Urban Isolation and the Rural Wasteland
Although subordinate to SHAEF, and later to zonal commands (the US Office of Military Government and the British Control Commission), MG in American- and British-controlled Germany was designed to be superimposed on existing German administrative divisions. The occupation therefore hierarchically reflected German states (Länder), each of which would have an Office of MG, and then city and rural districts, roughly equivalent to the size of counties. (MG detachments were also assigned to oversee intermediate-level administrative districts called Regierungsbezirke—“government districts”—in the states like Bavaria that had them.) But while this structure created the appearance of a strict hierarchy, the Handbook for Military Government in Germany reflected SHAEF thinking that “the basic unit for Military Government” was to be “the Military District,” meaning the Kreis.8
In practice, this diffusion of power to the districts meant that “the Military District Commander [was] directly responsible for the efficient working of the Military Government machine … for the whole region under his control,” and in turn these local detachments carried the weight of authority and responsibility for MG overall.9 Investing such power in them had some unexpected consequences, however: it granted significant autonomy to detachments and their commanders while isolating them and dissecting occupied Germany into distinct urban and rural areas. SHAEF anticipated questions about relative authority between detachments and respective jurisdiction. The commander with responsibility for a “regional capital” was notionally superior to others in the area. This division was apparent in MG courts—intermediate and general courts were typically established in urban centers—but little else. As in Kulmbach, district detachments were primarily inward looking; they concentrated on local security and reconstruction efforts with little regard for what occurred beyond their borders.10
The challenges associated with ensuring local security and restoring basic functions were manifold, and detachments were forced to address them largely without support. Detachment E1 F3, for instance, arrived in Munich on 15 May 1945. The level of devastation astounded the officers.11 Detachment commander Colonel Charles E. Keegan marveled at the all-but-leveled city and echoed other Allied soldiers across Germany, writing: “Upon arriving in Munich, State government was found to be non-existent … all ministries had either been bombed out or removed to dispersed locations.”12 The SS had summarily executed key German administrators for defeatism and forced the rest into hiding. For all intents and purposes the basic societal infrastructure was gone; the city itself was devoid of life. Yet Keegan expected widespread crime and even resistance, and on arrival he contacted nearby tactical forces in case their support was required. The same day, he opened a public safety office, evaluated available prison space, and then began planning to restore civil functions.13
Keegan’s actions in Munich were similar to those taken by H4 B3 in Kulmbach. Even when arriving well after the German surrender, detachments approached potential disorder and resistance, and the challenge of civil reconstruction, in essentially the same way. They notionally had support available from tactical units and investigative assistance from CIC, but most detachments addressed law and order independently, imposing civil restrictions, making mass detentions, and using MG courts to try criminal offenders. These pro forma tactics were applied uniformly across vastly different urban and rural conditions, with social disorder ranging from persistent rioting and looting to administrative chaos and debilitating social unease. Differences in social circumstances roughly spanned the urban-rural divide. Cities tended to experience more pronounced disorder, while fear was the most immediate problem in the geographically larger, less populated, rural districts.
MG methods were suited to imposing order in defined urban spaces. Cities with clear boundaries were readily demarcated into prescribed zones. Streets were cleared with curfew orders while armed patrols could ensure the population’s confinement, dampening rioting and looting. These processes took anywhere from a few days in cities like Nuremberg to weeks in Bremen and Cologne; but once order was restored, societal infrastructure could be returned rather quickly. MGOs could then begin rebuilding a sense of peacetime normality. People were gathered, organized, and from there instructed in the operation of the new regime. German police and administrators returned to their positions, creating a visible, societal continuity. Moreover, once order was restored, survivors were able to find family and friends, and social bonds could be reformed. In Augsburg, which surrendered, all of these steps occurred rapidly during the first days of the occupation.14
Although rural detachments took similar approaches, the environment meant that the outcomes looked very different. For the most part, the countryside remained relatively unscathed. A British report on conditions in Schleswig-Holstein at the end of the war noted there was “very little war damage” outside the cities.15 And the first MGOs found the apparent normality eerie; to many, the countryside seemed an almost natural space for crime. It was a feeling exacerbated by the size of rural districts, which were littered with the remnants of Nazi brutality, and their comparatively sparse populations. When Captain Ben H. Logan’s detachment arrived in rural district Obernburg, southeast of Frankfurt, on 26 June 1945, he was surprised to find that he, nine other officers, and an equal number of enlisted personnel were to govern an area of approximately 2,500 square kilometers containing thirty-five separate communities.16 His first action was to make contact with the local American combat unit in case of resistance or uncontrolled criminal disorder, though there was virtually no sign of either.17 His officers nonetheless remained vigilant, though as in Kulmbach the detachment mostly faced administrative challenges stemming from the geography. Restoring telephone services and providing transport connections to doctors was a problem throughout July. There were only about three hundred DPs, but district officers were forced to monitor and care for nearly ten thousand refugees. Denazification complicated the search for German staff for key administrative positions. Over the course of July, the detachment conducted background evaluations of existing politicians and government officials. They discovered avowed Nazi mayors, administrators, and police who either had initially been overlooked by prior MG detachments or had simply escaped detection because they governed tiny villages beyond officers’ attentions.18
Not only was there no partisan activity in the district; there was also very little crime of any sort. When two unidentified bodies were found in a local river on 8 July, officers were unable to determine whether they had died from murder or by accident. At the end of the month, a detachment tally showed only thirty-one reported cases of looting across the district from mid-June. No cases appear in the trial records, however, so it is impossible to determine how serious they were, whether the reports were multiplying a smaller number of actual incidents, or whether they were merely rumors. The first three criminal trials in the summary court established on 10 July were for minor breaches of civil restrictions. The court did not sit again until the 22nd when fifteen people were tried for minor (though unrecorded) offenses. Of these, twelve were convicted and sentenced to “between one and 14 days.” One man was sentenced to six months for violating curfew and being drunk and disorderly; his harsh punishment may suggest that he committed a more serious unrecorded offense such as looting, that the American governors held some deeper animosity toward him, or that being drunk and disorderly was the worst offense brought before the court that day.19
The low level of crime neither alleviated Logan’s or his officers’ concerns about what the ostensibly peaceful countryside concealed, nor calmed persistent fears about disorder among the local population. The reports of looting were especially disturbing, and despite a lack of arrests through July and August, Logan routinely recorded it as a major problem, noting reports from German police and citizens. On 2 August, he even informed the commanding officer of the nearby Combat Command Reserve of the Sixth Armored Division of “looting problems in the Landkreis” and requested the unit prepare for deployment to prevent spreading disorder. The tactical forces were never required, however, and it is unclear where the line between fear and actual criminal incidents lay. But whatever the motivation, the fear was itself pervasive and destabilizing,