Legitimising Occupation: The Quest for Popular Consent during the British Occupation of Germany,1945–1949

The problem of legitimacy has in recent years emerged as one of the central themes in the study of military occupations in Europe during the mid-twentieth century. Exploring how occupiers attempted to legitimise their rule has enabled historians to embrace a more fluid understanding of power relations under occupation and to capture the wide range of attitudes that existed amongst occupied communities, while unearthing the manifold ways in which occupation regimes sought to integrate their rule within pre-existing socio-political structures. As Martin Conway and Peter Romijn have argued in their pioneering volume on the subject, ‘socially rooted notions of what constituted right, proper or legitimate government continued to mediate the ways in which individuals responded to regimes, even as those regimes were engaged in oppression of them’. ¹ Although occupation rule has always been dependent, in the last resort, on the use or threat of force, power relations under occupation were rarely based exclusively on the brute imposition of the will of the occupiers. ² Drawing on the work of the political theorist David Beetham, Conway and Romijn consequently propose exploring legitimacy by analysing the extent to which rulers managed to generate popular consent by making their actions appear acceptable to the local population based on the beliefs, values, norms, needs and expectations that were current within the communities over which they ruled. ³

This article explores the quest for legitimacy during the British occupation of north-western Germany after World War II. The extent to which the Allied liberators and occupiers of western Europe during and after the war had to justify their rule remains poorly understood, with historians often assuming that after the collapse of the Third Reich the local population generally accepted the policies of the ‘democratic occupiers’. ⁴ Encompassing a territory with c.22 million people and Germany's main industrial assets, the British occupation offers the ideal case for examining the intricacies of such attempts to generate legitimacy. Germany was the site of extensive war-time destruction and the occupiers faced a local population that became increasingly antagonistic as their material conditions deteriorated, while the post-war reconstruction of the country required a significant investment of resources that the British population was reluctant to support. The article engages, therefore, with the two central dimensions that impinge on the ways in which occupiers try to secure consent for their activities. First, it examines how the occupation authorities justify their activities to the population of the occupying state at home. This, of course, is important if the occupying state is a full or partial democracy, where the actions of the government may be questioned and criticised by the media, in parliament or in popular elections. Even in an authoritarian state, however, the occupying authorities must justify their use of often scarce resources and highlight the perceived benefits that maintaining the occupation provides to the home population. Second, the article investigates how an occupation regime seeks to mould the perception of its activities by the occupied population. Even the most brutal occupiers depend on a degree of cooperation or at least passive acceptance of their rule from local authorities and the wider population.

In exploring the question of legitimacy, we make no judgement as to whether British rule in post-war Germany was ‘benign’ or ‘malign’, or whether it may or may not have been in the longer-term interest of the local population. Neither are we concerned with the question of the extent to which British rule in occupied Germany was ‘legitimate’ or ‘illegitimate’ under international law. ⁵ Rather, we are concerned with the dynamics of power and seek to explore how popular conceptions of what constitutes legitimate rule influenced the behaviour of those in power and the responses of the civilian population in both the occupied and occupying states.

In doing so, the article is intended as a contribution to two larger debates. First, by placing the issue of legitimacy centre stage it seeks to challenge existing assumptions in the historiography of Allied rule in post-war Germany regarding the extent of popular consent, while bringing to the fore popular responses to occupation policies. In the past, scholars all too often assumed that the American, British and to a lesser extent French occupations of western Germany had been neat affairs, with the occupiers finding a largely apathetic population that generally complied with occupation policies imposed from above. In addition, the extensive historiography on the politics of the Cold War has emphasised the impact this had on generating support for the US and British rulers in their zones of occupation but has disguised the extent of popular contestation. ⁶ As a new generation of historians is now demonstrating through detailed archival work, such a view unduly privileged the high politics of the occupation period and neglected conditions on the ground. ⁷ This article is therefore part of a larger historiographical turn that focuses on the ‘dynamic power relationship’ between the occupiers and the occupied and seeks to restore a degree of agency to the occupied population, by demonstrating the ways in which the occupiers sought to respond to pressures coming from below. ⁸ In engaging with this theme, the article also seeks to show how such pressures not only originated from the occupied population, but also from within the occupier's own society. The history of the British occupation of Germany, we thus argue, needs to be written as an integrated history that interrelates the British and German domestic contexts. Second, to use the influential phraseology of Dipesh Chakrabarty, the article seeks to contribute to ‘provincialising’ the Allied occupation of Germany, which has largely been studied as a unique case and explored in isolation from overarching analytical questions that cut across different cases. ⁹ As such, it engages with the concerns of the new comparative field of occupation studies by addressing the broader question of how occupiers seek to gain legitimacy and why such attempts often run into significant difficulties. ¹⁰ A reluctance to provide the necessary resources and fund the cost of occupation can be observed in many cases of occupation when an armed conflict has abated or is over. The significant lack of what political theorists call ‘input legitimacy’ ¹¹ (the extent to which rule is seen to be reflective of the will of the people and based on political participation by them) and the broader absence of popular consent, which may develop into passive or active resistance, only serves to exacerbate the problem for the occupier. This is compounded in cases such as that of Germany after World War II, where there were multiple occupying powers, all of which had to pay attention to their own and their allies’ domestic contexts, to their relations with each other, and to often rapidly changing conditions within the occupied territory. Occupiers may apply different strategies to alleviate the various problems arising from their intrinsic lack of legitimacy, one of which, as discussed here, is the use of techniques of information and persuasion. This article is therefore also intended as a case study on the uses of propaganda by occupiers generally as well as the significant limits of attempts by an occupier to enhance their legitimacy and generate popular consent through such activities.

To engage with these concerns, this article explores two campaigns run by the British authorities in Germany. Drawing primarily on an extensive analysis of archival sources from the British Foreign Office, the Control Commission for Germany (British Element) (CCG), and the Control Office for Germany and Austria (COGA), it analyses the two most intensive propaganda campaigns that were organised to publicly legitimise the British occupation. Both of these campaigns mobilised a remarkable amount of resources, but have hitherto been ignored by historians. The article first looks at ‘Germany under Control’, a large-scale public exhibition put on display in the heart of London from 7 June to 5 August 1946, then taken on tour to major cities in the United Kingdom from January to April 1947. It then explores ‘Operation Stress’, the largest propaganda campaign run in the British Zone of Germany, which ran from March to April 1948 and sought to legitimise food policies at a time of severe material crisis. ¹² For both campaigns, we explore the internal rationale amongst British policymakers, the objectives behind the campaigns and how they were implemented, as well as the outcomes and the extent to which the campaigns achieved their original aims.

There were numerous propaganda efforts during the occupation period, and an entire division of the CCG was set up to that end. The Public Relations and Information Services Control Group (PR/ISC) was formally responsible for providing ‘information’ to the German public and, together with staff at the Control Office (COGA) in London, for managing ‘public relations’ with visiting politicians and journalists and influencing ‘public opinion’ in the United Kingdom and the wider world. Beyond some studies on its role in shaping the German media and cultural landscape, PR/ISC has, however, received only marginal attention by historians. ¹³ This neglect has led some historians to claim, rather speculatively, that the British failure in shaping public opinion and averting criticism during the occupation originated from the fact that ‘the British attached little importance to information or propaganda in favour of their own policy’. ¹⁴ In this article, we concentrate on an in-depth analysis of two of the largest campaigns in order to shed light on the wider problems that the British faced in gaining popular consent for the occupation. While the ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition primarily targeted a domestic British audience, ‘Operation Stress’ sought to speak directly to the occupied German population, persuading them of the benevolence and efficiency of British rule, and in so doing dissuade them from passive opposition or active resistance. As we will show, both campaigns ran into significant difficulties and ultimately ended in failure. That double failure, we argue, reveals much about the wider problem of legitimacy and the inherent fragility of military occupation as a form of rule.

1. The ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition

On 26 July 1945, the new Labour government took office in Britain with an ambitious domestic programme, but immediately faced a financial crisis as US lend-lease loans, which had sustained Britain during the war, were cancelled. Although the British government successfully negotiated a new arrangement, this came with conditions that severely limited the government's ability to import goods from overseas. ¹⁵ In Germany, instead of an expected asset, the British Zone proved to be a financial liability. The already low daily ration of 1,500 calories, agreed by the Allies as the minimum to avoid gradual starvation, could not be met without imports, and for the first two years of the occupation the ration provided in the British Zone remained at near starvation levels of between 1,000 and 1,500 calories per day. ¹⁶ The only countries in the world able to produce a significant surplus for export were the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada, but after the end of the war, the Americans required payment, in dollars, for supplies of food exported for consumption in the British Zone of Germany. ¹⁷ The cost of the British occupation of Germany was therefore considerable. Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer, argued in his Budget speech on 9 April 1946 that Britain was in effect ‘paying reparations to Germany’ and explained that after allowing for German exports, the net cost for the coming year would be £80 million, a very large sum that was subsequently much debated in the British media ¹⁸ and subject to a formal enquiry by the cross-party parliamentary Select Committee on Estimates. ¹⁹ During the war, government information and propaganda activities had been devoted to justifying the need to fight against Germany. ²⁰ Now that the war was over, the occupation and the resulting costs had to be justified to Members of Parliament, voters and taxpayers at home. Organising public exhibitions was one way that government officials hoped to shape public opinion. The ‘Victory over Japan’ exhibition, for example, was staged for four months from August to December 1945 at a large site in central London at 66 Oxford Street and attracted huge crowds: over one and a half million people in total, more than 10,000 a day. ²¹ The ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition, held in London from 7 June to 5 August 1946, was the most elaborate of several activities organised by the British Military Government and Control Commission in Germany (CCG) and the Control Office for Germany and Austria in London (COGA) that sought to appeal directly to the British public. ²² It was staged at the same site in London as ‘Victory over Japan’ but it never achieved the huge number of attendees as the preceding exhibition. Still, a total of 220,646 people paid the entrance fee of sixpence ²³ to visit during the seven weeks it was open in London. ²⁴ An additional 107,500 saw the exhibition when it was taken on tour to Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Edinburgh from January to April 1947, with its further extension to Cardiff in July. ²⁵

The idea for the exhibition originated from CCG staff who were seeking to find ways of presenting their work to a domestic popular audience. General Gerald Templer, former Director of Civil Affairs and now Deputy Chief of Staff in the British Zone, explained in December 1945 that its objective was ‘the enlightening of the British public in regard to the problems and tasks of the Control Commission for Germany (B.E.), and the action which is being taken to deal with these problems’. He proposed that it should ‘take the form of a reproduction of the Information Room at the Main Headquarters of the C.C.G. at Lübbecke, augmented by suitable photographs, cinema films and, as far as possible, physical exhibits’ and should open on 28 March 1946 to coincide with the start of the new financial year. ²⁶ The Treasury funded the costs and technical support was provided by the Central Office of Information (COI), but the exhibition was not presented to the public as a UK government project and apart from John Hynd, the Minister for Germany, senior government figures were conspicuous by their absence. Prime Minister Attlee and Foreign Secretary Bevin were both invited to perform the opening ceremony but declined. ²⁷ A suggestion that the Duchess of Kent should visit the exhibition was vetoed ‘on grounds that members of Royal family decline at present time to be associated with such a controversial subject’. ²⁸

The opening date originally proposed by General Templer and the start of the new financial year was, therefore, no coincidence. Significant concerns that both the Labour government and the broader public were deeply reluctant to continue to finance the occupation at the current level were central to the decision to hold the exhibition. Minutes of a meeting of the Control Commission's Public Relations Group recorded that ‘the main reason for having the exhibition was that as from April 1st of next year [1946] there would have to be provision in the Budget to meet the cost of the occupation of Germany’. ‘The British public’, the meeting concluded, ‘would probably receive a shock when they realised the expenditure involved, and since they would have to share the burden it was necessary for something to be done to let them see what was being done in Germany and how their money was being spent’. A secondary objective, as noted in the minutes, was to persuade the government to relax financial constraints on the recruitment of additional staff to the CCG. ²⁹ In a wider sense, the exhibition was therefore intended as a general justification of the purpose of the British occupation of Germany and the need to maintain a significant presence in the country.

General Alec Bishop, the head of the Control Commission's Public Relations and Information Services Control Group (PR/ISC), was put in charge of making detailed plans and arrangements for the exhibition. Bishop was a seasoned career soldier who would go on to become the Military Governor's Deputy Chief of Staff (Executive) from 1946 to 1948 and then Regional Commissioner of North-Rhine Westphalia from 1948 to 1950. Prior to arriving in Germany, he had spent long periods of his career working within the British Empire, including in Mesopotamia and Palestine (1916–1918), India (1919–1925) and then as a staff officer in the Colonial Office (1937–1939). ³⁰ Under his supervision, the Control Commission also published its own fortnightly journal, the British Zone Review, which was distributed in Britain as well as to staff in Germany. An article headlined ‘For those at Home’, published on 8 December 1945, emphasised the need for popular consent for the occupation amongst British citizens:

It follows, therefore, that the members of the Commission must inevitably fail in their mission if they do not carry with them the understanding of their countrymen. This, in a democracy, means in addition to the chosen representatives of the people and the servants of the Crown, the normal average man and woman, the citizen whose qualities enabled Britain to become the rallying point of the Free Nations in the fight against the darkness of totalitarianism. It is the voter who will, in the years to come, dictate what is to become of Germany. ³¹

2. Selling the occupation to the British public

The exhibition sought to promote that very ‘understanding’ of the occupation, and in doing so legitimise British activities vis-à-vis a domestic electorate. For that purpose, British officials deployed a discourse that combined both ideological and pragmatic arguments. In his speech at the official opening ceremony on 7 June 1946 at the Dominion Theatre, John Hynd, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for Germany, took the moral high ground. He emphasised the scale and importance of the task of ruling Germany, claiming that it was ‘an enterprise of great magnitude and difficulty for which there is indeed no precedent in human history’. Sufficient funding should therefore be made available to enable them to ‘finish the job’ which he described as ‘a great, perhaps final, effort to establish conditions in which the world may be freed from the menace of war forever’. ³² Sholto Douglas, who had recently been appointed as Military Governor and Commander-in-Chief of British forces in Germany, presented a more practical case:

Without food the Germans cannot work. Without work they cannot produce coal. Without coal, industry cannot get going again. Without industry, a reasonable standard of living cannot be achieved. And as the Chancellor [i.e., Hynd] has already pointed out, until German exports and imports are balanced, the occupation and control of Germany must remain a burden on the British tax-payer. ³³

As these documents demonstrate, the exhibition was intended to tell the story of the first year's work undertaken by the British in Germany by emphasising three key vectors: the numerous problems encountered and the need for economic reconstruction; the scale and magnitude of the task undertaken by the CCG; and the extent to which the occupation would benefit the ordinary British citizen. ³⁷ First, it was essential to highlight the extreme level of destruction. At the end of the war, Germany was presented as a ‘ruined country’, a ‘land of desolation and bewilderment’, in which people were ‘stunned and helpless’. ³⁸ The immediate task of the British was, consequently, to create ‘order out of chaos’ and ‘administer the country until the German people could be re-organised to look after themselves’. ³⁹ Such notions echoed familiar discourses used to legitimise British colonial rule, most notably by drawing on the notion of the British acting as ‘trustees’ of people who were not yet ready for democratic self-government. The use of such colonial tropes was in many respects unsurprising. Many British army officers and officials in Germany had colonial backgrounds and experience or had previously served in the Empire. Bishop himself was a staunch believer in the virtues of the Empire and wrote in his memoirs about the British acting as ‘the trustees of the people whose affairs they were administrating until the time came when they were able to take the tasks over themselves […] and stand on their own feet’. ⁴⁰ The same, in this view, was necessary for post-war Germany. ⁴¹

A second element emphasised the enormous range of governmental tasks assumed by the British following the total collapse of the German central government. This served to justify the high cost of employing several thousands of British occupation officials. Thus, much effort was invested in conveying a sense of the Control Commission's full scope of activities, including, for example, the provision of food, housing, health, the care of Displaced Persons and refugees, education, culture, media, supervising the civil service, the legal system and the police, taxation, banking, as well as more generally contributing to the creation of democratic institutions, such as supporting the establishment of trade unions and newly formed or re-formed democratic political parties. ⁴²

While the scale of the tasks involved in running the British Zone could be presented graphically through concrete examples and exhibits, the third objective, how the work of the Control Commission benefitted the ordinary British citizen, was much more difficult to convey. Some panels claimed to show that Germany must not be ‘a corpse on our hands’ or the ‘plague spot of Europe’ and that economic reconstruction was necessary so that Germans were able to ‘pay for the war and the cost of occupation’. Yet others emphasised that Germany must ‘be taught a democratic outlook’, ‘become a law-abiding nation’ and ‘never be able to start another war’. ⁴³ Despite the stated aim of justifying the cost of occupation to the British taxpayer, however, the exhibition offered very little concrete evidence of exactly how British citizens benefitted personally from the occupation. The level of wartime destruction in Germany and the need to promote economic reconstruction were therefore presented as a means of guaranteeing the political and economic security of Britain and Europe as a whole. ⁴⁴ For that purpose, the British were, for example, maintaining coal production, and re-shaping and demilitarising German industry, as a part of a policy of turning ‘swords into ploughshares’, which formed one of the main mottos of the exhibition. ⁴⁵

The proposed ‘script’ for the exhibition made only passing reference to the persecution and murder of the Jews or to German war crimes more generally. ⁴⁶ By early 1946, these topics were no longer receiving the same attention from the British government, press or general public as they had in April and May 1945, when the liberation of concentration camps such as Bergen-Belsen had been widely covered in the media and much-discussed in public. ⁴⁷ Hynd directed that the exhibition ‘shall not be implemented in such a way as to stress a note of vindictiveness, on the lines of ‘Germany must pay’. The emphasis should rather be on the democratic re-education of Germany that will make her a ‘good citizen’ of the European family.’ ⁴⁸ Giving further publicity to the Holocaust and German war crimes and discussing issues such as justice for the perpetrators and restitution for the victims were not seen as being conducive to the objectives of the exhibition. ⁴⁹

To generate popular interest, the organisers drew on a mixture of presentational tools designed to gain the attention of the audience through the ‘auratic’ quality of some of the exhibits, such as a Volkswagen car displayed just outside the entrance, ⁵⁰ and satisfy their curiosity by providing factual information that was not readily available elsewhere. To appeal to as many people as possible, the exhibition was divided into two parts that spoke to different sectors of the population: a so-called ‘popular side’ for the ‘average person’ and a ‘statistical side […] for those who visit the Exhibition with a definite purpose, such as lecturers, MPs etc’. ⁵¹ A team of up to fifty ‘demonstrators’ was on hand at the site in London to assist visitors and answer questions. ⁵²

The exhibition presented military occupation as a highly rational and professionalised form of rule that drew on the most recent techniques of government, such as, most notably, the science of statistics. Thus, an article in the News Chronicle, a daily newspaper with a circulation of around one and a half million copies, ⁵³ described the Control Commission's ‘Information Room’ at its headquarters in Germany in glowing terms as ‘one of the most fascinating and revealing exhibits to be seen anywhere in the world’, emphasising its high modernity. It reported that an ‘exact replica’ would be shown at the exhibition in Oxford Street, kept up to date by teleprinter, with staff on hand to answer any questions:

A large hall filled with enormous maps and charts, dynamically portraying the entire picture, item by item, of conditions in the British Zone – health, nutrition, transport, crime, hospitals, coal output, the trade union set-up, political parties, refugees, crops, buildings, bridge repairs – every mortal thing you can think of or want to know about a nation that was smashed and now has to be put together again. ⁵⁴

An extensive publicity programme was implemented for the launch of the exhibition. Ten thousand posters were printed in Germany by the CCG and distributed by the Ministry of Information to be displayed at their ‘usual venues […] Government Offices, Town Halls, Public libraries etc’. The speeches by Hynd and Douglas were broadcast live on BBC radio. ⁵⁷ To transmit the key messages of the exhibition, the CCG also printed 487,000 copies of a three-page folded leaflet. ⁵⁸ On the front of the leaflet there was a striking image of ‘four blades of green corn growing out of an inverted Boche tin hat’ which according to the News Chronicle was ‘another way of saying “swords into ploughshares”’. ⁵⁹ On the back of the leaflet there was a detailed description of the work and achievements of the Control Commission. ⁶⁰ The concluding paragraph of the original draft, produced in early 1946, adopted a high moral tone and implied that the British would stay in Germany indefinitely, reflecting the view current amongst British policymakers at the end of the war:

We are going to ensure that Germany does not again make war on us. We are going to convert the British Zone from a liability into an asset. We are going to maintain a Control Commission in Germany until we have attained these aims. ⁶¹

3. The public response

Despite the intensive efforts by the staff responsible for organising the exhibition, the public's response to it did not meet the organisers’ initial hopes and expectations. The exhibition's launch on 7 June 1946 was widely reported in the local and provincial press but received relatively little coverage in the major national papers. The Daily Telegraph published a brief 12-line announcement, ⁶⁵ and The Times printed a short piece with extracts from Hynd's and Douglas’ speeches under the headline ‘Future of Germany: Food to prevent a new war’, but with no further comment. ⁶⁶ The Manchester Guardian did much the same under a similar headline, ‘Urgency of Germany's food problem’. ⁶⁷ The Daily Herald was more positive, reporting that the ‘Exhibition demonstrates how Control Commission is countering Hitler legend, training Germans to replace Nazi administrators’. ⁶⁸ With only a few exceptions, newspapers generally followed the official line by restating some of the key messages that the exhibition sought to communicate. At least 14 provincial papers published a brief notice on 7 June, the day the exhibition was launched, with short extracts from Hynd's and Douglas’ speeches under a generally favourable headline such as ‘Tribute to British Achievement’, but no additional comment. ⁶⁹

In general, it was not overt criticism, but rather insufficient interest and a failure to understand the exhibits’ intended messages that concerned the organisers. Lt. Col. Campbell, the officer in charge of arrangements for the exhibition, produced a report that included a list of 50 questions asked by members of the public, which offer a glimpse into popular attitudes. These questions show that visitors displayed a lack of knowledge or scepticism about what they had read about Germany in the press, asking questions such as ‘Are the Germans really as badly off as the press make out – or is it propaganda? […] How long will the British Taxpayer have to pay for the control of Germany?’ ⁷⁰

After the first week, the number of attendees declined to an average of just under 3,300 a day, well below the 10,000 a day achieved by the Japan exhibition. ⁷¹ The minutes of a meeting on 21 June to discuss additional publicity noted that reactions in the press had ‘not been too exciting’. Comments received from visitors, the minutes continued somewhat patronisingly, revealed that some were ‘quite intelligent whilst others are quite confused’. Some visitors, for example, completely misunderstood an exhibit displaying the low food ration in Germany compared to much higher rations in Britain:

In the Food Section there are folk who think that the Germans are getting too much and we, not enough: simply vexing themselves by not reading the captions correctly – thinking our ration in this country to be that of the Germans and vice-versa. ⁷²

The exhibition was extended for a further two weeks and closed in London on 5 August. A proposal to tour 15 cities across Britain was reduced by the Treasury to four, and from January to April 1947 the exhibition was staged for 10 to 15 days in Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and Edinburgh, followed by one last appearance in Cardiff in July. ⁷⁴ Official launches were held at each of the venues with speeches by local dignitaries that echoed the aims of the launch in London the previous year. In Bristol, for example, the Lord Mayor said that it was ‘the duty of every person in this city to come and see the exhibition, to find out what the Germans are like, and what the sacrifices we in this country are making mean for the German people’. ⁷⁵

Despite the sustained efforts of its organisers, the exhibition did not succeed in its aim of persuading the government, the press and public opinion at home that the Control Commission was doing an excellent job and that a full-scale occupation had to be sustained to keep ‘Germany under Control’ and prevent the future ‘menace of war’. The government did agree to provide additional supplies of wheat for Germany, purchased from the United States, but rations remained at low, near starvation levels in the British Zone until the situation was resolved at the end of 1948 with an improved harvest and an agreement with the US to pay for the cost of food imports. ⁷⁶ Following Dalton's budget speech in April 1946, the Conservative opposition called debates in Parliament on 10 May and 29 July in which they launched personal attacks on Hynd. ⁷⁷ The press picked up the story and on 8 July, while the exhibition in London was still open, the Daily Mirror published a full-page article under the headline ‘£160 million a year, to teach the Germans to despise us’, which made allegations of corruption and racketeering among some Control Commission officials. ⁷⁸ Explicit criticism of the occupation in the press on the grounds of excessive cost and extravagance contrasted sharply with the image and messages displayed at the exhibition. Press criticism, often scathing, continued throughout 1946 and 1947, bringing the activities of the CCG into disrepute and contributing to the broader image of the occupation as a failure, an interpretation which would have a lasting impact on the memory of the occupation period in subsequent decades. ⁷⁹

Generating popular consent at home through running a propaganda campaign that highlighted the ambitious and wide-ranging programme of activities undertaken by the British Military Government and Control Commission during the first year after the end of war had not worked. Wide sectors of the British population questioned the need for a significant investment in personnel and resources at a time when they themselves were facing substantial material hardship. The Control Commission made no further major efforts to influence public opinion in Britain, preferring instead to work directly with the government in London. In the following years, the solution to the problem of the need to obtain popular consent for costly ventures overseas was, therefore, sought, not by propaganda or persuasion, but by scaling back the activities of the Control Commission.

4. The making of ‘Operation Stress’

The early days of 1948 would see what was perceived by British officials as the largest propaganda effort in the British Zone since the beginning of the occupation. ⁸⁰ 18 months after the ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition had opened in London, the situation in the British Zone of Germany had changed. Hynd resigned as Minister for Germany in April 1947, and the Foreign Office reasserted control over occupation policy and took back responsibility for the activities of the Control Commission from the Control Office in London (COGA), which was now integrated as a sub-department within the Foreign Office. Earlier disagreements with the Americans and the French over the future of the Ruhr had largely been resolved, but increased tensions with the Soviet Union and the worsening political climate of the early Cold War exacerbated concerns regarding the extent of Communist support in Germany. ⁸¹ Worries about the rise of Communism in the British Zone were therefore widespread amongst the policymakers in Whitehall who were responsible for British occupation policy at a time when, following local and regional elections in the British Zone, significant power and responsibility at district (Kreis) and regional (Land) levels had devolved to elected German officials while the number of staff employed by the CCG was reduced. Furthermore, the decision had been taken to merge the British and US zones, now known as ‘Bizonia’, and administer the combined area as a single economic unit. The British occupation authorities had therefore lost direct control over some important aspects of government, including the administration of food supplies, and were finding it difficult to respond to criticism from an increasingly antagonistic local population. This criticism became ever more pronounced as the German population began contrasting generous US reconstruction policies that were implemented from late 1946 onwards with those of the British, who by 1948 were seen by some sectors of the population as holding back recovery and not providing enough resources for reconstruction while still insisting on seemingly vindictive measures such as the dismantling of some German industries. ⁸²

‘Operation Stress’, as the campaign was aptly code-named, came into being in January at a time when mass strikes and demonstrations were being held across the zone to protest at the lack of food and coal. While standard food rations improved a little in 1948 compared to the disastrous situation in the winter of 1946–47, they would not surpass a maximum of c.1400 calories per day before mid-1948. ⁸³ The response was a wave of strikes by millions of workers in North Rhine Westphalia and Hamburg, as well as a general strike called by the Deutsche Angestellten Gewerkschaft (DAG), the main union for white-collar workers. ⁸⁴

The propaganda campaign emerged from a meeting between Military Government representatives and German officials held on 16 January 1948. At the meeting, members of the German regional (Land) administrations seemed to be close to sheer panic in light of the catastrophic food situation. The Ministerpräsident of North Rhine-Westphalia, Karl Arnold, foresaw a total collapse of industry and Hans Böckler, the leader of the German Trade Union Federation, the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB), not only expected strikes, but also pillaging and large-scale looting. The British officers tried to blame German officials for ‘poor collections’ of foodstuffs, arguing that they needed to improve their own administration, but the Deputy Regional Commissioner of North Rhine-Westphalia, Brigadier John Barraclough, gained the impression that the situation was extremely grave. He reported that he had never seen Germans so concerned and maintained that if the British did not offer any help to the population ‘the volcano might well erupt’. ⁸⁵

This was not, however, how the highest echelons of the British administration, including the Military Governor, General Brian Robertson, saw it. They understood such comments as part of a general attempt by German officials to deny their shared responsibility for food shortages and to appeal instead to British and US authorities for increased imports. If the German population were just ‘given the facts’ of the situation, Robertson and his colleagues argued, it would no longer be possible for ‘German officials to side-step their responsibilities’. ⁸⁶

The British response was, therefore, predicated on a paternalistic attitude towards the German population as well as a deep-seated and long-standing mistrust of the German political elites, who were seen by the occupiers as holding immature views and seeking to evade ‘responsibility’. While the British had appointed many of the German officials and had worked successfully with them on detailed local and regional issues, this primarily reflected the pragmatic British policy of ruling the zone through local intermediaries who had governmental experience, knowledge of local conditions, and were thought to be trusted by the German population. At the same time, the British remained highly suspicious of the democratic inclinations of German officials and politicians from across the political spectrum. ⁸⁷ Consequently, British officials believed they could speak directly to the German population, over the heads of German socio-political elites. This reflected a broader belief present within some sectors of the CCG that, following the collapse of the Nazi regime, British rule in Germany was ultimately more legitimate than German self-rule, perceiving themselves as the protectors of the people against the self-interest of conniving local politicians. ⁸⁸ As a result, Robertson commanded that an ‘all-out food publicity campaign’ should be run in the British Zone to educate the German population about what the British believed were the correct ‘facts’ of the food situation. The campaign would revolve around three main topics: the global food shortages; Allied measures to bring food into Germany; and ‘what German authorities should have done and can do respecting food production and collection in Germany’. ⁸⁹ To finance this extensive operation, the substantial sum of £2,500 was requested from the Foreign Office in London. ⁹⁰

There was, however, significant disagreement among the British authorities as to the exact shape that the campaign should take. Leading information-control officers on the ground in Germany argued that ‘it would not be good policy to lay too much stress on faults of collections and distribution’ and blame the Germans for this since ‘collection is in the circumstances reasonably good’, and they were concerned about the public effect that such a message would have. ⁹¹ Foreign Office officials in Whitehall, by contrast, rejected such attempts and agreed with Robertson that ‘carping criticism should be avoided, but stress must be laid on those constructive efforts which the Germans can and should make to help themselves’. ⁹² Officials in London were also acutely aware that they faced what one might describe as a ‘double burden’ of legitimising the occupation both at home and abroad. As one perceptive observer noted ‘what seems to be lacking is a clear cut idea as to what can be said to the German audience without confusing or offending at the same time the British or American audiences who might take note of our publicity campaign in Germany, and vice versa’. ⁹³ The solution was thought to lie in transmitting what the British regarded as neutral ‘facts’ and not shying away from presenting information that might be badly received by the German population. This decision would have fateful consequences in the weeks that followed.

5 . Legitimising the occupation

After several weeks of intensive planning and collecting information on food production and distribution, ⁹⁴ the Military Government launched the campaign at the beginning of March 1948 and let it run for a total of four weeks, deploying a broad variety of modern propaganda tools. The Military Governor himself opened the campaign with a speech on the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), the British-licensed radio station. ⁹⁵ Robertson read the speech in German, to address the population as directly as possible. His speech alternated between information, paternalism, exhortation and self-legitimisation. Thus, he claimed that the principal reasons for the current food shortages in Germany were the global food crisis caused by Germany's war of aggression; an increased world population; and the fact that ‘in certain parts of Europe new political barriers have been created which prevent the free flow of trade’, an allusion to the cessation of food supplies from the agricultural surplus areas in the former German territories east of the Oder/Neisse line and an implicit criticism of the policies of the Soviet Union. He emphasised that many countries other than Germany were experiencing food shortages, such as the United Kingdom ‘where the rations are lower than during the war or any other previous time’, and that therefore there had to be an international regulation of foodstuffs. At the same time, he maintained that the British and American people were still paying for most of the imports which were needed to keep the German population from starvation. The British, according to Robertson, were behaving as a benign power and were going well beyond what one would expect from an occupier: ‘Never before have the victors in war spent so freely to set the vanquished on their feet again’. Such arguments culminated in a broader discourse of a similar sacrifice now expected from the German population. Robertson thus called for a fair distribution of food within Germany which, he argued, could only be guaranteed if Germans avoided the black market and demonstrated ‘unselfishness’ and ‘self-discipline’ to ‘gain sympathy in the outside world and to obtain more food, whereas by slack administration and selfishness you will forfeit the sympathy and prejudice your chances of getting more food’. ⁹⁶ Scenes of Robertson delivering the speech were also featured in the weekly newsreel Welt im Film, in a reel showing graphic scenes of famine in China and India meant to bring home to the Germans that others were worse off than they were. ⁹⁷

The campaign combined a distinctive mixture of coercive elements and attempts at persuasion through presenting what the British believed were ‘objective’ facts. Thus, in the following weeks, the British-run newspaper Die Welt published special articles on the subject, while all German newspapers were obliged to publish at least two articles on the food situation from the perspective of the Military Government; these articles were either directly provided by the British, or they could be written by German editors but with the British having the final say on the wording to ‘ensure a uniform line of policy’. If newspapers refused to issue the articles as their own, they were permitted to publish them in a section headed ‘Stimme der Militärregierung’ (The Voice of the Military Government). ⁹⁸ In those instances in which German newspapers did not take the British line and instead blamed the British occupiers for the food crisis, the occupiers instructed them to publish an additional article reflecting the British point of view. ⁹⁹ Nine such reluctant German newspapers, from across the full political spectrum, were consequently ordered to publish articles written by the Military Government. ¹⁰⁰ At the same time, all major national newspapers in Britain were asked to carry their own stories on the food situation, which it was hoped would then filter into the German press through quotes and references, and in doing so provide ‘a most invaluable weapon’ to the occupiers. ¹⁰¹

The main difficulty for the British authorities lay in running a propaganda campaign to convince Germans that British policies were in their own interest, without appearing to be doing so. The problem was, of course, that by staging a coordinated campaign involving the full spectrum of available media, it became patently clear to most Germans that this was a concerted effort from the occupiers, rather than impartial news and comments from a free press. At the same time, the Military Government continued to believe that popular acceptance of British policies could be generated simply by the sharing of information. In line with their belief in the persuasive capacity of ‘the facts’, four million copies of an extensive 16-page pamphlet explaining the food situation to the ordinary German including simple illustrations, charts and data were thus printed and distributed with the newspapers. Using colloquial language, Ums tägliche Brot ([about] our daily bread) tried to explain where the ‘Schulzes’, an ordinary German family, got their bread from. The general message was, once again, that most of the food the Germans ate was coming from abroad, that current global food shortages had been primarily caused by ‘Hitler's war’ and the increased populations of Africa and Asia, and that there was no more food available on the market to purchase for Germany. British and US taxpayers together, the authors argued, had paid more than one billion dollars for German imports and the ‘Schulzes’ ration was lower than it might otherwise be because some Germans behaved in an anti-social manner by selling foodstuffs on the black-market. ¹⁰²

This message was repeated through all channels. A 12-minute film, Hunger, was produced and screened in 400 cinemas across the Zone, showing vivid images of the effects of the food crisis around the world, with British officers instructed to ‘ensure that the first performance in their respective areas is attended by as many of the leading German officials as possible’. ¹⁰³ Displays were set up in 50 information centres and reading rooms with pictures and charts on the world food shortage, while NWDR featured news items and talks on the subject and organised two open ‘question time’ discussions between Military Government representatives, German officials and ordinary Germans, announced under the title ‘The normal consumer asks Military Government’. ¹⁰⁴

The overall intention of the campaign went, however, beyond the mere delivery of ‘facts’ to educate the presumably uninformed German population. Ums tägliche Brot claimed that every German could engage in practical work to relieve the situation. ¹⁰⁵ To the broader public, however, this appeared to be no more than a misguided exhortation to work harder. In reality, as both local British officials and German politicians knew, most Germans, especially those living in the cities, could do very little to resolve the food crisis. If their rations were inadequate and there was no food to be purchased in the shops, the only way they could possibly ameliorate the situation was to resort to the black market. It was therefore not surprising that the British had no practical suggestions to offer on how ordinary Germans could help resolve the situation, other than a rather vague ‘anpacken’ [‘mucking in’].

By trying to explain the origins of the food crisis as due to causes other than the assumed mismanagement of the Military Government, the British were therefore not especially aiming to change behaviour, but were rather encouraging the local population to accept the existing situation, endure it for the time being and not engage in active resistance. In doing so, they were also hoping to dissuade them from rallying behind the Communist Party, which the Military Government, on orders from Whitehall, had been combatting through propaganda campaigns and other repressive measures since early 1948. ¹⁰⁶ The campaign was also, however, tacitly designed with a British audience in mind. Thus, it sought to legitimise British occupation policies to a highly critical domestic audience. As in imperial contexts, this, it was believed, could be achieved by showcasing the ways in which the British were inculcating ‘responsibility’ amongst Germans and how they were preparing them for self-rule by insisting that they resolve the food crisis on their own, rather than with British taxpayer's money. The campaign can therefore be understood as a rear-guard action intended to justify the existence of the occupation apparatus to both a British and a German audience at a time when, following the agreement with the United States to merge the British and American Zones, the British administrative presence in Germany was being drastically reduced.

6. The failure of propaganda

Not surprisingly, the campaign proved to be a partial – if not total – failure. British officials recorded German reactions to the campaign carefully and traced its public effect using the latest tools of public opinion research. At the onset of the campaign, key officials had already remarked that ‘the ever growing feeling of distrust and even hostility vis-à-vis the Occupying Power […] is being fostered by a tendency in CCG […] to make information more factual than human’, disregarding ‘the mood of the German people’. ¹⁰⁷ Officers tasked with carrying out the campaign soon complained that they had ‘been batting not so much on a sticky wicket as before a very hostile audience’, but failed to appreciate that the deeper reasons for such hostility might be the many ways in which the campaign clashed with long-standing and widely-held attitudes amongst the occupied population. ¹⁰⁸ Most notably, this included the view that one of the main functions of any government was to ensure an adequate supply of food for the civilian population and to manage shortages. By contrast, the interpretation that soon crystallised amongst most British observers across the Zone was that Germans now seemed to be generally resistant to any form of propaganda, especially in a context of post-war military occupation and extreme material privation. The result of a poll of 133 respondents in Hamburg, for example, showed that on average nearly half of those asked considered British statements to be simply false. ¹⁰⁹ These figures improved somewhat in more rural areas, where the food shortages were far less acute than in the big cities and public opinion was better disposed towards the occupiers. ¹¹⁰

Careful investigation of the reception of the different components of the campaign confirmed that large parts of the audience saw General Robertson's broadcast as ‘the same old propaganda’ and a ‘vain attempt to appease the German without giving him any food’, while criticising the inconsistencies within the speech. ¹¹¹ Typical comments from the audience included that of a 32-year-old German working-class housewife from Bielefeld, who explained that ‘What's the use of all learned speeches as long as I have nothing to put in my cooking pot’. Similarly, a 60-year-old housewife from a rural area expressed her incredulity regarding British claims, explaining that ‘the lack of self-discipline of the German authorities is mostly due to the fact that they have no executive power’, while a 50-year-old male manager maintained that ‘there were too many contradictions in the speech. On the one side we are told of a world food shortage; on the other hand, Robertson promises us a rise in the rations if we behave ourselves. Where is he going to take the additional rations from, if there is a general shortage?’ ¹¹² In transmitting what they considered to be the mere ‘facts’, the British therefore struggled to present a convincing argument.

The film Hunger met with the strongest disapproval. Showings often culminated in ‘laughter, cat-calls and stamping’, particularly in urban areas where the food crisis was particularly acute. It even appeared to encourage revanchist feelings amongst the defeated population. ¹¹³ Thus, the screening led to the paradoxical situation that scenes of marching German Wehrmacht soldiers and close-ups of Hermann Goering, which were meant to illustrate German responsibility for the food shortage, were met with applause by parts of the audience and received with ‘hisses by others and frequently caused considerable disturbances’. Similarly, a remark at the beginning of the film about ‘The German War’ put off the audience from the outset. In general, according to the research on public opinion, the audience seemed largely ‘dominated by apathy and disapproval’, while the appeal to farmers to distribute food honestly and justly was met with ‘roars of laughter’. Depressing images of hungry masses throughout the world caused anger and led to comments that such a film should ‘not be shown in hungry but in satisfied countries, as an appeal for help to all those who have a full stomach’. One report concluded that ‘a large body of opinion called the film sheer propaganda in the line of Dr. Goebbels, made to stupefy the Germans and stop them from realising that hunger […] is caused by other factors than the “German War”’. ¹¹⁴ Reactions were so negative that the German Zonal Advisory Council, one of the main zonal consultative institutions established by the British in February 1946 and comprising many of the Zone's leading politicians, passed a resolution criticising the film for its ‘schoolmasterly’ character, describing it as ‘partly irritant, partly ridiculous’, and recommended that in the future, the Military Government should inform itself about the ‘German mentality’ beforehand. ¹¹⁵

It was only when the occupiers started to create fora that allowed for exchange and disagreement that the campaign received a more positive response. The NWDR radio discussion in which Germans could openly ask questions, for example, was approved by roughly half of the respondents. ¹¹⁶ This seemed to reflect the fact that the programme encouraged a dialogue with the population and gave them an increased sense of agency, rather than simply forcing on them the view of the Military Government. As such, it provided them a ‘chance of meeting the occupying power on a basis of equality’ and offered the possibility of ‘hitting out at Mil. Gov’. ¹¹⁷ Two bricklayers were consequently ‘enthusiastic’ about the programme and felt that ‘at least we were able to tell Mil. Gov. what we think’, demonstrating that forms of acceptance, if not active support for British policies, could be generated through establishing structures that allowed for greater engagement between the occupier and the occupied. ¹¹⁸

On the whole, however, such partly successful elements could not distract the British authorities from the overall negative reception of the campaign and the fact that any success in shaping German views was marginal. ¹¹⁹ Many senior officials recognised that ‘Operation Stress’ demonstrated the futility of propaganda in general. Thus, as one report maintained, ‘the efforts of “Operation Stress” are seen by most Germans as “propaganda” and the general reaction is that Goebbels could have done it better’, while ‘the only propaganda that would be appreciated must be in the form of substantial increases on the ration’. ¹²⁰ Likewise, the Regional Commissioner of Hamburg commented on the campaign:

Western European countries are sick of propaganda. Our success and American success here will depend on our general policy towards Germany, not on our propaganda efforts. If the new Germany obtains reasonable consideration all may be well. If it fails to secure the ordinary amenities of life for the mass of the people and if it is associated with political servitude, it will not last nor will our policy last. ¹²¹

The campaign had been ill conceived and clumsily implemented, disregarding ‘the mood of the people’ ¹²⁴ and the reality of the material conditions that prevailed in Germany. As such, it shared many features with other propaganda campaigns of the mid-twentieth century, including some of those run in the United Kingdom during the wartime period, when the government often failed to convince the population of its policies. ¹²⁵ At the same time, however, the campaign also revealed a fundamental truth about what one might describe as the ‘moral economy’ ¹²⁶ of the occupation period: the German population was generally reluctant to accept British claims on the food situation because of the ways in which they understood the nature of the power relationship that had been established with the occupation and the social obligations that resulted from it. Most notably, occupied Germans believed that responsibility for local conditions and food provision lay with the British occupiers, who, because they were now the country's rulers, were thought to still possess absolute control over all fundamental political and economic matters, regardless of what they said in public and how much blame they apportioned to the Germans. As a trenchant public-opinion research report noted, ‘few Germans feel personally affected by the exhortations to work harder, increase production or improve collections. This is felt to be the concern of the authorities and, more particularly, the occupying authorities, who, in spite of all the publicity of “Stress” are still felt to be answerable for food conditions in Germany and ultimately responsible for feeding Germany’. ¹²⁷ As a distinctive system of rule that was brought about through coercion and lacked inherent legitimacy, the occupation had severed some of the forms of interdependency that normally exist between the rulers and the ruled, with the population behaving as if the actions of those in power were insulated from their own behaviour, while simultaneously expecting to be protected against physical and material hardship.

7. Conclusion

The ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition failed in its objective to persuade public opinion in Britain that occupation rule in Germany was effective and had to be maintained, while the ‘Operation Stress’ campaign failed in its aim of strengthening the legitimacy of occupation rule in the eyes of the German population. While the campaigns took place at different moments and against markedly different international circumstances, they share a striking similarity: when seeking popular consent for occupation against a backdrop of austerity at home and severe material suffering in the occupied territory, the British authorities encountered populations whose ‘moral economy’ and expectations of proper and ‘good government’ were fundamentally opposed to the maintenance of the occupation.

In the UK, the ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition did not resolve the Control Commission's problems in securing legitimacy for a significant long-term British presence in Germany from a domestic population that considered the occupation to be an expensive overseas venture with little continued relevance for their daily lives. Faced with incomprehension and lack of interest amongst the population, the British occupation authorities subsequently opted for a lower public profile. That did not, however, prevent the British press from engaging in a scathing media campaign that criticised the occupation for its waste of resources and the excessive privileges enjoyed by some of its staff. By the time the ‘Germany under Control’ exhibition opened in June 1946, British policy had already started to change. The size of the Control Commission and the cost of the occupation were subsequently reduced by devolving responsibility to Germans more quickly than had originally been anticipated, ¹²⁸ while at the same time the main focus of British policy changed from the negative aims of keeping Germany ‘under control’ and preventing ‘the menace of war’, to promoting the recovery of German industry and accepting US primacy in economic policy in exchange for the Americans covering the bulk of the occupation costs. The number of CCG staff reduced from its peak of 25,740 in January 1947 to 18,363 a year later; to 13,954 in January 1949, 7,527 in January 1950 and 4,014 by the end of the year. ¹²⁹

The failure of ‘Operation Stress’, by contrast, shows how the occupation had turned pre-existing notions of a hierarchical relationship between the rulers and the ruled upside-down, producing expectations from below that those in power deliver ‘good government’, including providing sufficient food and a minimum standard of living, while minimising the extent to which the population felt any obligation to express loyalty by complying with their demands. The campaign thus illustrates how military occupation was a makeshift form of government in a ‘state of emergency’ ¹³⁰ with an intrinsic lack of trust between the ruled and the rulers. As such, the problems the British faced in occupied Germany were a particular expression of the broader crisis of legitimacy that applied throughout the war and in the immediate post-war period across Europe. As long as there was a sizable British presence in Germany, the occupiers found themselves in the difficult position of still being held accountable by the population, even for matters beyond their control. Where they actually devolved power to local structures, they found it increasingly difficult to enforce their policies or respond to demands that originated from below. Working with local intermediaries was necessary to gain legitimacy and reduce the cost of the occupation, but in doing so the British lost political control. Within such an intricate power framework, blaming German elites, as the British tried to do in the ‘Operation Stress’ campaign, did not work, and only compounded the problem of generating popular consent.

Both campaigns, therefore, epitomise the pitfalls of propaganda campaigns when facing bitter social realities, and they demonstrate the intricacies of the quest for legitimacy during military occupations. Like other citizens of mid-twentieth-century Europe, British and German people after the war were ‘not passive tools of the pseudo-scientists of mass propaganda, and their responses to regimes were an amalgam of prior beliefs, present perceptions and quiet calculations of self-interest’. ¹³¹ Propaganda for occupation could carry little conviction to populations facing daily hardship. Instead, the legitimacy of British rule in Germany, lacking any significant symbolic, traditional, legal or discursive roots, depended not on propaganda, but on the extent to which the occupiers could provide fair and efficient government in the short term, and in the longer term on the evolving ‘propaganda of events’, ¹³² as the German economy revived, food shortages eased and real power was successfully devolved to German authorities. ¹³³