By the late summer of 1944, Allied victory in Europe was increasingly assured and, inevitably, thoughts gradually turned to the peace. For many of those fighting on the front lines there was an understandable eagerness to get home. Yet for leading Allied politicians and military officials, the prospect of victory revived one of the defining questions of twentieth-century European history: “What to do with Germany?”[1]
On the 12 September 1944, the European Advisory Commission (EAC)—an inter-Allied organisation set up at the beginning of the year to study postwar political problems—outlined the London Protocol. It was the first comprehensive proposal for what ought to be done with Germany and the beginnings of a framework for the future political settlement of postwar Europe. It declared the intention of Britain, America, and the Soviet Union to implement a joint military occupation of Germany, with each power taking control over a zone of the country as well as a sector of Berlin. It was, Field Marshal Montgomery later claimed, “one of history’s boldest experiments”.[2]
Three days after the EAC proposal was signed at Lancaster House in London, the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) issued a Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany).[3] This short pamphlet was intended to prepare British and American military officers as they embarked upon command duties in Germany. As the first Allied troops to reach enemy territory, these soldiers were expected to play a key role in establishing the machinery of the proposed military occupation.
This was not the first time that Allied military command had issued technical guides and handbooks to their troops. Many, such as Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain (1942) and Instructions for British Servicemen in France (1944), were earnest, if sometimes rather stereotypical, attempts at easing the culture shock for soldiers deployed to unfamiliar surroundings. They included maps, helpful phrases, and useful explanations of local customs.
The Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany) was, however, one of the first examples of such a guide for soldiers on deployment in an enemy nation during the Second World War. At this point in the war, such guidance was a matter of some urgency—American forces were on the cusp of capturing the German city of Aachen. A few days later, Allied forces launched Operation Market Garden, an ambitious (if ultimately unsuccessful) operation to push through German-occupied Netherlands and into the Ruhr.
Aimed at officers rather than rank-and-file soldiers, the Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany) was a technical outline of the German state alongside instructions as to how the Allied armies were expected to interact with it. As such, it provides revealing insights into the rationale that lay behind early Allied plans for the occupation of Germany and offers vital context for how official thinking evolved in the final months of the war.
Most strikingly, the handbook demonstrates the interconnectedness of Anglo-German history across the first half of the twentieth century. It outlines a narrative of German history from Bismarck through to the Nazi state and highlights the post-1918 military occupation as a vital turning point.[4] After the First World War, Allied troops had occupied the west bank of the Rhine until their eventual withdrawal in 1930. Following the rise of Nazism and another major war, there was a widespread sense amongst the Allies that the mistakes of the past ought not to be repeated.
The first lesson in this regard was the perceived lack of ambition which had characterised the interwar occupation. Alluding to the Dolchstoßlegende (stab-in-the-back myth), the handbook explained that the German people “had no realization of the completeness of their defeat”.[5] To right this wrong, the forthcoming military occupation needed to be “of a nature to make a more definite and lasting impression”. In practical terms, the Allied powers were preparing to exercise their supreme military authority across the whole of Germany and to take a much more hands-on role in dealing with matters of state.
To this end, much of the handbook is taken up with a detailed overview of the Third Reich, from the Gleichschaltung (coordination) of state institutions after 1933 to the precise mechanisms of the civil service, law courts, financial sector, policing, and more. This, it made clear, was not merely an academic exercise but deemed essential context for military officers expected to assist with the establishment of a military government. Given that they were to gain responsibility over public safety, law and order, public health, and property control, it was deemed “imperative that the unit commander have some idea of the German government, the Nazi Party, the police system and other matters”.[6] The latter ranged from the favoured mode of transport of a local policeman (bicycle or horse) to the pre-war population sizes of the fifteen German Länder.
A second major concern highlighted in the Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany) was the conduct of the British and French troops who occupied German territory in the interwar period. It warned that local resistance to the Allies was “not always met with firmness, and, where justified, by prompt punishment”.[7] Likewise, the lack of uniform anti-fraternization measures among the Allied occupiers was regarded as a significant shortcoming. This time around, commanders were told that “conduct of the members of the Allied forces must be dignified, formal and exemplary.”[8] Fraternization would not be permitted, with interactions “restricted to the minimum” and all social contacts to be avoided. When encountering the enemy “Allied personnel should be just, but invariably must be firm” while “discussions relative to the causes of the war, racial or political views should not be permitted”.[9]
The Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany) also set out the principal aims of the Allied occupation as envisaged in 1944. A military government was expected “to aid and secure military operations and dispositions; to destroy Nazism and Nazi Hierarchy; and to maintain law and order”. In undertaking such a momentous task, Allied officers were compelled to “operate with the same efficiency and achieve the same success as the military force which defeated Germany on the field of battle”.[10]
During the final months of the war, Allied thinking about the postwar peace continued to evolve. While the primary objectives outlined in the Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany) endured, the Allies adopted a range of even more ambitious proposals including demilitarisation, denazification, economic decentralisation, re-education, and democratisation. Meanwhile, with Anglo-Soviet relations in rapid decline, the British government successfully lobbied for the inclusion of France as an occupying power. The French were envisioned as a bulwark against Soviet power on the continent at a time when American commitment to peacetime Europe was far from certain.
In March, Allied soldiers crossed the Rhine and, within weeks, the full-scale occupation of Germany became a reality. For British and American commanders, it was quickly apparent that wartime plans were substantially at odds with on-the-ground realities. After years of heavy Anglo-American bombing, the destruction encountered across Germany was immense. Allied soldiers took control of towns and cities reduced to rubble and lacking even the most basic supplies. In Hanover, 75 percent of the city’s buildings were destroyed and the electricity, water, and sewage networks had all broken down.[11] The same could be said for almost any medium or large urban area across vast swathes of the country.
Alongside such overwhelming physical destruction, the political and social structures of the Third Reich were rapidly collapsing. These were hectic, violent days. Millions of civilians were displaced. In the face of imminent defeat, the institutions of Nazi governance had unravelled in a frenzy of terror and destruction. By the spring of 1945, the vestiges of the German nation-state were few and far between.
These were ingredients for the total breakdown of social order. As A. G. Dickens, serving with the British military government in Lübeck, wrote, the Allies could “scarcely accept as a permanent basis of life this State of Nature, where the life of man remains, in Hobbes’s famous phrase, ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’”.[12] For most unit commanders, establishing law and order took immediate priority.
To their credit, British and American Civil Affairs detachments did much to stave off a humanitarian disaster. Yet the Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany) was rapidly becoming a relic of outdated wartime planning. In September 1944, it had outlined a more comprehensive and exacting version of the post-1918 Rhineland occupation. These Allied plans were founded on the expectation that a functioning German state would survive the war. The reality, it turned out, was rather different.
In the tense environment of the early Cold War, it would take several years for the Western Allies to fundamentally change tack. Eventually, a combination of economic constraints, geopolitical strategy, and military pragmatism brought about a radically different model of military government. The West’s strategic realignment in Germany set the stage for a division of the continent that lasted for the next forty years. It was also the genesis of a new era in the history of the Anglo-German relationship.
[1] Andrew Szanajda, The Allies and the German Problem, 1941–1949: From Cooperation to Alternative Settlement (Basingstoke: Palgrave Pivot, 2015), pp. 6–12; Trevor Burridge, “Great Britain and the Dismemberment of Germany at the End of the Second World War”, The International History Review 3, no. 4 (1981), p. 576.
[2] “F.-M. Montgomery on Future of Germany”, The Times, 12 November 1945.
[3] British Online Archives, Germany, 1920–1969: British Foreign Office Confidential Print, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, available at LINK.
[4] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 5.
[5] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 6.
[6] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 41.
[7] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 6.
[8] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 37.
[9] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 33.
[10] British Online Archives, “FO 425/591: Handbook for Unit Commanders (Germany)”, image 45.
[11] Leonard O. Mosley, Report From Germany (London: Left Book Club, 1945), p. 72.
[12] Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, Lübeck Diary (London: Gollancz, 1947), p. 45.