on its solution."

Ebsworth describes his first impressions on driving into Germany in May 1945, at the border near Aachen, seeing a sign saying: "You are entering Enemy Territory – Be on your Guard" and being struck by the emptiness and absence of people: "There was just a deadly silence in the streets, and of course the indescribable ruins."

Ebsworth’s perception of German history (unlike others in Britain) was that "after all, democracy was not new to Germany" and he speaks of the Weimar constitution as founded on the principles of liberal democracy. The role of the British was to "help the Germans try again."

In their reforms of the German electoral system, the British went to great lengths to try to establish the principle that elected members represented a constituency and the name of the party they belonged to should not be included on the ballot paper. (This reflected British practice at the time although this changed in, I think, the 1970s, when the name of the candidate’s party was included on British ballot papers).

The British view was that proportional representation (where members were elected in strict proportion to the number of votes cast by the electorate for each party)  had contributed to the weakness of elected parliaments and councils in the Weimar period, as those elected owed their success to their position in the party, not to having been elected by voters as individuals. In Ebsworth’s words: "Even it they could not introduce the British electoral system complete, which was the intention of the more ardent democratisers, they could at least insist on a scheme which would bring the elected councillor or parliamentarian into close contact with his constituents."

The British looked for, and found, German opponents to Nazism with whom they could work and place in positions of responsibility. According to Ebsworth, whereas some may have been former Nazi fellow travellers, now disillusioned by defeat, "there were also others whose dedication to democracy was deeper and far more genuine. These were the men who had suffered at some time for their political views at the hands of the Nazis; many had only recently been freed from concentration camps….They included Communists, and in those early post-war days, we were ready to accept them."

Communists were not given positions of responsibility in the British zone of Germany for long. Ebsworth continues: "This was before the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, and the political situation in the other countries under Soviet occupation was not yet clear. The Communists were prepared to cooperate, and we accepted them, but the cooperation was short-lived; it soon became clear that the party was coming under direct Russian influence and they would not be allowed to work with the British."

As with other contemporary accounts, it is possible to see the origins of the Cold War reflected in the attitudes of the British administrators in Germany to members of the communist party and to the Soviet Union.

Ebsworth came to see the communists in Germany as no different from the Nazis. He describes attending a communist rally as follows: "There were all the old paraphernalia of the Nazi mass meetings – loudspeakers every few yards, vast banners, and, of course, at the stadium itself an orchestra playing Beethoven. The only difference was the flags; they were plain red, instead of the black-white-red and swastika."

He describes British policy towards the Russians as follows: "As soon as it became clear that the Russians intended to apply the same ruthless coercion in their zone of Germany as they had done in the other satellite states of Eastern Europe, the Western Powers realised that any further cooperation with them over political reconstruction was useless."

The book is also interesting for what it reveals of tensions and differences in outlook within the British administration. According to Ebsworth, the British envisaged, at least initially, a long occupation "during which powers would be handed over to German elected bodies by carefully planned stages." By 1950 this had changed to a policy to leave Germany as quickly as possible.

"Yet even in those early days there were Englishmen in high places who regarded such a policy [a long occupation] as too idealistic. The professional diplomats in particular took a more cynical view: it was useless, they said, to try to change the character of a nation, and the Allies should leave her to work out her own solution, even if she decided to try authoritarianism again. She might be an awkward friend, they said, but she was a vigorous and potentially powerful nation. What really mattered was that she should be on our side next time."

There were clearly differences of opinion between British administrators in the local government branch and Foreign Office diplomats. Ebsworth complains that, in the later years of the occupation, although the staff in Germany occasionally received polite congratulations, more often they were criticised for "interference in matters in which the Germans now had full sovereignty" by "the senior foreign servants who were now beginning to take over the key posts in the British administration."

"Each year the summer school [at which British and Germans jointly discussed local government issues] was opened by a senior Foreign Office official with an apologetic speech. His theme would be: ‘please forgive us for giving you a few tips about local government; we have no business to do it, really. Anyhow this is the last year we will be doing it.’"

According to Ebsworth, in 1949, there was a complete change in policy in favour of complete withdrawal: "The British volte-face was a deep disappointment to many of us. What perhaps irritated us most was the attitude brought by men new to post-war Germany. Most of them were professional diplomats posted from the other side of the world whose experience and training had taught them that any kind of intervention in the affairs of other nations was bad."

"The ‘new men’ when they arrived, seemed to have only one real end in view; to wind up the whole apparatus of the Control Commission … and restore as quickly as possible, a normal British Embassy."

This change was felt acutely in relation to the issue of German rearmament (which was in stark contrast to the earlier British and Allied economic policy of dismantling German industries and armaments factories). Ebsworth describes the embarrassment felt by himself and his colleagues as they had to adopt a "new approach … brought by new young men from London" and go out and persuade reluctant Germans to re-arm."

"But in 1950, the year when we were really made aware that the Foreign Office proper was taking over from the Control Service, we had to change our attitude overnight. We had to go to our old [German] colleagues and say: ‘Are you not ashamed to leave the defence of your country to foreigners? It is time you shared the burden with us.’ Over armaments manufacture we had to eat our words too. Although we had dismantled nearly all the plants capable of producing war materials, we now had to say: ‘Of course, we expect you to join in the unpopular and unproductive task of manufacturing arms. So far you have dodged it, and concentrated instead on producing more profitable wares such as consumer goods; hence your striking economic recovery.’"

In summary, we are left with the impression of idealistic British administrators, attempting to reform German politics and society after the war, to make it more democratic; achieving success by working in close cooperation with German colleagues, many of whom had been opponents of Nazism during the war, only to find towards the end of the occupation that they now believed that their work was being undermined by those on their own side forcing them to leave too soon, before the job was complete.

But then, looking back in 1960 when the book was written, these same idealistic British administrators now seemed to believe that, despite not having achieved all they had wished, in Robert Birley’s words, their "success was remarkable", and "a piece of work of which our country can afford to be proud" especially when they compared a democratic West Germany with the totalitarian communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the other side of the iron curtain.

17th February 2007

Ethel Mannin was a well known and popular author who published many books from the 1920s through to the 1960s and 1970s. ‘German Journey’ tells the story of a visit she made, as a war correspondent, to Germany and Austria in the Spring and Summer of 1947.

The book was published in 1948, a little later than most of the other contemporary British accounts of Germany after the war, which I’ve talked about on this blog. (See earlier postings on Fenner Brockway, ‘German Diary’, Noel Annan, ‘Changing Enemies’, William Strang, ‘Home and Abroad’, Lieutenant-Colonel Byford-Jones, ‘Berlin Twilight’ and Victor Gollancz, ‘In Darkest Germany’).

It’s interesting to see many of the same themes reappear. Here are some extracts from Ethel Mannin’s ‘German Journey’:

On the devastation caused by the Allied bombing, still visible two years after the end of the war: "It is a shock to see buildings which look as though it were only last week they were bombed. Each side of the road there are hills of rubble, and the hollow houses; not a house or building here and there, but each and every house, continuously. You were prepared for it, you remind yourself, you knew it would be like this; you had read Victor Gollancz’s book and Fenner Brockway’s, you had seen a film made by the Quakers; it is all as you expected; what you had not expected was the effect on yourself. You discover that you feel sick. Physically sick."

She describes a conversation with her driver in Hamburg: "I exclaimed involuntarily, ‘My God, it’s frightful!’ ‘Oh, but there’s far worse,’ my companion assured me. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘when people want to see ruins there’s a special drive we take them – a kind of show-piece. You just go on and on….’"

On the distinction between the (British) occupiers and (German) occupied, and the tendency of the victorious British (not the defeated Germans) to behave as if they were the ‘Herrenvolk’ or ‘Master Race’: "It could be South Africa and the Europeans and ‘non-Europeans’ as they call the whites and blacks. Or India at the height of the British Raj. What Fenner Brockway calls the ‘Poonah’ attitude is expressed in a marked tendency not to say please or thank-you to German personnel, whether it is waiters, chambermaids, drivers, or office staff…This Herrenvolk attitude has been commented on by other observers than myself."

A constant theme in the book is how well fed the occupying forces are, in contrast to the local population – for example the luxury of the British Officers’ Mess, which war correspondents, such as the author, were allowed to attend.

"I personally should find it depressing to live in an oasis of plenty in that desert of starvation. But admittedly it’s all in the point of view. Everything possible has been done to brighten the lives of the allied personnel, with clubs, cabarets, special cinemas; even in the German places they have priority. If a dance-place is packed, for example, and there are no tables available, you simply ask for an ‘allied table’. You are one of the garrison, one of the victors, and they, the conquered, cannot refuse you."

On the black market economy: "Domestic servants to Allied personnel will gladly take part of their wages in cigarettes. You tip the porter on the station two cigarettes, and your car-driver three – five if you have kept him for some hours. You leave a couple of cigarettes beside your place in the dining car of a train."

And finally, evidence of the emerging cold war: "As I write, the effectiveness of the Marshall Plan in getting the wheels going again and the food on the table in Germany has yet to be demonstrated; there may well be now a race between East and West to feed Germany – food having taken its place as a political weapon."

And the growing perception among the British that there was little to choose between National Socialism and Soviet Communism. On walking in Vienna, in the Soviet sector of Austria, seeing posters on the walls of happy Soviet workers and Soviet achievements, Ethel Mannin comments: "substitute the hammer and sickle and Soviet star for the swastika and it could as easily be Nazi propaganda."

4th February 2007

Fenner Brockway, was a pacifist in the First World War (though not in the Second) and British Labour Party MP from 1929-31 and again from 1950-64.

This book describes a two week visit he made to Germany in April and May 1946, with an author’s preface written in September 1946. Though in no way representing an official British view, it is interesting for what it reveals of one strand of British Labour Party opinion, twelve months after the end of the war.

His main purpose appears to have been to encourage the development of trade unions in Germany, and during his visit he made the first addresses after the war, by a British trade unionist to socialist and trade union audiences in Germany. The book also includes some interesting comments on the food situation in Germany, and as far as I know, some of the earliest descriptions of Germany after the war in Cold War terms – at least by someone on the political left.

His own views are clearly stated in the preface, where he says:

“As an international Socialist, I am not concerned whether Russia or Britain is the instrument which provides food and industrial recovery to Germany. I want the hunger to be ended, I want the German people to have the opportunity to lift themselves from Nazism and War and their consequences, and to become a partner in a co-operative world. I want that as a matter of human decency and freedom apart from any political considerations. But I am also a Democratic Socialist and I want the future Germany to be a Democratic Socialist, rather than Totalitarian Communist, State. I love liberty, and no democrat who has learned of Russian methods in Germany, as I did during my visit, would wish to see them extended…. Germany is now the battleground in which the issue of Democratic Socialism or Totalitarian Communism for the whole of Europe may be decided.… Britain should be as clearly the instrument of Democratic Socialism in the world as Russia is the instrument of Totalitarian Communism.”

Here are a few more extracts from the book on similar or related themes:

As a stark reminder of the food situation in Germany after the war Brockway quotes a recipe for tea made with pine needles, published in the “Food facts” column of one of the German newspapers: “You need 1 oz of pine tree needles and 2 pints of boiling water…” (This reminds me of the British Pathe newsreel – Ref: 1406.06 ‘GERMANY’S FOOD – THE TRUTH’ – made at much the same time, which shows a factory converted to make liver sausage, for people to eat, from pine or beech logs.)

He comments on slogans written on walls supporting the merger of the German Communist and Social Democratic parties. This was a policy backed by the Soviets and known as ‘Einheit’ or ‘Unity’. It was implemented in the Soviet Zone, where the parties merged, but not in the Western zones, where they remained independent. Brockway sees the Soviet slogan: “Ein Ziel, Ein Weg, Einheit” as unpleasantly close to the former Nazi slogan: “Ein Volk, Ein Führer, Ein Reich”

After speaking at a May Day demonstration organised by the Socialist Trade Unions, he describes his surprise that the British military commander of Hamburg congratulates him on his speech, which he heard over the wireless:

“My speech was a forthright declaration of international working class solidarity. It urged that the food supplies of the world should be distributed according to need and that industry should be retained to enable the German people to live and become part of a cooperative European economy; it included a declaration for workers’ and technicians’ control as essential to industrial democracy and for common action by the workers of all lands to prevent rulers again sending us to mutual slaughter – and the Military Commander jumps into a car to congratulate me!”

After another speech the same day at a May Day meeting of the Social Democratic Party, he is amazed to see tears running down his German colleagues’ cheeks in response to his expressions of international workers’ solidarity:

“To an Englishman this may seem undisciplined emotionalism; but remember that this is the first Free May Day in Germany since 1933, remember the isolation which German Socialists still feel, remember that this is the first time that a Socialist from another land has spoken to them as a comrade – and their emotion will be understood.”

In the afternoon of May 9th he gave a speech to the SDP (Socialist Party) conference in Hannover, and says that, as the only socialist representative from outside Germany:

“The speech has a tremendous reception, not because of me or what I say, but because it breaks at last the isolation which German Socialists feel so keenly. I cannot forget that the comrades in this hall were the first victims of Nazism, that they have gone through years of suffering for the Socialist cause which few of us in other countries have had to undergo. I am grateful for the opportunity to be the channel of the first expression of international solidarity with them.”

Finally his view that cooperation on iron and steel between Germany and her neighbours could be the start of a united Europe:

“Belgium and France. On the edge of the German frontier they also have their belt of coal and steel. Geologically they belong to the same coalfield; they also are a part of this industrial core of Europe. An idea! Why not link them up with German coal and steel and internationalise them all as one concern? That would be a serious beginning of a united Europe.

I remember the film Kameradschaft, [made in 1931 by the film director G W Pabst] in which we saw German and French miners separated only by an iron gate across one of the underground passages, the German miners going to the rescue of the French when there was an explosion. Why not remove the iron gate?”

27th January 2007

Noel Annan was a senior officer in the Political Division of the British Military Government in Germany immediately after the Second World War. He reported to Christopher Steel, who in turn worked for the political adviser, William Strang (see last week’s posting). He left Germany and returned to Britain in August 1946.

During the war Annan worked in the Joint Intelligence Staff in the Cabinet Office. After the war he had a distinguished career as an academic, becoming Provost of Kings College Cambridge in 1956, Provost of University College London in 1966 and a Life Peer in 1965. He is probably best known as the chair of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting, generally known as the Annan Committee.

In last week’s posting on William Strang, I contrasted some of Annan’s writing on Germany with Strang’s autobiography ‘Home and Abroad’. This week I thought it would be interesting to quote some more extracts from ‘Changing Enemies’, Annan’s memoirs of his time in Germany, published in 1995. This provides a personal, and sometimes idiosyncratic account of the times. Here are a few extracts:

In the introduction he explains the choice of title:

"The second part of the book describes the beginning of the regeneration of Germany and the minor part I took in reviving German political parties. We had changed enemies. Soviet Russia was imposing communist regimes upon the Soviet Zone and in Eastern Europe. It was not in our interest to acquiesce in a centralised Germany that would bring communism to the Rhine; nor in the interests of the Germans to substitute for Nazism another one-party dictatorship. It was odious to find oneself in alliance with people who had been willing to go along with Hitler to keep communism at bay. But the best hope for the West was to encourage the Germans themselves to create a Western democratic state. It was also in Germany’s interests."

The first chapter is titled "Britain’s new colony." He describes early (1943-44) US and British plans for post-war Germany as follows:

"What should be done with Germany? At first there had been much talk of dismemberment and returning to the days before the Zollverein, or customs union, was formed, the first stage in the unification of Germany in the nineteenth century. Roosevelt and Stalin were still talking dismemberment at Yalta, [in February 1945], and Churchill and Eden went along with them, but both knew Whitehall was sceptical….

"Meanwhile Roosevelt had become enchanted by his old friend and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau’s plan for the future of Germany…. Four million Germans would be shifted from industry into agriculture and transported to farm lands east of Berlin. The Allied occupation was to last for twenty years, and no assistance should be given to the German economy. The plan was solemnly initialled by Roosevelt and Churchill at Quebec in September 1944….

"In the winter of 1944-45 it became clear that Stalin was going to shift Poland’s frontiers to the west, and the land Morgenthau had earmarked for the four million displaced Germans would be farmed by Poles, not Germans….

"The Morgenthau plan died at the Potsdam conference of July-August 1945, but its ghost walked for many months and bedevilled occupation policy."

(For more on the Morgenthau Plan, see the Wikipedia article)

When the new Labour Government came to power in Britain in 1945, Prime Minister Attlee and Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin were in a dilemma:

"They wanted good relations with the Soviet Union, and had been shocked by a paper written by the Chiefs of Staff who argued that if Russia turned hostile Britain would have to incorporate as large a part of Germany as possible within the Western sphere."

The key issue was reparations. The Russians were asking for a share of the output of the German coalmines in the Ruhr, which was in the British zone. But the British wanted to keep the level of reparations low and the capacity of German industry relatively high, to reduce the costs of occupation and the burden on the British taxpayer.

"The decision about reparations, and the British expostulation that it would be the British as well as the Germans who would be paying the price, established the matrix for the future of Germany. All talk about a central government – reunification, de-Nazification, frontiers and the rest – was secondary to the decision about reparations. That decision determined that the Western powers would be responsible for the German economy in their zones."

In other words, according to Annan, it was the issue of reparations, which led to each of the Allies wanting to run the economies of their own zones in Germany in their own way, for their own benefit, which was the prime cause of the division of Germany after the war, between West and East.

On the situation in Germany immediately after the war, and the attitudes of the British military personnel and administrators, he says the following, echoing many other eye-witness accounts:

The "spectacle of misery pervaded one’s life" and "the memory of Germany in defeat has never faded from my mind … Particularly since we, [the British] the new lords of creation, swept by in our cars bound for some snug [officers’] mess remote from hunger and cold….

"When P.J. Grigg, Secretary of State for War, saw the man [Gerald Templer] whom Montgomery appointed to be Military Governor of the British zone, he told him he must resign himself to the fact that two million people would die of starvation in Europe after the war…."

(Fortunately this didn’t happen, but looking back sixty years later, it’s sometimes easy to forget how close parts of Europe were to famine and starvation after the war. I wrote about this a year ago in my posts on Bread Rationing in Britain).

In ‘Changing Enemies’, Annan describes how: "Templer’s energy transformed the British zone. Military Government officers, who had previously spent happy hours commandeering the best houses and stocking up the messes with wine and schnapps, found themselves working late hours reconstituting the German administration and putting Templer’s emergency plans into operation….

"Who were these new rulers in Germany whom Templer galvanised? Some were senior officers, generals and brigadiers, who a few months earlier had been commanding military units. Indeed during 1945 most of the Military Government detachments were manned by army officers, some like myself waiting to be demobilised…. Then there were the civilians, many wearing ill-fitting uniforms and somewhat despised by the regular officers. Some were civil servants. Ministries had been asked to release experienced administrators, but few were willing to let their best men and women go when Britain was converting from a war to a peacetime economy. Others came from the Colonial Service. Some were young idealists who hoped for a lifetime career in the Control Commission – described by Con O’Neill of the Foreign Office as ‘low-level’ zealots.’ Quite a few, singularly lacking in zeal, were there for the pickings."

And as a final quote from the book, here is the response from German politicians to a speech Annan made to them in December 1945, on plans to hold the first democratic elections in the British zone after the war:

"The response was touching: ‘This news is better for us that white bread’ said one old social democrat. Here were men with sallow faces and with the strained expression that hunger gives, men who were prepared to devote themselves to the unrewarding task of being a politician. I recognised during the time I spent in Germany a spirit of dedication to parliamentary democracy which sprang from the knowledge of what dictatorship had been, and still was in the Soviet Zone of Germany. I have never failed to be struck by this spirit whenever I have returned to the Federal Republic."

There is another review on the web of Noel Annan’s book, Changing Enemies, on H-Net

31st December 2006

Henry Faulk was the British officer responsible for a programme to ‘re-educate’ 400,000 German Prisoners of War held in England at the end of the Second World War.

This book, published in 1977, is remarkable for two reasons. Firstly much has been written on the theory of re-education, but the programme described in the book was one of the few examples where it was consciously and systematically applied in practice. Secondly Faulk approaches the subject from the point of view of group psychology, rather than the attitudes of individuals, or of any supposed ‘national character.’

In all, there were 1,500 separate prisoner of war camps in Britain, which, in Faulk’s words, made it possible to observe alterations in the group conditions of men "under conditions as like those of a laboratory as real life permits."

It is also one of the few books in English I have read, which consciously tries to portray both a British and German point of view. As Faulk says:

"Although the war was the same historical event for both the Germans and Allies, they saw it from diametrically opposed points of view. To the West the war was a symptom of the specifically German disease of super-nationalism, and re-education was to be the cure. The majority of German POW had as little comprehension of that viewpoint as had the British population for the way in which Germans had experienced the years of National Socialism under Hitler."

Before 1944, very few German POW were held in Britain. But after D-Day and the Normandy landings, numbers increased rapidly and in total around 400,000 German POW were held in Britain between 1944 and September 1948, when the process of repatriation was finally completed.

(The 3 million German soldiers who surrendered to the British in Germany at the end of the war in April and May 1945, were not treated as POWs and are not part of this story. They were renamed ‘Surrendered Enemy Personnel’ allocated a living area within Germany, provided with rations, and left to manage as well as they could, until they were eventually demobilised).

On the concept of ‘re-education’ Faulk says that: "The word was a reminder that the Second World War was in part fought on both sides for ideological reasons." The policy as it applied to POWs was officially approved in 1944: "In September 1944 the War Cabinet approved a scheme of re-education for German prisoners. The Department responsible for the submission and initiation of the scheme was known at that time as the Political Intelligence department and, later, as the Prisoner of War Division of the Foreign Office."

On his own role Faulk says that: "A few weeks before the end of the war the author, then an officer of the Intelligence Corps, was seconded by the War Office to the Political Intelligence Department. At the end of the war the author was given the task of organising the work of re-education in the camps."

The situation in the POW camps at the end of the war

Until the end of the war, the POW camps were run in accordance with the Geneva Conventions which meant that prisoners remained subject to their own military discipline and Nazi ideology and supporters dominated the camps. Faulk says of the situation at this time:

"Until the end of the war…The POW accepted and carried out orders in the same way and in the same spirit of mingled defiance and contempt as any other POW. There was no trouble for the British guards other than the odd attempt at escape, and all serious crime was committed by the prisoners against each other and was politically motivated…. In general the behaviour of the German POW was probably the best of all POW of the last war. Serious crime was rare…. The good behaviour of the POW was not the simple submission to authority. It was a conscious good conduct of the individual. The men were proud of their communal discipline and hoped that it would persuade the world at large that they were not really barbarians. They rarely understood that the accusations of the world were really directed at their group ethos, not at their personal morality."

According to Faulk: "For the mass of German POW National Socialism was a way of life, a system of group attitudes, which supported the individual in his concept of himself as a German, and was seen though a projection of personal honesty. It was identified with racial virtues, patriotism, courage, comradeship, fidelity, self-sacrifice, honour and efficiency. Politically it was seen as a movement of reform towards a classless society, social justice and the betterment of the underprivileged."

This meant that the mass of POW could not understand why the world was "blind to the ‘good side’ of National Socialism or was not a ‘good idea badly carried out.’"

However, according to Faulk, the POWs showed a lack of empathy for those who were not members of their own group. This was not a lack of understanding of another’s point of view "for they learned in the most admirable way to listen quietly and patiently to differing opinions and to discuss without hear. Basically it was the lack of a concept of humanity, of men simply as people."

"Until the group blinkers had been removed and it became possible to achieve a moral perspective based on a concept of humanity and not solely on conformity to the group habits, it was difficult to establish an intellectual common ground for any kind of social or political discussion. On the other hand, once the moral basis was established, re-education had attained its aim and the political aspect was of little import."

In summary, the aim of the British Prisoner of War Department, "entrusted with the re-education of the German POW …was first to separate the concepts of National Socialism, patriotism and the German character, and then to substitute for the attitudes of the National Socialist group ethos, attitudes based on a less ethnocentric and more humanitarian view of people."

Changing British attitudes to the German POWs

On attitudes to the re-education of POWs in Britain, Faulk says: "In so far as the general public was aware of the policy of re-education, and on the whole it evinced relatively little interest, its interpretation of the aim, never clearly defined, tended to be a vague feeling that it was necessary to make the Germans more like the British."

Initially the war was seen as a war of ideas, not a national war between Britain and Germany. But after the discovery of the concentration camps, the distinction drawn by liberal opinion between Germans and Nazis was questioned. Nationally minded opinion, largely represented by the Conservatives, saw this of further evidence of German collective guilt.

According to Faulk, the meaning of ‘guilt’ was understood differently by British and Germans. The British understood it to mean moral responsibility. "Although there was a general emotional confusion, the British were really talking of moral responsibility." The Germans, on the other hand understood it as "criminal involvement in a personal and legal sense."

During the war, the German POW had enjoyed a higher level of rations than the British civilian population, in line with the government’s interpretation of the Geneva Conventions. But on 15th May 1945, after the discovery of the concentration camps, the government yielded to popular demand and reduced the ration scale. Faulk comments on this: "In the POW camps the adjustment of the ration scale was regarded either as proof of the hatred the British bore them or as an act of revenge for the concentration camps; in the course of time the latter explanation became the generally accepted slogan."

But from then on, remarkably, the attitude of the civilian population to German POW changed. Despite a ban on fraternisation and social contacts:  "…German POW from that time on began to receive secret and illegal offerings of food from the [British] civilians among whom they worked, a first step in the process which made the POW draw a sharp distinction between their personal thoughts of the [individual] Britisher and their group concept of ‘the British.’"

Presumably the British civilian population had made the same distinction in their personal thoughts, between a group concept of ‘the Germans’ and the individual German POW.

In general there was little contact between the general British population and POWs until 1946. Faulk says of this: "The POW first appeared outside the camps as workers under strict military supervision in the autumn of 1944. Contact with civilians was then the minimum dictated by the needs of employers. Civilian contact developed through 1946 and became general and sanctioned only at the end of that year."

"The war psychosis began to ebb at the beginning of 1946, and the demand on humanitarian grounds for fraternisation and repatriation gathered momentum. Public sympathy was increased by the growing number of cases of people punished for kindness to POW or for deliberately flouting the fraternisation ban. Conversely no credit was allowed to the POW for praiseworthy action. When, for example near Stratford, in the summer of 1946, two POW saved the life of a farmer from the attack of a bull, the War Office forbade any concrete expressions of gratitude."

"In July Richard Stokes MP chaired in London a public meeting of the Churches, Parliamentarians and welfare organisations that passed a resolution demanding for the POW repatriation, fraternisation, a decent pay and a chance to send parcels home. By August the press was in full support. The ban continued even after repatriation began in September and was only relaxed at Christmas, when public and parliamentary pressure had made fraternisation inevitable. Thereafter it progressed fairly rapidly."

"Among the families with which the POW began, eighteen months after the end of the war, to form friendships, any conscious idea of re-education was almost completely absent. Here the watchword was simply humanity and friendliness, and the underlying principle the faith that warm humanity would evoke humanity and that this was bound to have social and political repercussions."

By 13th June 1948 even The Sunday Express was saying: "At the beginning bus conductors refused to carry Germans, Councillors would not have them in libraries, ex-soldiers fought them in dance-halls, but all gave way to public opinion. The Germans are all right."

Around 10% of the 400,000 German POW applied to remain in Britain and eventually 25,252 (6%) were given permission to do so. 796 British girls married POWs.

The process and methods of re-education

The process of re-education started by screening POWs and classifying them as ‘blacks’ ie Nazi sympathisers, ‘whites’ ie anti-Nazis and ‘greys’. Faulk says of this:

"There never at any time existed among the POW camps of Great Britain a ‘White’ or a ‘Black’ camp, in the sense that all the inmates of the one were untainted by Nazi attitudes, whilst all the inmates of the other were steeped in Nazi ideology. Every camp consisted of a small ‘white’ element and a small ‘black’ element, rarely making up more than 20% of the camp total between them, and of some 80% of ‘greys’, men in whom National Socialism was simply the expression of group conformity. Nevertheless both prisoners and POWD spoke of ‘white, ‘grey’ and ‘black’ camps. The reference was to the ‘tone’ of the camps, the awareness of preponderant attitudes to which the mass conformed and which emanated from the small active element."

Re-education was about finding the right people, more than about ideas. The process was to remove active Nazis from a camp and then to "find and encourage men capable of making the group aware of a new direction, and to aid the mechanics of the spread of awareness."

"Even though a camp might, for a number of reasons, be ready for change, the process would not start without the right kind of man to lead it. Rejection of Nazism, whether political or based on a positive humanitarianism was not enough."

"The initial impetus toward change required men of impressive quality. The best of these ‘whites’ were men whose humanity, integrity and capabilities were of a quality to overcome opposition and to command respect, trust, and a focal social influence in the community."

The British Prisoner of War Department described the process as follows: "These men will be hard to find, but when we do find them, we must win them over for re-education. Above all they have objectivity and humanity, integrity, tolerance and ethical principles, which they can express. They prefer democracy because with all its faults it puts people in the foreground and not an impersonal political or economic ideology."

Results

Faulk’s assessment of the results was that the process of re-education resulted in a shift of attitudes from ‘black’ towards ‘white’ but the greatest movement was from ‘black’ to ‘grey’. The proportion of ‘whites’ remained fairly constant at 10%.

"Re-education was not a process of preaching and persuasion. It was a reorientation of group attitudes to people and events…. It did not proscribe opinion, but it affected the way in which the group saw its problems and the conclusions it drew."

The ‘tone’ of the camps changed and results are summarised as follows:

• "About 3% of the POW claimed to have acquired in captivity a new, positive philosophy of life
• About 30% considered tolerance, objectivity and esteem for human dignity the basis of their new social attitudes. The word ‘tolerance’ was the commonest new concept among the POW. They were proud of it.
• About 20% claimed to have changed their political outlook. For almost all of these men that meant a conclusion in favour of democracy.
• About 4% remained faithful to the old National Socialist norms. For these men the re-educational efforts were enemy propaganda."

Faulk claims that whereas many POW retained some respect for the social institutions of National Socialism, they rejected its attitudes, whereas the mass of the civilian population in Germany rejected National Socialism as a political system, but retained the attitudes which had ensured cooperation with it. Many POW were "shocked after repatriation by the retention of National Socialist attitudes at home."

In summary Faulk says that in the camps involved in re-education in 1945 there was a "gradual, fairly slow, but steady reaction against National Socialism … In 1946 the persistence of the old attitudes and the dominance of the ‘blacks’ shrank to a small minority of the camps."

To finish this posting here are two examples from letters Faulk received, after their release, from POW at different ends of the scale. Firstly one who claimed that re-education was a complete failure, because it taught the POW, or at least those of his generation, nothing they did not already know:

• "Re-education: let me restrict myself to those men, perhaps the lesser half, who don’t want war or power, and were old enough to know why. The lecturers only told us what we knew already, or else they said things meant to make us feel guilty, or they talked about crimes we hadn’t committed and that we ourselves condemned. Most men listened without any interest or just brushed it aside as propaganda. To my mind re-education was a complete failure."

And the second which speaks for itself:

• "Looking back one must confess that captivity was no waste of time for any of us, even for the worst fanatics. In every case the POW was the gainer and so much of it stuck that today, 20 years later, one notices constantly, in every serious conversation, who had the luck to be a prisoner of war in Britain. I write the word ‘luck’ quite intentionally, because, believe it or not, it is today here in West Germany considered to be an advantage to have been a prisoner of war in Britain. Not an advantage, of course, because of any sort of preferential treatment, but simply because the intellectual and political perspective of the men from Britain is wider and deeper than is, for example, that of the prisoners of war who were unlucky enough to spend the best years of their lives in Russia. Even they got something out of it, although their re-education was a one-sided anti-capitalist affair which failed to turn them into communists, and you notice that they are less patient and tolerant that the prisoners of war from Britain."

18 December 2006

Michael Thomas was a German citizen, a British army officer during the war and a member of the British Military Government and Control Commission for Germany after the war.

He was born in 1915 as Ulrich Holländer. Half Jewish, he was the son of Felix Holländer, director of the Deutsche Theater in Berlin, and later a theatre critic. His uncle, Victor Holländer, wrote operettas, and his cousin, Friedrich Holländer, wrote the music for the film, ‘The Blue Angel’, including the famous song sung by Marlene Dietrich: ‘Falling in Love Again’ (Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe engestellt.)

He fled to England in 1939 and after being interned as an ‘enemy alien’, volunteered for the British Army, was promoted to be an officer, fought in Normandy, Belgium and Germany with a Polish Division, and then, after the war, became a liaison officer for General Gerald Templer, who was Director of Civil Affairs for the British army in Germany in the period immediately after the war.

His mother continued to live in Berlin and survived the war. But all of his Jewish relations on his father’s side, except for one aunt who escaped to England with her son, and Friedrich Holländer, who emigrated to Hollywood, were killed in the concentration camps.

He was demobilised from the British army in August 1946 and returned to Germany as a civilian member of the Control Commission. He left the Control Commission in January 1952 and stayed in Germany, working for the Hamburg firm of Coutinho, Caro and Co, where he remained for 25 years.

His remarkable background and experience make his memoirs "Deutschland, England über alles", published in 1984, an unusual and fascinating book. It was written in German and as far as I know, has never been translated into English. This is a shame, as the story he tells is not from a British, or a German, or a Jewish, perspective, but a mixture of all three. Here are a few extracts:

1) At the start of the war there were around 70,000 ‘enemy aliens’ in Britain, many of them Jewish. Some were interned immediately, but those who could show they were ‘Anti Nazis’ or ‘refugees from Nazi oppression’ remained free. After Dunkirk these too were interned. Thomas relates how he was woken from sleep by two policemen on 27th June 1940 and interned in Huyton, near Liverpool. The camp commander, a colonel, (revealing how ignorant many in Britain were of what was really happening in Germany), remarked as he saw the internees arrive "Ich wusste gar nicht, dass es unter den Nazis so viele Juden gibt." (I didn’t know that so many Jews were Nazis).

2) On 19 September 1940 he was enrolled into the British army and escorted to Devon where he "exchanged one barbed wire fence for another." He was later promoted to become an officer.

3) In  August 1944 he joined a Polish division fighting in Normandy after the D-day landings. He changed his name, from Ulrich Holländer to Michael Thomas, to protect his mother, in case he was captured by the German army. On 5th April 1945 he crossed the border into Germany. A young boy took off his cap to him. In all the houses where people were still living, white sheets were hanging out of the windows as signs of capitulation.

4) Soon after this, the troops in his company freed a small concentration camp in Aschendorf. "Was später über Bergen-Belsen und andere Lager bekannt werden sollte, hier sah ich es mit eigenen Augen." (Here I saw with my own eyes what was later revealed at Bergen-Belsen and other camps).

5) He says he learnt how to distinguish Nazis from non-Nazis by a simple formula: "ein Nazi jemand, der eingleisig dachte; ein AntiNazi war, wer differenzieren konnte und diskutieren wollte." (A Nazi was someone who had a single track mind; an Anti-Nazi could understand different viewpoints and wanted to discuss these).

6) He wrote a report on attitudes among young people in Germany and gave it to his colonel. He found that his colonel had forwarded his report on German youth to Field Marshall Montgomery and a colonel at Montgomery’s HQ wanted to see him. Montgomery later published the report in his memoirs.

7) Following the meeting at Montgomery’s HQ, he was transferred to the political intelligence branch of the 21st Army group. He says of these times in Germany: "Viele haben das trostlose Bild, das Deutschland damals bot, und ihre eigenen leiden fast vergessen, waehrend jene, die diese Zeit nicht miterlebt haben, sich das Elend kaum vorzustellen vermogen." (Many people have almost forgotten their own suffering and the tragic picture of Germany at that time, but it is almost impossible for those who did not live through it to imagine what it was like).

8) He worked for General Templer as a liaison officer, and took part, as a British observer, in meetings of leading German officials, appointed by the British after the war, which were later formalised as the ‘Zonal Advisory Council’ and became the nucleus of the new German administration.

9) Of Templer himself, he says: "Ohne Templer wäre der Winter 1945/6 für die Bevölkerung zur Katastrophe geworden." (If it had not been for Templer, the Winter of 1945-6 would have been a catastrophe for the [German] population). Despite having done many other things since, the happiest times of his life were when he was working for Templer in 1945-6, with the belief that he was serving his split country on both sides of the Channel.

10th December 2006

It’s always interesting to compare how the same people, places and themes are portrayed in different historical sources. The subject of my research is how Germany after the war was portrayed in Britain, with special reference to two events: Humphrey Jennings’ film – "A Defeated People" – and the London exhibition "Germany under Control."

I chose the film and the exhibition, because they were both sponsored by the British Ministry of Information, and made with the full support of the British Military Government and Control Commission for Germany, and can therefore be taken as representing an official view, rather than being individual personal accounts.

To cross reference and validate my understanding of what was portrayed in the film and the exhibition, I have found it useful to refer to another official source, the British Zone Review, a fortnightly review of the activities of the British Control Commission for Germany. I’ve also been looking at the official publications given to British forces, telling them what they should and should not do, once they crossed the frontier into Germany, such as Germany 1944: the British Soldier’s Pocketbook.

One theme which appears, in different ways, in the Film, the Review and the Pocketbook, is whether it was acceptable for the British to feel sympathy for the suffering of the German people after the war. The British public were clearly divided over the issue. See for example my post last week, when I wrote about the debate in the letters pages of British Zone Review, on ‘Feeling sorry for the Germans’ which was started by a letter from Subaltern Lucia Lawson.

I was therefore interested to come across a reference both to Lucia Lawson and to her letter, in another account of Germany after the war. Berlin Twilight, originally published in 1947, was written by Lieutenant-Colonel Byford-Jones, a British officer on Field-Marshal Montgomery’s staff in Berlin. Describing one of his visits to the bars and cafes of Berlin, to meet and talk to local people, he says: "With me went Mr Vincent Evans (Daily Express war correspondent) and Subaltern the Hon. Lucia Lawson, with whom I flew to Germany from London and who had already expressed sympathy with the German women and children, which had brought her both criticism and support in the British Zone Review."

Written in an entertaining, not to say racy style, the book is a vivid description of life in Berlin at the time. Though a personal, rather than an official account, it’s a useful additional source for evidence of how the occupation of Germany was portrayed, by the British, to an audience of people at home.

Here are a few extracts from the first part of the book, called "Meeting the People;" a description of conditions in Berlin shortly after the end of the war:

On his first impressions of Berlin:
"It will be a long time before I forget my first sight that day of the city of Berlin…. So many poignant memories flashed though my mind as I began to see what war, bombs and artillery could do to a vast city, as clean, as well organized, as comfortable, and as stately as any of its age and size…. Berlin virtually was destroyed. Naturally the bombs and the artillery and mortars had missed buildings here and there, as they had missed the Hotel am Zoo, in Berlin’s Piccadilly, where I was quartered, but Berlin as I knew it had disappeared…. Never for a second could one forget the destruction and tragedy of Berlin."

On the outlook from his office, looking out onto the rubble:
"From beneath it all, rising on the heat of the day to my bedroom, came a hideous small of dampness, of charred remains, of thousands of putrefying bodies."

On the notices pinned to trees with messages from people looking for lost friends or relatives, or seeking work or money, (as also shown in the film A Defeated People):
"On the trees that flanked the pavements were many thousands of little cards and envelopes bearing desperate messages in pencil, ink, or typescript, some embellished with a crude drawing, asking people to change luxury articles for something that could be eaten or worn, or appealing for work of any kind, or offering marriage, companionship and more doubtful liaison. Everywhere there were these pathetic appeals, literally tens upon tens of thousands of them, and around each tree from early morning until late at night crowds gathered, making notes."

On the US soldier:
The US soldier has plenty of money and has "a Leica camera round his neck, perhaps two…. The most surprising thing was the German girl. She was so like the girl back home, the girl he had met in England, so unlike those in France, who were exotic, or those in Holland, who were dull. After all something like twenty-five per cent of the people in the States were German…. ‘Somehow or other we’d been led to believe that a German girl was fat and ugly, with fanged teeth, who beat her fist on Mein Kampf and shouted Heil Hitler, I am a Nazi.’ (Psychological warfare and scientific orientation had told him everything about the Germans, except that they were human beings.)"

On the black market and the purchasing power of cigarettes:
"It was not long before the Allied soldier realized the vast purchasing and persuasive power he had in his possession of cigarettes…. He saw that he could make money on which to have a good time, that he could not only keep his pay intact but could also acquire fountain pens, cinematograph apparatus, jewels, watches, antiques, diamonds and binoculars."

On the banquets which followed the Allied Control Council meetings:
"…each meeting of the Council was followed by a banquet such as few emperors can ever have improved upon when entertaining visiting Royalty…. This small body of men, most of whom had seen or known the worst of human suffering and deprivation on the world’s worst battlefields in the bloody years, then sat down for an hour in a ruined city of over three million souls, all of whom were learning in hunger and poverty the high cost of aggression, and ate the choicest of food and drank the finest of wines the needy could produce."

On the German refugees expelled from former German territory now ceded to Poland:
"In the course of two or three months, I made periodic visits to various railway stations…. Everywhere I found men and women who had lost, together with their homes, families and property, all human dignity and had become animals, sleeping like animals on the floor, and going periodically into any corner at hand…. They looked like tramps, who had been on the road for life. When I saw their passport pictures, taken a few months before I was staggered. The change these people had undergone was incredible. They had all lost weight, aged ten years, had lined faces. They were sick and mentally unbalanced….

I went round some of the refugee camps – former barracks, schools, quarantine stations, Red Cross centres – which were like a crown of thorns round the festering head of Berlin – and I saw such human degradation, depravity and tragedy that I was physically sick after a few hours of it….

The deportations had obviously not been the subject of any
organization. The Poles had ordered entire populations to leave at half
an hour’s notice. The Poles had not previously been in touch with the
German authorities to warn them, or with the Allied Powers in the
various zones. Thus, day after day entire families had set off with
handcarts, wheelbarrows, going west. New-born infants and people who
had died of malignant diseases were found lying amid the belongings on
the trucks. The refugees tried each night to reach inhabited centres,
and next morning were moved on again; only those who were dying remained….

In the month of July, when the first count was made, 500,000 had reached and roamed through Berlin terribly disillusioned, regarding silently the burned-out ruins…. Few families arrived in Berlin without casualties. Either people had fallen off trains, got lost on the way, or had become sick and been retained by municipalities in hospitals which refused to keep the rest of their families…."

These comments by a British observer on the German refugee crisis after the war were by no means unique. In a recent article in Twentieth Century British History, Matthew Frank has written about the origins and development of a campaign in Britain to raise awareness of conditions in central Europe in late 1945, and to rally support behind measure to find a solution to the German refugee crisis. In view of my interest in how the British Occupation of Germany was portrayed to people back home, I found it interesting that he says in the article:

"The British response to the expulsions and the ensuing German refugee crisis… has been almost totally overlooked [by historians]. As a result one still gets the impression, even from more recent studies, that this vast movement of population passed with scarcely a word of comment or criticism in Britain, when quite the opposite was the case."

In fact, vivid accounts of the crisis were published in the British press, and an appeal launched by the publisher Victor Gollancz,  to highlight the need to relief and reconstruction in Europe, which led to the formation of the campaigning group "Save Europe Now." I first wrote about Victor Gollancz and Save Europe Now (in a different context) on this blog over a year ago in my posts on 27 October 2005 on Gollancz’s book "In Darkest Germany" and on 5 November 2005 on "Victor Gollancz, Peggy Duff and Save Europe Now."