More on Stephen Spender and post-war Germany

1st June 2009

In my last post, I wrote about Stephen Spender’s book 'European Witness', and his reactions to the destruction he found in the cities of Germany after the war; of how this made him all too aware of the fragility of European civilisation, and his fear that the ruins of Cologne and Berlin could all too easily be followed by the ruins of London, Paris or Brussels.

The conclusion he drew from this was, that if things were to get better instead of worse, a conscious effort was required:

“… today we are confronted with the choice between making a heaven or a hell of the world in which we live, and the whole of civilization will be bound by whichever fate we choose.”

The Nazis had shown, in his view, that it was possible for individuals to have a dramatic effect on the future of the world, for the worse. Previous outlooks on life, prevalent before the war, were no longer sustainable. Both Marxist historical determinism and liberal laissez-faire attitudes had assumed that the actions of individuals were insignificant compared to the greater impersonal forces of history. But if the end result of trusting to a benign and inevitable social progress was the rise of fascism and the destruction of civilisation, as he knew it, what was the alternative?

“We realize today that what goes on in men’s minds may have a terrifying effect on their environment. The nihilistic nightmares of Fascism have proved that, and the weapons which destroyed fascism have proved it to a degree which makes even Fascism seem a childish dream.”

“One might compare the countries of the world to-day to clocks. Each country registers a different time, but outside their time there is one time for the whole world, registered to one clock, with a time-bomb attached to it.”

“The countries of the world are isolated in their separate experience. Yet the pressure of awareness is so great that the world to-day has a kind of transparency. We look through our own experiences to those of other countries. They might be us and we might be them. What has happened to us might happen to them. Through the streets of London and Paris we see the streets of Hamburg and Warsaw. Yet, it is easier in Paris to imagine the whole city being destroyed, than in Berlin to imagine Berlin being rebuilt.”

Liberal ideas of individual freedom, of each individual striving for his own personal self-interest, resulting in social progress and greater happiness for all, were no longer acceptable as a guide to personal conduct. The only answer to the nightmare of present destruction and the threat of worse to come was a conscious and deliberate effort, by all those who recognised the danger, to do whatever they could to avoid it.

“If we are truthful with ourselves, we have to admit, surely, that political freedom has been tolerable and welcome to us, because we did not think that it confronted us with the direct responsibility of a choice between good and evil. We were free because we believed in ‘laissez-faire’, in the old-fashioned conception of evolution, in the sense of having confidence that an interplay of free forces and conflicting interests would inevitably product the best results. And no one was responsible for these results, no one was responsible for progress. If one was a reformer or even a radical revolutionary, one was still only a force within a total of conflicting forces which were producing the general movement of social advancement, so that in a sense it was true that the people who were opposed to reform, the conservatives, were contributing as much to the general progress (in that they themselves represented one of the forces of society) as the progressives.”

The Nazi and fascist leaders showed that individuals could make a difference, even if it was for evil, rather than for good:

“They made social and political activity significant moral, or rather immoral, activity, and they renounced the irresponsible amoral automatism of the progressive industrial era. As human beings, they were at the centre of their own social actions and in a universe which, if it does not include the idea of heaven, at least includes the idea of hell, they damned and destroyed themselves and a great part of the world with them.”

I’ve written before on this blog (in my post on Amy Buller’s book ‘Darkness over Germany’) about how some British commentators described the war and its aftermath in religious and spiritual terms. Perhaps surprisingly, even an enlightened, liberal and rational commentator such as Stephen Spender ended his book by writing in religious and spiritual terms about the importance of morality, and of the “realization that society has got to choose not just to be free but to be good.”

“Thus can I explain to myself why it is that these terrible men preoccupied (I can witness only for myself) not only my waking thoughts but also my dreams, during many years. And in my dreams, I did not simply hate them and put them from me. I argued with them, I wrestled with their spirits, and the scene in which I knew them was one in which my own blood and tears flowed. The cities and soil of Germany where they were sacrificed were not just places of material destruction. They were alters on which a solemn sacrifice had been performed according to a ritual in which inevitably all the nations took part. The whole world had seemed to be darkened with their darkness, and when they left the world, the threat of a still greater darkness, a total and everlasting one, rose up from their ashes. And at the same time, there could not be the least doubt that the only answer to this past and this present is a conscious, deliberate and wholly responsible determination to make our society walk in the paths of light.”

Stephen Spender – European Witness

9th May 2009

Stephen Spender was one of a group of highly influential left-wing writers and artists who came to prominence in Britain in the 1930s, including W H Auden and Christopher Isherwood. After the war he was a notable public intellectual, editor of the magazine Encounter, and received numerous honours and awards, including Poet Laureate of the United States in 1965, and a knighthood in Britain in 1983.

In more recent years his reputation as a poet has declined. See for example this review, in the electronic magazine Slate, of a recent biography of Spender:

“Fairly or unfairly, Spender's reputation as a toady has steadily consolidated, while his reputation as a poet has steadily declined.”

I am no expert on Spender and can’t comment on whether this view of his poetry and personality is justified or not, but I’ve recently read his book European Witness, an account of two visits he made to Germany immediately after the Second World War, in July and August, and September and October 1945.

In some ways, European Witness tells a similar story to other British and American accounts of Germany after the war, such as Patrick Gordon-Walker’s The Lid Lifts, and Humphrey Jennings’ documentary film ‘A Defeated People’, but Spender seemed to have had a knack of making explicit, what other observers alluded to but rarely, if ever, said directly.

I’ve written on this blog before, about the shock many British observers felt at the scale of destruction in Germany – far worse than anything at home. It wasn’t just the physical destruction of the cities they found shocking, but the apparent collapse and demoralization of the people. Humphrey Jennings expressed this in stark terms in a letter he wrote to his wife Cicely, when filming in Germany in September 1945:

“… the problem of the German character and nation … seeing, watching, working with the Germans en masse – terrified, rabbit-eyed, over-willing, too friendly, without an inch of what we call character among a thousand … a nation of near zombies with all the parts of human beings but really no soul – no oneness of personality to hold the parts together and shine out of the eyes. The eyes indeed are the worst the most telltale part – no shine, often no focus – the mouth drawn down with overwork and over-determination …” 
 
Jennings was unusual in expressing this so directly and visually. Spender, writing in European Witness, a book for publication, was more literary, but some of the language he used – parasites sucking at a dead corpse – was just as vivid:

“Now it requires a real effort of the imagination to think back to that Cologne which I knew well ten years ago. Everything has gone. In this the destruction of Germany is quite different from even the worst that has happened in England (though not different from Poland and from parts of Russia). In England there are holes, gaps and wounds, but the surrounding life of the people themselves has filled them up, creating a scar which will heal. In towns such as Cologne and those of the Ruhr, something quite different has happened. The external destruction is so great that it cannot be healed and the surrounding life of the rest of the country cannot flow into and resuscitate the city which is not only battered but also dismembered and cut off from the rest of Germany and from Europe. The ruin of the city is reflected in the internal ruin of its inhabitants who, instead of being lives that can form a scar over the city’s wounds, are parasites sucking at a dead carcase, digging among the ruins for hidden food, doing business at their black market near the Cathedral -  the commerce of destruction instead of production.

The people who live there seem quite dissociated from Cologne. They resemble rather a tribe of wanderers who have discovered a ruined city in a desert and who are camping there, living in the cellars and hunting amongst the ruins for the booty, relics of a dead civilization.

The great city looks like a corpse and stinks like one also, with all the garbage which has not been cleared away, all the bodies still buried under heaps of stones and iron.”

It’s easy now, looking back with hindsight, to think that reconstruction and economic recovery – the economic miracle – followed almost inevitably from the ruins of war. For contemporary British observers in 1945, it was very far from obvious. Their expectation was the opposite – that what had been destroyed was lost for ever and could never be rebuilt. According to Spender this sense of hopelessness, and despair at the future, affected the occupiers, as well as the occupied:

“The effect of these corpse-towns is a grave discouragement which influences everyone living and working in Germany, the occupying forces as much as the German. The destruction is serious in more senses than one. It is a climax of deliberate effort, an achievement of our civilization, the most striking result of co-operation between nations in the twentieth century. It is the shape created by our century as the Gothic cathedral is the shape created by the Middle Ages…. The city is dead and the inhabitants only haunt the cellars and basements. Without the city they are rats in the cellars, or bats wheeling around the towers of the cathedral…. The destruction of the city itself, with all its past as well as its present, is like a reproach to the people who go on living there.”

It made him feel sick, as he described in a chapter in the book, entitled Nausea:

“A few days later, I experienced a sensation which is as difficult to describe as a strong taste or a disagreeable smell or a violent action, because, although it was a mental condition, its effects were so physical. It is worth endeavouring to describe however, because although I may have felt this rather more acutely than others, I believe that the condition is a mental one which is partly the result of the occupation, and from which many people in the occupying Armies suffer. Other people would probably explain the horror – the longing to get away at all costs – which affects the majority of the members of the Forces occupying Germany as a result of the ruined surroundings, the lack of entertainment and the generally depressing atmosphere. But I think that subtler and deeper than this is a sense of hopelessness which is bred of the relationship of Occupiers and Occupied.

The first symptoms of the illness were violent homesickness accompanied by a sensation of panic that I would never get out of Germany…. Such sensations are acuter than most physical pain and, although they do not last, whilst they go on it is of little use telling oneself, what is most certainly true, that one will be better to-morrow, because they have the force of a vision…”

In some ways therefore, although the war had ended and Nazi Germany had been defeated, things were no better than they had been before. The ambitions of modern nation states, the destructive power of war, and the possible consequences of this in the future for everyone, for the victors as well as for the defeated, were starkly obvious in the ruins of the German cities and a demoralised and hopeless people. The Cologne and Berlin of today could all too easily be the London, Paris or Brussels of tomorrow. According to Spender, there was no German problem now, only the problem of the disunity of the Allies.

“Germany, instead of being a place where the ‘German problem’ is being solved has become a scene where the disunity of the Allies is projected and one more demonstration of the fact that modern states were incapable, during what is called peace, of sacrificing national sovereignty in order to avert foreseen disasters.”

The foreboding he had felt in 1931, before the rise of the Nazis, had not been dispelled by victory in war, as the potential for further and even worse destruction was all too obvious and the ruins of Germany could become the ruins of the whole of Europe. Just as there had been, in his words, “enormous power for good or for evil” in Weimar Germany, the future in 1945 was not inevitable, but required a conscious choice. In summary, as he wrote at the end of the chapter, his “sense of nausea on certain days in Bonn”, was due to:

“… a real potentiality in my environment, as vivid as the potentialities of Nazism in 1931. This was the potentiality of the ruin of Germany to become the ruins of the whole of Europe: of the people of Brussels and Paris, London and New York, to become the herds wandering in their thousands across a continent, reduced to eating scraps and grass. It was the sense as I walked along the streets of Bonn with a wind blowing putrescent dust of ruins as stinging as pepper into my nostrils, that the whole of our civilization was protected by such eggshell walls which could be blown down in a day. It was a sense of two futures within modern humanity, like the two worlds within Faust’s breast, one a future of confidence between people in a world of such happiness as can reasonably be organized within the conditions of human existence, the other a world given over to destruction and hatred. Both these potentialities were real: but the constructive one required resolution, unity, will, acceptance of guilt, and a conscious choice to determine our future, the destructive one was to be got by going on as we have done now ever since 1918.”

References:

Stephen Spender
European Witness
(London: Hamish Hamilton, 1946)

For other views of Stephen Spender see:

John Xiros Cooper
“The Crow on the Crematorium Chimney”: Germany, Summer, 1945
https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/ESC/article/view/341/317 (PDF)

David Aberbach
'Stephen Spender's Jewish roots'
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5800826.ece

Stephen Metcalf
Stephen Spender, Toady: Was there any substance to his politics and art?
http://www.slate.com/id/2113164/

Marriage with ‘ex-enemy nationals’

2nd May 2009

I’m trying to work out who was the first British soldier or civilian member of the Control Commission to marry a German, after the end of the Second World War, and when the first wedding took place.

Two years ago I conducted an oral history interview (now held as part of the Imperial War Museum sound archive) with an elderly gentleman who married his wife in Germany on 28th June 1947. He believed he was the first serving British soldier to have been given permission to marry a German woman, but I am not sure that is correct, as in her autobiography, Lucky Girl Goodbye, Renate Greenshields describes how she, and fourteen other German women, travelled to Britain on the ship the Empire Halladale on 18th December 1946, to marry British men they had met in Germany. Her wedding took place on 6th January 1947. But she was married in Britain, so perhaps the rules were different for couples marrying in Germany.

The ban on fraternisation was relaxed on 25th September 1945, permitting British soldiers and members of the Control Commission to mix socially with German men and women, but intermarriage with German women was still forbidden, at least until August 1946.

The first official reference I have found on the subject is a file at The National Archives entitled Marriage with ex-enemy nationals. It starts with a copy of Hansard (the official record of proceedings in the British Parliament), for 31st July 1946, in which Lord Nathan, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for War, said in the House of Lords, in answer to a question by Lord Faringdon, that the matter had been considered by the government and he was now:

 “… able to state that it has been decided that local military Commanders should be authorised to relax the present ban on marriage between British servicemen and alien women, other than Japanese, in cases where the reasons for marriage are good and there is no security objection.”

In reply, Lord Faringdon said that:

“I should like to thank the noble Lord very much indeed for his reply, which I believe will give great satisfaction, both in this country and to members of the Forces abroad.”

Although the government had decided in principle that the ban could be relaxed, in the British Zone of occupied Germany, specific approval in each case was still required from “Commanding officers with the rank of Commander, Lieutenant Colonel or Wing Commander” or above, and marriage was only permitted under certain conditions.

A note from the armed forces Chiefs of Staff Committee to the Military Governor of the British Zone, Sir Sholto Douglas, entitled “The conditions under which British Service men may marry German women in the British Zone of Germany,” stated that:

“This approval only to be given if the marriage is in the interest of the man concerned, subject to security examination and to specific conditions:

  • No marriage until after 6 months from date of application, during which time the man is to go to the UK on his normal leave
  • Married accommodation available on the same conditions as apply to British families, and the applicant is entitled to it (to prevent members of the occupying forces living with Germans)
  • Medical certificate by a British medical officer to be submitted for the prospective wife
  • A certificate of good character to be signed by the Oberbürgermeister or other relevant official
  • Pregnancy not to influence above conditions
  • Conditions to apply even if a form of marriage has already taken place”

The Military Governor, Sholto Douglas, suggested a minor amendment, (which was agreed a few days later on the 29th August), in a reply which also revealed something of his own attitude to the matter:

“I consider that the words ‘in the interest of the man concerned’ should be deleted from the conditions. A Commanding Officer might hold the view – which indeed I am inclined to share – that in no case is it in the interest of a British officer or man to marry a German girl, and so might prevent any of his men from so doing. This would not be in accordance with the spirit of the Government instruction. The sentence would now read ‘This approval only to be given if the marriage is subject to security examination etc etc’”

As one of the conditions was that marriage could not take place earlier than 6 months after the date of application, it seems unlikely that any marriages were permitted in Germany before 1st March 1947 at the earliest. However, Renate Greenshields described how she and her husband-to-be, had originally applied to be married in May 1946, so maybe there was some flexibility in how the date of application was interpreted.

Mr Jan Thexton, the gentleman I interviewed, had great difficulty securing approval to marry his wife, not only from the British, but also from the German authorities. He remembered the announcement being made in the House of Commons, rather than the House of Lords, and told me about the reaction of his local commander:

“When I first got engaged to my wife we weren’t allowed to get married. And then it was announced in the House of Commons that people could get married to Germans … And when I applied I was told I couldn’t get married. They didn’t accept the parliamentary … what had gone through parliament they didn’t accept …

I had to apply to, well fundamentally at that time the local commander, who was a brigadier I think from memory; this was in the Control Commission of course. And he said I couldn’t get married, and in fact … I knew him quite well … he said ‘Look I’d much sooner you married a wog, rather than marry a German. They’re quite terrible people.’ I said ‘I don’t agree.’ Anyway I got fed up with this. I knew the thing had gone through Parliament and I had a neighbour who was an MP … my parents had a neighbour who was an MP, so I went home and told him the story …

Anyway he said he’d take it up, and when I got back to Germany there was a big notice on my desk: ‘Here is your authority to get married. God help you.’ So I started to sort things out, and then I was told that the Germans were still operating under the laws of the Third Reich, so the Third Reich forbade German citizens to marry foreigners. So I had to take a car and a driver and go all over the place in Germany to sort out the legal situation. I finished up at what amounts to … what would be the equivalent over here … a sort of district legal office … and I sat down with the German civil service lawyers and we thrashed out a method of doing this….

When we’d sorted it out I went back and applied and got married in a German registry office. I set up a sort of … established notice of how to do it and this was circulated. I was told three thousand other couples married in that year … based upon what I’d negotiated with the Germans.”

References:

Imperial War Museum sound archive
Interview with Mr J M G Thexton, 7th November 2007

The National Archives
FO 1030/174
Marriages with ex-enemy nationals

Renate Greenshields
Lucky Girl Goodbye
First published 1988

General Sir Brian Horrocks – Corps Commander

24th April 2009

The purpose of my research is to understand what British people aimed to achieve in occupied Germany after the Second World War. For the past year or so I’ve been looking at some of the senior army officers, notably Field Marshal Montgomery, who was Military Governor of the British Zone for the first year of the occupation, from May 1945 to the end of April 1946.

As I progress further with the research I’ll be looking at other groups of people: politicians, diplomats and administrators, the education advisers, young men, who were only 18 or 19 years old at the outbreak or war and who had no adult experience of anything else, and German speaking exiles, who returned to the country they had grown up in, as members of the occupying forces or as administrators in the Control Commission.

One theme which interests me is how army officers adjusted to their changed role after the fighting was over and the task of ‘winning the peace’ had begun. I’ve recently read the autobiography of General Sir Brian Horrocks, ‘A Full Life’, (first published in 1960 by William Collins; new edition published 1974 by Leo Cooper), which provides some insight into this, although he stayed in Germany for only a few months after the end of the war.

Horrocks was one of three Corps Commanders in the British 21st Army Group, who reported directly to Montgomery as Commander-in-Chief. With the rank of Lieutenant General (which is higher than Major General) the Corps Commanders were, in the early days of the occupation, the most important people in the Zone, equal if not senior in rank to the Deputy Military Governor, Sir Brian Robertson, with complete authority in their own areas of command.

According to his Wikipedia entry, Horrocks was one of Montgomery’s most successful generals, respected by both his British and American colleagues. He fought under Montgomery at the Battle of Alamein and in North Africa, and then again, as commander of 30 Corps, from the Battle of Normandy to the final defeat of the German armies and unconditional surrender in May 1945.

I’ve quoted some extracts from his autobiography below, which are interesting for a number of reasons: his background and experience as a POW in the First World War and in Russia and Germany afterwards, which must have influenced his outlook on life later, his descriptions of Montgomery, his reactions to the liberation of a concentration camp, and how he set about his task in Germany after the Second World War was over.

Brian Horrocks was born in India in 1895, but grew up and was educated in England. His father was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps and he remembered holidays in Gibraltar as a young boy:

“I used to travel out by P. & O. every holidays from my preparatory school in Durham and the Gibraltar of those days was a small boy’s paradise, much more so than today, as we had free access to Spain. Life consisted of bathing, hunting with the Calpe hounds, cricket matches, race meetings and children’s parties – all great fun.”

In 1912 he went to Sandhurst to train as an officer in the army. At the outbreak of war in August 1914 he was sent to France, but was wounded and captured at the Battle of Ypres in October. He was just 19 years old at the time. He spent the rest of the war as a POW, despite numerous unsuccessful attempts to escape, one of which ended only yards from the Dutch border. As a POW he shared a room with 50 Russian officers and learnt Russian. As a result of this, he was sent to Russia in 1919 as part of the (unsuccessful) British efforts to help the White Russian armies defeat the Bolsheviks.

On returning from Russia he rejoined his regiment, now stationed in Germany, as part of the British occupation of the Rhineland after the First World War. He described his experiences as follows:

“When I returned to my regiment as a captain I was lucky, for the 1st Battalion The Middlesex Regiment then formed part of the British Army of the Rhine. For us in the occupation forces life in Cologne was very pleasant, because, owing to the chronic inflation of the German mark, we always had plenty of money, a most unusual experience for me.

It was all too easy. I opened an account for £10 sterling in a German bank and as each day the pound become worth more in German currency, all I had to do was to call and draw out the extra marks. Towards the end of this period we used to get the weekly pay for our companies in sacks. But the Germans suffered terribly. The more expensive bars were filled with fat profiteers and their hard-faced, brassy mistresses who drove round in huge cars and seemed to batten on the wretched, starving, professional classes. …

I don’t think anyone who has not witnessed at first hand the real horrors of inflation can understand what it means. I came away convinced that any sacrifice was worth while in order to avoid this economic cancer.”

In April 1921 he returned to the UK “for duty in connection with the coal strike.” He was then posted to Ireland during ‘the troubles’ “where our life consisted of searching for hidden arms, patrols, keeping a lookout for road-blocks and dealing with ambushes organised by the Sinn Feiners – a most unpleasant sort of warfare.” This was followed by a trip to Silesia in 1923 “to maintain law and order during a plebiscite” to determine whether the area should be remain part of Germany or be transferred to Poland.

He also took part in the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, competing in the Modern Pentathlon. In those days the modern pentathlon had a strong military association, as it was, according to Horrocks, “based on the conception of a courier carrying dispatches though a hostile country” who needs to ride a horse, run on foot, swim, fence and shoot with a pistol.

At the start of the Second World War in 1939, Horrocks joined the British Expeditionary Force in France as a major, commanding a machine-gun battalion. He described his first meeting with the divisional commander, General Montgomery:

“I hadn’t been there two hours when I was told that the divisional commander, General Montgomery, was in his car on the road and wanted to see me. Monty had obviously come up at once to cast an eye over his new divisional machine-gun commander. This was my first meeting with him, apart from once in Egypt. I saw a small, alert figure with piercing eyes sitting in the back of his car – the man under whom I was to fight all my battles during the war, and who was to have more influence on my life than anyone before or since.

I knew him well by reputation. He was probably the most discussed general in the British Army before the war, and – except with those who had served under him – not a popular figure…. He was known to be ruthlessly efficient, but somewhat of a showman. I had been told sympathetically that I wouldn’t last long under his command, and to be honest, I would rather have served under any other divisional commander.”

Later in the book he described another meeting with Montgomery, in 1947 after the war was over and he was based in Chester:

“The highlight was a visit from Monty. I had not realised how popular he was with all and sundry. It was almost like a Royal tour, with people lining the route – and he loved every minute of it. Just before his departure for Liverpool, where he was to catch his train back to London, the mayor of Birkenhead rang me up to say that over 1,000 people were waiting for him on the near side of the Mersey tunnel. A small platform had been erected and he hoped that the field-marshal would be prepared to say a few words to the crowd. This was quite unexpected so, as we drove along, I did my best to brief him on the role which Birkenhead had played during the war. I spoke most of the time to his back as he was continuously leaning out of the window and waving to the crowds while he murmured ‘Yes, yes Jorrocks – three battleships constructed – I have got that. Yes go on.’ We arrived, and he then made a sparkling speech which delighted everybody without mentioning a single word of what I had told him during the journey.”

After defeat in France and evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, Horrocks returned to England. In 1942 he went with Montgomery to Egypt and played an important role in the series of victories which led to the German army being driven out of Africa. His army career was interrupted in 1943, when he was seriously wounded in Tunisia in an attack by an aeroplane. He was out of action until July 1944, when he re-joined the army as commander of 30 Corps in the Battle of Normandy.

Towards the end of the war, he played a large part in the fighting which forced the German army back across the Rhine. I’ve written before on this blog about the horror many soldiers felt at the destruction caused by war; to themselves, their enemies and to innocent civilians. Horrocks described ordering the destruction of the town of Kleve, during the Battle of the Reichswald:

“One thing, during this preparatory stage, caused me almost more worry than anything else; the handling of the immense air resources which were to support us. General Crerar told me that in addition to the whole of the 2nd Tactical Air Force the heavies from Bomber Command were also available. And he put this question to me: ‘Do you want the town of Cleve taken out?’ By ‘taking out’ he meant, of course, totally destroyed.

This is the sort of problem with which a general in war is constantly faced, and from which there is no escape. Cleve was a lovely, historical Rhineland town. Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fifth wife came from there. No doubt a lot of civilians, particularly women and children, were still living there. I hated the thought of its being ‘taken out’. All the same, if we were to break out of this bottle-neck and sweep down into the German plain beyond it was going to be a race between the 15th Scottish Division and the German reserves for the hinge, and all the German reserves would have to pass through Cleve. If I could delay them by bombing, it might make all the different to the battle. And after all the lives of my own troops must come first. So I said ‘Yes’.

But I can assure you that I did not enjoy the sight of those bombers flying over my head on the night before we attacked. Generals, of course, should not have imagination. I reckon I had a bit too much.”

This “horrible battle” lasted a month. “We took 16,800 German prisoners and it was estimated that the total enemy casualties was about 75,000 as against 15,634 suffered by us. Our losses seemed very high at the time, but this was unquestionably the grimmest battle in which I took part during the last war and I kept reminding myself that during the battle of the Somme in the 1914-18 war there were 50,000 casualties during the first morning.”

After crossing the Rhine, he led the force which captured the city of Bremen:

“It was in Bremen that I realised for the first time just what the Germans must have suffered as the result of our bombing. It was a shambles; there didn’t seem to be a single house intact in this huge seaport.”

Earlier in the book, while describing his experience as a POW in the First World War, he had spoken of the ‘great respect’ front line soldiers had for those on the other side:

“I have always regarded the forward area of the battlefield as the most exclusive club in the world, inhabited by the cream of the nation’s manhood – the men who actually do the fighting. Comparatively few in number, they have little feeling of hatred for the enemy – rather the reverse.”

This was reinforced by his experience in North Africa:

“There was an odd atmosphere about this desert war: never has there been less hate between the opposing sides: that is between the Germans and ourselves. Owing to the constant ‘to-ing and fro-ing’ both armies lived alternately on each other’s rations and used quite a quantity of each other’s captured equipment.”

But at the end of the war, he was present at the liberation of Sandbostel concentration camp, and this made him change his opinion:

“Up to now I had been fighting this war without any particular hatred for the enemy but just short of Bremen we uncovered one of those horror camps which are now common knowledge, but which at that time came as a great shock. I saw a ghastly picture when I entered with General Allan Adair, the commander of the Guards Armoured Division. The floor of the first large hut was strewn with emaciated figures clad in most horrible striped pyjamas. Many of them were too weak to walk but they managed to heave themselves up and gave us a pathetic cheer. Most of them had some form of chronic dysentery and the stench was so frightful that I disgraced myself by being sick in a corner. It was difficult to believe that most of these hardly human creatures had once been educated civilised people.

I was so angry that I ordered the burgomasters of all the surrounding towns and villages each to supply a quota of German women to clean up the camp and look after these unfortunate prisoners, who were dying daily at an alarming rate. When the women arrived we expected some indication of horror or remorse when they saw what their fellow-countrymen had been doing. Not a bit of it. I never saw a tear or heard one expression of pity from any of them. I also brought one of our own hospitals into the camp and when I found some of our sisters looking very distressed I apologised for having given them such an unpleasant task. ‘Goodness me,’ they said, ‘it’s not that. We are only worried because we can do so little for the poor things – many of them have gone too far.’ A somewhat different approach to the problem by the woman of two countries.”

He received the surrender of German forces in his area:

“I had often wondered how the war would end. When it came it could hardly have been more of an anti-climax. I happened to be sitting in the military equivalent of the smallest room when I heard a voice on the wireless saying ‘All hostilities will cease at 0800 hours tomorrow morning 5th May.’

It was a wonderful moment – the sense of relief was extraordinary; for the first time for five years I would no longer be responsible for other men’s lives. The surrender on our front took place at 1430 hours on 5th May when the German general commanding the Corps Ems and his chief of staff arrived at our headquarters. Elaborate arrangement had been made for their reception. Our military police, looking very smart escorted them to a table in the centre of the room; all round the outside was a ring of interested staff officers and other ranks of 30 Corps.

When all was ready I came in and seated myself all alone opposite the two Germans. After issuing my orders for the surrender I finished with these words, ‘These orders must be obeyed scrupulously. I warn you we shall have no mercy if they are not. Having seen one of your horror camps my whole attitude towards Germany has changed.’

The chief of staff jumped up and said, ‘The army had nothing to do with these camps.’ ‘Sit down,’ I replied, ‘there were German soldiers on sentry duty outside and you cannot escape responsibility. The world will never forgive Germany for those camps.’”

But once the war was over, another “considerable mental switch” was required:

“During those first few days after the German capitulation we all felt as though an immense weight had been lifted from our shoulders; but this wonderful carefree atmosphere did not last for long. We were faced by the many intricate problems involved in the resuscitation of a stricken Germany. Having spent the last six years doing our best to destroy the German Reich, almost overnight we had to go into reverse gear and start building her up again. This required a considerable mental switch.”

“There is something terribly depressing about a country defeated in war, even though that country has been your enemy, and the utter destruction of Germany was almost awesome. It didn’t seem possible that towns like Hanover and Bremen could ever rise again from the shambles in which the bulk of the hollow-eyed and shabby population eked out a troglodyte existence underneath the ruins of their houses.

Things were better in the country districts, but what struck me most was the complete absence of able-bodied men or even or youths – there were just a few old men, some cripples, and that was all. The farms were all run by women. How appalling were the casualties suffered by the Germans was brought home to me forcibly when I first attended morning service in the small village church of Eystrop where I lived. The Germans commemorate their war dead by means of evergreen wreaths – dozens and dozens of them. In a similar church in the United Kingdom I would not expect to see more than eight to ten names on the local war memorial. The Germans certainly started the last war, but only those who saw the conditions during the first few months immediately after the war ended can know how much they suffered.”
 
“Monty laid down the priorities as 1) food and (2) housing; he then, as always, gave us a free hand to look after our own districts until such time as proper military government could take over from us. It was a fascinating task. I found myself to all intents and purposes the benevolent (I hope) dictator of an area about the size of Wales. At my morning conference, instead of considering fire plans and laying down military objectives, we discussed such problems as food, coal, communications, press and so on. I soon discovered the merits of a dictatorship. I could really get things done quickly. One day in the late autumn a staff officer reported than the output of coal was dropping every week in our corps district. That was very serious with winter approaching. The reason, I was informed, was that the miners lacked clothes. I immediately ordered a levy to be carried our in certain nearby towns to provide adequate clothing for the miners, and sure enough a few weeks later the graph showing coal production began to rise. I smiled when I thought of what would happen in dear old democratic Britain if the Cabinet ordered clothes to be removed compulsorily from Cardiff, shall we say, to clothe the miners in the Welsh valleys.”

“To start with a great deal of this work had to be carried out by British troops and quite naturally this caused resentment. I remember being asked by an intelligent sapper corporal, ‘Why should I now have to work hard and repair bridges for the so-and-so Germans who have caused so much misery to the world.’ As he was obviously voicing the doubts of many others, I collected the company together and explained to the best of my ability that the war was now over, so Germany must take her place again as a European state. Many of the people were on the verge of starvation and if food couldn’t be moved freely into the towns they would die that winter. And this would cause great bitterness. Furthermore it was essential for our own British economy to start trading again with Germany and we would never be able to do this until communications had been repaired. Whether I convinced them or not I have no idea, but they went back to work at once without any further questions.”

“The British soldier has often been described as our best ambassador and this is particularly so if he forms part of an army of occupation because one of the most difficult things in the world is to occupy a foreign country and yet remain friendly with its people. If left to himself the British soldier will soon be on the best of terms with the local population.  Unfortunately this time he was not left to himself and all sorts of regulations about non-fraternisation with the German population were issued. No doubt there were good reasons for this policy but it caused endless trouble at our level. What happened was that our troops were prevented from getting to know the ordinary, decent families in an open and normal way, and were driven to consorting on the sly with the lowest types of German women.”

“In spite of the non-fraternisation rule I was determined somehow or other to make our occupation as palatable as possible for the local inhabitants. This may sound sloppy, but I had experienced the difficulties of occupying Germany after the First World War. I knew very well that nobody will ever keep the Germans down for long because they belong to a very rare species which actually likes work. I also understood the menace of Communism better than most – thanks to my time in Russia. So, without claiming any particularly brilliant foresight, it seemed to me that the Germans were the sort of people whom it would be better to have on our side than against us. I therefore ordered all units in my corps to do everything they could to help the German children. Nobody could blame them for the last war, and they had obviously had a bad time. Some of the children had never even seen chocolates in their lives. Units were told to open special youth clubs, and camps in the summer, and organise sports, etc.”

He gave a tea party for 150 German children, but “unfortunately the party was also attended by some reporters from the British Press … inexperienced, callow, young men who were concerned mainly with getting an angle to their stories … It soon become obvious they were hostile” and the next day headlines appeared in the press “British General Gives Tea Party for German Children”. He received “an enormous number of letters in which the kindest comment was “that I had obviously gone mad.’”

“These were of little consequence, but unfortunately owing to all the adverse criticism I was ordered to cease my activities with the German children at once. Orders had to be obeyed but I still feel that this was a serious mistake. Instead of mixing with the civilian population on a friendly basis we were driven back into ourselves and when I returned to Germany some three years later to take over the appointment of commander-in-chief, I found that the B.A.O.R. was an army of occupation in the true sense of the word, living quite apart from the German people.”

He was appointed commander-in-chief of the British Army of the Rhine in 1948, but before taking up the post, had another operation on his stomach, his seventh after being wounded in North Africa:

“Very unwisely I went out to Germany before I had completely recovered and then followed the most unhappy period of my life. I arrived to command B.A.O.R. just when things were getting more and more difficult with the Russians.”

He had to resign from the army, but continued to live an active and varied life. In 1949 he was appointed gentleman usher of the Black Rod in parliament and fourteen years later became a director of Bovis, the construction company. He also presented a series of TV programmes ‘Men in Battle’ which at its peak, had eight and a half million viewers. Brian Horrocks died in 1985.

Why did Field-Marshal Montgomery believe that a Germany that ‘looked East’ was ‘a menace to the British Empire’?

5th April 2009

For the last few weeks I’ve been writing about different aspects of Field-Marshal Montgomery’s year as Military Governor of the British Zone of Germany, based mostly on his unpublished ‘Notes on the Occupation of Germany’ held as part of his papers at the archives of the Imperial War Museum.

It seems to have been an extraordinarily active time for him. As I wrote last week, he repeatedly made the point that “our hardest task remains to be tackled”. After the destruction caused by war, the task of “rebuilding European civilisation” required the same, or even greater, levels of dedication, hard work and personal sacrifice, as winning the war had done.

It’s almost as if, in some ways, he didn’t want the war to end. The Battles of Normandy and of the Rhine, which culminated in the unconditional surrender of all German forces in North-West Europe on Luneburg Heath on May 4th 1945, were soon followed by the “Battle of the Winter” whose objectives, this time, were not to defeat the enemy, or capture territory, but “food, work and homes” for people in Germany.

He made a conscious decision that, in the absence of any functioning civil administration, he would use the army to tackle the chaos and confusion he found in Germany after the war, and operations ‘Overlord’, ‘Market Garden’ and ‘Plunder’ were followed by Operations ‘Barleycorn’ (the release of captured German POWs to work on the land and help bring in the harvest), ‘Coalscuttle’ (a further release of POWs to work in the coalmines of the Ruhr) and ‘Stork’ (the evacuation of young children from the British Zone in Berlin).

He issued four ‘personal messages’ to the population of the British Zone, addressing a civilian population of 20 million people in much the same way as he addressed his own troops before going into battle. As the number of soldiers under his command in Normandy, when he was supreme Allied Commander in July 1944, was around 2 million, perhaps the difference was not that great? In message no.3, for example, issued on 8th August 1945, exactly 3 months after the end of the war in Europe, he told the German people he was:

“… now going to proceed with the second stage of the Allied policy. In this stage it is my intention that you shall have freedom to get down to your own way of life, subject only to the provisions of military security and necessity. I will help you eradicate idleness, boredom, and fear of the future. Instead I want to give you an objective, and hope for the future.”

In his three ‘Notes on the Present Situation’ issued a little earlier, on 25th June, 6th and 14th July, and sent to his Corps Commanders and the Heads of Division of the British Control Commission, he had already outlined what he meant by the “second stage of Allied policy,” in some detail. For example in the second of these notes, he explained to his colleagues that:

“Two months have now passed since Germany surrendered and the country passed to the control of the Allied Nations.

During these two months the full extent of the debacle has become apparent; we now know the magnitude of the problem that confronts us in the rebuilding of Germany.

The coming winter will be a critical time. In the British Zone there will be a shortage of food, a very definite shortage of coal, inadequate services of transportation and distribution, and insufficient accommodation. Northwest Europe is very cold in the winter; the average temperature is freezing and heavy falls of snow are frequent; under such conditions people want food and warmth, and they are likely to lack both.

…

The great mass of 20 million people in the British Zone are in for a hard time this winter; they are apprehensive about food, about housing, and about the general unsettled conditions.

The best way to counteract this feat is to give them ‘hope’

It is clear that we must tackle the ‘battle of the winter’ energetically, and we must win it; for if we lost it, we would compromise the future.

We require a good short term plan to take us through the winter; this must be closely linked to the long term plan for the complete restoration of the economic life of Germany.”

Although this was not explicitly stated in these notes, it appears that, in his mind, the task of rebuilding civilisation in Europe was now closely associated with the urgent need for reconstruction in Germany. Existing policy, agreed by the Allies before the end of the war and implemented by SHAEF, the joint British and US Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, was, in his view no longer relevant. As he explained in the Notes:

“I think some of our troubles are due to a tendency to adhere rigidly to SHAEF instructions issued previously; many of these instructions are now out of date.”

A week, later, in the third Note, he was able to say that he had been given authority, by the Government, to act on his own initiative in the British Zone, without waiting for joint agreement by all the Allies:

“In my ‘Notes of the Present Situation’ dated 6 July, I outlined the problem that is likely to confront us during the coming months and I gave my views on the methods we should adopt to deal with the situation.

It has now been agreed that the Directive issued to me as C-in-C [Commander-in-Chief] of the British Forces of occupation in Germany, and U.K. member of the Control Council, gives me full powers to begin work on the policy we want to adopt: without waiting for the Control Council to become fully operative…

Our present attitude towards the German people is negative, it must be replaced by one that is positive and holds out hope for the future.”

By the end of the year, the ‘Battle of the Winter’ seemed to have been won, but perhaps surprisingly, Montgomery’s outlook for the future had deteriorated rather than improved.

On 8th October 1945, he returned to England for a conference of the Chiefs of the Imperial General Staff, the most senior military body in the country, and didn’t return to Germany until the 27th.

In the ‘Notes on the Occupation of Germany’ he says he was first told he would be appointed CIGS or Chief of the Imperial General Staff on 26th January the following year, 1946, but he may have been given an indication of this during the conference, as for the remainder of the year, he appeared increasingly preoccupied with the problems faced by the British Army, (rather than those of the British Zone of Germany), arguing strongly that the army should not be reduced in size too much, too quickly. (The war against Japan had ended two months earlier with the surrender of Japan on VJ Day, August 15th 1945, following the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August).

In a paper Montgomery gave at the conference in October, he said he expected the occupation of Germany to last a long time, 20 years or more, and this represented an ideal opportunity to get training facilities for the British army, at no cost:

“An Army of occupation would be required in Germany for at least ten, and possibly twenty years … The Field Army should normally be kept and trained in Germany, where the cost would be borne by the Germans and where training facilities were magnificent.”

On 31st October he started a tour of the Army Corps in Germany in a special train ‘Lion’ meeting his troops and canvassing their views. His diary shows he made three separate tours, over the next two months, each lasting just under a week.

He continued to press the case that the number of troops should not  fall below what he considered minimum requirements, arguing in December that although: “‘The Battle of the Winter’ is proceeding and it is my opinion that we shall win that battle… this is no time for complacency.”

“…the British Zone has remained quiet. So far scarcely a spark has occurred. I do not think we shall have any trouble with the Germans this winter;  they are fully occupied with their own immediate troubles; our main problems this winter are more likely to be with the hard facts of economics; how to sustain the Zone with the minimum of starvation and disease.

Our conflicts with the Germans lie ahead; but they will come. Next year, 1946, is going to be a difficult time; the Germans will have got through the winter and will be feeling better; they will see their factories and coal being removed; they will realise that they themselves are not to be allowed to benefit from the recovery of their country.

We have removed from positions of responsibility a large number of Nazi Germans, all immensely capable people and first-class organisers; these people are now idle.
 
Our industrial and economic policy is such that there is bound to be widespread unemployment in Germany as time goes on.

We have demobilised in the Zone about two million fighting men and are now in process of adding about another half million to the figure.

It will be clear from this brief outline that there is much fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of discontent and trouble.

Therefore I am convinced that our conflicts with the Germans lie ahead, and may well begin next year.

It is essential that we should not let the strength of our armed forces in Germany run down too quickly…”

After returning home for the Christmas holidays, he saw the Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, on Christmas Eve and on January 3rd he addressed a full meeting of the Cabinet, at which, according to his ‘Notes’, he made the same points, but this time also stressing the need to import food, to prevent starvation the following year:

“… the 23 million Germans in the British Zone were peaceable now but might not be so in the future; and he emphasised that the outcome of the Battle of the Winter depended on the Imports of Wheat, without which the Germans would starve.”

In summary, it appears that, although this is not stated in the Notes, Montgomery was losing the argument with the government in London in at least three areas he considered crucial:

– the size of the army in Germany was being reduced too far
– imports of wheat might not be sufficient to prevent starvation, with resulting discontent and unrest, which could be difficult to control
– the level of industry proposed for the future German economy was not sufficient to prevent unemployment, promote economic reconstruction and give German people ‘hope for the future’

(For the context and background for the second two points, see earlier posts in this blog on Bread Rationing in Britain, and the Level of Industry Talks). 

With hindsight, we know that after Montgomery left Germany in May 1946, British policy changed yet again in all three areas. Decisions were taken to maintain the British Army of the Rhine in Germany indefinitely (it is still there today), significant imports of wheat from the US were sent to Germany from 1946 onwards, and the very restrictive terms agreed by all the Allies at the Level of Industry Talks in Berlin in January 1946 were soon relaxed allowing German industry to expand from 1947 and 1948 onwards.

However, in early 1946 things looked very different. The conclusion Montgomery drew was that the consequences of the current restrictive British policy (as determined in London) was that the German people would look to Russia for support, rather than to the US or Britain, and that a hostile Germany combined with a communist Russia could be a serious threat to the security of Britain and the British Empire.

Before he left Germany, Montgomery expressed these concerns in two memos. The first, on the Problem in Germany, was dated 1 Feb 1946. In this he said that: ‘The Battle of the Winter’ had been won:

“No epidemics had broken out and the general health of the German people had been maintained. But the outlook for the future was now worse than ever before…. The future level of German economy would cause distress and unemployment; the influx of refugees was just beginning; all stocks of consumer goods had now been used up. The next battle would be more serious than the ‘Battle of the Winter.’”

His final ‘Notes on the German Situation’ are dated 1st May 1946, the day before he left Germany. Montgomery claims in his Memoirs he took it back to England and "handed a copy personally to the Prime Minister" (though not to his successor as Military Governor in Germany, Sholto Douglas, who complained later that he had never been given these and only learnt of their existence many years later). In these final Notes Montgomery wrote that:

“The general picture was sombre if not black. The food crisis overshadowed all else, but there were other serious factors. The whole German economy was sick. Coal was short, industries lay idle, and there were few goods in the shops. The level of industry agreement was bound to cause distress and might produce unemployment. The result of this situation was the beginning of inflation.”

He went on to say there was a need for “a concrete plan designed to bring about a change of heart in the German people”. The foundation for the plan was “the economic line of attack” and Germans must have “a reasonable standard of living; they must be given some hope for the future…”

“I gave it as my opinion that if we did not do this, we would fail in Germany.

We have not done it and I would say that at the moment there is a definite danger that we may fail. By that I mean there is a danger that if things do not improve the Germans in the British Zone will begin to look EAST. When that happens we shall have failed, and there will exist a definite menace to the British Empire. In this connection, much communist propaganda is coming westwards over the ‘green frontier.’

The people living inside that Germany must be given a reasonable standard of living, and hope for a worth-while future.”
 …

“We must decide whether we are going to feed the Germans, or let them starve. Basically we must not let them starve; if we do, then everything else we do is of no avail.

It does not look at present as if we can increase the ration beyond the present rate of 1042 calories; this means we are going to let them starve: gradually.

In spite of the difficulties of the world food situation, we must get back to a reasonable ration standard in the British Zone as quickly as possible. The discrepancies which exist between the standard of feeding in our Zone and that in other Zones must be removed by agreement on a common standard.

… above all, we must tell the German people what is going to happen to them and to their country. If we do not do these things, we shall drift towards possible failure. That ‘drift’ will take the form of an increasingly hostile population, which will eventually begin to look EAST.

Such a Germany would be a menace to the security of the British Empire.

On the other hand, a contented Germany with a sound political framework could be a great asset to the security of the empire and the peace of the world.”

What did Field-Marshal Montgomery mean by ‘Winning the Peace’ in 1945?

30th March 2009

When I first read Field-Marshal Montgomery’s four part 'Notes on the Occupation of Germany' I ignored the speeches, reprinted in the appendices, which he gave on receiving numerous honours in Britain and in Europe, such the Freedom of the Cities of Manchester, Newport, Brussels, Antwerp, Londonderry and Canterbury, of the London Boroughs of Chiswick and Lambeth and an honorary degree from Queen’s University, Belfast.

At first I thought this showed his vanity and that success had gone to his head, as he wrote, for example, of being greeted by cheering crowds in the streets of Brussels and elsewhere. The speeches all seemed to say much the same thing, fine words and platitudes about soldiers and civilians depending on each other and the importance of the British Empire.

But on a second reading, it seemed to me that these speeches may be as close as we can get to what Montgomery’s own views really were and what he aimed to achieve after the war was over. Why else would he include all these speeches in the Notes, word for word, if he didn’t mean what he said?

On other occasions, for example when he spoke to the press and journalists, he was eminently practical, detailing the problems faced by British Military Government and the steps they had taken in response to these. He talked about issues such as the shortage of food, the problems of refugees, displaced persons, lack of accommodation, the threat of disease, shortage of coal and absenteeism in the mines, the problems of denazification, the formation of political parties, trades unions, and the need for cooperation between the allies. Some of these addresses read as if they were written for him.

The speeches he gave on receiving honours were quite different in tone. Perhaps they were an opportunity for him to say what he really thought and believed?

In these speeches the same themes re-occur again and again, expressed in different ways: the need to rebuild civilisation after the chaos and destruction of war, which can only be done through hard work, sweat and blood (if not tears); the need for personal sacrifice to achieve this, and a firm “spiritual basis” on which to build; how older men, such as himself, were tired after the stress and strain of years of war, and younger men were needed to take over the task from them; the importance of a strong and united British Empire as one of the main pillars of the post-war world.

Here are some extracts:

From his speech in reply to receiving the freedom of the city of Antwerp, on 7th June 1945

“Our first task in now ended. Together we have won the war, and have destroyed the Nazi tyranny of Europe. Our hardest task remains to be tackled. Out of the chaos and confusion which the war has inflicted on Europe we have to rebuild our European civilisation. In destroying the Nazi power, we have destroyed one great evil; much that was good and beautiful has also been destroyed, and the economic organisation of Europe lies in ruins. We can rebuild what has been destroyed only by toil and sweat, and there is no short cut back to prosperity.”

On receiving the freedom of Chiswick, 28th July 1945

“The war in Europe is now over, and the war in the Pacific will be relentlessly pressed to its certain conclusion. But even then much will remain to be done. We must now start to face the problems of rebuilding our civilisation in Europe, and in the world. As a result of this war much of Europe has been destroyed. We have lost much that was good and much that was beautiful, and the whole economic framework of Europe lies in ruins. We have got to rebuild that framework in England, in Europe, in the World, and this can only be done by toil, and sweat, and much hard work; there is no short cut to prosperity.”

On receiving the Freedom of Lambeth on 15th August 1945

“We are all tired as a result of the strain and stress through which we have passed; we all want a rest and some relaxation. I do myself. But we cannot any of us rest for long. We have a job to do which will call for all our energy and purpose. We have got to rebuild a new England and a new Europe out of the ruins of the old. Much of Europe will look to us to give them a lead and we cannot afford to neglect this great responsibility. If we do neglect it, we may well allow the seeds of yet another war to be sown.”

….

“I firmly believe that every enterprise which man undertakes, if it is to achieve any lasting success, must have a strong spiritual basis; if we attempt any great thing for soles material reasons, the results cannot be good. Today our task is greater and more complex that ever before. We have won the war; we now have to rebuild a new civilisation: a new world in which all nations may live in peace and prosperity.

We cannot achieve success in this great task unless we have a firm spiritual basis on which to build.”

….

“But we do not only want peace. We want prosperity; and there are many who think that this will be provided for us by the State: but this is a great mistake. The State can merely provide the opportunity and ensure that it is fair for all; we have got to win prosperity for ourselves, or else go without it; and we will win it for ourselves only by much hard work and by personal sacrifices on the part of us all.”

On receiving the Freedom of the City of Brussels on 12th September 1945:

“In spite of this war, and in spite of all that has been lost or destroyed by it, Europe still has the heritage of all the culture handed down to us through the ages, and this is immeasurably more valuable that our material possessions which have been destroyed. We must build our future on all that was good in the past, and must this time make sure that what we build cannot again be destroyed.”

Of especial interest were three speeches he gave in Northern Ireland, where his family originated from, and still owned land:

On receiving an honorary degree from Queen’s University, Belfast, on 14th September 1945, he started by saying: “It is a great pleasure for me who am an Irishman to come here today to receive an Honorary Degree of your famous University.”

“The future is in your hands. Many of us older men are tired with the stress and strain through which we have passed during the war. In due course we shall want a rest. But the task ahead calls for great energy and drive and the white-hot enthusiasm of youth. We older men may give the lead for a while, but it is for the younger men to take up the running and shoulder this task. I believe there are now immense opportunities for reshaping our world for the better.”

And on receiving the Honorary Burgess of the City of Belfast, later the same day he spoke of the British Empire:

“This Empire of ours does not stand still. It is a great living and developing organism, and is today, I believe, one of the great forces for good in the advancement of the world towards peace and prosperity. During this war, every part of our Empire has learnt to carry greater responsibilities, and our brotherhood in arms has brought us closer together and more conscious of each other’s problems than ever before. Let us see to it that we do not forget the lessons we have learnt. Now, as never before, we must be prepared jointly to shoulder our Imperial responsibilities, and together to help to build a new world based on our love of freedom and justice for all.”

On receiving the Freedom of the City of Londonderry the following day, 15th September 1945, he continued the same theme, invoking the history of the city “which I almost feel is my home town”:

“Before the war, the Empire was everywhere weak … A weak Empire is a danger to ourselves and to the whole world. But a strong and united Empire, united in a common belief in freedom and justice, is one of the greatest forces for good in the world today.”

“This ancient city of ours can well understand these things, since it has itself been through difficult times and suffered great tribulations: the ancient city of Derry being finally reduced to ashes early in the seventeenth century. But the people of London assisted in the work of reconstruction, and a new city arose on the ruins of the old: and was called Londonderry, on account of its connection with the capital of the Empire.

“We of Londonderry thus have a link with the Empire that can never be broken: a link that binds us strongly to the very heart of the Empire.”

On receiving the Freedom of the City of Newport, on 25th September 1945, he spoke of what he believed needed to be done in Germany:

“For how long we shall occupy Germany we cannot say now. But we will do so until we can satisfy ourselves that she can conduct her affairs decently and will not again become a canker in the heart of Europe. Therefore we must start to reorganise her country for peace, a country which has been completely destroyed. We must re-educate her, and teach her people to want to live a free and decent life, and to accept the ideals of freedom and justice. We must eradicate the poison which has been injected into her for so many years and replace it by decent ideas. This is what we are now trying to do in Germany today. It is part of our task of restoring the shattered fabric of civilisation. It will take a long time, but I think it can be done. We shall not ensure peace unless we succeed in this task.” 
 
On receiving the freedom of the City of Canterbury on 20th October 1945

“Today we stand at the beginning of a new era. Peace has been won; we must now win prosperity. We have got to rebuild our civilisation, much of which lies in ruins. This will call for much hard work, as prosperity is not automatically one of the fruits of victory.”

On receiving the Freedom of the Borough of Maidenhead on 22nd October 1945

“Furthermore, the destruction in this war has been on a far greater scale than anything known before. Our complex modern civilisation lies heavily battered, and in some parts of Europe it has almost ceased to exist.”

And finally, the conclusion to a lecture he gave at St Andrews on 15th November 1945 on 'The Spiritual basis of leadership'

“Finally I do not believe that today a commander can inspire great armies, or single units, or even individual men, and lead them to achieve great victories, unless he has a proper sense of religious truth; and he must be prepared to acknowledge it, and to lead his troops in the light of that truth. He must always keep his finger on the spiritual pulse of his armies, and he must be very sure that the spiritual purpose which inspires them is right and true, and is clearly expounded to one and all. Unless he does this he can expect no lasting success.

For all leadership, I believe, is based on the spiritual quality, the power to inspire others to follow; and this spiritual quality may be for good or may be for evil. In many cases this quality has been devoted towards personal ends and was partly or wholly evil; and, whenever this was so, in the end it failed. For leadership which is evil, while it may temporarily succeed, always carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.”

 

Field-Marshal Montgomery and the fraternisation ban

14th March 2009

I’m still trying to make sense of Field-Marshal Montgomery’s year as Military Governor of the British Zone of Germany.

His four messages to British troops on non-fraternisation, issued between March and September 1945, show how his policy gradually eased from a strict ban on any contact with the enemy.

It seems to me they also show British attitudes and assumptions changing; from an over-riding concern with the past, to concern for the future; from viewing the German people collectively, to seeing them as individuals, different from their rulers, and perhaps most bizarrely, from seeing the non-fraternisation ban as a form of collective punishment for the German people, to seeing its relaxation as the first step in a process of positive engagement between occupiers and occupied.
 
Montgomery’s first message, issued in March 1945, two months before the end of the war, forbade any contact with German men, women or children. It warned soldiers not to repeat the mistakes, believed to have been made at the end of the First World War, when British and French armies occupied the Rhineland:

“Twenty-seven years ago the Allies occupied Germany: but Germany has been at war ever since. Our Army took no revenge in 1918; it was more than considerate, and before a few weeks had passed many soldiers were adopted into German households. The enemy worked hard at being amiable…”

Meanwhile, according to the message, the German general staff prepared for war, and “‘organising sympathy’ became a German industry.… So accommodating were the occupying forces that the Germans came to believe we would never fight them again in any cause.”

This time the instruction to British troops was quite clear:

“In streets, houses, cafes, cinemas etc, you must keep clear of Germans, man woman, and child, unless you meet them in the course of your duty. You must not walk out with them, or shake hands, or visit their homes, or make them gifts, or take gifts from them. You must not play games with them or share any social event with them. In short you must not fraternise with Germans at all.”

“You will have to remember that these are the same Germans who, a short while ago, were drunk with victory, who were boasting what they as the Master Race would do to you as their slaves …”

“Our consciences are clear; ‘non-fraternisation’ to us implies no revenge; we have no theory of master races. But a guilty nation must not only be convicted: it must realise its guilt. Only then can the first steps be taken to re-educate it, and bring it back into the society of decent humanity….”

“Be just; be firm; be correct; give orders, and don’t argue. Last time we won the war and let the peace slip out of our hands. This time we must not ease off – we must win both the war and the peace.”

Three months later, on 12th June 1945, just over a month after the end of the war, Montgomery issued a brief second message that “We cannot let up on this policy … But these orders need no longer apply to small children.” A month later the ban was relaxed further and soldiers were told, in a third message to British forces, dated 14th July, that “conversation with adult Germans in the streets and in public places” was now permitted, but they were still forbidden to enter homes. Following consultations with the other occupying powers, and agreement at a meeting of the Control Council, a fourth message to all members of British Forces in Germany, dated 25th September, announced the full relaxation of the ban, except that no Allied soldiers were to be billeted with Germans or allowed to inter-marry.

Montgomery claimed in his memoirs that: “It was a great relief to get this matter settled. I had never liked the orders which we had to issue; but it was Allied policy.” This implies that in his first message he was reflecting official policy, and the easing of the ban was his response to the conditions he found on the ground.

The papers in the archives at the Imperial War Museum appear to back up this claim, at least from June 1945 onwards. They show Montgomery writing to the Secretary of State for War in London, James Grigg, recommending the relaxation of the ban, and approval to do so reluctantly granted by the government in London.

Other sources show that the ban was clearly unenforceable, and it was impossible to stop soldiers at the end of the war talking to German civilians, but I find it interesting to track the reasons given in the various messages, and in the correspondence between Montgomery and the government in London, for gradually relaxing the ban.

On 5th June Montgomery wrote to Grigg as follows:

“In March, just before the battle of the Rhine, I issued a card to every soldier on the subject, that order has been obeyed.

But we have now won the war and the problem is changed.

I consider we should ‘let-up’ by bounds, or phases; if we do not the soldiers will force our hands. We cannot expect the soldier to go on snubbing little children; he must be allowed to give full play to his natural kindly instincts. We do not want the German children to regard the British soldier as a kind of queer ogre.”

On 9th June he sent a telegram to Grigg confirming that the US army had now issued a statement that US soldiers could talk to small children and claiming it was “absurd and also very awkward” if British troops could not do the same. He went on to say he would issue an order permitting British troops to talk to small children on the following Monday, 11 June, if he had not heard otherwise.

He received a reply from a senior official at the War Office saying that his message had been referred to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and may have to go to Cabinet. “Question had highly political aspects though importance of military aspects is fully appreciated. Please do NOT repeat NOT issue any orders on Monday unless and until we have communicated authority to you. We will do our best to get early decision.”

On 11th June he received a personal message from the Prime Minister saying that “I think all you say is very good. I have great confidence in your handling of the situation. If you act in the (spirit) of your [previous messages] you will have my unflinching support. Surely you should pardon quietly those [British soldiers] who have previously offended. I see one man got 56 days.” Montgomery also received a telegram from Grigg, also dated 11 June, referring to the PM’s telegram and saying he personally was also in favour of “trusting to your discretion” but suggesting the action “should NOT have too much formal publicity in this country.”

All of this suggests that that Churchill and Grigg were prepared to give Montgomery their qualified support, but were not willing, at this stage, to ask for formal approval from Cabinet. Montgomery went ahead anyway and issued his brief message on 12th June telling troops the ban “need no longer apply to small children.”

On the same day, 12th June, he issued his second personal message to the German population of the British Zone, attempting to explain the ban to them. With hindsight, at this point, the story seems to me to become surreal. In this message, the German people were addressed as if they were naughty schoolboys, punished for “allowing themselves to be deceived by their rulers” by being sent to Coventry, and Montgomery sounds like a headmaster, trying to explain to them why it was all really for their own good. I wonder what any German men, woman and children thought of it, if they read it. Here is an extract:

“Again after years of waste and slaughter and misery, your Armies have been defeated. This time the Allies were determined that you should learn your lesson – not only that you have been defeated, which you must know by now, but that you, your nation, were again guilty of beginning the war. For if that is not made clear to you, and your children, you may again allow yourselves to be deceived by your rulers, and led into another war.….

This we have ordered, this we have done, to save yourselves, to save your children, to save the world from another war. It will not always be so. For we are Christian forgiving people, and we like to smile and be friendly. Our object is to destroy the evil of the Nazi system; it is too soon to be sure that this has been done….

You are to read this to your children, if they are old enough, and see that they understand. Tell them why it is that the British soldier does not smile.”

A few weeks later, Montgomery received a note from the Prime Minister dated 6th July, saying the question of fraternisation would be discussed at a Cabinet meeting that evening and asking for his views. Montgomery replied as follows. This time the emphasis is on re-education, rather than punishment:

“I have some 20 million German civilians in the British Zone. You cannot re-educate such a number of people if you never speak to them.

The Germans have had their lesson; we have not spoken to them for two months.

I consider we should now withdraw the ban on fraternisation; intimate relations should be discouraged; the exact methods must be left to Commanders-in-Chief.”

A few days later, on 10th July, he received another telegram from Grigg giving him qualified authority to relax the ban further:

This telegram started by attempting to explain why the ban had been put in place in the first place, in similar terms to Montgomery’s message to the German population a few weeks earlier. According to the telegram, this had been done partly as a security measure but “mainly to (impress) on German and Austrian populations (a) their responsibility for the war which has brought them to their present straits (b) what other countries think of their past (conduct) and (c) as a deterrent for the future than war does NOT pay.”

The telegram went on to say that the matter had been discussed in Cabinet and Montgomery now had discretion to relax the ban further, provided this was done gradually, and timed so that “the attitude of the British occupying forces is less severe in Austria than in Germany” and he should consult General Eisenhower [the US Military Governor] so similar policies were followed in both Zones. He should also “have regard to the likelihood that the Germans might attempt to play off the Russians against the other Allies” and therefore have the matter dealt with by the Allied Control Council, rather than act on his own.

Montgomery sent a message to Eisenhower the same day, suggesting that troops should be permitted to speak to adults as well as little children. He received a reply from Eisenhower agreeing in principle and suggesting both released statements on 14th July, which they duly did.  A third letter to British forces on non-fraternisation, dated 14th July, permitted “conversation with adult Germans in the streets and in public places” but still forbade them to enter homes.

Interestingly, it seems Montgomery may have jumped the gun a bit, as he had already explained his policy on non-fraternisation in a long document (the second of his 'Notes on the Present Situation') dated 6th July, sent to his army Corps Commanders and Control Council Heads of Divisions. This outlined the policy they should follow in a wide number of areas, and even included a tear-off slip they should fill in and return to confirm they had received and read the document.

The section on fraternisation ran as follows, in Montgomery’s typical style for these types of documents, of brief numbered points:

"14) We cannot resuscitate Germany without the help of the people themselves; we cannot re-educate 20 million people if we are never to speak to them.

15) We crossed the Rhine on 23 March and for nearly four months we have not spoken to the German population, except when duty has so demanded. The Germans have been told why we have acted thus; it has been a shock to them and they have learnt their lesson.

16) To continue this policy is merely to make our own task very difficult, if not impossible,

17 I consider the ban on fraternisation should be lifted at once.

Fraternisation should be discouraged, but not forbidden

Commanders-in-Chief should be given a free hand to decide the best methods of applying this general directive.

18) At present the policy of the various Allies is not even the same

In the Russian Zone an officer or man is allowed to speak to and mix with civilians; in the British Zone he is tried by court-martial for so doing.

The Allies must all adopt the same policy."

Two months later, following discussions and agreement between all Allies at a meeting of the Control Council, in a fourth message to all members of British Forces in Germany, dated 25th September, Montgomery announced the full relaxation of the ban, except that no allied soldiers were to be billeted with Germans or allowed to inter-marry.

The ban on inter-marriage remained for a further 18 months or so, and the first marriages between British soldiers and German women were permitted in early 1947.

Field-Marshal Montgomery’s ‘Notes on the Occupation of Germany’ – part 1

21st February 2009

Two weeks ago I wrote about Field-Marshal Montgomery, as Military Governor of the British Zone of Germany after the war, and his unpublished 'Notes on the Occupation of Germany' which are held with his papers at the Imperial War Museum.

In this post I’ll say something about what he wrote in the first volume of the 'Notes', which covers the period from the end of the war in Europe on May 8th, to July 14th 1945.

According to the ‘Notes’, the situation at the end of the war had not developed as anticipated. German central government had collapsed and the unconditional surrender had been signed by the German military command, not the government. There was also uncertainty as to the intentions of the Russians in their Zone:

“The Allies were therefore faced with a situation very different to that which had been envisaged at the meetings between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, in which the Allied organisation for the occupation of Germany was discussed…. the machinery whereby a central government could function no longer existed. Furthermore a firm ‘frontier’ had already sprung up between the zone held by the Western Allies and that held by Russia and the Russians had imposed a strict control on all traffic through their lines.”

Conditions in Germany were chaotic:

“When the war ended, the chaos and confusion throughout Germany was immense. No central government machine existed; large numbers of displaced persons of all European nationalities were roaming the country, often looting as they went; the transportation and communication services had ceased to function; agriculture and industry were largely at a standstill; and there was a serious risk of an outbreak of famine and disease during the coming months.”

And there was no framework in existence to manage this:

Military government organisation, as already implemented during the campaign following the D-Day invasions and the Battle of Normandy was intended to be a temporary measure only, to “control the civilian population only sufficiently to prevent it from interfering with the operational requirements of the armed forces. For this reason planning by the Military Government organisation was based solely on meeting short-term needs.” The situation in Germany was different from that in France, Belgium and the Netherlands and “An organisation to plan and direct the activities of the community over a long-term period was now urgently required.”

Montgomery wrote in the ‘Notes’ that he had been informed privately that he would be appointed Military Governor of the British Zone and the British member of the Allied Control Council, but as the days went by, he became increasingly concerned that no appointment had been made. As a result he flew to London on May 14th to argue the case directly with the Prime Minister.

He “arrived in England at a politically unfavourable moment” as the wartime coalition government was coming to an end and politicians’ minds were on other things. He had dinner with Winston Churchill, but had “the greatest difficulty in getting the Prime Minister to consider the problems of Government in Germany as of such importance as to require an immediate decision.”

(This was a time of political uncertainty in Britain. The wartime coalition was dissolved soon after the end of the war and a general election held on July 5th.  The result, victory for the Labour Party, was not declared until July 26th and in the meantime, Winston Churchill remained Prime Minister.)

Montgomery “was very disturbed by the Prime Minister’s procrastination” and although gaining approval for his own appointment, there was still a difference of opinion as to who should be his deputy. As a result he “returned to the attack in a telegram to the Prime Minister …” Once the issue of appointing a deputy was resolved, there was still a difference of opinion as to when the appointments would be announced. “After a somewhat acrimonious exchange of telegrams the Prime Minister finally gave way and agreed to announce the appointments …”

As soon as his appointment was announced, on May 22nd, he summoned the heads of divisions of the British Control Commission, (who had been waiting in London as a kind of embryonic government), to a meeting, and told them that they would be deployed to Germany as soon as possible, and located somewhere, still to be decided, in the British Zone, rather than in Berlin.

He returned to Germany on May 26th and four days later, on May 30th, issued his first 'Personal message to the population of the British Zone', (which was printed and displayed in prominent places throughout the Zone). In this he said his object was: “to establish a simple and orderly life for the whole community, and to see that the population had food, housing and freedom from disease; that those who had committed war crimes would be punished in the proper fashion; and that the armed forces would be disarmed and disbanded, and would then be discharged to their home areas, first and foremost to bring in the harvest and then to restart the life of the community.”

Montgomery’s description of events in the 'Notes' raises a few questions:

Firstly, what was the reason for the delay in his appointment as Military Governor? A German historian, Jochen Thies, has written that the diplomat Yvone Kirkpatrick was previously considered for the post, but I haven’t checked the references to this in the archives. Kirkpatrick himself says nothing about this in his autobiography.

Secondly, why did Montgomery use such strong language about his interviews with Churchill and the delays in confirming his appointment? What did he hope to achieve in Germany after the war and why did he seem to treat this as if it were a personal mission? Why didn’t he rest on his laurels, return to Britain, and enjoy the adulation of the crowds?

One possible clue is provided in a speech he gave in June 1945, on receiving the freedom of the City of Antwerp, which is included as one of the appendices in the 'Notes'. In subsequent months he gave similar speeches on receiving honours from other cities across Europe. What is noticeable in this and other speeches, it seems to me, is not just the sentiments, but the force and passion with which they are expressed. The death and destruction of war must have made a profound impression on him. In this speech, he said that victory on its own was not enough. Even the destruction of the evil of Nazism, on its own, was not enough, as in so doing “much that was good and beautiful had also been destroyed.” Here is the relevant passage:

“Our first task in now ended. Together we have won the war, and have destroyed the Nazi tyranny of Europe. Our hardest task remains to be tackled. Out of the chaos and confusion which the war has inflicted on Europe we have to rebuild our European civilisation. In destroying the Nazi power, we have destroyed one great evil; much that was good and beautiful has also been destroyed, and the economic organisation of Europe lies in ruins. We can rebuild what has been destroyed only by toil and sweat, and there is no short cut back to prosperity. In this gigantic task the Allied Nations must continue to co-operate in that same spirit of service to the common cause of freedom which has so strengthened us during the stress and strain of war.

Together we have achieved much in war; may we achieve even more in peace.”

 
References:

Montgomery papers
'Notes on the Occupation of Germany' part 1
Imperial War Museum reference: BLM 85

Stealing coal in Germany after the war

14 February 2009

Ursula White now lives in England in Shropshire, but in 1945, at the end of the war, she was a 6 or 7 year old girl living with her parents in a village in Germany, just outside the city of Krefeld. She recently emailed me, after reading this blog, to say she still has vivid memories of the hard winter of 1946-7, when she and her family stole coal from the open wagons of the goods trains, when they stopped at signals in the woods near the village.

The books about life in Germany in the years immediately after the war always mention how people had to steal coal to keep warm, because there was none available to buy. The documentary film School in Cologne (which I wrote about on this blog a few weeks ago) starts by showing a young boy stealing coal briquettes, picking them up from the ground in a railway siding. But this is the first time I have heard the story directly from someone who was there at the time, and remembers stealing coal herself.

This is what Ursula wrote. If you want to know more, she has recently started her own blog – Friko's Musings – where she intends to write some more reminiscences of those times.

"Winter 46/47

As a small child I lived in a village on the Lower Rhine. Although we had shelter we had very little food and no fuel. There were, however, trains laden with coal from the nearby mining area of the Ruhr, which rolled through woods not far off on their way to the Dutch border. It so happened, that these trains always came to a momentary stop in the woods waiting for a signal to change to green, to allow them passage onwards. It didn't take long for this to become known in the village. The coal was transported in open wagons, not very high ones, with steps or iron bars on the outside. A few village men risked the first raids on the train; when nothing happened, others followed suit. 

Little by little, everyone was involved in stealing coal, my parents and me included. It was always after dark when the raids took place. The villagers gathered on the edge of the woods, close to the tracks, but still hidden from view. As soon as the train started to slow down (it was never very fast), the men broke cover, climbed up the bank and clambered onto the trucks, women and children following behind, but staying on the ground. The men began to shovel coal, most with their bare hands, throwing it from the trucks onto the ground where the women and children frantically scooped it up, into small sacks or baskets; the lucky few might have had a handcart although it was quite difficult to get anything but the smallest conveyance over the uneven terrain of the woods. We had a bicycle which helped with carrying our loot. My father pushed it. My mother was ill with malnutrition and unable to carry much and I was too small, although I remember dragging a sack behind me until we got out of the woods and my father loaded it on to his back.

Because we were such a small group we never managed to take much coal, enough for loading the stove once or twice only. Others were better organized, a family of several men and older children could carry two or three sacks away on every raid. I still have a strong feeling that one didn't grab coal from other families; I was all for picking up the spoils thrown from the train by other children's fathers, but I remember being stopped from doing so.

Inevitably, the authorities soon became aware of the raids. The trains never stopped for long, at most five to ten minutes, not enough time to steal large quantities of coal; it was, however, a criminal offence, even people in danger of freezing to death could not be allowed to get away with it.

We never knew how the military police found out but, within a week or two, the raids were regularly interrupted by several all terrain army vehicles arriving along the tracks, lights blazing, whistles whistling shrilly and much confused shouting. The men jumped from the wagons, women and children dragged away what they could and, abandoning the rest, the thieves fled into the woods.

Nevertheless, the raids continued for much of that winter. Not always did the military police get to the signal box in time; sometimes they came when the train was already moving again and the families were just about to vanish into the woods.

I never heard of anybody being caught and punished. Why that is so I don't know; women and children would have been easy prey. It was, of course, bitterly cold – the soldiers may just have resented leaving their vehicles and stumbling into the woods? Did they possibly turn up late occasionally because their barracks were at least warm?  I remember the adults speculating but I cannot remember that anyone came to a conclusion.

During that same winter the villagers were allowed, on several occasions, to help themselves to firewood in these same woods, provided they didn't actually fell any trees. Naturally, brush and small trees were taken, but again, it was such back breaking work and so difficult to transport the wood that only the larger and stronger groups profited.

Could permission to gather wood have had anything to do with the authorities trying to stop coal being stolen? I don't know."

Field-Marshal Montgomery: as Military Governor of the British Zone of Germany

1st February 2009

Field-Marshal Montgomery was the first Military Governor of the British Zone in Germany after the war, for just under a year from May 1945 to April 1946.

Surprisingly his Wikipedia entry makes no mention of this, skipping straight from his accepting the surrender of all German forces in Northern Germany, Holland and Denmark, on Lüneburg Heath on 4th May 1945, to his appointment as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) in 1946.

Montgomery is best known, of course, for his wartime victories, notably at El Alamein and as Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces at the Battle of Normandy. After the war he was wildly popular at home in England, both among soldiers who fought under him, and among civilians, thousands of whom cheered him in the streets. In later life though, and especially after his memoirs were published in 1958, he attracted a great deal of controversy and criticism.

As my research is on the British in occupied Germany after the war, I am not so interested in the debates on how the war was fought – on whether Montgomery was right or wrong at, for example, El Alamein, Normandy, Arnhem (‘A Bridge Too Far’), or the Battle of the Bulge. I am more interested in how influential he was as Military Governor of the British Zone of Germany and how he reacted to the transition from war to peace.

In my post a couple of months ago on Turning Points; when and why did British policy change at the end of the war, I wrote about a clear change in British policy towards Germany, as shown in the weekly PR Directives issued by the British 21st Army Group, which coincided with Montgomery’s return to Germany from England on 26th May, after confirmation of his appointment as Military Governor.  

Why did he react to the end of the war in the way he did? And what did he really mean when he spoke of “fighting a battle to save the soul of Germany” (see my previous post on the book ‘Darkness over Germany’ by Amy Buller)? Montgomery’s father had been Bishop of Tasmania and was later secretary of the Christian missionary Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. To what extent was the ‘missionary idealism’, so evident in the words and actions of some British people in Germany after the war, inspired directly by the first Military Governor?

One insight into his character can be obtained from Goronwy’s Rees’ description of him at the time of the Dieppe Raid in 1942 (which I wrote about some months ago on this blog). Another fascinating account of Montgomery, this time as an old man, is on the BBC WW2 People’s War website.

As far as I know, no-one has attempted an assessment of Montgomery’s time as Military Governor of Germany. His biographer, Nigel Hamilton, appears to take two quite different views. On the one hand, he interpreted this period as the start of the decline of a great military commander, who “failed to grow in stature commensurate with his high office … That Monty could have achieved such undoubted greatness as military commander in war, yet failed to rise to an equivalent greatness of spirit or stature in peace, was a strange paradox.”

On the other hand, Nigel Hamilton wrote elsewhere in the book in more favourable terms of his time in Germany:

“Critics of Montgomery would later claim that he was a general who, by virtue of his prickly personality, could only perform in war. While it cannot be denied that Monty’s generalship was uniquely suited to war, his military governorship of Germany was without doubt the least ‘sung’ and yet, in many ways, the most successful of all Monty’s campaigns. Under his personal leadership, administering the most populous and industrialized zone of Germany, seeds were sown that later resulted in the world’s most astonishing industrial revival within a free and liberal society.”

In another passage, on Montgomery’s personal character rather than on his military or political achievements, Hamilton appears to try (in my view not very successfully) to have it both ways:

“What emerged [after the war] was, increasingly, an overwrought, lonely tyrant without family or real friends, unable to share as once he had shared the fellowship of desert warriors. Whether any other commander could have done as well, let alone better, in ruling Germany is doubtful …. To complain that he was not, at the same time, a great statesman or diplomat, that he did not rise to the stature, say, of MacArthur in Japan or even Eisenhower in Europe, is wilfully to overlook his achievement and belittle his profoundly Christian charity.”

Montgomery himself clearly considered his time in Germany to be significant and devoted four chapters to this in his memoirs, but to try to gain a better and more detailed understanding of what he aimed to achieve, I’ve been reading his unpublished ‘Notes on the Occupation of Germany’ held, together with his other papers, at the Imperial War Museum. It’s not entirely clear who wrote them, or exactly when they were written, but (unlike his memoirs published in 1958) they do appear to be contemporary, and were probably produced soon after the events they describe by one of his staff, in consultation with him, (in much the same way as a narrative of events was compiled by his military assistant, Kit Dawnay, between D-Day and the end of the war in Europe). They are in four parts, each comprising a typewritten chronicle of events with introduction and commentary, 14-25 pages long, and a number of appendices comprising relevant documents – such as memos, directives and speeches – and finally a brief diary listing his movements and meetings with visitors. The introduction and loose-leaf documents for each of the four parts were originally hand bound with a board cover with the title, a hand coloured map of the British Zone, and marked ‘TOP SECRET, Personal for C-in-C, copy no. 3’.

In my next post I’ll describe some of the things I discovered in his ‘Notes on the Occupation of Germany'.

References

The Memoirs of Field-Marshal The Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (Collins, London: 1958)

Nigel Hamilton, Monty: The Field-Marshal 1944-1976 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986)

The ‘Notes on the Occupation of Germany’ are part of the Montgomery papers at the Imperial War Museum, reference BLM 85, BLM 86, BLM 87 and BLM 88.