case study on world war 2

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How ‘good war’ wasn’t all that good.

West Point scholar argues ‘hazy, rosy’ myth shaped false sense of U.S. destiny

Harvard Staff Writer

“When we think back to World War II, we say, ‘Everybody was united, everybody was behind the war,’ and certainly in comparison to subsequent wars, that’s true. But that was not exactly the case,” says Elizabeth D. Samet ’91, author of “Looking for the Good War.”

Photo by Hedy Samet

In her new book, “Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness,” Elizabeth D. Samet ’91, professor of English at West Point, makes the case for demystifying World War II. The Gazette spoke with Samet about how a “sentimental narrative” about World War II took hold in the American imagination after the losses of the Vietnam War and how it shaped, for better or worse, a false sense of national destiny. This interview was edited for clarity and length

(Editor’s note: The views expressed by Samet do not reflect the policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.)

Elizabeth D. Samet

GAZETTE: You dedicate this book to your father, a World War II veteran who died in 2020. How would he have reacted to this book?

SAMET: My father died in December of 2020 while I was working on the last revisions to the book. He was, in large measure, the reason I wrote it. The whole project has its deepest roots in something we used to do together: I grew up watching World War II movies with him, and that was my first exposure to depictions of war in popular culture. My father was an air traffic controller in the Army Air Corps and served in a series of stateside bases and overseas in India. He was very young at the time, and I think he saw a lot of things that he never expected to see. I’m sure we would have agreed about certain points and disagreed about others in the book, and I think we would have had some great conversations. He was a man who valued the pursuit of truth, and it’s my persistent sadness that he was not able read it.

GAZETTE: What are the roots of the mythology about World War II being the “Good War”? How did it take hold in the American imagination?

SAMET: The most robust version of the mythology surrounding World War II is that of the 50th-anniversary commemoration, which took place in the 1990s. One of the people most closely identified with this version is the historian Stephen Ambrose, whose series of books about World War II were wildly popular; they’re fast-paced narratives that tell a particular story of the “Good War” and portray American service members as decent, boyish liberators who come to seem larger than life. Tom Brokaw labeled them the “The Greatest Generation” in his book of the same name. In terms of popular culture, several films that came out around that period, but particularly Steven Spielberg’s film “Saving Private Ryan” cemented this mythology in our imagination.

It’s an immensely flattering and seductive narrative. It seized the imagination because it came in the wake of wars that could not have been described as victories, chiefly Vietnam. In addition, the 50th anniversary came close on the heels of the First Gulf War, which was an overwhelming spectacle of American power and was viewed by the first President Bush, who was a World War II veteran, as the war that would once and for all cure what he and others called the “Vietnam syndrome.”

This concatenation of events crystallized the mythology and effectively wiped away the traces of the deep ambivalence — and differences of opinion — about World War II that existed while it was being fought and in its aftermath. But my book is not an argument that our participation was either unjustified or unnecessary. I believe it was both justified and necessary. It’s not an attempt to diminish in any way the cruelty or crimes of the regimes that we defeated or the significance of Allied victory. It’s not a history of the war per se, but rather of how it entered our national imagination and was transformed into something else.

GAZETTE: As a result of that mythology, you write, there is a “sentimental narrative” about World War II that obscures the historical reality of the conflict. Can you explain?

SAMET: When we think back to World War II, we say, “Everybody was united, everybody was behind the war,” and certainly in comparison to subsequent wars, that’s true. But that was not exactly the case. Before Pearl Harbor, there were many Americans who had no desire to intervene in the war: the America First committee — among whose members were public figures, U.S. senators, and a national hero, Charles Lindbergh — all were isolationists, and some were alarmingly sympathetic to European fascism. The isolationist sentiment was very strong after World War I.

Pearl Harbor changed a lot of minds, but the idea that everybody changed overnight is overstated. Several months after Pearl Harbor, members of the Roosevelt administration were worried that the country was growing complacent again. It is also the case that Pearl Harbor focused us on Japan — and the cry was to avenge, not to liberate — but we still didn’t declare war on Germany. Germany declared war on us. The idea that we went to war specifically or primarily to liberate Europe is largely a fiction, even though we obviously helped to accomplish that feat. There were plenty of people in the United States who weren’t interested in joining the world’s struggle against fascism and resented what they perceived to be the Roosevelt administration’s pushing the country closer and closer through Lend-Lease and other initiatives. We went to war because we were attacked and because we felt suddenly that there was an existential threat. We didn’t feel that before.

Another part of the myth is that everybody welcomed veterans with open arms. Movies and newspapers of the period present the figure of the World War II veteran as a wanderer, a modern-day Odysseus, a drifter, but that view has been mostly forgotten. Even at the time of the war’s 40th anniversary, a more nuanced view of the war was still prevalent. Around this time, Studs Terkel published his oral history of World War II [“The Good War”], which included everything from gung-ho veterans to the deeply damaged, from enthusiastic patriots to others who admitted they really didn’t know what the war was all about. What I admire about this work is that there’s no attempt to weave one coherent story, to unify the many attitudes toward the war. It offers a much healthier alternative to sentimentality — to remembering the war in a sort of hazy, rosy glow as a moment when everybody was 100 percent united by a cause and to celebrating the generation that fought it as possessing a kind of a greatness that was unmatched before or since.

GAZETTE: You say that to understand the mythology of World War II, one must understand that of the Civil War and the so-called Lost Cause of the Confederacy. What do these mythologies have in common?

SAMET: I view those as the two cataclysmic events in American history: the great domestic crisis of the Civil War in the 19th century and the transformative experience of World War II on the international stage in the 20th century. We can see all around us the damage done by the ways in which we have memorialized the Civil War. Eric Foner, the great historian of this period, has explained, “The Confederacy lost the war on the battlefield but won the war over memory.” We’re still dealing with that legacy every day. The Civil War feels very distant to us, World War II less so, of course, because there are veterans who are still alive. We have a powerful emotional response to those veterans — how could we not? It has taken us a long time to start to reckon with the consequences of uncritically accepting Civil War myths for so long. Even though it’s hard to understand the perils of the myth when it’s still being lived out, I wanted to suggest the magnitude of what happens when you buy wholesale a particular myth of war. That’s why I cast that retrospective glance on the Civil War.

GAZETTE: What do your students at West Point think about World War II?

SAMET: My students, when they graduate, will be commissioned as second lieutenants in the Army. To many of them, World War II is ancient history. What unites them is that, as one of my first-year students put it last semester, they’ve never known a country that’s not at war. Like so many Americans, they know about the Greatest Generation and the notion of the good war. They are also taken with the image of the World War II soldier as it is filtered through comics and the movies made from them, such as “Captain America.” So many comic-book heroes came of age fighting Nazis during World War II.

There’s sometimes an assumption that when we talk about war or teach war at West Point, we don’t teach anything that’s anti-war or that we don’t show the realities of it, which is grossly unfair to my students, who are thoughtful, committed, capable of deep introspection. We teach a wide range of literature, including some of the most searing anti-war memoirs. Who knows better than a veteran how terrible war is? Do my students believe the image of American soldiers as agents of freedom? Is that appealing to them? Absolutely. In the best case, one hopes that they will find themselves in that place, but they may also have to reckon with the ambiguity and confusion with which veterans of the wars of the last 20 years are dealing right now.

GAZETTE: What are the dangers of perpetuating myths about World War II?

SAMET: World War II gave us a way to look at the world as an unambiguous contest between good and evil. We have used a vocabulary that was inherited from it: Fascism became Islamofascism, the Axis Powers became the Axis of Evil, the second President Bush’s term to describe a constellation of unrelated adversaries. It also left us with the belief that the exercise of U.S. force would always magically bring about victory and would serve the cause of liberating the oppressed. As a result of that, we find ourselves, after decades of war and loss, having to reckon with the fact that our way of thinking and talking about war and about the world is hopelessly out of date. There’s an irony in the fact that a country that has always been predicated on reinvention and looking to the future now seems to draw its greatest strength from an event that happened 80 years in the past.

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Germany 1945-1949: a case study in post-conflict reconstruction

Chris knowles | 29 january 2014.

Executive Summary

• British and American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that ‘regime change’ and victory in war do not necessarily lead to the establishment of stable and prosperous democracies, as was the case in the Allied occupations of West Germany and Japan after the Second World War.
• British experiences in post- war Germany, 1945-1949, highlight some general principles which are relevant today: what happens after the war is won can be more important than the war itself. As Field-Marshal Montgomery said in a message to his troops on Victory in Europe (VE) Day, 8 May 1945, ‘We have won the German war. Let us now win the peace.’
• Restrictive measures to prevent future aggression need to be complemented by positive reconstructive measures so that the occupied can see their own efforts are rewarded. Giving the Germans ‘hope for the future’ was one of Montgomery’s favourite phrases.
• There is a limit to how much preparation can be done in advance because it is impossible to predict actual circumstances on the ground. Therefore military commanders and civilian authorities need to respond flexibly in light of what they encounter.
• Democracy cannot be imposed by force or by totalitarian means. Trying to make local people do everything the victor’s way can be counter-productive. If political structures are to last beyond the occupation, they have to be created by local political leaders and accepted by the population as a whole.
• Personal relationships between occupier and occupied are important. Reconciliation does not happen automatically, but requires a conscious effort on both sides.

Introduction

At the end of the Second World War, in accordance with agreements made between Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at Yalta in February 1945, Germany was divided by the victorious Allies - Britain, the US, the Soviet Union and France - into four zones of occupation. It was originally intended that the country would be governed as a single entity by central German administrations, in accordance with decisions made by the four Allies acting jointly through the Allied Control Council in Berlin, but in practice each of the Allies ran their zone more or less independently for the first two years of the occupation. In 1947 the British and US zones combined economically to form the ‘Bizone’ but remained separate political entities. It was not until 1949, four years after the end of the war, that the three western zones formally joined together to form the Federal Republic of (West) Germany, and the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

This policy paper examines the situation in the British zone, between 1945 and 1949. Many of the conclusions appear to be equally valid for the US and French zones, although the detailed situation, policies pursued and timescales varied in each zone. In the east, the German Democratic Republic was to prove a loyal ally of the Soviet Union for over 40 years until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and become, in the meantime, relatively affluent compared to other members of the Soviet bloc.

Politically and diplomatically, Germany was de-nazified, disarmed as an independent military force and the Western and Eastern parts firmly anchored within the NATO and Warsaw Pact alliances. In the West, currency reform in 1948, free market policies and the generous terms of Marshall Aid provided the pre-conditions for the subsequent ‘economic miracle.’ This success story was reinforced by peaceful re-unification in 1990 replacing the inconclusive and potentially unstable situation created in 1949 of Germany divided into two separate states.

Success, however, was not a foregone conclusion. A superficial understanding of Allied policies and actions and the German response may create unjustified complacency that once victory is achieved and dictatorial regimes removed from power, sufficient financial investment and the adoption of free market economic policies will be enough to create stable and prosperous democracies. The difficult period of transition, between the end of the war in Europe in May 1945 and the creation of an independent Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, involved hard choices. Governing the British zone of occupied Germany offers relevant lessons for contemporary operations.

The situation in Germany in 1945

In May 1945 Germany was in chaos. Observers reported that the destruction in some of the larger cities had to be seen to be believed with, for example, 66% of the houses in Cologne destroyed, and in Düsseldorf 93% uninhabitable. The economy was at a standstill and no central government remained to implement instructions issued by the Allies. Millions of people were homeless, or attempting to return to homes that no longer existed. They included German civilians evacuated from the cities or trying to escape from the fighting on both Eastern and Western fronts, former forced labourers from across Europe (known as ‘Displaced Persons’ or ‘DPs') and ethnic Germans expelled from Czechoslovakia or from former German eastern territories now ceded to Poland. Ivone Kirkpatrick, later appointed head of the German Department and subsequently Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, described his first impressions of Germany in 1945: there were ‘hundreds of thousands of Germans on foot, trekking in all directions … as if a giant ant-heap had suddenly been disturbed.’

Although numerous plans for the occupation had been compiled during the war by officials based in London, and a set of directives issued by the War Office in October 1944, these seemed inappropriate for the conditions the soldiers found on the ground in Germany, once victory had been achieved. Field-Marshal Montgomery, appointed Commander-in-Chief and Military Governor of the British zone of occupation on 22 May 1945, later recalled the immediate problems they faced: what to do with 1.5 million German POWs, a further million wounded German soldiers, similar numbers of civilian German refugees and Displaced Persons of many different nationalities, no working transport or communication services, industry and agriculture at a standstill, a scarcity of food and the risk of starvation and epidemics of disease. He added that: ‘I was a soldier and I had not been trained to handle anything of this nature … However something had to be done, and done quickly.’

In his second ‘Note on the Present Situation’ in July 1945, Montgomery wrote that they had only recently become aware of ‘the full extent of the debacle’ and ‘the magnitude of the problem that confronts us in the rebuilding of Germany.’ Part of the problem, he continued, was ‘a tendency to adhere too rigidly’ to earlier instructions which were now out of date and a new general directive was required. A week later he added, ‘Our present attitude towards the German people is negative, it must be replaced by one that is positive and holds out hope for the future.’

Physical and economic reconstruction

Montgomery and his senior staff responsible for Military Government and the civil administration of the British zone assumed that their most urgent task was to create order out of chaos. Writing in January 1946, his deputy, General Brian Robertson, described the first phase of the occupation, immediately before and after the German unconditional surrender in May 1945:

The directives were not many, and much was left to the initiative of individuals … the detachments entered into a land of desolation and bewilderment. Government above the level of the parish council had ceased. Everything was in disorder; people were stunned and helpless … “First things first” was the motto when Military Government first raised its sign in Germany…

Montgomery had served as a young officer in the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) after the First World War, during the occupation of the Rhineland, when British troops occupied Cologne and surrounding areas to try to ensure that the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles were enforced. Robertson’s father, Field-Marshal Sir William Robertson, had commanded the BAOR for a time. Faced with problems which appeared alarmingly similar to those their predecessors had faced only 25 years earlier, Montgomery, Robertson and their colleagues tried to avoid the mistakes they believed had been made then. The lessons they drew from the failure to secure a lasting peace after the First World War, were not only that Germany should be completely demilitarised and its industries controlled to prevent future re-armament, but that law and order had to be restored, steps taken to prevent epidemics of disease, and economic activity re-started, to try to prevent the unemployment and social unrest which had, they believed, contributed to the rise of extreme political parties and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.

Montgomery decided to treat the task of governing their defeated enemy as if it were a military operation, referring to the need to fight the ‘Battle of the Winter’, to secure food, work and homes for the former enemies. The resources available under his direct command were the army and the civilian Control Commission, which had been established in the final year of the war and transferred to Germany in July and August 1945. As early as July 1945, less than three months after the end of the war, he issued a new draft directive to British army commanders and Control Commission heads of division, finalised on 10 September 1945. Unlike earlier wartime directives, the new directive identified steps to be taken to reconstruct German economic and political life, address shortages of food, fuel and housing, improve transport facilities, re-open schools, permit freedom of assembly, licence political parties and prepare for future elections. Con O’Neill, a senior Foreign Office official and leading authority on Germany, minuted that the new directive ‘gives me, in general, the impression that British Military Govt. has now embarked on a policy of Full Speed Ahead for German rehabilitation.’

The new policy of reconstruction had some limited success, but fell short of achieving sustained economic growth or more than a basic subsistence level of existence for the German civilian population. Over a million German soldiers, captured and detained at the end of the war and held in the British zone, were released between June and September 1945 to work on the land and bring in the harvest, in a project named ‘Operation Barleycorn’. A similar project, ‘Operation Coalscuttle’, was less successful, with around 30,000 former soldiers released to work in the coal mines, far fewer than were needed to restore output to pre-war production levels. British army engineers restored much of the transport infrastructure and the economy started to revive, but severe shortages of labour and raw materials meant that production remained at very low levels.

Despite widespread concern over incidents of TB, Hunger Oedema and other diseases, there were no serious epidemics in post-war Germany. The supply of food, however, was a constant problem. Rations in the British zone had to be reduced to a near starvation level of 1,000 calories a day in March 1946, which limited workers’ productive capacity, as they took time off from work to travel to the countryside for additional supplies. Rations did not exceed 1,500 calories a day until 1948-9, following a substantial increase in US financial aid and food exports to both the US and British zones (by comparison, food consumption in ‘austerity Britain’ during the immediate post-war years was significantly higher, averaging 2,800 calories a day). Due to the high cost of food imports and the lack of exports to pay for these due to low levels of production, shortages of labour and raw materials, the zone proved to be an economic liability instead of the expected asset. It cost the British taxpayer £80 million in 1946-7, despite containing much of West Germany’s industrial and manufacturing capacity.

The economic historian, Werner Abelshauser, and others have shown that the first stages of German post-war economic recovery, leading to the ‘economic miracle’ of the 1950s and 1960s, pre-dated the currency reform of 1948 and the economic and financial stimulus offered by the European Recovery Programme (Marshall Plan). What contribution to revival was made by British economic policies during the first four years of occupation? There were some notable achievements, such as restoration of transport infrastructure, and the preservation and effective management of some enterprises taken into Military Government ownership, such as Volkswagen. Yet the essential British contribution to future German economic revival lay in providing a period of stability after the war, restoring order and the rule of law, and securing the provision of basic services, even though in many areas, such as food and housing, this could only be done at a low level. In so doing, the British provided an environment which enabled Germans to succeed and create economic prosperity through their own efforts.

Political renewal

Responsibility for re-establishing democratic structures and processes of government in the British zone was devolved to the Administration and Local Government (ALG) branch of the Control Commission. The set of directives issued by the War Office in October 1944 contained no guidance on the issue, apart from instructions to remove all former Nazis from public office and positions of responsibility, and a general requirement to promote decentralisation and the development of local responsibility. None of the senior officials in the branch had previous experience of working in local government positions in Britain. Those who did have suitable qualifications generally preferred to stay in Britain, where there was great demand for skilled personnel in a labour market distorted by six years of war. Harold Ingrams, the head of branch, was a former colonial official. He reported to an army general. Soldiers and former colonial officials, with no personal experience of democratic processes, were therefore given the job of creating a democratic system, in a country that had been ruled by a fascist dictatorship for the past 12 years.

Ingrams believed that the purpose of their work was to prevent another war, writing that ‘We are trying to beat the swastika into the parish pump, and the parish council does not go to war.’ In his view, they had to do more than remove former Nazis from positions of responsibility, disarm what was left of the German army and destroy weapons factories. They had to create a new political system, in a foreign country, that would prevent another Hitler coming to power. This, he believed, could best be achieved by a policy of decentralisation, starting the process of political renewal at local level, giving people responsibility for their own communities.

Montgomery, as Military Governor, banned all political activity for the first four months of the occupation, while Army ‘Civil Affairs’ detachments took over direct control of civil administration of towns and districts and assumed responsibility for the immediate needs of the inhabitants. Ingrams and his colleagues in the ALG branch then built from the bottom up, creating nominated representative councils for towns, cities and rural districts. British local detachment commanders selected German council members to represent all the ‘party or sectional’ interests in the area, which were defined widely, to include religious groups, trade unions, political parties, farmers and industrialists, or geographically by residential areas.

During the first two years of the occupation, British policy in local government moved from direct to indirect rule. Political parties were licensed from late 1945, initially at local, then at regional and zonal level, and elections were held in October 1946 to select representatives for city, district and regional councils. Following the agreed principle of decentralisation, considerable power was devolved to the regions, the German Länder , Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia and the city of Hamburg. Only those functions of government which could not be performed regionally, such as central economic planning or managing the transport infrastructure, were retained at zonal level under Military Government control, pending agreement between the Allies on the future governmental structure for Germany as a whole.

Over time, British officials learnt that they could not impose democracy by force. At first, Ingrams tried to introduce a British model of democracy in Germany. He attempted to impose British practices, such as the ‘first past the post’ method of voting in elections, and the appointment of unpaid and non-executive chairmen of local city councils, to replace the German Bürgermeister or elected city mayors. These attempts were generally unsuccessful. Leading German members of the newly formed democratic political parties argued that there had been a strong tradition of local democracy in Germany before the Nazi seizure of power, and it was wrong to impose an ‘alien’ British system. They were supported by German exiles in London, and by John Hynd, the Minister for Germany, who had close links with some of the exiles.

When discussing future political structures, both sides agreed on many key principles – that individuals should be safeguarded against excessive demands from an authoritarian government, and that the electoral system should be designed to promote stable government with an effective but loyal opposition, and discourage extreme political parties. In many cases, the outcome was a compromise, containing elements of both the British and pre-Nazi German systems. The electoral system eventually adopted in Germany and still used today, for example, is an elaborate compromise between proportional representation – choosing multiple candidates from a party list – and the British ‘first past the post’ electoral system.

A policy of introducing democracy by persuasion, not by force or by unilateral decree, appears to have succeeded, despite well-publicised concerns (which emerged from the 1950s and continue to the present) that some former Nazis remained in positions of authority and influence. When elections were held in the Federal Republic of (West) Germany in August 1949, the great majority of people voted for the democratic parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU), the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Free Democrats (FDP).

Personal reconciliation

In the first two years after the war, instructions issued to British administrative staff and army personnel regarding personal relations with German civilians changed completely, from non-fraternisation and a ban on all contacts with Germans other than those necessary for their work, to official support for all forms of activity that promoted mutual understanding and personal reconciliation. The change in official policy appeared to reflect changes in attitudes among the troops on the ground, who came to see Germans as individuals and ‘people like us’ rather than the national stereotypes promoted in wartime, which had portrayed all Germans as aggressive, militaristic and not to be trusted.

British soldiers and administrators have recorded in diaries, memoirs and oral history interviews how they came to know Germans during the occupation through work, meeting socially as friends, as lovers, or eventually as husbands and wives. Around 10,000 British soldiers and officials married German women they met during the occupation. Official initiatives to promote mutual understanding and personal reconciliation included Anglo-German discussion groups, exchange visits, town twinning projects and a network of reading rooms and British information centres known as Die Brücke , ‘the Bridge’. Once power started to be devolved to local German administrations, British officials could no longer issue instructions to German subordinates. Many believed that their influence over the future development of the country was best maintained through personal relationships, especially with a German ‘elite’ in responsible positions in government, business, the media and education.

Relations between British and Germans were not harmonious throughout the occupation. There were some tense conflicts, hunger strikes and demonstrations. Requisitioning of accommodation for the occupying forces was especially unpopular among the Germans, at a time of massive housing shortages. Many Germans also objected to the privileges of the occupying forces, such as clubs and hotels exclusively for their use, and reserved compartments on some local trains in cities such as Hamburg.

But in general, reconciliation worked in post-war Germany, because personal initiatives, at many levels, received official support and encouragement and were combined with active collaboration between the British and local German administrations. Reconciliation required a conscious effort on both sides. It did not happen automatically.

The military occupations of Germany and Japan after the Second World War are probably the most prominent examples in modern times of the economic and political reconstruction of a defeated country. Historian John Dower, for example, has suggested that they were used by US policymakers in 2002 and 2003 as examples of successful military occupations. Despite the successful outcome, however, post-conflict reconstruction in occupied Germany should not be seen as a direct model for countries where specific circumstances may be very different.

If there had been armed resistance in occupied Germany, requiring British troops to fight back and possibly kill civilians, as has occurred in other post-conflict situations such as Iraq, the outcome might have been very different. There was no armed resistance because Germany had been completely defeated in war and the Nazi government utterly discredited. Acceptance by a majority of both occupiers and occupied that the previous regime had been illegitimate, together with the establishment of law and order, peace and internal security, adequate supplies of food and measures to prevent disease, were the crucial pre-conditions for the positive work of reconstruction.

The British experience, however, illustrates some general principles which are relevant today. Firstly, political solutions cannot be imposed from above by force or by decree. Secondly – and correspondingly – there is a need for flexibility. The occupying authority’s high command must respond to the changing conditions relayed by those on the ground, as happened in Germany. Thirdly, it is important to provide a period of stability after the end of a war and the removal of the previous government, to give local people the space to develop political, economic, social and cultural institutions and practices. Finally, after war a period of subsequent occupation is not, in itself, any effective guarantee of achieving ‘regime change’, however desirable that may seem; the outcome is always uncertain, contingent on the wishes of the occupied, and never a foregone conclusion.

This policy paper is based on an article first published in The RUSI Journal , December 2013, ‘The British occupation of Germany, 1945-49: A case study in post-conflict reconstruction’, The RUSI Journal , Vol. 158, No. 6 (Dec. 2013), pp. 78-85.

• Knowles, Christopher
• International perspectives

Further Reading

Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: from War to Peace (London, New York, Sydney, Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2009)

Peter Stirk, The Politics of Military Occupation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009)

Alan Kramer, The West German Economy, 1945-1955 (Oxford: Berg Publishers Ltd, 1991)

About the author

Christopher Knowles is a postgraduate research student at Kings College London. He recently completed his PhD thesis on ‘Winning the Peace: The British in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948’.

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Don’t expect democracy this time: japan and iraq, john w. dower | 01 april 2003, winning 'hearts and minds': american imperial designs of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries, adam d. burns | 01 october 2011, afghanistan’s armies, past and present, stephanie cronin | 01 july 2010, exit strategies in counter-insurgency: britain in aden and the lessons for afghanistan, andrew mumford | 25 june 2013, papers by author, papers by theme, digital download.

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Skip to Main Content of WWII

Emerging scholars: the ghosts of past and present: analyzing american wwii memory.

This new series features master’s student papers from the University of New Orleans. The first submission delves into American memory of World War II.

A Note from Dr. Guenter Bischof: The University of New Orleans (UNO) and The National WWII Museum:

It is often forgotten that the University of New Orleans and its History Department happened to be the originator and initially the principal driving force behind the creation of The National WWII Museum in New Orleans. Distinguished UNO history professor Stephen Ambrose (a Boyd Chair in the LSU system) and his friend and history professor Nick Mueller (then Dean and Vice Chancellor of Extension) founded the Eisenhower Center (EC) in the mid-1980s. Ambrose made the EC the wellspring of his activities in the 1990s—collecting D-Day oral histories and writing his celebrated history of D-Day for the 50th anniversary in 1994, as well as organizing annual conferences on World War II and regular WWII Roundtable lectures. The first planning sessions for a “D-Day Museum” in New Orleans—as it was then called—with a distinguished group of Presidential Library/Museum directors, occurred in the confines of the EC in the spring of 1990. Ambrose and Mueller launched what was then The D-Day Museum in 2000 after 10 years of vital planning and fundraising while they still worked for UNO, with strong support from UNO chancellor Gregory O’Brien. The idea to start a new “online series” of student papers by the Museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy is welcomed by the UNO History Department as it will reinforce the old ties between these two vital New Orleans institutions. In the fall of 2020 (the “COVID Semester”), I taught a graduate seminar on “American Memory of World War II.” Expecting to bring my students to the “memory conference,” planned by the Museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy for September 2020. My course planning was upstaged by the postponement of this international conference due to COVID-19. Instead, I brought the graduate students in this seminar to the Museum to see and think about the D-Day Exhibit and the memory it was aiming to spark and to listen to presentations by Dr. Mueller, the President and CEO Emeritus of the Museum, and Dr. Citino, the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy and the Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian. The students were asked to write as their final paper in the course an entry for a future WWII encyclopedia on “American Memory.” This paper by Kaylie McCarthy, a student in the course, was the most pertinent to the topic and is the first paper published online in the new series by the Museum of papers by UNO students. McCarthy’s paper contains some of the theoretical concerns dealing with memory and then applies it to American memory of World War II, including film, literature, historical case studies (including Stephen Ambrose’s master narrative on D-Day), and the Museum. — Guenter Bischof, PhD, Marshall Plan Chair of History & Director of Center Austria: The Austrian Marshall Plan Center for European Studies, UNO.

Lead Image: Propaganda posters, including this one created by the Office for Emergency Management, encouraged collective remembrance of events like the attack on Pearl Harbor to bolster American patriotism and increase enlistment. Courtesy of US National Archives.

In order to discuss memory, it is important to begin with the human repository for remembrance—the brain. It is not possible to elaborate on the complexities of individual and collective recollection without first addressing the foundational elements that form the brain’s biological capacity for processing, coding, and storing information. Although many parts of the brain are responsible for processing sensory input that informs memory, the area of the brain known as the hippocampus is the central zone of memory storage. In simplified terms, this area acts as the gateway between an individual’s conscious present and the recollection of experiences past. The biological formation of memory is further molded by social relations and interactions with the surrounding environment. However, not all moments from the conscious present are converted into retrievable memory. In regard to violent or unpleasant experiences, the brain’s organizational methods that guide memory formation and recollection may be complicated, and in some cases inaccurate. The processes of rehearsal and repetition help to demarcate which experiences are forgotten, while encoding others into long-term memory. The capacity for the brain’s ability to recollect the past is dependent on an array of factors, yet moments that do  become memories tend to be coded by the experience’s associated emotions.

Beyond the biological components that serve as the foundation for consciousness and establish the underlying structure for individual recollection exists a shared human memory that connects through social and cultural ties. A significant portion of subjective memory is fundamentally situated within a framework of collective memory, and an understanding of the past is inherently contingent upon an evolving negotiation process that operates to form a group consensus. According to French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs, collective memory is a critical element to every society, acting as a cohesive link based on a shared conscious existence. In the article, “Individual Memory and Collective Memory,” Halbwachs argues that it may be virtually impossible to sort individual memory from the collective, as individual memories are intrinsically relational to the group framework. The ability for aspects of the past to enter into the collective is vital for the preservation of certain memories, which function as learning tools to better comprehend and adapt to current events and experiences.

Collective American WWII memory is heavily intertwined with American identity, often depicted in art with representations of unity and bravery. Courtesy of US National Archives.

An important aspect of collective memory, Halbwachs notes, is that individuals typically exist amidst a variety of diverse groups, with each informed by their own different collective memory. These variances in perspective thereby create unique cohort memory pools, which may account for the generational differences in collective memory and interpretations of historical events. Memory researcher Aleida Assmann notes that the dynamic quality of memory is a major contributor to the formation of cultural memory—a collective understanding of the past that is strengthened through a symbolic heritage. Moreover, in The Southern Past , historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage adds that nostalgia  is the central factor that produces the concept of heritage as an in-group identity  formed as a subset within the cultural collective memory.

In the case of World War II, American memory has been fundamentally shaped by the formation of a collective cultural identity. To a great degree, the very essence of American identity has been intertwined with interpretations of the past, and when the narrative of one shifts, the other also becomes subject to revision. There exists a multitude of pathways that allow for the transfer of memory from an individual mental construct into a collective basis of understanding. However, American WWII memory is defined primarily through popular culture in the form of film and literature, by professional historians and other academics, as well as through the creation and interaction with commemorative memory sites such as museums and monuments.

Depictions of WWII events in popular culture such as film and literature have long played a unique role in public memory formation. These artistic mediums are intended for broad audiences, and are often consumed by a greater segment of the population compared to scholarly works that follow traditional academic structures. Thus they are capable of influencing public memory regardless of the level of historical accuracy maintained in the portrayal of the events. In the decades after the war, fictional works such as Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 published in 1961, and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five  published in 1969, entered into the postwar body of American literature. The controversial sentiments contained in the two novels were greatly influenced by the personal wartime experiences of Heller and Vonnegut. Although Catch-22  and Slaughterhouse-Five  are both works of fiction, the novels reflect the authors’ own memories of World War II, and present a jaded view of the American involvement in the war that characterizes the narrative of American exceptionalism as absurd and oftentimes blatantly hypocritical. Despite the critical perspective of Heller and Vonnegut, the novels have continued to maintain notable popularity since their publication, and in 2010 both were placed on Time ’s ALL-TIME 100 Novels list, thus indicating that Slaughterhouse-Five and Catch-22  have been guaranteed a place in American popular culture and memory.

US Army portrait of Pvt. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Vonnegut wove aspects of his own wartime experience throughout his fictional novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Along a similar vein to popular literature, film has also had a significant impact on American memory of World War II. Film’s unparalleled ability to portray highly realistic renderings of historical events furthers the medium’s success as a consumable memory product. American movies about World War II serve as informative markers of postwar memory, often revealing the prevailing narrative at the time of the film’s release. Furthermore, a unique characteristic of film is the medium’s potential to form a reciprocal path in the influence of memory, whereby the films themselves are informed by the memory of real historical events, yet the film’s portrayal of the events also tends to enter into public memory.

Hollywood’s fixation with adding movies that have plots revolving around WWII events to the growing historical-fiction genre demonstrates American society’s desire to capture wartime memory, as well as a desire from audiences to vicariously “experience” the war. Contained to a reasonable length of time, films can only present a highly fragmented account, designed to achieve optimal entertainment while supplying the necessary material to satisfy the anticipated range of emotional responses. Among the numerous American films based on WWII events, The Longest Day  and Saving Private Ryan  are two well-known examples. Generational differences in WWII memory are revealed through the films’ contrasting postwar memory narrative.

Released in 1962, The Longest Day  depicts the events surrounding the invasion of Normandy. The movie takes on a documentary-like tone, presenting the war from multiple angles. However, an emphasis is placed on the role of the Allied commanding officers as fearless leaders protecting their men in a just fight aimed at defeating a totalitarian power. The movie does not offer an in-depth perspective on the experience of the lower ranking soldiers, and repeatedly sanitizes the portrayal of violence. The focus of The Longest Day  is not on the emotional and psychological pain and suffering of those involved, but is instead meant to illustrate the success of the Allied forces’ immense coordination efforts that went into the planning and execution of the operation.

John Wayne (center) from the movie The Longest Day. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

The 1998 film Saving Private Ryan  also concentrates on the events of D-Day, but in contrast to The Longest Day , the film relies heavily on the powerful emotions that arise from being faced with the violent reality of war. Saving Private Ryan  does not simplify combat, but rather indulges in an analysis of the complex, and often ambiguous emotional, psychological and moral elements that comprise the WWII experience, underscoring the brutal conditions that many soldiers faced, resulting in psychological issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Notably, the film’s intense representation of the storming of Omaha aligns with oral history interviews from WWII veterans who had been present. In an article for the American Historical Association’s online newsmagazine Perspectives on History , entitled, “Translating War: The Combat Film Genre and Saving Private Ryan ,” film historian Jeanine Basinger praises the film’s depictions of wartime violence, saying, “What Saving Private Ryan  does is take the carnage out of space and back down to the human level. Spielberg has asked us to think about it and ask ourselves where we are going in the future of this country.”

Taking a contrasting position, historian John Bodnar argues in the article “ Saving Private Ryan and Postwar Memory in America,” that, despite the efforts of director Steven Spielberg to present a historically accurate depiction of D-Day, the movie is selective in the aspects it highlights, thus playing into an ethnocentric narrative that perpetuates the idea of American exceptionalism. Saving Private Ryan  contextualizes the American soldiers’ acts of violence as being within the boundaries of moral behavior. Bodnar claims that Spielberg’s depiction of World War II is highly nationalistic, calling for a renewed reverence for the veterans who had served, and demanding unquestioning support of the American participation in the war. Furthermore, in the article Bodnar suggests that both The Longest Day  and Saving Private Ryan  present skewed representations of the events of D-Day, with the two films offering biased narratives that overly accentuate American ideals of bravery, power, and heroism. According to Bodnar, pop culture cinema’s emphasis on patriotic individualism instead of the Allies’ collective fight for democratic community reveals significant insight into American postwar memory.

Since the war, professional historians and other academic researchers have continued to be among the main contributors to the scholarship on World War II, in many cases also serving as consultants for pop culture films, video games, exhibits and displays, and non-academic books; therefore, holding significant influence over American WWII memory. Often, professional scholars obtain a level of respect within American society due to the dedication and time involved in the academic pursuit, as well as the expertise required for the obtainment of an advanced degree. Due to the authority granted to the expert historical analysis from said academics, scholarly interpretations of WWII events should not be understated in the discussion of American WWII memory.

Comprehensive textbooks concentrated on presenting a thorough analysis of the events of World War II, often compiled from essays of numerous historians and researchers, are a mainstay for American students of history. Works such as For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States from 1607 to 2012  by historians Allan Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis, feature prominently in syllabi, serving as essential texts for classes on military history. Books like For the Common Defense operate as efficient resources for learning fundamental WWII knowledge, and in some instances, may be a student’s first encounter with the material, consequently becoming the individual’s basis for interacting with other forms of WWII memory. Moreover, because such works have the potential to mold students’ understanding of World War II, the texts enter into the collective “memory” of American students.

Distinctive methods and approaches for interpreting history used by different historians has also shaped the broader memory formation of World War II. For example, Studs Terkel’s “The Good War:” An Oral History of World War II  challenged the traditional historical narrative’s top-down approach that tended to only focus on an analysis of the war’s leaders and commanding officers. Instead, Terkel opted for a bottom-up interpretation that emphasized the role of the lesser-known participants who carried out the critical tasks and provided wartime support. Based on numerous oral history interviews with WWII veterans conducted by Terkel himself, The Good War , published in 1984, was instrumental in bringing the voices and experiences of the veterans to the forefront of WWII discussions. Therefore, due to Terkel’s extensive attention to the interviews with veterans, the book’s entire premise was based on memory. Reciprocally, the memories detailed in The Good War  infiltrated the broader American collective memory, placing greater consideration on the experiences and stories of the numerous soldiers who had served.

In a similar way to Terkel, historian Stephen E. Ambrose integrated the memories of veterans into his research on World War II. The foundation of Ambrose’s D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II  lies in the approximately 1,400 individual oral histories from WWII veterans that Ambrose collected in the decades prior to writing the book. Differing from Terkel’s rather diverse assortment of interviews, Ambrose gives special attention throughout D-Day  to the role of the American forces, and how American ideals (the fight for democracy, dedication and loyalty to country, courage, etc.) were instrumental to the resulting Allied victory. D-Day  reveals a moderate level of selection-bias due to Ambrose’s choice of including only snippets from the oral history interviews to better support his own claims and to further the patriotic perspective of American involvement in World War II. In response to Ambrose’s nationalistic interpretation of the United States participation in World War II, historian Michael C.C. Adams argued that Ambrose’s excessive selectivity negated any semblance of impartiality in the discussion of historical events, elevating the role of Americans to a near mythical status.

Stephen Ambrose’s collection of oral history interviews helped to lay the foundations for what would later become The National WWII Museum. Photo courtesy of the author.

However, Ambrose’s ability to form a historical analysis that is accessible to the public has been a central reason for his success outside the world of purely academic literature. The writing and structure of D-Day  appeals to academic historians and non-academics alike. Ambrose largely foregoes extensive use of military terminology that would require specific knowledge of the subject, and the book presents the historical actors and events within the broader historical context, allowing readers to engage with the material without necessitating consultation with external resources.

The interviews contained in The Good War and D-Day  offer perspectives from the veterans who were involved, making both books valuable assets in the preservation of WWII memory. Despite some critical reviews, the importance of the two books will likely grow as those with first-hand experience of the war pass on, and new generations are left to learn of the war’s significance through the oral history accounts. Ambrose’s and Terkel’s works function as memory time capsules, not only of the events of World War II, but of the two historians themselves. Taking this into account, readers can gain perspective on the shaping of memory and American identity, and the role that academics like Studs Terkel and Stephen Ambrose may have played in both.

Lastly, American WWII memory is influenced by what historian Pierre Nora would refer to as, lieux de mémoire —memory sites. Although Nora’s definition of memory sites is quite broad, limiting the discussion to only physical spaces of commemoration—such as museums and monuments—still presents an important analysis on American memory formation. According to Nora, memory sites are classified by the intention of remembrance , and maintain material, symbolic, and/or functional value. Furthermore, Nora distinguishes memory sites seeking to recreate the experience of the initial memory event as history , as opposed to real memory . One of the central purposes of the historically framed memory sites is to preserve the past, due to anxiety within a society over the possibility of losing parts of a shared collective memory.

The National WWII Museum, like other museums that focus on historical events or topics, is what Pierre Nora would call an artificial lieux de mémoire  (memory site), the result of the modern shift from memory to history. It functions not as a site of real  memory, but as a depiction of history , existing somewhere in-between memory and history with the purpose of organizing the past in a cohesive manner for those in the present. The Museum is shaped by the intended audience: primarily post-WWII generations that have no first-hand experience of the war and international patrons who are interested in learning about the American WWII experience. Holding true to its mission statement, a significant portion of the Museum focuses on the perspective of the soldiers themselves. Oral histories are located throughout the galleries, and many of the information placards feature quotes from soldiers, brief snippets that reveal their own personal experiences during the invasion. Ultimately, the Museum’s central aim is to provide an account of World War II through public history methods from the American perspective, emphasizing the heroism of the American troops and the exceptional leadership demonstrated through the war. The National WWII Museum serves as a major repository for pieces of real  American WWII memory (the artifacts and personal objects of veterans), but also serves as a site of memory formation for the numerous patrons and tourists who visit and learn from the Museum’s exhibit offerings.

The National WWII Museum serves as an integral site of American WWII memory, with oral histories and memories from veterans featured prominently throughout the exhibits, including on this placard in the D-Day exhibit. Photo courtesy of the author.

Although memory formation originates in the brain’s biological processes, external factors influence the final interpretation and comprehension that determines the final formed recollection. Collective memory, based on social relationships and interactions, informs both individual and group identity, and perspective of the past and present. The national collective of American WWII memory has been shaped by multiple factors:  representation in popular culture formats like film and literature, academic historical interpretation, and curated memory sites that work to reaffirm particular narratives. Ultimately, American memory regarding the events of World War II continues to evolve depending on the dominant narrative that forms due to differences in generational interests, changes within international diplomatic relations, and new academic interpretations.

United States v. 2LT Jack R. Robinson

Jackie Robinson is best known for breaking Major League Baseball’s color barrier. Less well known, but just as pivotal, is his 1944 court-martial after refusing to move to the back of a military bus.

Kaylie McCarthy

Kaylie McCarthy holds a master's degree in history from the University of New Orleans, and currently works as the Institute Associate with the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy.

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Impact case study

Understanding world war ii through the eyes of german soldiers.

  Professor Sönke Neitzel used secret transcripts of German prisoners of war to create a unique portrait of the mindset of soldiers during WWII.

Research by

Sönke Neitzel

Former distinguished professor, what was the problem.

For many decades after the end of World War II (WWII), a broad popular narrative—reinforced through thousands of films and books—cast the German military as unthinking tools of Nazi ideology. Only in recent years has a more nuanced view emerged, as represented in films like Downfall and the recent television series Generation War, both of which attempted to convey the war from the point of view of ordinary Germans.

This recasting of the war from the German perspective has been largely based on individual memoirs, diaries and interviews, many of which emerged long after the war ended. However, it was generally assumed that, because of the totalitarian nature of the Nazi military, no comparable records existed that could reveal what those who were actually doing the fighting and killing, the German soldiers, thought and felt about the war and their role in it.

What did we do?

LSE Professor of International History Sönke Neitzel specialises in the history of war, especially the First and Second World Wars. In 2001 Neitzel discovered a new source for researching the Third Reich and its military machine: secretly recorded conversations of German prisoners of war (POWs) in British and American captivity. The reports, held in the National Archives in London and Washington, D.C., run to about 150,000 pages.

Unlike official documents or even private letters—which German soldiers knew would be reviewed and censored—the recorded chats of the German POWs represent candid, even casual, exchanges between comrades. Neitzel discovered that the war created its own very specific frame of reference, one in which violence quickly became perceived as normal, even a necessity. However, within this framework, Neitzel’s research revealed that German soldiers in the main acted on the same patterns as in peacetime: they did their work and sought acceptance amongst their comrades.

Neitzel’s research revealed that most soldiers were not interested in National Socialism or the ‘new order’ that Nazi leaders sought to impose upon Europe. Their worldviews, shaped by the violent exigencies of war, were largely shaped by the core group to which they belonged, their unit, their duty, the next battle, and their weapons of war.

Critically, Neitzel’s research underscored that for most German soldiers the Second World War was in the main a continuation of the First World War: bigger, probably more brutal, but in the end the same war for the same reason, which was defence of the Homeland against foreign aggression. That the Second World War was of a totally different character—emphasising ethnic cleansing, genocide and global conquest—was not reflected, even though many soldiers spoke casually, even gleefully, about raping and killing civilians and prisoners.

What happened?

In 2011, based on his National Archives research, Neitzel published Soldaten: On fighting, killing and dying: The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs. Written with social psychologist Harald Welzer, the book’s launch was held at the German Consulates in New York and Toronto.

Soldaten was an immediate bestseller in Germany, where it spawned two theatre plays and a television documentary. It was published in the UK in 2012 and became the basis of a Channel 4 documentary. The book was also published in the US, Australia and Canada and to date has been published in 20 translations, receiving major press coverage and positive reviews around the world.

In 2013, Neitzel published Tapping Hitler's Generals: Transcripts of Secret Conversations 1942-45, based on British intelligence eavesdropping of high-ranking German officers held in captivity at Trent Park, in the London suburb of Cockfosters. Based on 167 transcripts, Tapping Hitler’s Generals suggests that Nazi military leadership was deeply divided about National Socialism and Adolf Hitler’s ability to lead Germany. It also suggests that military leaders were aware of many Nazi atrocities, including the summary slaughter of civilians and the extermination of European Jewry, though opinions were divided about the justification of such actions.

Based on his Soldaten work, Neitzel was asked by the German Federal Agency of Civic Education to write a core education text to be distributed to all German grammar schools as part of its Informationen zur politischen Bildung (Information on Political Education) series. In Das Zeitalter der Weltkriege (The Age of the World Wars), Neitzl encouraged students to step back from the usual black-and-white narrative dominating recent German school education and to engage with a more ambiguous interpretation of the outbreak of the World Wars (the First in particular), the character and global dimensions of these wars, the war experience and the ways in which they have been remembered. The text was published in spring 2014, with a print run of 700,000 copies, and distributed to all grammar schools as well as institutions for adult education and the armed forces.

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• Case Study: Second World War
• Topic 11: Causes and effects of 20th Century wars

The Second World War is a cross-regional case study.  I t is also an example of a conflict where the theatres of war: land, sea air, new technology and the extent of human and economic mobilisation could be seen as factors in determining the outcome.  

Due to the large amount of content for this war, we have divided up the ATL on The Second World War so that there are separate pages for each of causes, practices and effects of the war.

Please see the student essay exemplar page for an example of an essay using the Second World War as a case study: Causes and effects of 20th Century wars: Graded student examples  

1. Second World War: Causes Part I (ATL)

Case study: The Second World WarThis page contains ATL to help students understand the causes of The Second World War.Essay writing practice for this case study as well as ideas for videos and how to...

2. Second World War - Causes Part II Asia (ATL)

This page continues with ATL on the causes of the Second World War - from the impact of Japanese militarism. It also summarises the key themes that caused the war.Remember December 7th!, by Allen Saalburg,...

3. Second World War: Practices (ATL)

The Second World War is a case study of a war between states. It is also cross-regional case study. It is an example of a war where you can analyse and evaluate the relative importance of each theatre...

4. Second World War: Effects (ATL)

Guiding questions:What was the situation in Europe and Asia at the end of the Second World War?What were the economic costs of the Second World War?What were the political and ideological effects of the...

5. Second World War: Essay planning for Paper 2

Second World War essay planningThis page contains essay plans and essay writing activities on the Second World War. For comparative essays involving the Second World War, please go to the comparative...

7. Second World War: Videos and activities

On this page you will find some suggestions and links to videos that can be used as well as teacher notes with suggestions as to how the videos can be used with students. Questions for some of the videos...

Causes and effects of 20th Century wars: Comparative essay planning

This page gives some suggestions for activities and plans which require students to compare two wars.Refer back to the page Essay writing for Paper Two for hints for students on how to structure comparative...

8. Second World War: Extra resources

On these pages you can find suggestions for useful websites as well as for historians' texts that students might find enjoyable to develop their understanding further.Also see this page for resources...

9. Second World War: Quizzes

In this section you can find quizzes which can be used as a starters to a lesson or as an end of topic quiz.On this page there are 'paper' quizzes which you can download and print off for students

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• International and Comparative Law

Stuart Eizenstat/Negotiating the Final Accounts of World War II

Jeswald Salacuse, with Kristin Schneeman

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Abstract: Part of the PON Great Negotiator Case Study Series, this factual case study examines former EU Ambassador, Deputy Treasury Secretary, and Special Representative to the President Stuart Eizenstat's career as a negotiator, with special emphasis on his work negotiating reparations for victims of the Holocaust. As a result of these efforts, Eizenstat received the Program on Negotiation's 2003 "Great Negotiator" Award.  The case study begins with Eizenstat's background and early career, including several complex negotiations in which Eizenstat played a key role: the 1996-98 standoff between the U.S. and EU regarding economic sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Libya; a 1997 trade dispute between the U.S. and Japan over controversial port practices; the management of the U.S. delegation to the 1997 Kyoto conference on global warming; and a 1999-2000 dispute between the U.S. government and U.S. terrorism victims over the availability of blocked assets to settle legal judgments.  The bulk of the case study focuses on Eizenstat's extraordinary work facilitating the negotiations between World War II victims and Swiss, German, Austrian and French government institutions and industries over reparations for slave and forced labor, confiscated property (including looted art and frozen bank accounts), and unpaid insurance policies. The scope of the eventual settlements was enormous, resulting in $8 billion for the victims of the Nazis. Eizenstat navigated this complicated -- and in many ways, uncharted -- terrain between 1995 and 2001, in addition to his demanding responsibilities as a senior official in the Commerce, State and Treasury departments. Learning Objectives: This case study provides a wonderful opportunity to teach from recent history, using a living, working diplomat as a focus for learning about negotiation. It may be used alone or in conjunction with the Great Negotiator 2003: Stuart Eizenstat DVD. Subjects Covered Negotiations, War Crimes, International Dispute Resolution Setting Geographic: United States, Europe Event Year Begin: 1995

Educator Materials This case study and educator copies are available from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center .

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World War II and the Holocaust, 1939–1945

With the start of the second World War and a swift succession of German victories, the Nazi regime began realizing its longstanding goal of territorial expansion. Under conditions of war and military occupation, they could pursue racial goals with more radical measures. The German Army, military, SS, and German police units took an active part in authorized mass murders of Jews in the Soviet Union. The Germans and their collaborators deported roughly 2.7 million Jews and others from occupied Europe to killing centers in German-occupied Poland. At the largest of the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports arrived from all across Europe. The camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz were the first liberated, as Soviet troops reached Poland. As more Allied soldiers saw the camps with their own eyes, the truth was undeniable.

TEXT ON SCREEN: World War II and the Holocaust, 1939-1945

NARRATOR: As the Nazi regime implemented its long-standing goal of territorial expansion, aggression against Germany’s neighbors initially succeeded without encountering armed resistance. Hitler counted on the reluctance of Britain and Europe to intervene, for fear of another war. The German occupation of Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia, left no doubt as to Germany’s intent on military conquest in Eastern Europe. On September 1, 1939, a massive German force invaded and conquered Poland within a month. It was the start of the Second World War. In April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark and Norway. In May, the German armed forces attacked France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. In June, Paris fell and France surrendered. The swift and unexpected victory over France avenged Germany’s defeat and humiliation in the First World War. It propelled Hitler to a new level of popularity and trust among the German people. In June 1941, the German Army, with more than three million soldiers, invaded the Soviet Union to wage a war of annihilation that targeted tens of millions of civilians. Under conditions of war and military occupation, the Nazi regime could pursue its political and racial goals with more radical measures. As German troops advanced into eastern Europe, Germany’s power extended over millions more Jewish inhabitants in the occupied lands, where German authorities could exploit existing anti-Jewish attitudes among local populations.

Across eastern Europe, German authorities forced those identified as Jews into tightly packed areas called ghettos. Separated from the non-Jewish population, Jews in the larger ghettos were imprisoned behind brick walls and barbed wire. The German drive eastward was cast as a crusade against Judaism and Communism—in the Nazi view, two aspects of the same evil. German soldiers and police officials treated Soviet prisoners of war as sub-humans, either shooting them or deliberately causing their deaths by exposure to the elements and by starvation. Millions died in German captivity. On the eastern front, racial political instruction was part of regular training for all types of German occupation forces. SS chief Heinrich Himmler referred to the war against the Soviet Union in an address to his men: “This invasion is an ideological battle and a struggle of races. Here in this struggle stands National Socialism—an ideology based on the value of our Germanic, Nordic blood… On the other side stands a population of 180 million, a mixture of races whose very names are unpronounceable, and whose physique is such that one can shoot them down without pity and compassion…” In July 1941, Hermann Göring—Hitler’s second–in–command—authorized all necessary preparations for the “final solution of the Jewish question” in the European territory under German control.

As German military forces advanced, mobile killing squads advanced with them. The German Army, military SS and German police units took an active part in authorized mass murders. The Germans and their accomplices rounded up the victims, drove them on foot or in trucks to a killing site, often made them remove their clothes, and shot them. Participants in the murders included local collaborators—especially police—in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Belarus. The German killing squads and their auxiliaries murdered at least two million Jewish men, women and children in mass shooting operations.

Back in Germany, SS and police deported the remaining Jews to the occupied eastern territories. In German-occupied Warsaw, the walled ghetto that German Jews entered as newcomers in 1942 was already a place of mass suffering due to terrible overcrowding, lack of sanitation, disease and starvation imposed by the Germans. Despite all efforts of the imprisoned Jews to find ways of surviving and sustaining their communities, those conditions increasingly led to death for scores of thousands. Most vulnerable were the orphaned children.

Originally, German occupation authorities established ghettos to concentrate Jews and separate them from the non-Jewish population. Later in the war, many ghettos served as staging grounds for the transportation of Jews to the east, euphemistically called “resettlement” by the Germans, who promised their captives better conditions and opportunities to work. People endured unimaginable suffering on journeys that lasted days, without food, water, or toilet facilities. Many of the weak, the young, and the elderly died before reaching the destination.

The Germans and their collaborators deported roughly 2.7 million Jews and others to killing centers in German-occupied Poland. At the largest of the camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, transports arrived from all across Europe.

LILLY MALNIK, Auschwitz Survivor: Transports were coming in every day, people with all kinds of different languages—Hungarian, Poles, Czechoslovakians, from Holland, from France, from Belgium, from Germany, from Italy, Russians. They were from everywhere.

NORBERT WOLLHEIM, Auschwitz Survivor: My wife was somehow waving to me, and that’s the last I’ve seen of her.

FRITZIE FRITZSHALL, Auschwitz Survivor: The smell, gas chambers. When I asked, “When will I see my mother?”—I was shown the smoke. This is how I found out where she went.

ERNEST KOENIG, Auschwitz Survivor: It took a long time until I started to realize that we are condemned to die. All Jews are condemned to die.

NARRATOR: Those whom the SS judged unable to work were killed, often within two or three hours of arrival. Those who could work would be used for forced labor, under punishing conditions. When they could no longer work, they, too, would be put to death. In several killing facilities, exclusively designed to kill human beings on an industrial scale, camp authorities used poison gas to murder children, women and men. At these killing centers, nearly half of all Holocaust victims died.

The camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz were the first liberated, as Soviet troops reached Poland. News of Majdanek’s liberation in summer 1944 was met with disbelief. The New York Herald Tribunesaid, “Maybe…we should wait for further corroboration…this…sounds inconceivable...” In April 1945, US troops in Germany and Austria came upon concentration camps at Buchenwald, Dachau, Nordhausen, Mauthausen and Ohrdruf. The soldiers saw the camps with their own eyes, and the truth was undeniable. General Dwight Eisenhower, Commander of the Allied liberating forces, wrote: “The things I saw beggar description…. The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were…overpowering…” In American movie theaters, newsreels made witnesses of thousands more. One commentator said, “To future generations it must be told: Once man did this to his brothers. In the 20th century there existed a civilization which for twelve years returned to barbarism.”

Shock permeated the camps as liberating troops tried to grasp what they had found. Soldiers did all they could to attend to the dead and to support the living. Those who survived faced the slow task of reclaiming their dignity and returning—somehow—to life.

TEXT ON SCREEN: The Holocaust darkened the world’s view of humanity and our future. As the world struggled to understand what had happened, a new word, genocide, was needed for these crimes—crimes committed by ordinary people from a society not unlike our own.

Discussion Questions

How did the Nazis lead Germany to war in Europe and, with their collaborators, kill millions—including systematically murdering six million Jewish people?

Why is learning about the Holocaust important?

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Course: US history   >   Unit 7

• Beginning of World War II
• 1940 - Axis gains momentum in World War II
• 1941 Axis momentum accelerates in WW2

Pearl Harbor

• FDR and World War II
• Japanese internment
• American women and World War II
• 1942 Tide turning in World War II in Europe
• World War II in the Pacific in 1942
• 1943 Axis losing in Europe
• American progress in the Pacific in 1944
• 1944 - Allies advance further in Europe
• 1945 - End of World War II
• The Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb
• The United Nations
• The Second World War
• Shaping American national identity from 1890 to 1945

• On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
• The surprise attack by some 350 Japanese aircraft sunk or badly damaged eighteen US naval vessels, including eight battleships, destroyed or damaged 300 US aircraft, and killed 2,403 men.
• Across the nation, Americans were stunned, shocked, and angered. The attack turned US public opinion in favor of entering the Second World War . The United States declared war on Japan on December 8, 1941.
• Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy, declared war on the United States on December 11. The United States responded in kind, and therefore entered World War II.

The Pearl Harbor attack

Motive for the attack, forewarnings about the attack, what do you think.

• On the attack at Pearl Harbor and the events surrounding it, see David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 500-526; Gordon W. Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), 499-504.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 521-522.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, “ Address to Congress Requesting a Declaration of War with Japan December 8, 1941 ." Courtesy the American Presidency Project.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 512.
• See James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2001), 470.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 519.
• Kennedy, Freedom from Fear , 517, 525.

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Opinion: A lesson from World War II: Appeasement never works

W ill today’s Cold War confrontation end auspiciously, the way the first one did, or will it slide through strategic miscalculations on both sides into a third world war? 

Adolph Hitler’s misjudgments before World War II could be matched by Vladimir Putin’s and Xi Jinping’s today. At each step in Hitler’s preparations for war against Nazi Germany’s neighbors, the international community wavered, convinced itself that his assurances of peaceful intent were sincere, and simply wished the problem away. Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” proved evanescent.  

Until the last few years, the West made the same mistake regarding the hostile intentions of Russia and China. Even now, after Putin’s third invasion of a neighboring country with the aim of reconstituting the former Soviet Union — Georgia in 2008, Eastern Ukraine and Crimea in 2014, Ukraine again in 2022 — some Western leaders still seem to believe they can deal with him as a normal leader in a normal time. 

Commercial factors and profit-seeking constantly skew national security considerations on Russia, just as they did with Nazi Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s. On China, America’s most dangerous adversary, business interests in the United States press political leaders to weaken or eliminate punitive measures to counter China’s economic aggression. They seem intent on validating the observation attributed to Lenin that “ capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them .”  

There are other disturbing parallels between today’s East-West confrontation and the period leading up to World War II. As was also true of the Cold War, the confrontation is not merely about territorial disputes but over something more fundamental and ideological — a political holy war of sorts whose outcome is existential for both sides. The battleground does not simply concern the fate of individual countries’ rulers but the viability of governing systems generally and the international order itself. 

Xi and Putin declared the inevitable conflict in their announcement of a “no-limits strategic partnership” just before Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine: “Certain States’ attempt to impose their own ‘democratic standard’ on other countries … pose serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine the stability of the world order. … It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their State is a democratic one.”    

Those who decide the Russian state is not democratic, like Alexei Navalny , end up in prison and/or dead.  

The painful lesson the world learned — or should have learned — from its experience with men like Hitler, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Communist China’s Mao Zedong is that rulers who grievously mistreat their people, as China and Russia do, and who become powerful enough to threaten their neighbors and world peace invariably do so.  

The international legal norm that guarantees national sovereignty and noninterference in the internal affairs of other states frequently comes into tension with international humanitarian norms such as the prohibitions against genocide and crimes against humanity.  

More recently, the international community has developed the concept of a “Responsibility to Protect,” which, theoretically at least, establishes the norm that when a regime is incapable or unwilling to address a humanitarian catastrophe within its population, or is itself the perpetrator of it, the international community has a moral obligation and a legal duty to intervene.  

With countries as militarily powerful as China and Russia — or even smaller and poorer states like North Korea that have been allowed to develop nuclear weapons — the intervention as a practical matter cannot be in the military realm, but must rely instead on economic, diplomatic and moral shaming through information warfare. Those nonkinetic approaches contributed to the relatively peaceful end of the apartheid system in South Africa and the downfall of the Soviet Union, the latter of which Putin has called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,”  

The mistakes the West has already made cannot be undone, but at least must not be repeated. The lesson of appeasement that led to World War II was forgotten in recent decades with the resurgence of an aggressive Russia and the indulgence of a rising China, which successfully followed Deng Xiaoping’s admonition for Chinese leaders to “hide your capabilities, bide your time.” Xi discarded the coyness. 

What was never hidden — indeed, was constantly exaggerated and flaunted — was the deep sense of grievance at the hands of Western powers. China’s “century of humiliation” served the same purpose and mimicked the language of Hitler’s condemnation of the Treaty of Versailles. “Germany was humiliated. … So long as this Treaty stands there can be no resurrection of the German people.” Implicitly or explicitly, both statements required a forceful redressing of perceived historic injustices.  

The guilt-ridden, fearful and profit-lust motivations of the West manifested in four decades of generous engagement policies that constituted the direct opposite of Beijing’s preemptive charges of “containment” and “holding China down.” The West succumbing to the clever psychological warfare enabled the emergence of the powerful and aggressive Communist China that now menaces the Indo-Pacific and world peace. Fortunately, there is now broad bipartisan consensus on the nature of the threat.  

What is needed is a clear and unambiguous policy statement that any Chinese resort to force against Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan or any other American ally or security partner will be met with a decisive U.S. military response. Today’s Hitlers will pay attention. 

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute. Follow him on X @BoscoJosephA .   

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