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    How Americans came to love the German Army

    Reviewed by Kelly ***all (Department of History, Newman University)
    Published on H-Genocide (November, 2010)
    Commissioned by Elisa G. von Joeden-Forgey

    Tracing the Resurrection of a Reputation: How Americans Came to Love
    the German Army

    Unusually, I want to begin with a personal anecdote. In 1995 I was a
    graduate student in Vienna researching my dissertation. Through
    great good fortune I was able to join a friend chaperoning Austrian
    teenagers on a field trip to London. I found myself accompanying the
    students as they ventured across London to museums, galleries, and
    stores. During one shopping expedition, my friend and I lagged
    behind our charges and surveyed the selection of fine frozen foods.
    Ahead of us, a pair of English stock boys whispered and laughed as
    the Austrians passed by. Suddenly, one of the employees walked out
    into the aisle and performed a credible goose step behind the girls
    for several seconds while simultaneously extending his arm in a
    Hitler salute.

    Being teenagers, the girls didn't notice. I did and briefly
    exchanged some unpleasant words with the young man, who clearly
    couldn't understand why I was sticking up for people he had
    misidentified as Germans. The mocking ended quickly (if a bit
    reluctantly) and we went on our way.

    I start with this story because it contrasts so directly with the
    American attitudes toward the German army explored by Ronald Smelser
    and Edward Davies II in their _The Myth of the Eastern Front: The
    Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture. _The book is a
    fascinating immersion into a simple but important question: How did
    the German soldiers who fought on the eastern front during World War
    Two become hero figures to so many Americans? The authors address a
    narrow topic and investigate it thoroughly. Precisely because they
    frame their question so narrowly, they leave ample room for other
    scholars to explore. Accordingly, American historians, military
    historians, and perhaps historians of genocide will want to read this
    book. But they will do that with notepads (or laptops) handy,
    scribbling down ideas for future research projects as they go.

    The book breaks down into three sections. In the first, the authors
    summarize the prevailing American view of Germany and the German
    military (and SS) during and immediately after the war. They review
    newspapers, magazines, and other sources to show that American public
    opinion viewed the Soviets sympathetically while seeing Germany and
    its soldiers as enemies and war criminals. In my opinion, this is
    the best and most convincing part of the book. The extensive survey
    of reports and articles about the Soviet Union demonstrates clearly
    reporters' successful attempts to present the Soviet Union as
    honorable and its people as similar to Americans. The subsequent
    discussion of the postwar trials shows how widespread knowledge of
    German wartime misconduct was. American opinion is aptly summarized
    with the words of Dwight Eisenhower, who wrote his wife toward the
    end of the war that "the German is a beast.... God, I hate the
    Germans" (p. 75) and who in 1944 advocated "exterminat[ing] all of
    the general staff" (p. 40).

    Toward the end of the decade, however, attitudes toward the German
    army changed decisively. They did so for two broad reasons. First,
    the advent of the Cold War changed the geopolitical climate
    significantly. The need to integrate West Germany into the new
    alliance system meant rethinking accepted narratives about the Second
    World War. Only by erasing memories of Germans as fascist and
    criminal could Americans see them as allies and friends. Just as
    important, a campaign by German officers to defend the German army
    and soldiers against accusations of war crimes and dishonor proved
    enormously successful. This effort took several forms.

    First, many German officers worked closely with the American army to
    produce reports and histories about the German army's war against the
    Soviet Union. With the West's strategic planning increasingly
    assuming that any new world war would begin with NATO forces giving
    ground in Europe, precisely the same kind of war the Germans had
    fought from 1943-45, the American army solicited these reports to
    learn how to wage such a campaign effectively. Closely coordinated
    by the prominent German general Franz Halder, the Germans produced
    hundreds of manuscripts. The U.S. Army thought these materials
    extremely useful and distributed them widely.

    Secondly, the publication of memoirs by German officers played an
    important part in changing perceptions of German soldiers. Written
    mostly by formerly high-ranking German generals, these accounts were
    widely read by American officers and politicians. While these
    authors don't seem to have coordinated as explicitly as in the
    production of military manuscripts, the messages the memoirs convey
    remain remarkably similar. The German army, according to these
    officers, was at least apolitical and, for some, actively
    disassociated from the Nazi Party. The incompetent leadership of
    Hitler and the Nazis sabotaged the army and the German war effort.
    General after general argued that Germany would have won the war
    except for the meddling of amateurs in affairs about which they knew
    little (while Smelser and Davies don't use the words, they are
    essentially recounting the creation of a second "stab in the back"
    legend). Even with this political interference, the army had fought
    valiantly and lost only because the Soviet army vastly outnumbered
    the German. The memoirs also insist the German army had fought the
    war honorably and had been unaware of any atrocities. In instances
    where awareness could not be denied, they accused rear-area police or
    SS forces as having initiated and conducted the atrocities as an
    honorable army fumed powerlessly. Indeed, they claim the German army
    treated Russian civilians and prisoners of war well throughout the
    war, in alleged contrast to the bad conduct of the Soviet army.

    Finally, Smelser and Davies address memoirs written by front-line
    soldiers and novels about these men. These books concentrate heavily
    on the fear and adrenaline of combat, the emotional impact of losing
    friends and superiors, and the exhaustion of constant retreats.
    Precisely by focusing on battlefield events, they portray German
    soldiers as "ordinary men," uninterested in and unmotivated by
    politics or race, rather simply trying to survive. Atrocities (at
    least by Germans) simply don't appear in these memoirs.

    The broad outlines of this argument are familiar, but Smelser and
    Davies add a degree of detail that is both persuasive and
    enlightening. It's clear American soldiers and leaders read these
    memoirs and this reading played a significant role in reversing
    images of the German army. Moreover, the authors do a thorough job
    discrediting the claims made by the German officers in their memoirs,
    which can no longer be viewed as even minimally respectable. It is
    less clear how the broader public responded to the German message.
    The authors make some effort to measure how ordinary Americans
    responded to these memoirs by discussing the types of presses that
    published these accounts and the blurbs that appeared on back covers.
    But they could go farther in this direction. There's no reference
    to public opinion polling data, for instance, nor to sales figures
    nor is there an attempt to do a demographic analysis of readership
    (admittedly a challenging task). Consequently, it's more difficult
    to assess changing perceptions of the German army among ordinary
    Americans.

    The same dynamic exists in the third section of the book. Here,
    Davies and Smelser examine the emergence of a community of writers,
    "war-gamers" and re-enactors who became devotees of the German army
    and its campaigns in the east. As far as it goes, this is insightful
    and exciting research (if sometimes too detailed for some tastes).
    Smelser and Davies astutely identify a set of sources historians have
    rarely tapped and survey it thoroughly. They identify a set of
    authors and speakers (whom they label "gurus") who have been
    exceptionally influential in presenting a heroic, sanitized picture
    of the German army in the east. In a path-breaking discussion, they
    examine the iconography and mechanics of war games published in the
    1970s and 1980s to show how they presented gamers with an honorable
    and heroic German army. They have thoroughly convinced me of the
    existence of a community of "buffs" who have made a fetish of the
    German army as super-efficient and super-heroic (although it would be
    helpful to compare games set on the eastern front with other games).
    The difficulty comes in understanding how influential this image was.
    The authors don't really identify how large the community is (it's
    unclear, for instance, when they cite Web site views, whether these
    are total views or unique visitors) and whether the views of
    war-gamers and re-enactors have spread outside their group.
    Moreover, by focusing the discussion mostly on the 1970s and 80s,
    they leave unclear how the creation of vast networks of computer
    gamers have affected this community. As early as 2002, for instance,
    the _New York Times_ wrote about games like _Day of Defeat_ which
    allowed players to take the part of German soldiers and used Nazi
    symbols and characters in a way that attracted a neo-Nazi
    following.[1] It's unclear what kind of following war games like
    _Panzerblitz_ (one of several cited by the authors as widely
    influential) have had since the rise of computer gaming and whether
    this has reinforced or redirected the communities highlighted by the
    authors.

    What is most interesting and potentially valuable about the book is
    the broad framework the authors offer to explain the trends they have
    identified. They suggest Americans have created two separate but
    similar "myths of the lost cause" as lenses through which to view
    their past. The first, obviously, relates to the South and the Civil
    War. The second identifies German soldiers from World War Two as
    good people fighting unwillingly for a bad cause. It encourages
    Americans, precisely because it represents German soldiers as
    fundamentally honorable, to focus on the battlefield rather than
    atrocities. And it offers them a coherent narrative explaining why
    the United States was suddenly allied with its former enemies and
    opposed to its former allies. This is a rich and thought-provoking
    interpretation, well worth more exploration than the authors give it.

    Here we come back to my story about the British stock boys and the
    Austrian girls. The authors do what they set out to do and do it,
    for the most part, convincingly. But they miss the chance to dig
    deeper. They don't attempt to explain (and never intend to) why
    American attitudes diverged so clearly from those of another NATO
    ally of Germany, the British (as I believe they did). Why would
    British teenagers mock girls they believed to be German while
    American teenagers stayed up late searching the Internet for the most
    realistic recreations of Wehrmacht boots and caps? More broadly, as
    I read, I kept asking for more. It would be fascinating, for
    instance, to have dived into visual and oral culture before and after
    the war in the way John Dower does in his book on perceptions of
    Japan and Japanese soldiers, _War Without Mercy _(1987)_._ The
    authors take some steps in this direction but could have gone much
    farther. Similarly, they rarely address the influence of movies and
    television. Given how many of my students refer to the History
    Channel as the "Hitler Channel," it seems this would offer a rich set
    of sources that would flesh out the authors' interpretations. In
    particular, one wonders if the recent spate of Holocaust and war
    movies touched off by Steven Spielberg (both the branch emerging from
    _Schindler's List_ [1993] and that from _Saving Private Ryan _[1998])
    changed American impressions of the German war effort at all.
    Finally, and entirely appropriate for this list, they don't even
    begin to suggest how this study might shed light on the aftermaths of
    other genocides and military conflicts.

    This should not be taken as criticism. All authors hope their work
    will prompt other historians to wrestle with the issues they
    identified. Davies and Smelser have given us an interesting and
    persuasive study. It is likely to be most influential, however, in
    prompting historians to further investigate the ideas they engage
    here for the first time.

    Note

    [1]. Jonathan Kay, "Defying a Taboo, Nazi Protagonists Invade Video
    Games," _New York Times_ (January 3, 2002),
    http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/03/te...deo-games.html,
    accessed September 2, 2010.

    Citation: Kelly ***all. Review of Smelser, Ronald M.; Davies II,
    Edward J., _The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in
    American Popular Culture_. H-Genocide, H-Net Reviews. November, 2010.
    URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=30397

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States
    License.
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    #2
    I can remember sitting with my father and some other WWII veterans at a social gathering, like a picnic, in the early 60s and hearing one of them saying "Well, I think we fought the wrong people in the war, we should have fought the Russians". Several of the other veterans also agreed with the statement.
    The vet that made the statement was a disabled veteran (he had been shot in the hand and it was locked into one position) who had served in the 45th Infantry Division.
    One must remember that this was a time when we were having drills in case we had an atomic bomb attack at our schools. The Russians were considered a heathen enemy.

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by DennyB View Post
      I can remember sitting with my father and some other WWII veterans at a social gathering, like a picnic, in the early 60s and hearing one of them saying "Well, I think we fought the wrong people in the war, we should have fought the Russians". Several of the other veterans also agreed with the statement.
      The vet that made the statement was a disabled veteran (he had been shot in the hand and it was locked into one position) who had served in the 45th Infantry Division.
      One must remember that this was a time when we were having drills in case we had an atomic bomb attack at our schools. The Russians were considered a heathen enemy.
      This is pretty much the same sentiment I heard at that time. Also keep in mind that George Patton wanted to take the remaining German forces under American control and push the Russians back to their original borders.
      Jim

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by james m View Post
        This is pretty much the same sentiment I heard at that time. Also keep in mind that George Patton wanted to take the remaining German forces under American control and push the Russians back to their original borders.
        Jim
        I am not sure that would have been a bad idea. Maybe Stalin would not have been quite as bold as he was about pushing Communism down everyone's throat. I would bet the Germans would have been game for it too.

        Comment


          #5
          I suspect that the Soviets would have kept moving West 'till they reached the Atlantic if we had tried. Oh and when they went East they would not have stopped quite so early also. The Japanese were pretty well hammered by the Red Army in a couple weeks.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by leibermuster View Post
            I suspect that the Soviets would have kept moving West 'till they reached the Atlantic if we had tried. Oh and when they went East they would not have stopped quite so early also. The Japanese were pretty well hammered by the Red Army in a couple weeks.
            I think you're overlooking something here. We we only a few short months of defeating the Japanese in the Pacific theater freeing up the whole Pacific fleet and demonstrating to the world that we had the atomic bomb. Ameican industry ,geared for war production, along with the American military were at the height of it's power. We would have been able to re-start German V2 amd ME262 production along with other weapons in the German arsenal. I suspect the Russians would have "cut bait" at this point and retreated to their original borders.
            Jim

            Comment


              #7
              Interesting thread and so truth.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by james m View Post
                I think you're overlooking something here. We we only a few short months of defeating the Japanese in the Pacific theater freeing up the whole Pacific fleet and demonstrating to the world that we had the atomic bomb. Ameican industry ,geared for war production, along with the American military were at the height of it's power. We would have been able to re-start German V2 amd ME262 production along with other weapons in the German arsenal. I suspect the Russians would have "cut bait" at this point and retreated to their original borders.
                Jim
                You may be right Jim, I guess we will never know?

                Comment

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