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~ 1945-1949

Postwar Germany

Category Archives: Americans

Nuremberg Trials: Fair? Dangerous?

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by Anika in Allies, Americans, Crime, postwar

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germany, nazis, nuremberg trials american international law, postwar

The Nuremberg Trials are generally seen as a landmark in international law. When I first learned about the trials in school, I took for granted that they were a good thing, that the big wig Nazis got their due, and that the trials were fair, maybe even more than fair considering the men (and some women) they prosecuted and the severity of the crimes.

Digging deeper, especially into sources from the time period, a different picture develops. Nuremberg was controversial right from the beginning. Even as the trials were running, the world media was debating whether they were fair at all. Nothing quite like it had ever been done. How could the Allies be sure they were not committing an act of revenge on Nazi Germany cloaked in a legal process?

That’s one of the topics in the fascinating article Nuremberg: A Fair Trial? A Dangerous Precedent by Judge Charles E. Wyzanski Jr., published in the US magazine of political analysis The Atlantic from April 1946. It’s not easy reading, but if you give it a chance, you get a deep look at how the trials worried legal experts, especially in the United States, the driving force of most of the trials. What were the long-term implications of trying people for acts that were not crimes under their own laws? What about trying them for breaking laws “invented” after the fact, solely in order to investigate and punish those people? Was it fair to try them under a legal system from another country? In the end, was Nuremberg mostly a political act?

I’m not a legal expert and can’t go deeply into these issues myself, but I recommend reading the article and then thinking about the relationship of the United States to today’s International Court of Justice at the Hague. (The US no longer accepts the court’s jurisdiction when it comes to alleged US violations of international law). The article about Nuremberg from 1946 discusses how sincere America’s conviction was that “all wars of aggression are crimes,” one of the beliefs that underpinned Count 2 of the indictment (crimes against peace).

In the end, the Nuremberg Trials were murkier than they seemed. They weren’t just about punishing Nazis, but about legal concepts and precedents that apply (or not) today.

For some additional reading and transcripts about Nuremberg, try Yale University’s the Avalon Project and the National Archives Collection. And if you’re interested in how Wyzanski’s view of the trials evolved, he wrote an update in The Atlantic in December 1946, Nuremberg in Retrospect.

 

Our Red Army Ally

05 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by Anika in 1945, Americans, Soviets

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american, army, red, soviets

It’s 1945 and soldiers in the US Army are about to shake hands with their Russian counterparts for the first time in Nazi Germany, the land they defeated together. The average GI didn’t know much about the Soviets except for the news/propaganda they’d consumed before and during the war. So how did the War Department deal with what was to be a meeting of WW2’s biggest allies?

Red Army Ally

Imagine all those GIs holding War Department Pamphlet No. 21-30 with its red cover and the hammer and sickle: our Red Army ally. It’s a 77-page illustrated booklet giving the GI the lowdown about Soviet army practices, uniforms and insignia, weaponry, language and other interesting tidbits. It’s not terribly easy to find information in English about regular Soviet soldiers and their everyday lives, so this booklet is a real find.

The Cold War was pretty much over when I was growing up in the United States, but I do remember the Soviet Union being accused of being a part of some vague axis of evil. That’s why I was so struck by how positive our Red Army ally was about the Soviets. I don’t think I’ve ever read or seen a US government source that attempted to be so fair and understanding about them.

On the first page under “Meet the Red Army Man,” it says:

He is your friend. He is your ally. He has fought hard in this war, just as you have. . . .

Elsewhere, the GI learns that Red Army discipline is strict, that soldiers make do with much less than what GIs have, and that off duty Soviets play dominoes and chess or read Pushkin. This lesson in humanizing the Soviets continues under the section “Why He Fights,” where the booklet argues Soviet soldiers are just the same as American ones. They want to live a peaceful life in their homelands, but in the Soviet case, they had to mobilize to defeat the brutal enemy that killed millions in the Soviet Union. The Red Army’s oath is even printed so the GI understands what ideal his counterpart aspires to.

My favorite section was on p. 6 when GIs are informed about Soviet women in combat. I was surprised women got a whole paragraph describing their work and the fact that some became commanders of combat formations.

Don’t be surprised if that tank commander turns out to be a personable young sergeant named ‘Masha’ (a popular nickname for girls).

Though apparently some of the language advice in the booklet is a bit shaky, the information as a whole is golden, especially the many color illustrations. I was also impressed at the little glimpses the booklet gave into everyday life of Soviet soldiers. But most impressive was seeing the massive attitude shift in the US government ahead of the monumental task of occupying the defeated Nazi Germany with its militarily strongest ally — and its biggest threat — the Soviet Union.

Help! Where in #Germany is this?

24 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by Anika in 1945, Americans, Uncategorized

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americans, germany, government, military, photo, postwar

Does anyone have any idea where this photo was taken?

The man in the photo is the father of one of my American readers. He’s in front of a Military Government building, but she’s not sure where in Germany it was. Here’s the general information she was able to give me:

“My dad was an army surgeon with the 27th evacuation hospital.

In Germany they served at Dreisen, Hosbach, Feuchtwangen, Starnberg and
Darmstadt. They treated victims from all countries and were among the first
to help the victims at Dachau.
I’m assuming this is from 1945.”

FullSizeRender(16)

If you recognize the building in this photo, please contact me. Thanks!

Anything is possible

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by Anika in 1945, Americans, postwar

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anika, cologne, germany, postwar, ruins

It’s natural to feel dismay at scenes of devastation, but what about hope? Cologne was about 75% destroyed in WW2, yet it’s still here, still wearing silly costumes at Karnival time, and telling really bad jokes to bad music. The amazing Cologne Dom still pierces the clouds. As bad as the world’s conflicts are, there’s always hope — to rebuild, and go on living.

Here was Cologne on April 24, 1945, view taken by the US Department of Defense (now public domain).

Koeln_1945 US Department of State

Here’s Cologne in 2010.

Kölner_Innenstadt_(Flight_over_Cologne) Neuwieser commons 20(Photo: Neuwieser, Wiki Commons 2.0)

Liebe, American-style

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Anika in Allies, Americans, postwar, Women

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brides, GIs, marriage, postwar

Now that the posts about casual encounters between German women and allied men are out of the way, I thought it was time to do one about the couples that got hitched. The Allied Museum in Berlin has some great information about this in the book to its former exhibition “It Started With a Kiss.” I’ll focus on marriage to American GIs in this post.

It’s pretty well known that GI marriages were a phenomenon. By 1949, about 20,000 German brides and fiancés had moved to the United States. No small feat considering marriages were allowed only since December 1946. Apparently, the first American GIs requested to marry Germans in the fall of 1944 while the war still raged!

People can fall in love under any circumstances, of course, but German women and GIs started out with the kind of baggage no relationship needs. Nonfraternization laws banned romance at first, but when even officers ignored the rules, they were abandoned. The concept of collective guilt cast a shadow over all Germans, even teenage girls who spent most of their lives under Nazi rule. Romance with the victor equaled treason for some Germans.

Some Americans felt the same way. The media reported intensely about the moral dangers of Germany for the boys, and the public debated if and how German women should be allowed into the US. Women called “Nazi-Gretchens” in the US press weren’t necessarily going to be welcomed in American homes.

But there’s no stopping love. The War Brides Act in late 1945 and similar acts in later years laid the foundation for wives and children of US personnel to enter the country.

First they had to meet. Maybe at work, where Germans often took menial or clerical jobs in allied facilities and organizations. Maybe in cafés, restaurants or dance clubs. One German GI bride met her future husband on a Berlin street as she was rushing to catch a bus. She was 19, he was 24. They hit it off right away, but their road to a life together in Brooklyn had more than its share of bumps. Ursula lived in the Soviet sector of Berlin, and couldn’t get the papers to emigrate. She had to finagle an American Sector address via friends. She didn’t talk to many people about her plans out of fear someone would inform on her to the Soviet authorities. Her boyfriend returned to the States in October 1945 and worked from there to cut through the bureaucracy. Only in April 1947 did she board a flight from Tempelhof Airport to New York.

She was one of the lucky ones. She never felt foreign in her new home, since practically everybody was foreign in Brooklyn. Two years after she married, she became a US citizen.

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