The appendix also addressed the issue of the control of German forces, which it considered essential. It suggested that control staffs placed at various German military headquarters would suffice and that the provision of previously trained personnel would also fall upon SHAEF but that they could be found in the several existing SHAEF headquarters and staffs.
The SHAEF staff erroneously assumed that the demobilization and disbandment of German forces would not take place during this period and thus should not be included in this postsurrender planning document without further instructions. As will be seen below, within six weeks of Germany’s surrender, members of the German armed forces, with the exception of those cited as “war criminals,” security suspects, or members of the Schutzstaffel (the infamous SS), were being disbanded and demobilized.
Lastly, to provide guidance to subordinate commanders, the appendix recommended that a postsurrender handbook be prepared to obviate the necessity of preparing and issuing innumerable additional directives.44
Operation Rankin/Talisman/Eclipse
The complaint that the military planners were left without policy by their governments was the most prominent complaint in papers relating to planning for the occupation. The fact that SHAEF had to undertake these coordination meetings underscores this lack of guidance, and the reports written as a result further illuminate the extremely broad and complex nature of the problems the SHAEF staff was forced to solve on their own. A clear example of this lack of guidance is voiced by Morgan in the transmittal letter to Operation Rankin, in which he addressed “the essential difficulty in planning operations before the clear establishment of the political policy whence those operations derive their necessity.”45
When COSSAC, under the direction of General Morgan, was established following the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, it was charged with three tasks by the British Chiefs of Staff. The first and third tasks were pure combat operations: plan deceptive operations to keep German divisions in Western Europe, thereby relieving the pressure on the Soviet Union, and plan for the invasion of the continent (i.e., what became Operation Overlord).46 Behind this directive was the idea, based on experience derived from the end of World War I, that Germany might suddenly collapse. It was also supported by naïve and wishful thinking that stemmed from recent German defeats in North Africa and Stalingrad and the planned Allied invasion of Sicily. The idea that Germany would simply “disintegrate” was voiced by Morgan. In the directive for the plan that began on 22 May 1943 and was given the code name Rankin, Morgan said that the expected German “disintegration” would not necessarily take the form of a complete collapse but could be a partial withdrawal from occupied territory or the result of an Allied breakthrough.47
This belief in a German disintegration was still held by Morgan in the summer of 1943 and by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) following its review of the German situation, as is reflected in the Rankin plan published in August of that year:
The general situation as it exists today must appear to the German military leaders as verging on the desperate. . . . They are now faced with a serious situation on the Russian front and with the urgent problem of stopping the breach developing in Italy and the Balkans. Their U-boat campaign has met with a serious set-back. Finally, the ever-increasing Allied air offensive, to which there is no serious likelihood of a reply being possible, must be making the planning of the production increasingly difficult and must be causing serious doubts as to how long the home front can stand up to the combined strain of Allied bombing, the blockade, and military reverses.48
Planning for the occupation and demilitarization of Germany was a complex matter. Planners were asked to envision the situation as it would be when the time came. Thus planners were given an “intellectual exercise of unusual difficulty,” one much broader than what military planners are normally given.49 In other words, since the plan they were asked to develop would cover the period following Germany’s surrender, Germany’s defeat was not the objective. Instead, the plan would have to cover a myriad of problems ranging from displaced persons and Allied POWs to the disposal of captured German war matériel, the disbandment of the German Armed Forces, and the destruction of Germany’s industrial warmaking potential.50
Planning for Operation Rankin continued slowly despite the fact that the first Quebec conference provided no guidance to COSSAC regarding posthostilities planning. It did, however, provide support for a continued planning effort.51 On 23 August 1943, the plan, which contained three scenarios that were envisioned as signaling the end of hostilities, was approved by COSSAC. The first scenario, named Rankin Case A, simply foresaw a rapid collapse or substantial weakening of German strength and morale, allowing Allied forces to land on the continent earlier than planned. The second scenario, Rankin Case B, saw a German pullback to its prewar borders, also allowing Allied forces an early entry on the continent. Rankin Case C, the third and final contingency, foresaw an unconditional surrender, thereby allowing an unopposed Allied entry into Germany with a force of approximately twenty-five divisions. It was the only case that had anything to do with the occupation of Germany and therefore became the primary plan.52
Rankin Case C did not, however, consider much beyond the immediate disarmament of the German armed forces. The plan only provided guidance for stationing troops in certain strategic areas, not all the locations that eventually came under SHAEF’s purview. It did not address what to do with German military forces once they were disarmed or how to treat German police or paramilitary forces. Furthermore, it failed to address how Allied forces would take up their positions with sufficient speed to disarm the German troops before they were able to retreat into Germany. In addition, it also failed to address the question of Germany’s military-industrial complex, due in part to the lack of comprehensive postwar planning at the most senior levels of government.53
Nonetheless, with support for continued planning from the Quebec Conference, General Morgan gave priority to Rankin Case C and a final draft was prepared in October 1943 and issued as a planning directive to both the British 21st and American 1st Army groups. A revision of the plan covered occupation areas deep in Germany and included Berlin. It also specified the involvement of US forces. There remained, however, no additional guidance regarding the disarming of German forces. Operation Rankin—whose target date was set for 1 January—never went into effect. Despite the great effort and time that went into its planning, Rankin continued to be based on what proved to be false assumptions. As late as July 1944, the senior officer of the British CCMS stated his opinion that “the German surrender probably would take place with our forces still well outside the German frontier” and that planning in the CCMS was being conducted on that basis.54 Rankin’s significance according to McCreedy, however, was that it began a “process of thinking and preparing for postconflict operations that would continue through the rest of the war.”55
This process of “thinking and preparing” was supported by General West, who underscored the importance of not waiting for policy to be laid down by the Allied powers. It was essential, he wrote in January 1944, “that [they] . . . prepare now, as a matter of urgency, papers on all these problems” (armistice terms, disarmament, and the disposal of captured war matériel among other issues).56 Thus, as D-Day approached, there was an explosion of planning activity and as early as April 1944, two postconflict staff studies were underway and the subjects listed by General West as needing urgent attention eventually became Operation Eclipse memoranda or administrative memoranda.57 Thinking shifted from anticipation of the sudden military collapse envisioned by Rankin to the realization that the war would only be brought to an end by military operations.
Following a directive to all chiefs in the G-3 division from General Bull, a weekly progress report covering the activities they had completed or taken