Originally published August 17, 2007 at 12:00 AM | Page modified August 17, 2007 at 2:02 AM
Book review
Brutality didn't end when World War II did
"After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation" by Giles MacDonogh Basic Books, 618 pp., $32 Americans' image of the end...
Special to The Seattle Times
Book review
"After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation"
by Giles MacDonogh
Basic Books, 618 pp., $32
Americans' image of the end of World War II in Europe is of GIs parading on happy streets. But that was not the case in Germany, as author Giles MacDonogh demonstrates in "After the Reich," a history of the conquest and occupation of the Reich, including what is now Austria.
The reader may find the subtitle, "The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation," startling. But war is brutal, and brotherhood did not come overnight. Nor were all occupiers the same.
The first part of "After the Reich" is about the conquest, and is the most grossly violent. The description of the Red Army in eastern Germany is a flood of pillage and rape. And it wasn't only the Russians. In Stuttgart, French troops raped "perhaps 3,000 women and eight men," writes MacDonogh.
Many felt the Germans deserved it. But this is collective guilt — and in Western thought, guilt is individual. You might call the Nazi leaders criminals, but in most cases, MacDonogh notes, "it was not the criminals who were raped, starved, tortured or bludgeoned to death but women, children and old men."
For historic German territories in what is now Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic, conquest was followed by confiscation and expulsion. Today we call this "ethnic cleansing."
The occupier's hand was lighter in the American zone, but GIs did a considerable amount of looting and were not greeted as liberators, the author says.
America had not been conquered or bombed by the Wehrmacht, but American soldiers "had been fed a good deal of propaganda at home," writes MacDonogh. They tended to see all Germans as guilty.
"Public opinion," he reminds us, "favoured punishment and Eisenhower had made it clear that there was to be no billeting of American soldiers with German families, no mixed marriages, no joint church services, no visits to German homes."
The "no frat" policy didn't last — GIs eventually married 14,000 German women — but the first impression was not friendly.
German civilians did not resist. They tended to think of themselves as victims — first of Hitler's National Socialists and then of the Allied bombing. The Americans saw them as collaborators at best. They famously paraded civilians in their zone through the extermination camps and required them to fill out a 12-page de-Nazification form: How did you vote in 1932? Did you ever hope for a German victory in the war?
Germans thought these questions unreasonable. MacDonogh quotes one who saw the Americans as a nanny "who gets on our nerves with her bony index finger and her shrill old maid's voice."
The Americans tried 169,282 war-crimes and de-Nazification cases — far more than the British, whose efforts, this British historian says, were, at best, feeble. But what was right? In dismembering a totalitarian state, how far down should you affix responsibility? After a war, should you put your enemies on trial for things your soldiers did also? Should outrage at the past trump needs in the present? MacDonogh does not answer these questions, but he shows how people did, in fact, answer them.
"The Allies' fury," he writes, "was quickly spent." Most of the harsh sentences were commuted.
Readers may recall Stanley Kramer's 1961 movie "Judgment at Nuremberg," about the trial of four Nazi judges accused of war crimes. In the movie they were found guilty, and this book does not argue with that. MacDonogh notes, though, that four-fifths of the Nazi-era judges in the western zone ended up working for the West German government. And it was a decent government.
This is a sometimes violent and often disturbing history that prods the reader to think about the choices of conquerors.
Bruce Ramsey is a Seattle Times
editorial writer.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
The birth of 'Grunge,' in photos by Michael Lavine
Book review: Ayn Rand: goddess of the market, gateway to the American right
Book review: 'Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same': a teenaged friendship in rural Alaska
Book review: 'The Children's Book': A.S. Byatt's opus of the Edwardian age
Book review: 'Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary': on fire with the cause, at odds with everyone

Mourners gather at KeyArena for slain officer's memorial
Mourners gathered at KeyArena for the memorial service of Seattle police Officer Timothy Brenton on November 6, 2009.
nwjobs

Post a comment

Michelle Goodman blogs about work/life balance.
How to tell your office you're gravely ill
Post a comment
nwautos

Choosing a new sedan? Weigh the impact of your choice on your wallet and on the planet.
Post a comment
- Flags were key link to cop slaying, bombings
- Suspect shot as city mourns slain officer
- Briefs | Soccer: New Mexico suspends hair-pulling player Elizabeth Lambert
- McGinn pulling away as late ballots come in
- Using anti-shooter tactics, civilian Army police officer brought down gunman
- Huskies suffer another heartbreaking loss to UCLA
- Consortium on verge of owning Eastside railway land
- Heavy snow in Cascades shuts down roads
- Suspect in officer's slaying shot by police
- Stormy weather to continue today in the Seattle area
- UCLA game thread
939 - Suspect shot as city mourns slain officer
389 - Weapons, bomb-making materials found in suspect's apartment
334 - Decision day for health care in the House
198 - McGinn widens lead over Mallahan in Seattle mayoral race
183 - Schools emerge as new tactic in gay marriage votes
99 - Huskies suffer another heartbreaking loss to UCLA
94 - U.S. House passes health plan
91 - Referendum 71 show's Washington's strategy for marriage equality is working
79 - Bombs, guns found at home of suspect in Officer Brenton's slaying
65
- Suspect shot as city mourns slain officer
- Flags were key link to cop slaying, bombings
- McGinn pulling away as late ballots come in
- Consortium on verge of owning Eastside railway land
- Guest columnist | Cut the South Carolina jokes, Seattle. Get ready to compete
- Movie review | 'An Education' you won't forget
- Practical Mac | With new features, Apple's MobileMe is worth the price
- H1N1 vaccine for high-risk group coming to King Co. pharmacies
- Shoreline man killed when struck by falling tree part
- Do It in a Day | Spend a cozy, homey day in Edmonds








