A Familiar Place It got ugly in postwar Germany, too. W ith all the nay saying about our presence in Iraq, it's worth noting that none of these difficulties are particularly new. No postwar occupation has been without serious challenges, including the occupation of Germany after World War II. The New York Times ran a series of news stories in late 1945 reporting, in part, the following: "Germans Reveal Hate of Americans," October 31, 1945 The German attitude toward the American occupation forces has swung from apathy and surface friendliness to active dislike. According to a military government official, this is finding expression in the organization of numerous local anti-American organizations throughout the zone and in a rapid increase in the number of attacks on American soldiers. There were more such attacks in the first week of October than in the preceding five months of the occupation, this source declared. "Loss of Victory in Germany Through U.S. Policy Feared," November 18, 1945 Grave concern was expressed today by informed officials that the United States might soon lose the fruits of victory in Germany through the failure to prepare adequately for carrying out its long-term commitments under the Potsdam Declaration. Government failures were attributed in part to public apathy. The predictions of a coming crisis are predicated upon three points: "Germans Declare Americans Hated," December 3, 1945 An exhaustive compilation of opinions of Germans in all walks of life on their reaction to the United States occupation of their country was released this afternoon from the confidential status under which it was submitted to officials of the United States Forces in the European Theatre recently. "German Election Set In Towns of U.S. Zone," December 19, 1945 United States Seventh Army headquarters announced today that plans had been completed for initial German elections in January at Gemuende. A statement said that a vast majority of Germans remained passive in attitude toward politics and displayed no disposition to take over civic responsibilities. I think we can agree that the postwar occupation of Germany, and the rest of Europe, worked out quite well, despite numerous difficulties and the best efforts of the New York Times to highlight them ? as it does today in postwar Iraq. Mark R. Levin is president of Landmark Legal Foundation and talk-radio host on WABC 770 AM in New York. |
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Read These NEWS Headlines LOL IRAQ WWII ........
by ThiChi 24 Replies latest social current
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ThiChi
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IronGland
ThiChi-I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. In the meantime can you point me to some sources detailing the postwar armed uprisings of Germans against Americans? Good luck on your search. The Iraq war may or may not be justified or successful, but this constant comparison with WW2 has gotten stupid. If you knew anything about WW2 you'd realise that.
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SixofNine
I think we can agree that the postwar occupation of Germany, and the rest of Europe, worked out quite well, despite numerous difficulties and the best efforts of the New York Times to highlight them ? as it does today in postwar Iraq.
Number of American military personel killed by hostile action in postwar Germany and Japan combined : zero.
In practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing. The mayor of Aachen was assassinated on March 25, 1945, on Himmler's orders. This was not a nice thing to do, but it happened before the May 7 Nazi surrender at Reims. It's hardly surprising that Berlin sought to undermine the American occupation before the war was over. And as the U.S. Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, points out, the killing was "probably the Werwolf's most sensational achievement."
Indeed, the organization merits but two passing mentions in Occupation of Germany, which dwells far more on how docile the Germans were once the Americans rolled in?and fraternization between former enemies was a bigger problem for the military than confrontation. Although Gen. Eisenhower had been worrying about guerrilla warfare as early as August 1944, little materialized. There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting. In fact, the far greater problem for the occupying forces was the misbehavior of desperate displaced persons, who accounted for much of the crime in the American zone.
The Army history records that while there were the occasional anti-occupation leaflets and graffiti, the GIs had reason to feel safe. When an officer in Hesse was asked to investigate rumors that troops were being attacked and castrated, he reported back that there had not been a single attack against an American soldier in four months of occupation. As the distinguished German historian Golo Mann summed it up in The History of Germany Since 1789, "The [Germans'] readiness to work with the victors, to carry out their orders, to accept their advice and their help was genuine; of the resistance which the Allies had expected in the way of 'werewolf' units and nocturnal guerrilla activities, there was no sign. ?"
I know you feel safe like that, but your head doesn't go there.
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ThiChi
IronGlad:
The point went right over your head... The point is the Newspapers were painting a very different reality when, in fact, the reverse was true for the US in Germany. We succeeded in Germany, and many other Nations we occupied at the time. What happened with America?s occupation of Germany and what the press is saying now about Iraq is the exact same spin. Hope this helps....
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ThiChi
"""Number of American military personel killed by hostile action in postwar Germany and Japan combined : zero. """
Six of Nine:
Again you are wrong. In the American zone alone, it took eight years to eradicate the Nazies and their Sub groups. Your "world" of claims and so called facts are really very fascinating, yet irrelevant.
Let us look at one of the organizations, the "Werewolves" that fought occupied Germany and killed many :
The Werewolves were originally organised by the SS and the Hitler Youth as a diversionary operation on the fringes of the Third Reich, which were occupied by the Western Allies and the Soviets in the autumn of 1944. Some 5,000 -- 6,000 recruits were raised by the winter of 1944-45, but numbers rose considerably in the following spring when the Nazi Party and the Propaganda Ministry launched a popular call to arms, beseeching everybody in the occupied areas -- even women and children -- to launch themselves upon the enemy. In typical Nazi fashion, this expansion was not co-ordinated by the relevant bodies, which were instead involved in a bureaucratic war among themselves over control of the project. The result was that the movement functioned on two largely unrelated levels: the first as a real force of specially trained SS, Hitler Youth and Nazi Party guerrillas; the second as an outlet for casual violence by fanatics.
The Werewolves specialized in ambushes and sniping, and took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers -- perhaps even that of the first Soviet commandant of Berlin, General N.E. Berzarin, who was rumored to have been waylaid in Charlottenburg during an incident in June 1945. Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favorite targets for Werewolf bombings; an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans. Techniques for harassing the occupiers were given widespread publicity through Werewolf leaflets and radio propaganda, and long after May 1945 the sabotage methods promoted by the Werewolves were still being used against the occupying powers.
Although the Werewolves originally limited themselves to guerrilla warfare with the invading armies, they soon began to undertake scorched-earth measures and vigilante actions against German `collaborators' or `defeatists'. They damaged Germany's economic infrastructure, already battered by Allied bombing and ground fighting, and tried to prevent anything of value from falling into enemy hands. Attempts to blow up factories, power plants or waterworks occasionally provoked melees between Werewolves and desperate German workers trying to save the physical basis of their employment, particularly in the Ruhr and Upper Silesia.
Several sprees of vandalism through stocks of art and antiques, stored by the Berlin Museum in a flak tower at Friedrichshain, caused millions of dollars worth of damage and cultural losses of inestimable value. In addition, vigilante attacks caused the deaths of a number of small-town mayors and, in late March 1945, a Werewolf paratroop squad assassinated the Lord Mayor of Aachen, Dr Franz Oppenhoff, probably the most prominent German statesman to have emerged in the occupied fringes over the winter of 1944-45. This spate of killings, part of a larger Nazi terror campaign that consumed the Third Reich after the failed anti-Hitler putsch of July 20th, 1944, can be interpreted as a psychological retreat back into opposition, even while Nazi leaders were still clinging to their last few months of power.
Although the Werewolves managed to make themselves a nuisance to small Allied and Soviet units, they failed to stop or delay the invasion and occupation of Germany, and did not succeed in rousing the population into widespread opposition to the new order. The SS and Hitler Youth organisations at the core of the Werewolf movement were poorly led, short of supplies and weapons, and crippled by infighting. Their mandate was a conservative one of tactical harassment, at least until the final days of the war, and even when they did begin to envision the possibility of an underground resistance that could survive the Third Reich's collapse, they had to contend with widespread civilian war-weariness and fear of enemy reprisals. In Western Germany, no one wanted to do anything that would diminish the pace of Anglo-American advance and possibly thereby allow the Red Army to push further westward.
Despite its failure, however, the Werewolf project had a huge impact, widening the psychological and spiritual gap between Germans and their occupiers. Werewolf killings and intimidation of `collaborators' scared almost everybody, giving German civilians a clear glimpse into the nihilistic heart of Nazism. It was difficult for people working under threat of such violence to devote themselves unreservedly to the initial tasks of reconstruction. Worse still, the Allies and Soviets reacted to the movement with extremely tough controls, curtailing the right of assembly of German civilians. Challenges of any sort were met by collective reprisals -- especially on the part of the Soviets and the French. In a few cases the occupiers even shot hostages and cleared out towns where instances of sabotage occurred. It was standard practice for the Soviets to destroy whole communities if they faced a single act of resistance. In the eastern fringes of the `Greater Reich', now annexed by the Poles and the Czechoslovaks, Werewolf harassment handed the new authorities an excuse to rush the deportations of millions of ethnic Germans to occupied Germany.
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SixofNine
Zero. Zero Americans killed by hostile Germans or Japanese.
Several sprees of vandalism through stocks of art and antiques, stored by the Berlin Museum in a flak tower at Friedrichshain, caused millions of dollars worth of damage and cultural losses of inestimable value. In addition, vigilante attacks caused the deaths of a number of small-town mayors and, in late March 1945, a Werewolf paratroop squad assassinated the Lord Mayor of Aachen, Dr Franz Oppenhoff, probably the most prominent German statesman to have emerged in the occupied fringes over the winter of 1944-45. This spate of killings, part of a larger Nazi terror campaign that consumed the Third Reich after the failed anti-Hitler putsch of July 20th, 1944, can be interpreted as a psychological retreat back into opposition, even while Nazi leaders were still clinging to their last few months of power.
It was one killing of one German Mayor, before surrender. Hardly a spate.
Werwolf tales have been a favorite of schlock novels, but the reality bore no resemblance to Iraq today. As Antony Beevor observes in The Fall of Berlin 1945, the Nazis began creating Werwolf as a resistance organization in September 1944. "In theory, the training programmes covered sabotage using tins of Heinz oxtail soup packed with plastic explosive and detonated with captured British time pencils," Beevor writes. "? Werwolf recruits were taught to kill sentries with a slip-knotted garrotte about a metre long or a Walther pistol with silencer. ?"
In practice, Werwolf amounted to next to nothing. The mayor of Aachen was assassinated on March 25, 1945, on Himmler's orders. This was not a nice thing to do, but it happened before the May 7 Nazi surrender at Reims. It's hardly surprising that Berlin sought to undermine the American occupation before the war was over. And as the U.S. Army's official history, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, points out, the killing was "probably the Werwolf's most sensational achievement."
Indeed, the organization merits but two passing mentions in Occupation of Germany, which dwells far more on how docile the Germans were once the Americans rolled in?and fraternization between former enemies was a bigger problem for the military than confrontation. Although Gen. Eisenhower had been worrying about guerrilla warfare as early as August 1944, little materialized. There was no major campaign of sabotage. There was no destruction of water mains or energy plants worth noting. In fact, the far greater problem for the occupying forces was the misbehavior of desperate displaced persons, who accounted for much of the crime in the American zone.
Werwolf itself was filled not so much by fearsome SS officers but teenagers too young for the front. Beevor writes:
In the west, the Allies found that Werwolf was a fiasco. Bunkers prepared for Werwolf operations had supplies "for 10-15 days only" and the fanaticism of the Hitler Youth members they captured had entirely disappeared. They were "no more than frightened, unhappy youths." Few resorted to the suicide pills which they had been given "to escape the strain of interrogation and, above all, the inducement to commit treason." Many, when sent off by their controllers to prepare terrorist acts, had sneaked home.
Daniel Benjamin, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff. He is the co-author of The Age of Sacred Terror.
One can argue that the Bush administration hoped beyond hope that the nation of Iraq would be as orderly and predisposed towards democracy as Germany or even Japan. What you can't argue successfully is that postwar (or even prewar) Iraq has anything in common with Germany or Japan.
And an honest look would have shown that before all this started.
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Crazy151drinker
Zero. Zero Americans killed by hostile Germans or Japanese.
Six, I really worry about you.
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ThiChi
For a good history on the deaths of US service men in poswar Germeny see:
The Last Nazis by Perry Biddiscombe, is published by Tempus. The book explores the background to the movement, its operations and its wholly negative legacy to the history of reconstruction in postwar Germany.
The Last Nazis is available in bookshops, priced 19.99/$32.50 [pounds sterling], or by calling 01453 883300 (UK) or 001-888-313-2665 (North America).
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SixofNine
And why is that Crazy? Are you aware of postwar fatalities in Germany or Japan?
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Richie
And now some in-depth analysis on the aftermath of American help in Europe during and especially after WW2:
June 18, 2004, 8:42 a.m.
Let Europe be Europe
You won?t be our friends? Fine, protect yourselves and at least be neutral. B eware of punditry now assuring us that, because we have seen the error of our ways and are now penitent, Europe is back on board. A contrite Mr. Bush ? his critics imply ? now seeks to smile more like Reagan and bite his lip like Clinton, and drop the old, scary "dead or alive," "Old Europe," and "smoke 'em out" lingo.All this spin hides the real problem, which has nothing to do with Bush. The ethicists of Europe don't want to see success in Iraq, since it might be interpreted as a moral refutation of their own opposition to Saddam's removal. So let us in turn stop begging old Europe, NATO, and the EU to participate in the rebuilding or policing of the country. To join or help, in the collective European mind, would be to suggest that an emerging democracy far away was worth our own sacrifice to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. Liberating Iraq, shutting down Baathist terror, and establishing consensual rule, after all, was a dangerous ? and mostly Anglo-American ? idea, antithetical to all the Europeans have become.
Understandably, they do not want to be lumped in with the "missionaries of democracy" who evoke the ire of terrorists or the disdain of oil-producing grandees. They do not wish to forgive the debts run up by Saddam Hussein for their overpriced junk. And they most certainly are not willing to do any favors for Texas-twanged George W. Bush, whom they hope will be gone in less than six months. All this is not their world, which operates on self-interest gussied up with the elevated rhetoric of the utopian EU ? appealing to an Al Gore's Earth-in-the-Balance mindset rather than to serious folk who worry about genocide and mass murder.
So there are reasons our alliances cannot simply be glued back together again, and they transcend neo-con zeal and Bush as el Loco cowboy. Europeans, aside from a few tiny brave countries and courageous individuals, will no more participate in the "illegal" action in Iraq than they did in the "approved" and "legal" Afghanistan intervention, where about 7,000 NATO troops now help a postbellum liberated population of 26 million. Even if we sent Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Jesse Jackson as an obsequious trio, the Euros would not act in a resolute, muscular way.
To the small degree Mr. Bush supposedly encountered a more conciliatory attitude from Europeans, it was likely because wiser heads in Germany finally saw that their animus had nearly succeeded in generating an American consensus to end the free defense of Europe ? not because of a new remorseful "multilateralism" by the president. A quarter of Americans now see France as an enemy ? not an ally or even a neutral ? and the number is growing. Any sane person who carefully examined America's relationship to Europe over the last 60 years would have advised the Germans and French not to throw away something so advantageous to their own national interests. But they did, and now we must move on.
It was moving to commemorate the Normandy invasion on its 60th anniversary, but politely left unsaid amid the French-hosted celebrations was the real story of 1944 and 1945. We owe it to the dead, not just the living, to remember it with some integrity and honesty. Most of the Nazis' own European subjects did little to stop their mass murdering. There was no popular civilian uprising inside Germany or out. Most Germans were hostile to the onslaught of American armies in their country, preferring Hitler and the Nazis even by 1945 to so-called American liberators. When they did slur the Fuhrer it was because he brought them ruin, not the blood of millions on their hands. When they did stop fighting the Americans, it was because the thought of surrendering to the Russians was far worse.
Most Frenchmen either refused to resolutely fight the Germans or passively collaborated. The idea of a broad resistance was mostly a postwar Gallic nationalist myth. Those who spearheaded a few attacks on German occupiers were more likely led by Communists than by allied sympathizers, and thus fought in hope more of an eventual Soviet victory over the Nazis than an American one.
Meanwhile, those born after World War II in these two countries either know nothing about the American sacrifice or chalk the invasion up to the insanity of war in general. I won't even speak of a sense of gratitude, because that is an emotion almost as archaic to the contemporary European mind as patriotism. Nearly 30 percent of all Frenchmen polled last year wished Saddam to defeat the United States in Iraq.
Of course, Europe and America are both democratic and Western ? and will and should remain friends and partners. That said, we should also agree that our differences had been buried in the aftermath of World War II, the subsequent Marshall Plan, and American efforts to organize the defense of the continent against Soviet aggression.
But with European war, massive American aid, and Communism no longer present realities, the Atlantic world reverted to its natural tensions. Along with the Berlin wall, our NATO-inspired alliances also had a great fall. Well before George W. Bush assumed office, America and the Europeans split over differing ideas about liberty, free markets, class, race, and religion. And these shards are not going to be simply glued back into their proper places to reconstitute the fragile trans-Atlantic whole. As Europe addresses its demographic time bomb ? with ever-increasing entitlements, less and less defense spending, and ever greater schizophrenia as it vacillates between paranoid repression and dangerous laxity ? its angst about the freewheeling and upbeat United States will only grow.
Vocal supporters of the old Atlantic-American alliance are only half right in their bromides for putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Yes, they are correct that we should speak more softly and listen more. But if America had once done to NATO what the French or Germans did to us last year, the pretense of an alliance would now be long over. Imagine what would have happened if Paris or Berlin had mobilized to preempt Milosevic while the United States refused ? claiming with Russia in the Security Council that such unilateral, non-U.N. approved action was brinksmanship of the worst sort ? and then strong-armed other NATO countries to oppose European efforts.
Let us publicly hope for the miraculous reconstitution of NATO's shattered fragments into a real alliance; and then accept its quiet and permanent dismemberment on the pavement after a job well done. Meanwhile, seek bilateral partnerships with willing European countries, continue to unilaterally withdraw troops from Germany, and then start reducing elsewhere our unnecessary military presence ? perhaps first in Spain. Of course, there will be difficulties ? initial higher costs in redeployment, hurt Euro feelings, and hysteria from trans-Atlantic pundits ? but scaling back from Europe is long overdue.
We seek not to punish Europe by our departure, but to save it from itself. The problem is not just that our troops are doing nothing in places like Germany, or merely that they are more needed elsewhere ? they do real damage by their presence in enabling an increasingly strident and opportunistic pacifism and an anti-Americanism fueled by dependency and ignited by resentment.
The continent is now the repository of Western heritage ? a beautiful museum or amusement park, if you will, of caretakers and custodians. Unless that changes, we should no more expect Europeans to participate in the slogging in Iraq or Afghanistan than we should count on Disneyland guides venturing into nearby South Central to adjudicate gang violence, or Smithsonian docents to keep the piece in D.C. neighborhoods. Barring a 9/11-like event at the Parthenon or Louvre, one cannot ? and should not ? ask people to do what they simply cannot and will not do.
But isn't the Atlantic Alliance critical to American security? Sadly, no. Right now it de facto does not exist and we are in no greater danger due to its absence. Instead, the key is not to force Europe to be an ally, but to ensure by our absence that it is a friend ? or at least a Swiss-like neutral ? in the present fight against terrorists and their sponsors. Shared intelligence and mutual encouragement against terrorists do not require NATO. Perhaps Mr. Powell needs to give up on expecting Europeans to do anything real in the present war, and Mr. Rumsfeld needs to praise them far more for doing nothing.
I fear that we should expect over the next 50 years some pretty scary things coming out of Europe as its impossible postmodern utopian dreams turn undemocratic and then ugly ? once its statism and entitlement economy falter; Jews leave as Arabs stream in; its shaky German-French axis unravels; its next vision of an EU mare nostrum encompassing North Africa and Turkey begins to terrify Old Europe; and its pacifism brings it real humiliation from the likes of an Iran or China. Indeed, despite Europe's noble efforts to incorporate the former Warsaw Pact, we are already seeing such tensions in the most recent EU elections.
We all like the Europeans and wish them well in their efforts to create heaven on earth. But in the end I still think we Americans are on the right side of history in Iraq ? while they are on no side at all.
? Victor Davis Hanson, an NRO contributor, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Soul of Battle
and Carnage and Culture, among other books. His website is www.victorhanson.com.