Introduction
On 8–9 May 1945, the entire German military establishment put down their arms and surrendered. Approximately six weeks later, the Potsdam Agreement stipulated that Nazism and German militarism were to be extirpated and Germany’s armed forces dissolved in such a way as to permanently prevent their revival or reorganization. Furthermore, because of the nature of German militarism and the crimes committed during the war, German soldiers were reviled and looked upon as criminals. No one wanted to see Germans in uniform again.1
But just as wars have their unintended consequences, so too does peace—or at least attempts to maintain peace. For the United States, the desire to maintain the peace following World War II and prevent the Cold War from becoming a “hot” war resulted in a series of these unintended consequences. Rearming Germany was one. The irony of rearming Germany is that it had been agreed by all parties at the Potsdam Conference that Germany should be disarmed and demilitarized and that “all forces and all institutions or organizations which served to keep alive the military tradition [should] be completely and finally abolished.”2 It is clear that the decision to totally disarm and demilitarize Germany stemmed from the failure of the World War I Allies to control German disarmament. The World War II Allies concluded that Germany alone was responsible for that war, and, because of the failure of the restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty to cure the symptoms of German militarism, they formed the concept of disarming and demilitarizing a nation without any serious thought given to whether it could, in fact, be done or what the consequences might be.3
The above notwithstanding, the emerging Cold War caused some, particularly in the US Department of Defense, to think differently. There was universal agreement that Western Europe had to be protected against a Communist takeover. The question that remained was how? Thus, after years of debate within the US government and between it and the governments of its West European allies, a resurrected West Germany was granted full sovereignty and authorized to create a national armed force just ten years after being totally defeated. That this Cold War event could occur at all was primarily due to the reversal of a major US policy decision made long before World War II ended to keep Germany disarmed and demilitarized for generations.
Revisiting the rearmament debate contributes a new perspective to the vast scholarly literature on the Cold War’s first decade. It reflects what has been called a real “gap between the disciplines” (meaning diplomatic historians have neglected the military aspects of the period before 1950 while military historians have equally neglected this period’s politics).4 This book endeavors to fill that gap and thus examines both military and political dimensions of the German rearmament process and, with respect to the evidence, goes where others have not. This brings to light (often for the first time) many previously unseen, neglected, or underexamined archival files from the Department of State, the Policy Planning Staff, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF), as well as previously classified histories of the military services, some still unpublished.5
While these documents do not change our overall understanding of the era in question, they provide fresh insights to the underlying discussions and rationales that led to the decisions initially made by the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff and subsequently within the Department of State and the War Department (later the Department of Defense). They also add context to the existing scholarship and depth to understudied issues, such as the lack of US preparedness to defend Western Europe in the face of possible Soviet aggression both before and after the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb. Furthermore, they document the genesis of the original plan to disarm Germany and the heretofore unknown US military plans to arm West Germany that began as early as 1948, and provide additional meaning to the later debates over the question of German rearmament between officials of the departments of state, war, and later, defense.6 Using formerly classified documents, this history describes the efforts of and the obstacles faced by the US military services in planning for the creation of a new German armed force. Lastly, these documents show that while the United States had no intention of incurring a long-term defense commitment in Europe, American officials believed that they had no choice but to make repeated assurances that US forces would remain in Europe as long as needed, both to deter the Soviets and to protect America’s European allies against an imagined German revanchism.
This archival focus is not meant to denigrate the plethora of published books and articles that cover this early Cold War period, but rather to fill the literary void on the subject of German rearmament below the policy level and provide new details that illuminate the rationale behind the policies and actions taken. Most of the discussions in the literature on this period focus primarily on the nuclear issue (i.e., America’s nuclear monopoly prior to 1949 and the need to rapidly build on that nuclear capability after the first Soviet nuclear test in August 1949). The literature does not mention that the US Army, rapidly demobilized and seen as inconsequential, had not included atomic weapons in its war-fighting doctrine and remained focused on large formations and a need to conduct a war of attrition.7 While it was eventually agreed that German troops would be needed on the ground to help defend Western Europe, the discussions, debates, and actual planning for German rearmament that took place within the War Department (later the Pentagon) prior to 1949 are simply absent from the literature.8
What the literature does cover is the belief that German rearmament would require an end to the occupation, a step that would make the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) not only independent but also stronger. This, in itself, was feared as an invitation for a Soviet attack, one that some felt could not be resisted.9 France also feared a strong Germany, despite evidence that some French leaders had realized as early as 1945 that Germany would have to be rearmed to ward off the emerging Soviet threat. Even Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, chairman of the Western Union Military Committee, stated in late 1948 that a rearmed Germany should be admitted to the WEU and later to NATO. French WEU staff officers were of the same mind.10 However, despite all the words that have been written on the subject of German rearmament, still missing is a comprehensive narration of how the military services planned for it, how it was viewed by Congress, what actions they took to speed up or impede this rearmament, and under what conditions it finally took place.
Despite the key role played by the rapid disarmament and demilitarization of Germany following World War II, there is little in the literature about the two-year-long disarmament planning process that became Operation Eclipse or about its outstanding results. None of the several long and detailed articles on posthostilities planning for Germany even mention Operation Eclipse