Erlichman, Camilo

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  German Historical Institute London Bulletin Bd. 36 2014 Nr. 2        Copyright Das Digitalisat wird Ihnen von perspectivia.net, der Online-Publikationsplattform der Max Weber Stiftung – Stiftung Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland, zur Verfügung gestellt. Bitte beachten Sie, dass das Digitalisat urheberrechtlich geschützt ist. Erlaubt ist aber das Lesen, das Ausdrucken des Textes, das Herunterladen, das Speichern der Daten auf einem eigenen Datenträger soweit die vorgenannten Handlungen ausschließlich zu privaten und nicht-kommerziellen Zwecken erfolgen. Eine darüber hinausgehende unerlaubte Verwendung, Reproduktion oder Weitergabe einzelner Inhalte oder Bilder können sowohl zivil- als auch strafrechtlich verfolgt werden. 86FRANCIS GRAHAM-DIXON, The Allied Occupation of Germany: TheRefugee Crisis, Denazification and the Path to Reconstruction (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), xvi + 348 pp. ISBN 978 1 78076 465 8. £59.50Francis Graham-Dixon’s important book has unfortunately beenpublished under a misleading title, which will discourage readersinterested in its real theme, while confusing others looking in vainfor the subjects implied by its cover. Thus this study is neitherabout the four-power Allied occupation of Germany, nor does itdiscuss at great length the subjects of denazification and recon-struction. Instead, it is an in-depth exploration of British policytowards the refugee and expellee crisis in their zone of occupationin Germany, based on a detailed analysis of the situation in post-war Schleswig-Holstein. As such, this heavily extended version ofthe author’s doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University ofSussex in 2008, complements an already sizable body of research onthe fate of the German refugees and expellees, such as, mostnotably, recent work by Ian Connor, Matthew Frank, Pertti Ahonen,and R. M. Douglas.What differentiates Graham-Dixon’s approach from the existingliterature is his close study of British official discourses, policies, andactions towards German refugees and expellees both at top govern-mental level in London and on the ground in occupied Schleswig-Holstein. This combination of macro and micro perspective is fruitfuland brings to light the full impact of decisions taken by the Britishpolicy-making elite on the lives of the refugees and expellees, whichare traced from the moment of the official sanctioning of populationtransfer during the war until the end of the occupation in 1955. Hismain thesis, distributed throughout almost all sections of the book, isthat the British arrived in Germany styling themselves a ‘civilising,democratising and liberating power’ (p. 14), but that their repressive,disinterested, and uncoordinated policies towards refugees under-mined their entire mission. For Graham-Dixon, Britain, ‘by proclaim-ing its own moral code among the so-called civilized nations had . . .a duty of care in its role as an occupying power’ (p. 40) towards theGerman civilian population. In reality, however, it never lived up toits obligation to provide for the well-being of those who were sub-jected to its rule. German refugees who managed to survive underextreme material hardship in post-war Germany therefore did soThe Allied Occupation of Germany87‘despite British policy and not because of it’ (p. 7). His analysis of theBritish handling of the refugee crisis consequently leads him to ascathing condemnation of the British occupation as a whole. Whilethe British were intent on ‘exporting liberal democracy’ and under-stood their occupation as a ‘standard-bearer for Western civilisedvalues’ (p. 219), their policies during the refugee crisis demonstrate,in the author’s view, the moral double-standards inherent in Britishoccupation policy.To develop his argument Graham-Dixon, digging deep in a totalof eighteen British and German archives, has unearthed an impres-sive wealth of material ranging from the files of Whitehall ministriesand the Control Commission for Germany (British Element) to the pri-vate papers of leading officials, documents from British and Germanecclesiastical repositories, and from German national, regional, andlocal government archives. Some of these sources have hitherto beenlargely neglected and will prove to be of value for future researchprojects. Among these, the monthly reports submitted by British KreisResident Officers posted to Schleswig-Holstein and the Germanpolice reports on public opinion stand out, providing graphic illustra-tions of local conditions as described by first-hand observers. The empirical part of the study starts by looking at Britishwartime perceptions of Germany and connects the underlying atti-tudes to British policies regarding population transfer, aerial bom-bardment of German cities, and the prosecution of war criminals dur-ing the occupation. Graham-Dixon argues that the negative percep-tion of Germans and the popular equation of Nazis with Germans ledto punitive policies towards ethnic Germans, for which these threeareas serve as examples. In particular, he presents the extreme bomb-ing of Hamburg in 1943 as a form of retribution and links this to theflight and expulsion of ethnic Germans. Both policies, in his view,‘factored in the awareness that there would be heavy losses of non-combatant lives’ (p. 67) and thus demonstrate that the British werelargely politically indifferent to the fate of German civilians.The author struggles, however, to present evidence for the pre-sumed nexus between British perceptions of the ‘specificity andembedded nature of German aggression’ (p. 37) and the brutal poli-cies of bombardment and expulsion, which seem instead to be basedon flawed military and diplomatic considerations. In addition,British perceptions of Germany were neither coherent, nor was aBook Reviews88crude negative interpretation of ‘the Germans’ collectively acceptedor even dominant within official circles, as Jörg Später has shown inhis important study on Vansittartism (which is not mentioned in thebook). The link which Graham-Dixon does, however, successfullyestablish is that between the consequences of indiscriminate aerialbombardment and the material fate of the refugees in the post-warperiod. Thus the massive destruction of Hamburg led to its popula-tion seeking refuge in neighbouring Schleswig-Holstein, therebyadding to the refugee population in the region and significantly exac-erbating the problems of housing, food, and employment.The core of the book consists of a case study of conditions inSchleswig-Holstein, which absorbed more than one million Germanexpellees from the East. The selection of this region is well founded,given that in comparison to all other Länder it had the greatest shareof expellees and refugees as a percentage of its own population(around 45 per cent in 1947). The British decision to force so manyexpellees into this region, based on the notion that a rural area wouldbe able to accommodate a large number of refugees who would thencontribute to agrarian production, had fateful consequences, whichled directly to a disastrous refugee crisis. As is well known from pre-vious research, the living conditions of expellees during the period1946 to 1949 were appalling. There was a massive shortage of hous-ing and food, poverty and unemployment were the rule, and publichealth reached a gruesome low point. Graham-Dixon’s research brings to light that the British didalmost nothing to alleviate the bitter situation of the refugees. In gen-eral, they argued that the responsibility for refugee policy had beenfully devolved to the German authorities and thus tried to distancethemselves from the problems surrounding the crisis. Some officials,such as the Regional Commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein, Air Vice-Marshall Hugh Champion De Crespigny, showed real empathy forthe fate of the refugees, but could do little to help them because theylacked power and economic resources. Public figures in the UK whocriticized British policies, such as ecclesiastical dignitaries aroundBishop Bell and publicists such as Victor Gollancz, made a great dealof noise, but had little impact on the situation in Germany. The high-er echelons at Whitehall, however, apparently showed almost nointerest in the plight of German refugees and entirely marginalizedthe crisis.The Allied Occupation of Germany89Conversely, a number of British policies exacerbated the problemsfaced by refugees, such as the requisitioning of German propertiesfor British personnel and the dismantling policies which led to thedestruction of buildings that could have been used to accommodatethe refugees. Their fear of potential extremism and revanchism ledthe British to ban the formation of political expellee organizationsuntil 1950, thus, in Graham-Dixon’s view, hampering the successfulintegration of expellees into the British Zone. Most significantly, per-haps, the British altogether failed to redistribute the refugee popula-tion more evenly throughout Germany and alleviate conditions inSchleswig-Holstein.A constant theme which runs through Graham-Dixon’s analysis isthe claim that many of the problems persisted because the Britishpresumably devolved responsibilities regarding refugee policy to theGermans under their ‘indirect rule’ policy, but at the same timeretained a number of prerogatives, such as that of moving popula-tions between different Kreise, all of which significantly hindered thework of the German authorities. Thus the refugee crisis could only beresolved after the formation of the Federal Republic in 1949. Britishrule in Germany, characterized by its constant reluctance to transferreal power to Germans, is consequently interpreted as a ‘form of mil-itant liberalism, a controlling impulse that underscored key policiesin its mission to export democracy to Germany’ (p. 4).The final part of the book analyses British policies regarding warcriminals, Heligoland, and dismantling in the period 1949 to 1955.This section seems oddly out of place because it bears little relation tothe main subject of the book. Its sole purpose, it seems, is to decon-struct entirely the ‘familiar British myth that its time in Germany rep-resented a force for good’ (p. 234). This exercise in judging the ‘morallegitimacy of British rule’ (p. 220) is not confined to one chapter. Thewhole book is suffused by the author’s deep sense of outrage atBritish treatment of refugees and expellees. This indignation is well-founded and a morally necessary response to the terrible fate of theGerman refugee population in the immediate post-war period. Itseems to me, however, an insufficient reaction to a historical prob-lem. Instead, one would have wished to find more contextualizationand analysis. If, for instance, British attitudes towards Germany wereso negative and punitive that they impinged on their capacity todesign constructive solutions for the immense problems facing theBritish zone of occupation, where did these attitudes come from andwhy were they so resilient? An exploration of the devastating impactof the Second World War on the UK and the consequent forming ofBritish perceptions about what had gone wrong with Germanywould have provided some context. It might also explain some of thedifferences between the attitudes of the British and those of theAmerican occupiers, who the author regards as much more humane,and help towards an understanding of the ‘high-handedness’, ‘arro-gance’, and ‘patronising’, ‘authoritarian’, and ‘insensitive’ attitudesof the British (pp. 83–7, 96).A closer reading of the many internal debates and dissenting voic-es within the British Military Government, often characterized by asense of helplessness and desperation in the face of the enormity ofthe problems, would have allowed for a more balanced assessment ofBritish policies. The disastrous financial state of the British exchequeris discussed, but the author seems to underestimate its impact.Finally, while Graham-Dixon accuses the British of putting crudepolitical considerations above moral ones, he castigates them fortheir prolonged prosecution of German war criminals, suggestingthat ‘there was a clear need to promote better British–German rela-tions to help integrate the FRG within the new comity of nations, andto bolster the Western Alliance against Communist influence’ (p. 76).The redundant dichotomy between bad occupiers and goodGermans throughout the book is disappointing, and the leadingresearch question of whether it was ‘possible to reconcile British lib-eral democratic values as an occupying power’ (p. 4) is normativeand ahistorical.In the final analysis, therefore, this book presents a strange conun-drum. On the one hand, this is probably the most extensivelyresearched book on the British Zone to appear in the last decade andits author demonstrates an impressive command of the primarysource material. In this sense, Graham-Dixon’s work, despite touch-ing on many issues already well described by previous research, is animportant contribution to the field and a very rich source for thoseinterested in the history of the British occupation. It highlights fun-damental patterns of British rule in Germany and is very strong inshowing the gulf between official discourses and real practices on theground. On the other hand, however, the moralistic tone and ensuingcondemnation of almost every aspect of the British occupation in90Book Reviewsmany respects signify a step back to the intellectually unhelpfuldebate about whether the British occupation was a good or bad thing.The really important issues for scholars of the occupation are tounderstand how British rule in Germany functioned, to uncover itssocio-political legacies for the history of Western Germany in the firstpost-war decades, and to locate its place within the broader historyof military occupations which occurred in Europe during the 1940s.CAMILO ERLICHMAN is completing his doctorate at the Universityof Edinburgh and is currently a visiting scholar at the University ofCologne. His research project, entitled ‘Strategies of Rule: Co -operation, Collaboration, and Conflict in the British Zone of Ger -many 1945–1949’, explores the British occupation of north-westernGermany as a series of interactions between the occupiers and theoccupied.91The Allied Occupation of Germany

The Allied Occupation of Germany: The Refugee Crisis, Denazification and the Path to Reconstruction

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The Allied Occupation of Germany: The Refugee Crisis, Denazification and the Path to Reconstruction

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