MILITARY OCCUPATION AND THE ALLIES’ CAMPAIGN TO DENAZIFY GERMANY, 1945-1946

Allied occupation plans for Germany were originally drafted in a punitive spirit and assumed continuation of the wartime alliance among the USA, USSR, & Great Britain:

September 1944: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau develops plan to “de-industrialize” Germany.

February 1945: Yalta Conference yields agreement on occupation zones.

July 1945: Potsdam Conference creates an Allied Control Council with ambitious plans to de-nazify and de-militarize Germany.

November 21, 1945—October 1, 1946: Trial of the major war criminals by the International Tribunal in Nuremberg.

A SUMMARY OF GERMAN WAR CRIMES

POLAND: The murder of 20% of the prewar population (3 million Polish Jews + 3 million gentiles)USSR: Perhaps 10 million civilians killed, plus 10 million soldiers (10% of the prewar population)YUGOSLAVIA: 1.2 million killed in anti-partisan actions and civil war (10% of the prewar population)FRANCE: 400,000 killed in anti-partisan operations (1.5% of the prewar population)

Germany suffered 5 million combat fatalities, plus 593,000 civilians killed in air raids.

The Big Three at Yalta, February 1945:Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, & Joseph

Stalin

Occupation zones for Germany, Austria, &

Berlin

CONFLICTING VISIONS OF GERMANY’S FUTURE

• In September 1944 U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau secured FDR’s approval for a plan to partition and “de-industrialize” Germany. He also urged the summary execution of all war criminals.

• Secretary of War Henry Stimson protested that German industry must be revived for the sake of Europe’s economic recovery (a view championed by John Maynard Keynes), and that top German officials should receive a fair trial by an International Military Tribunal.

• JCS 1067 of April 26, 1945: “It should be brought home to the Germans that Germany’s ruthless warfare …has destroyed the German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable and that Germans cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves. Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation.”

The Red Army takes Berlin, early May 1945

The Brandenburg Gate in May 1945

Border revisions and streams of refugees in 1945

Some of the 12.5 million German refugees from Eastern Europe

Sudeten Germans assembled in Prague, July 20, 1945,awaiting deportation to Germany

The Potsdam Conference, July 1945:Clement Attlee, Harry Truman, and Stalin

THE POTSDAM ACCORD ANNOUNCED THESE OBJECTIVES:

“The complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany and the elimination or control of all German industry that could be used for military production.”“To destroy the National Socialist Party…, to dissolve all Nazi institutions.”“To prepare for the eventual reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis.”“War criminals… shall be arrested and brought to justice.”“All members of the Nazi Party who have been more than nominal participants in its activities… shall be removed from public office and from positions of responsibility in important private undertakings.” “German education shall be so controlled as completely to eliminate Nazi and militarist doctrines and to make possible the successful development of democratic ideas.”“The German economy shall be decentralized for the purpose of eliminating the present excessive concentration of economic power as exemplified in particular by cartels, syndicates, trusts and other monopolistic arrangements.”

GI’s were shocked when they liberated concentration camps: General Eisenhower views the bodies of camp

inmates in Ohrdruf on April 12, 1945

A German woman sobs as American soldiers force her to view

corpses

“26 million dead are

accusing! In Nuremberg there is a

reckoning!”

The historic city of Nuremberg in the summer of 1945

THE INDICTMENT AT NUREMBERG

1. Crimes against peace (based on the Kellogg-Briand Treaty of 1928, which banned offensive war).

2. Crimes of war (as defined by the Hague Convention on the Rules of Land Warfare and the Geneva Convention of 1929).

3. Crimes against humanity: participation in mass murder, the use of slave labor, or the suppression of religion (an unprecedented charge under international law).

4. Conspiracy to commit one of the acts listed above (unprecedented under international law).

“Duress” was acknowledged as a legitimate defense, but NOT the mere receipt of orders from a superior.

Opening session of the Nuremberg Trial, November 20, 1945

The top-ranking defendants at Nuremberg:Göring, Hess, Ribbentrop, and Keitel

Franz von Papen & Speer sat in the back row….

VICTORS’ JUSTICE?The Defense was in general forbidden to raise the argument

that the Allies had committed war crimes too….

Sentenced to death:

Göring, Ribbentrop, Gen. Keitel, Gen. Jodl, Alfred Rosenberg, Wilhelm Frick, Seyss-Inquart, Fritz Sauckel, Bormann [in absentia], Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Hans Frank, and Julius Streicher

Life imprisonment:

Walter Funk, Rudolf Hess, Admiral Raeder

Prison terms of 10 to 20 years:

Albert Speer, Baldur von Schirach, Konstantin von Neurath, Admiral Dönitz

Acquitted (over Soviet protest):

Franz von Papen, Hjalmar Schacht, Hans Fritzsche (Propaganda Ministry)