Abstract
The occupation of Germany after its defeat in the Second World War continues to fascinate historians, who have increasingly sought to test and historicize prevailing understandings of the period by investigating under-examined aspects of the relationships among the occupying forces, the occupied population, and the millions of ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs) and refugees inhabiting the country. Thomas Kehoe's book adds to this endeavor by exploring crime, policing, and criminal justice in the American occupation zone, with frequent glances at the British zone. He seeks to reconcile two contradictory perspectives in previous accounts: on the one hand, a ‘liberationist narrative’ (p. 48) that lauds the smooth re-establishment of law and order in 1945, and on the other hand, a ‘destruction-and-anarchy narrative’ (p. 49) that laments the continuation of violence, crime, and disorder into the late 1940s.
Kehoe draws largely on Military Government (MG) records, including the files of about 50 criminal trials and the registers of more than 30 American and British Summary, Intermediate, and General Courts. These registers contain basic information about the charges, defendants, and outcomes from thousands of trials, allowing some quantitative insights into the prevalence of certain crimes and sentencing practices. Inevitably, such records are patchy and only partially capture the reality of crime.
The first two chapters set the scene by discussing wartime occupation planning and the training of MG officers. Kehoe stresses the emphasis placed on officers’ discretion and responsiveness to local circumstances and how the long-standing doctrine of ‘Minimum change … maximum control’ tended to overshadow the ‘transformational’ aims of denazification and democratization. The subsequent chapters similarly indicate that MG officers often prioritized the assertion of authority and control over liberal principles such as fairness, consistency, proportionality, or the protection of civil liberties in policing and criminal justice. This was, after all, a period of martial law, where ‘normal’ standards of justice did not apply.
After a period of heightened criminality that predated (rather than simply followed) Germany's defeat and an often-brief phase of ‘lawlessness’ before the establishment of Allied authority, Kehoe finds that a persistent pattern emerged: violent and ‘gang’ crime constituted but a small proportion of reported and prosecuted offences relative to more numerous property crimes and widespread breaches of curfews, travel restrictions, and other MG rules. To be sure, Kehoe identifies variations between urban and rural areas as well as changes in the crime—or at least the reporting and prosecution—rate for certain types of offences (e.g., sexual violence, looting, or black-marketeering) by various groups of offenders (e.g., American soldiers, DPs, or Germans) at particular times (e.g., in autumn 1945 or during the bitter postwar winters). However, these variations did not alter the overall pattern.
Another persistent pattern—which helps explain the tension between the ‘liberationist’ and ‘destruction-and-anarchy’ narratives—was that the fear, perception, and attribution of crime often bore little relation to any evidence-based reality. Even if their own district appeared orderly and largely free of serious crime, MG officers frequently believed that surrounding areas were riddled with criminal and other threats. Pervasive fears of youthful gangs or organized criminal networks were similarly incommensurate with limited evidence of their actual incidence. Many MG officers and Germans shared similar criminalizing prejudices against groups such as Jews, Poles, and African Americans, and similar proclivities towards authoritarian solutions. Again, Kehoe notes how particular concerns and methods changed according to circumstance (such as with MG's use of undercover German police ahead of local elections in 1946). He also explores tensions between Americans and Germans, including German complaints about Americans’ supposed failure to control—even their facilitation of—DP crime. Yet underlying commonalities remained, including patriarchal tendencies to ignore domestic violence and to blame the victims of sexual crimes. Kehoe does not seek to completely ‘unthread fact from fantasy’ (p. 114) and stresses the importance of fears and exaggerations, however inaccurate they might have been. More use of German rather than Allied sources might have given greater weight and nuance to Kehoe's plausible but sometimes not fully demonstrated claims about German perspectives.
Given that Kehoe identifies numerous continuities across ostensible caesura in 1945, 1948, and 1949 and given that some issues (e.g., sexual violence or American criminality) arise repeatedly without ever being systematically addressed, a thematic structure focussing on such topics might have worked better than the chosen chronological structure. As it is, the demarcations between the book's second and third sections (on 1945–46 and 1947–49) are only loosely upheld. So too is the congruence of footnotes: in several chapters, the number of footnote references in the text differs from the number of actual footnotes.
In sum, the book provides an insightful account of important aspects of the occupation, even if it might have provided further contextualization and acknowledgement that there was more to the ‘art of occupation’ and governance than combatting crime and fear thereof.