By 25 January, the draft COSSAC disarmament paper had become a SHAEF paper and been sent to SHAEF’s head planners, indicating that significant amendments from the previous meeting had been incorporated and that unless controversial points arose during the coordination process there would be no further meetings on that paper. Among the various changes incorporated was a war establishment / table of organization (WE/TO) for the disarmament mission that now included manning for separate US and British units.21
The paper was released under the signature of Colonel Grazebrook, then Deputy Chief Staff Duties Section (G-3). The fifteen-page paper contained four appendices and a map. Extremely detailed, it included suggested sizes and compositions for mobile missions as well as disarmament detachments to be set up in German military districts (Wehrkreisen), and outlined the responsibilities of SHAEF and the German commanders who were to be used to implement disarmament under Allied supervision. In April, the study, now titled Primary Disarmament of the German Armed Forces, was forwarded to the SHAEF chief of staff, General Walter Bedell Smith, for approval. The cover letter stated that the total personnel requirement for the necessary disarmament missions would be 272 officers and 165 enlisted men and other ranks. This study, which was the second of four such studies, was approved on 29 April 1944 and issued as PS-SHAEF (44)10.22
There was one aspect of this study to which the British Foreign Office objected. The offending paragraphs stated that German forces would be used to guard German arms and supply depots in liberated territories to prevent them from being raided by Allied nations. The Foreign Office suggested that Allied governments would be offended to learn that after their liberation from the Germans, German troops were being retained on their territory to do a job the Allies could do. Furthermore, the Foreign Office believed the Allies would be none too pleased that Germans were needed to protect the dumps from Allied nations. The Foreign Office expressed its hope that these paragraphs would be thoroughly reconsidered.23
Several days later, the Allied naval staff sent a memo to the Admiralty asking for guidance on naval objectives that still needed to be occupied and on additional naval operations that were to be carried out. It suggested that naval disarmament requirements could be met by including naval representation in the disarmament missions then being prepared by SHAEF. The memo also included an enclosure with a timetable establishing when various ports were to be occupied under the present plan as well as under an accelerated, modified plan. The timetable indicated that none of the German ports could be occupied sooner than seventeen days after the armistice was signed.24
In early February, the War Office asked SHAEF for estimates of manpower needs for the control and disarmament commission. The War Office said that the bulk of the requested technical personnel would come at the expense of the 21st Army Group and forces in the United Kingdom that were needed for reinforcement or maintenance, and asked that requirements be kept as small as possible until the war was over.25
Responsibilities of the Supreme Commander
Concurrent with the planning taking place in SHAEF during 1944, questions concerning the postsurrender responsibilities of the supreme commander continued to be raised. In May, General Eisenhower received his first directive on military government in Germany. Known as CCS 551, Directive for Military Government in Germany Prior to Defeat or Surrender, the directive vested in him supreme legislative, executive, and judicial powers but contained nothing regarding disarmament or demilitarization.26 The receipt of CCS 551, and its guidance for military government in those areas of Germany captured by the Allies before the war was terminated made the lack of definitive guidance regarding Eisenhower’s responsibilities following Germany’s surrender even more urgent. Accordingly, and shortly before planning for Operation Talisman began, two additional documents, a staff study (titled Preparations for the Armistice and Post Hostilities Middle Period) and a memorandum (titled Short Term Post-Hostilities Responsibilities and Planning), addressed the responsibilities of the supreme commander and his powers during the “middle” or “military period.”27
The key feature of the staff study was its recommendation that the German Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) should be used to impose the will of the Allies upon a defeated Germany. Acknowledging that the EAC was still working on the Instrument of Surrender and that directives to complement the surrender document were still required from CCS, the study went on to consider the kinds of problems the supreme commander would confront during the middle period before an Allied control authority was established. These issues included control of the OKW, which was expected to remain in existence to ensure the terms of surrender were met; the disposal of enemy war matériel and captured arms; the destruction of enemy fortifications; the disbandment of the German armed forces, including their discipline, provisions, and use as labor before being demobilized; and lastly, the disposal of the German secret police, the Gestapo, and the denazification of those police forces that would be retained to impose law and order.28
The memorandum, written by General Bull, reflected the contents of a memo written by Colonel Grazebrook one month earlier. General Bull bemoaned the still-confused state of postwar planning and preparation and the fact that the CCS had yet to send any guidance relating to the supreme commander’s responsibilities. Many different bodies, he continued, primarily in the United Kingdom, were studying the problem but there was no real coordination between them or within SHAEF, despite the great deal of planning that had been carried out by the various divisions.
Attached to Bull’s memorandum was a second memorandum, designed to be sent to the CCS by Eisenhower, outlining actions that needed to be taken by SHAEF to provide Eisenhower with the necessary special staffs he would require to initiate plans for the immediate postsurrender period. Most importantly, it recommended that the SHAEF planning staff be placed at the disposal of the EAC for “consultation and exploratory work.”29 The attached memorandum recognized that it was not possible to predict when Germany would surrender but that, though the EAC was working on establishing the necessary postdefeat machinery to be set up in Germany (and Austria), it was likely the actual surrender could come about before the Allies had agreed on what to do. Therefore, the memorandum continued, it stood to reason that Eisenhower, as the supreme commander, needed to be prepared to initiate the occupation and control of Germany immediately following the cessation of hostilities, and that his responsibilities in that respect would continue for some indeterminate period.
The second memorandum also highlighted the fact that the British Chiefs of Staff had already established the Control Commission Military Staff (CCMS) and that extensive planning had been accomplished on behalf of the British Chiefs of Staff. It also recognized that the British Foreign Office and other ministries had established various working committees but that apart from the work done by military staffs of each nation in the EAC and that already done within SHAEF, General Eisenhower was unaware of any comparable posthostilities planning by either the Soviet Union or the United States.
The memorandum ended with a series of conclusions and recommendations regarding General Eisenhower’s need to cope with the fact that there might not be enough time before the war ended for the EAC to complete its work or to select and train the specialist staffs he needed for the occupation. These specialist staffs needed to be assembled to fit the final British and US organization for control in Germany.
The recommendations included steps to ensure that SHAEF would have the necessary US and British personnel to implement the planning and man the executive staff, as well as sufficient authority to approve directives to these staffs and subordinate field commanders to occupy and seize administrative and political control of West Germany and disarm the German forces in Western Europe.30 The memorandum was never sent because a cable arrived from the CCS that gave “the Supreme Commander the responsibility to act for a period after the signing of the Armistice.”31
At approximately the same time, and for the reason outlined in Bull’s memorandum, Eisenhower requested the establishment of the nucleus of an American control council to prepare for the postsurrender period. In a memo hand-carried to the JCS by General Wickersham,