Historical comparison.
A few months ago, I gave a link to a scanned-in copy of a feature from the January 1946 edition of Life magazine titled 'Americans are losing the peace in Europe'.

Germany went on to have the world's third largest economy and it's easy to assume that things must have turned around pretty quickly, but in fact this isn't the case at all. The article is overwhelmingly negative and is full of the sort of comment that we've heard from Iraq. Just exchange 'Germany' for 'Iraq' and 'Hitler' for 'Hussein' and you honestly wouldn't know that what you were reading didn't come from the Independent's Robert Fisk!

But we all know that Rome wasn't built in a day, so we shouldn't expect Iraq to be transformed in weeks or even months. In coming to a judgement about the success or otherwise of the post-war reconstruction of Iraq, we should be able to look at the German experience to give us an idea of the time-frame over which any improvements can be expected. I never see this from the mainstream media.

So once again, I'm so grateful to the internet and to the phenomenon of blogging for providing me with some sense of historical comparison. A site called 'The Counter Revolutionary' has run a series of reports called 'Ghosts of occupations past'. It consists of scanned-in articles from the early post-war years. They paint a very bleak picture. In some cases I think it's just the sort of negative nonsense that we still get today, but not all. It's easy to dig up the old newspaper cuttings. So why do I have to look at another obscure hobby website, like mine, in order to get this perspective?

You can go the the Counter Revolutionary yourself at http://thecr.blogspot.com/ but it is slow to download unless you have broadband. So for the sake of those using a narrowband connection, I provide a summary of the newspaper stories from the era, with a precis in italics. I have fought hard to restrain myself from sarcasm at many points.

The last item, which concerns food riots in Hamburg, shows that the post-war planning of today is far improved from that of the 1940s.


New York Times, Oct 21 1945
Reich girls want return of Nazism
German girls and young women are the most fanatical Nazis among the civilian population according to a survey by the United States Office of Military Government. Girls up to 19 and women in their 20s were reported to be yearning for a new Fuehrer, opposed de-Nazification and were ready to excuse Hitler as a good man with 'bad advisers'.

New York Times, Oct 31st 1945
Germans reveal hate of Americans
Key quotes: 'The German attitude towards the American occupation forces has swung from apathy and surface friendliness to active dislike', '...numerous anti-American organizations throughout the zone and ... a rapid increase in the number of attacks on American soldiers. There were more such attacks in the first week of October than in the preceding five months of the occupation.'

New York Times, Dec 3rd 1945
Germans declare Americans hated
An exhaustive compilation of opinions of Germans in all walks of life revealed 'bitter resentment and deep disappointment' with the Americans in the first six months of the occupation.

New York Times, Dec 27th 1945
Russians spread efficiency and Communism in Germany
It's enough to report the article's subtitle: 'US writers find zone ahead of ours in returning local rule - industry and farming revive, re-education gains'.

New York Times, Jan 13th 1946
US prestige drops after GI protests
US troops demonstrated in Berlin, Frankfurt and elsewhere demanding to be returned home.

New York Times, Jan 20th 1946
Dark German outlook encourages resistance
Quotes: 'Dissatisfaction with the occupation and with the state of Germany under occupation is growing. The German people have never had any respect for Americans as soldiers and recent demonstrations by homesick men in uniform have not increased our prestige'... 'The next ten years present a picture so sombre to the average German that it will not be surprising if young men and women turn from the exhausting sober tasks of reconstruction to the dramatic and dangerous life of the Underground'.

New York Times, Feb 15th 1946
US seen as 'fumbling' its job in Germany.
The newspaper's foreign correspondent speaks at a public gathering in New York and informs the crowd that the US has 'fumbled' its job of re-educating the Germans in democracy, while by contrast in the Soviet sector, a 'positive and explicit program' had made it 'only a matter of time' before all Germans there were Communists.

New York Times, Feb 25th 1946
Germans return to nationalism
Key quotes include 'young discontented Germans will build the resistance movement of tomorrow' and 'the German people, awakening from the trance into which they fell after May 1945, were denouncing the four-power partition and occupation', and '...former German officers and soldiers are the most active adherents of the new nationalism. They criticize but seldom support the political parties now in being and they are insolent, mischievous and bitter opponents of the Allies' occupation. German policemen say that the attacks made against Germans working for the military government in the various zones are almost invariably planned and carried out by war veterans.'

New York Times, Feb 28th 1946
Allies asked to pool food to avert crisis in Germany
In the British sector, daily rations were cut from 1,500 calories to 1,040 per day!

New York Times, March 2nd 1946
6,000 GIs in Europe are AWOL
This compared to a wartime peak of 15,000.

New York Times, March 24th 1946
British to quell Hamburg rioting
'British occupation officials announced today that they were prepared to use military armour to quell German hunger rioters in the British zone'. The British also mentioned 'sabotage groups taking advantage of the tension resulting from the general hunger'.