Erwin Warkentin
Preface
Was the American mission to cure the German psychosis after the Second World
War really an undertaking that failed? Has Germany not been rehabilitated since it perpetrated all those horrendous crimes against humanity during the Nazi regime? If one reads through the volumes that have been published on the subject since 1945, one is left with the distinct suspicion that little was changed in the German
“ mind
”
as a result of the postwar occupation of Germany. In book after book, article after article, the conclusion seems to be a negative one. The postwar denazification and reconstruction process failed and Germany was left as psychologically crippled as it had been in the centuries leading up to the Holocaust that it willingly embraced in 1933. It simply could not be brought up to the ideal standards set by its American occupiers and those charged with administering its prescribed cure.
No one in the realm of academic or popular history takes the position that
Germany has learned its lesson, even today and that the rest of the world must be ever vigilant of any detectable, and even in some cases imagined, anti-social behaviour that would presage a return to its old ways.
While it is hardly a scholarly source, our attitude towards Germany, and the
Second World War, is best summed up by the Irish comedian Dylan Moran. In a short routine he describes Anglo-German relations and highlights out how obsessed non-
German Europeans and North Americans still are with the question of Germany and its apparent continuing sinister threat to the world:
You're talking to a modern, nice, affable German person and they're saying to you something like “You know, vell, it's a critical time now for Germany within
Europe, also globally, economically ve are pretty good, ve have been better. But ve are very vibrant in the theater and arts...” and all the time you'll be listening to this, you're thinking Mmm, yeah, mmm... Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler ...
(Moran Like, Totally 2006)
It is not a matter of having forgiven the Germans, or recognition that the
Germany of today is different from the Germany prior to 1945, it is a matter of our collective subconscious trying to solve a problem that has no solution. This book does not offer a solution to the problem, but tenders a new starting point from which to approach the problem.
This book will concentrate on the activities of the Information Control Division
(ICD) that operated as part of OMGUS (Office of Military Government, United States) in the initial years of Germany’s occupation. While every division within OMGUS was involved in the reorientation process in some way, it was the ICD’s task to deal with the
1

collective German psyche and in that way cure what has often been referred to as the
German problem.
Until now scholars have relied on the testimony and judgement of those involved in applying “the cure.” These were the individuals who initially wrote extensively about the efforts of the US Military Government in Germany to reorient the German people.
They were for the most part employed by the US occupation forces to build a new, better, and less threatening Germany based on Anglo-American concepts of democracy and freedom. By creating the foundation of what we know about Germany during the immediate postwar period, these commentators are responsible for having created our understanding of whether Germany successfully shed the accoutrements of hypernationalism that led it down its destructive path, or not.
There is, however, a problem in accepting their negative judgement of Germany.
While they were for the most part scholars with solid academic training and credentials, they were also humans who were severely affected by what they saw in Germany and one can easily forgive them should their judgement be tainted by emotions generated by being some of the first to have liberated concentration camps where the bodies of its victims still lay fresh on the ground. A further problem is that they, for the most part, only saw the initial phase of the transformation of Germany, which was most often measured in terms of weeks and months. They were writing from the perspective of a
Germany that was still in the process of coming out of a fog of repressed memories of what the reality of the Third Reich was. However, these national transformations, in particular when one speaks in terms of the collective psychological state of a nation and how it behaves, can only be measured in generations. In short, not enough time had passed for an accurate picture of the new Germany to develop during the time in which they produced their assessment and made their prognostications about what Germany might become.
Finally, the initial commentators, and those who came after and supported their conclusions with the eye-witness evidence provided by these initial observers, had to base their work on memories they had of their time in Germany and not any documentary evidence. Any material that they might have produced as members of the military government staff would have been retained by the army and then classified as secret. This meant that they had no way of checking their work and refreshing their memories. Moreover, those who read their work had no way of verifying the assertions put forward by the witnesses.
In the late 1980s the government archives in the United States and in Great
Britain began the process of declassifying documents related to the occupation of
Germany. The sheer volume of material produced during the occupation by the various incarnations of what eventually became OMGUS (Office of Military Government,
United States) has ensured that much of the material remains untouched and unanalyzed.
It is the goal of this book to present and analyze some of the more significant documentary evidence produced during this period in order to provide a context within one can begin to understand how Germany’s media was changed and how it resulted in a mission that did not fail, but succeeded in creating a new Germany.
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Introduction
More than 65 years ago the victorious Allies set themselves the task of curing the psychological/political malady of the Germany. The idea that Germany was in some way “sick” had been advocated by my many in the United Stares and Great Britain for years before Hitler was even in a position to dream of what a Germany under his control might look like. Though one might be tempted to consider this to be a phenomenon that grew out of the Second World War and the Holocaust, metaphors referring to Germany as being a problem or “sick” predate the First World War. In the years leading up to the
First World War politicians and scholars in Britain made reference to the so-called
“German Problem.” Even in that early period they allude to this conclusion as being philosophically or even psychologically based. Charles Sarolea, in The Anglo-German
Problem , opines that the cause of German militarism and “perverted nationalism” lay in their Nietzschian “will to power” (351).
1
One of the most vociferous of those claiming that Germany as a nation suffered from a collective psychosis was Lord Robert Vansittart of Great Britain. Vansittart was the Chief Diplomatic Advisor to the British Government from 1938 onward. He was firm in his opposition to the National Socialists in Germany from the beginning. He published a prodigious number of articles in newspapers on the topic of the German problem. His American counterpart in describing Germany as psychologically diseased was Henry Morgenthau Jr. He was the American Secretary of the Treasury from January
1, 1934 until July 22, 1945 and advocated for Germany to be turned into an agrarian society with little or no industry. It should be noted that his image and name were used in the Nazi hate-film Der ewige Jude as a representative of the international conspiracy of Jewish bankers. For him, the war against Nazi Germany was a fairly personal issue, since he appears to have been specifically targeted as an enemy of National Socialism.
However, Morgenthau’s view of Germany had did not develop as a result of the Second
World War and personal attacks on him by Nazi Germany’s Propaganda Ministry.
Already towards the end of the First World War, in a 1918 editorial appearing in the
New York Times , Morgenthau is said to have “expressed his belief that the mental attitude of the German people could be changed for the better, but that it would take a nervous shock in the form of a crushing military defeat to do it.” However, at this point
Morgenthau still held that there was a fundamental distinction to be made between the
German leadership and the ordinary German citizen. But, he does refer to be necessity of the German mentality “to be restored to a condition of health.”
2
Though these sorts of opinions are expressed on an occasional basis throughout the period leading up to September 1939, it is 1943, when it looks as though Germany will lose the War, that a great deal of attention is focussed on Germany and its collective psychosis not only in the news media, but in books addressing the issue. It was during this period that Louis Nizer turned his attention to Germany’s postwar future in his 1944
1 London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1913, page 351.
2 “Morgenthau Would Chasten Germany,” New York Times , October 19,1918, p. 7.
3

publication, What to do with Germany . Nizer was a renowned English-born American lawyer, who, in his youth, “won a Government citation for his patriotic speeches during
Liberty Loan drives in World War I.” 3 While he himself did not advocate the extreme
“cure” that some did—he saw the occupation of Germany as being more like taking the
German people into “protective custody” 4
—he did provide a brief outline of some of the approaches to Germany that had gained traction in the United States, which he calls medicines without a cure: extermination and sterilization, selective breeding, political dismemberment, and compulsory migration.
5
It was not only the Americans and the British who saw the Germans as being psychologically afflicted as a nation. Gerhart Seger, a German Social Democrat who fled Germany after having been held at the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1933,
6 and Siegfried Marck,
7
a German Social Democratic journalist and academic born in
Breslau who fled Germany in 1933, added their opinions and solutions. They together conclude that:
Knowledge of the psychological structure of neurotic individuals helps us to understand the complications of a people’s spirit. The German mixture of contrasting neurotic complexes is explained by her history, which, unlike that of other nations, shows frequently alternating upward and downward trends. Periods of utter collapse interrupt those of highest power. The problem, To be or not to be? appears again and again in the course of her history with the accompanying alternative: Everything or Nothing. In individual psychology we would surmise that the neurotic person “arranges” these typical situations, but it is questionable whether such a definition is applicable to the relationship between the character and the destiny of a whole nation. We can rely on sober facts, however, when we contemplate the psychical effect of historical events upon the character of a people. Nietzsche once said that all Germans are born Hegelians, always in the making, never influenced by the happenings of today, but rather by those of the day before yesterday and the day after tomorrow.
8
While they do not come out and suggest that the collective German psyche is diseased, they do make a strong analogy between mental illness and the German people as a whole.
The foundational premise of those who believed that the Germans were in some way mentally ill, according to Vansittart, was that the “deep-seated German disease that
3 Obituary, New York Times , November 11, 1994.
4 Nizer 92.
5 Nizer 3-11.
6 In the United States Seger was an editor for a number of German newspapers and a much sought after speaker on the National Socialist regime.
7 Marck helped in the war effort in his capacity as an advisor and strongly influenced post-war policy in the United States toward Germany. He had a lengthy correspondence with Thomas Mann from
1939 to 1957. In a speech delivered to the annual congress of the Nazi Party on 13 September 1935,
Goebbels mentions Marck as a member of the “General Congress of the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviet of
Germany” that met on the 16 th of November 1918 with Marck representing the Army department.
8 Seger & Marck 15-16.
4

had been more than a century in the process of incubation” needed to be cured and that all Germans had been so deeply infected with National Socialism that one could only consider all of them as guilty of having waged war against democracy.
9 Vansittart believed that the only cure could be a thorough Umbildung of the German psyche as the result of a lengthy occupation.
10
There were, however, also those who took a more conciliatory approach to what was to be done with Germany after the war. For example, Harold Hurwitz outlines a middle ground, which nevertheless included many of the tough measures suggested by
Vansittart and Morgenthau. Others, however, like Ralph Franklin Keeling condemned any sort of hard-line approach towards the German people. He simply saw “the Allied program to re-educate the Germans [as] a case of one deluded group trying to disillusion another” (Keeling 132). He represented what John Gimbel describes as America's eventual policy in Germany as what was in America's national interest and not in the interest necessarily of the re-education or the democratization of Germany.
11
In this case, the interest was America protecting itself against the Soviet Union.
The initial American approach, dubbed the Morgenthau Plan, would have seen
Germany turned into an agrarian society, though this interpretation of Morgenthau's intentions has recently begun to be challenged.
12
It was eventually decided, as
Morgentau lost influence in Washington and the American commanders on the ground began to agitate for a less drastic approach, that the re-education process was to be more surgical in its approach. Moreover, it was quickly realized that tensions between the
Soviet Union and their erstwhile allies were escalating and that Germany needed to be more than an agrarian state to serve as an effective buffer between east and west.
While this seems to have been a rather abrupt about-face in terms of the
American policy in Germany, there was a considerable body of knowledge that had been accumulated during the war regarding a less overtly aggressive approach to reinventing
Germany. Hoping to have found the solution to what had been termed “the German
Problem,” the United States, together with Great Britain, the Soviet Union and France, not only set about disarming Germany materially, but psychologically. There was to be a complete laying bare of the German psyche, with the offending constituents being removed or render impotent.
Though the Allies had, at least on paper, decided on a unified effort, it soon became apparent that their own ideological differences, mistrust, and desire to assert their own will on post-war Europe ensured that they would go their separate ways in trying to establish a new Germany. The Soviet Union would pursue a path that was not particularly subtle, but was very quick in implementation and in many ways quite effective. This caused great concern among the British and American occupiers, who felt that they could easily lose the war for the German mind in 1945. France, on the other hand, had suffered the longest under German occupation and was more concerned
9 Cited in Dorn 485.
10 Cited in Dorn 485.
11 Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany , 321.
12 See Hönicke 1999.
5

with its own physical welfare. It proved to have little interest in curing Germany of its ills and concentrated on removing what wealth was left in Germany for its own benefit, but paid little mind to capturing the German soul.
This left only the British and the Americans to pursue a loosely unified effort, which on the surface appeared to move in lock step. However, even under rudimentary examination real differences in their approach are evident. The British took the tack of political warfare. If they managed to put the right gentlemen into places of appropriate authority, then the problem would solve itself. It was to follow the British system in which the elected officials were in some ways governed by, and captives of, their bureaucratic apparatus. The Americans, however, were to attempt Vansittart’s more thorough Umbildung of Germany, which began on a psychological niveau and involved a high level of social engineering.
The terms psychological and political are quite purposely used by the
Americans and the British. They denoted and described the respective Military
Government units that conducted the operations aimed at reducing the enemy’s will to fight. The Americans settled on the term psychological , which suggests that scientific methodology is at the heart of the activity. This resulted from their determination that some sort of psychological, developmental flaw in the collective psyche of being
German needed to be corrected. Furthermore, this deviancy could be remedied through the appropriate application of classical and operant conditioning. It is then not surprising to find the American occupation forces running camps, like the one at Bad Orb near
Frankfurt am Main, where staffs of psychiatrists and psychologists were employed to determine suitable candidates for employment in Germany’s postwar media.
The British used a more ambiguous term in designating their activities: political warfare . For them the problem lay with how Germans did things and governed themselves, rather than a fatal flaw in their character, though they also had a staff of psychiatrists advising their military and civil officials on how to approach issues with what was loosely termed the German mind. While one might not wish to place too much emphasis on the designations given to these units, the American Psychological Warfare
Division and the British Political Warfare Executive engaged in a lively debate during the war regarding the differences in how they viewed and approached the German problem. In the process it appears that they did learn from one another.
There was a similarity between how the Americans and British operated that may have been dictated by circumstances rather than planning. Both had to rely to a large extent on civilians to operate their programs. This caused greater difficulty for the
American occupation forces than for the British. The British were quite comfortable in having a mixture of civilians and military people working together in a command structure that tended to be a hybrid of military and civilian most of the time, with a civilian life of service following a stint in the military. This was a result of many of the individuals, whether civilian or military, having attended the same “public” schools and universities and simply knowing one another. The positive affect was that the British had a greater uniformity in the application of occupation policy.
6

The Americans tended to keep the command structure military, whether it involved civilians or not. That is, the officers running the programs were career or longterm military officers. They often did not understand what it was their “professors” were trying to accomplish. In fact, they reflected the attitude of their Military Governor,
Lucius Clay, who in his memoirs on his time spent as the American Military Governor in Germany remarked, “We had much advice from those who profess to know the socalled German mind. If it did exist, we never found it; German minds seemed to us to be remarkably like those elsewhere.”
13
There was thus a considerable disconnect between the goal oriented military officers in charge of enforcing regulations and the seemingly lax approach their civilian underlings exhibited. For this reason, one might at times note a certain dissonance between the ideal found in official policy and what was being done on the ground by individual officers charged with administering a program in a relatively remote part of Germany.
After the war the Psychological Warfare Division and the Political Warfare
Executive were redesignated as Information Control Division in the American sector and the Information Services Division in the British zone of control. Because the wartime units were not disbanded after the cessation of hostilities in Germany, but were simply retasked into their peacetime role with the entirety of the staff becoming part of the Military Government, they carried their wartime approach to German re-education with them into the postwar phase. While the following study will concentrate on the
American efforts, recourse will occasionally be taken to the British effort for illustrative purposes.
The American Psychological Warfare Division was redesignated the Information
Control Division (ICD) on 13 July 1945. With this, the official effort to cure the German malady began in earnest. There was, however, one further complication. Saul Padover, who was a Lt. Col. in the psychological warfare division from 1944 to 1945, notes that the Russians and Americans had an additional issue in dealing with the Germans that the
British and the French did not, which had absolutely nothing to do with the adequacies or inadequacies of any one of the policies or procedures during the occupation, but was the result of a deeply ingrained German attitude towards the Americans and Russians.
He notes that:
As a rule, Germans regard the British and the French as more or less on the same
Kultur level as them, and the Russians and the Americans as considerably below them. These opinions are deep-rooted and widespread and are not necessarily connected with the politics of nazism; they are part of the national folklore of
Germany. Consequently, they complicate the whole problem of re-education
(Padover [1946] 180).
This imbalance between how the Germans saw the Americans, as non-equals, might have led to considerable difficulties. The potential for German obstinacy, however, seems not to have developed. The Germans at this point were simply in no position to resist and could not deny the victors anything they asked for.
13 Clay 281.
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Organization and Personnel
Since organizational and personnel matters are so well described in Christoph
Weisz’s
OMGUS Handbuch this section will limit itself to peripheral items of significance and filling in qualitative details.
14
The American zone of control encompassed Bavaria, Hesse, Wuerttemberg-
Baden (now Baden-Württemberg), the Bremen enclave, and the U.S. Sector of Berlin.
Each of these had a full compliment of offices that dealt with the various administrative concerns in their region. Additionally, there were Military Government installations that provided overall direction for the entire zone of control, with the nominal headquarters being located in Berlin, with true operational control in and around Frankfurt am Main.
Of particular interest is the manner in which the ICD related to the Military Governor in the American zone. While other divisions of the Military Government were subject to all of the bureaucratic structures that one might expect when one combines military with governmental functions, the ICD could circumvent this structure due to its policy development being independent of the normal chain of command. This gave the
Division and its personnel incredible latitude and freedom of operation. In essence it could determine its own mandate without having to go through the normal chain of command, answering only to the Military Governor of their sector.
Until December 11, 1945, the ICD remained a Special Staff Division within
USFET (US Forces, European Theater) when its operation was transferred to OMGUS
(Office of Military Government for Germany, United States), though Hurwitz reports that the ICD leadership managed to protect it from being integrated with the Military
Government until February 28, 1946.
15 Nothing changed in the way that the ICD operated on a daily basis. It did, however, represent a caesura with respect to ICD operation focussing on military security and marked the beginning of the implementation of long-term plans for how information services would be turned over to the Germans. OMGUS was organized with Governors for each of the Länder under its control. The ICD units responsible for each of the
Länder
or enclaves were directly under the authority of the Land Governor, thus mimicking the structure for the entire sector. However, the ICD units responsible for the Länder also answered directly to the
Zone Governor through the Director of the Office of Military Government for Germany
Information Control Service, Brigadier General Robert A. McClure, who reported directly to the Zonal Military Governor, Lt. General Lucius Clay. This ensured the possibility of a coordinated development of ICD policy, a situation that did not exist for any of the other divisions such as finance, legal, transport, or manpower. Indeed, this put a great deal of power into the hands of McClure, who had previously commanded the
Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary
Force (PWD/SHAEF).
14 For a complete record of the American Military Government’s structure in Germany see, Weisz,
Christoph. OMGUS Handbuch. Die amerikanische Militärregierung in Deutschland 1945-1949 . Munich:
R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1995.
15 Hurwitz 329.
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Of further significance is the fact that the ICD remained a military staff division despite the fact that it had numerous civilian staff members. While on the surface this might not have made much of a difference in the day-to-day operations of the ICD, it did have the effect of maintaining military concerns as central to its operation as well as operating in a hierarchical authoritative fashion, which might not have been the case if it had been allowed to operate in a quasi-civilian fashion, as was the case with the British.
The ICD itself was divided into two groups. One saw to the staff work, while the other oversaw the operations of the division.
The staff group was divided into three units: Plans and Directives, Intelligence and Liaison, and Administration and Personnel. The work of this last group is selfexplanatory. Every organization needs a means of ensuring that it has the staff necessary to carry out its mission. The Plans and Directives group saw to the work of preparing plans and policies for the ICD and then saw that the appropriate directives were sent out to the operational units. In addition, it coordinated its activities with other units within
OMGUS. The Intelligence and Liaison group was responsible for the gathering of information necessary for the operation of the ICD. It also ensured that information was exchanged with other agencies within OMGUS and ensured that communication channels remained open with the other Allied Military Government organizations. It also played a vital part in the screening of individuals wishing to be involved in
Germany’s cultural industries.
The operating group was comprised of those units that had direct contact with the German populous and ensured that the plans and directives produced by the staff were carried out. It was compartmentalized into four media groups under ICD control:
1.
Press
2.
Publications
3.
Radio
4.
Film, theatre and music.
In addition, there was a fifth component called the Business Management Branch.
The Press Control Branch formulated policy regarding the operation of newspapers and news services in Germany. As the indigenous newspapers were reconstituted, the Press Control Branch not only provided guidance, but also exercised control over individual newspaper organizations. While the term guidance is sufficiently nebulous to mean most anything that an ICD officer might say to a perspective news publisher, the term control is not quite so vague. Both terms are used in in the documents produced by the Press Control Branch. Semantics aside, ICD officers had the power to shut down a newspaper if they so wished. Though it does not appear that this power was used capriciously, there are instances where individual publishers, or members of a publishing partnership, were banned from working in the newspaper industry in any way, even after they had received initial approval from the ICD and even after they had been cleared through the denazification tribunals.
The Publications Control Branch was quite different from Press Control Branch.
While there was considerable pressure to begin producing newspapers in the Press
Control Branch, there was no such pressure in the area of producing German books and
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magazines. The Publications Control Branch dealt with a medium that was far more permanent and perhaps more dangerous than the press control division. A questionable press story might be forgotten the next day, while a literary work, not produced in a format that is seen as being disposable, might have a longer lasting effect and might become relatively permanent over time. For this reason, considerable time and effort was spent on formulating policy in regard to who could publish and what materials were appropriate for publication and there was thus little pressure on the Publications Control
Branch to produce new material quickly. There was also the option of translating appropriate works from English before suitable German production was realized. It was also this group that undertook the greatest scrutiny of its applicants, because they were envisioned as having the longest lasting impact on how Germany’s “mind” was to develop.
As with the previous two and branches, the Radio Control Branch was responsible for the technical and editorial supervision of this medium. It was perhaps in the area of radio broadcasting that some of the most heated debates in regard to who controlled the medium took place. More than once, the two major political parties in
Germany, the SPD and the CDU, took umbrage at the individual chosen to run a particular radio service. While these discussions were part of the environment of the other media, the recognition that radio at the time was the most powerful way of reaching the average person, who would now be able to freely cast their vote, added a tremendous political urgency in the new Germany.
Film, Theater and Music fell under the governance of a single branch. This had as much to do with the fact that these areas were not considered as politically sensitive as the other three, as it did with them somehow being related to one another and using the same facilities. An important aspect of this branch was the fact that it also controlled the importation of films from foreign countries; such as, Great Britain, Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United States. One of the resulting challenges was access to hard currency with which they could obtain these foreign films. A further difficulty was deciding which films were appropriate for showing in Germany after the war. One particular film that was not allowed to be brought into Germany was Oliver Twist
(1948), in which Sir Alec Guinness played Fagan. It was thought, given Germany’s recent history, that the German public was not ready for that type of portrayal of a Jew.
It also led to some rather embarrassing questions being posed by some of the civilian officers about whether the Allies had the right to stand in judgement over the antisemitism of the German people. A further film that was singled out personally by
General McClure, as inappropriate for German audiences, was The Maltese Falcon , which he felt tended to confirm the propaganda produced by Goebbels during the war.
16
Furthermore any films that presented mob activity during the twenties and thirties received a blanket ban. While the explanation used by the ICD was that they did not want the United States portrayed in a poor light, the parallel between the violence of the
American mobster and the Nazi street thugs may also not have eluded them.
16 RG 260 10/11-3/1 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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It was in the final group, the Business Management Branch, where the finances of the ICD operations were taken care of. The entire operation was run in a manner that was intended to generate income to support the operation of the ICD, since it did not receive a budget allocation to produce its own material. Thus the ICD had its own bank accounts filled with money that did not come through regular military channels and for which it did not have to account for through the normal offices. This money could be used at the discretion of the ICD to support the projects it thought worthwhile. They were thus able to pay for copyright permissions in much the same way that any other commercial publishing house, radio station or newspaper might. Not only was the ICD an independent structure within OMGUS, but, perhaps more importantly, it was also to large degree financially independent.
One of the greatest problems that the ICD was faced was the requirement to perform functions that were hardly military in nature. The ICD needed to maintain a separate self-contained unit to carry out technical operational responsibilities associated with restoring information services in Germany, which involved the repair of printing facilities and radio broadcasters. This unit was located at Bad Nauheim. It was comprised of technical and professional people in all fields of information services, who were both civilian and military. It was in this unit that a great deal of native German expertise was at first put to use.
DISCCs (District Information Services Control Command) were located in each of the districts of the American zone of control. Each of these DISCCs replicated the divisional structure. However, numerous specialist units, such as those that might focus on a certain type of music, were stationed in the ten largest cities in the American Zone of Control and the Bremen enclave.
The Guiding Hand
The commander of the ICD was General McClure.
17
Born in Mattoon, Illinois, on March 4, 1897, he received his education at the Kentucky Military Institute. He served in the Philippine constabulary between July 13, 1916 and August 9, 1917 and was then commissioned in the regular army as a Second Lieutenant of Infantry.
Promotions came quickly for the young officer. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on
August 9, 1917 and to Captain (temporarily) on June 20th, 1918. On July 1, 1920 his promotion was made permanent. In the inter-war years, as one might expect, promotions came slowly, as was the case with most other officers. He was made a Major on August
1st, 1935 and then Lieutenant Colonel on August 9, 1940. A little more than a year later he was temporarily raised to the rank of Colonel on Dec. 24, 1941 and on March 15,
1942 to Brigadier General (temporary).
McClure’s first posting was at Fort William McKinley, Philippine Islands, with the 31 st
Infantry, until November 1917, which had been formed in the Phillipines on
August 16, 1916. He then joined the 15 th Infantry at Tientsin and Tongshaw, China. It was here that he had his first experience with Military/Civilian government, since it was
17 The brief Curriculum Vitae recorded here is based on one found in the files relating to the history of the ICD held at the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. RG 260 Box 69.
11

the task of the US military in China to disarm troops fleeing the White Russian forces.
He later joined the 27th Infantry in Manila and saw service in Siberia during the Russian
Revolution. Though this is not mentioned in any of the CV’s available on McClure, the
27th Infantry was encamped in the vicinity of Vladivostok, Russia in 1918 and 1919.
Later, he was transferred to a new regiment, the 19th Infantry, and was stationed to
Camp Sherman, Ohio, in October 1920. During this tour, his regiment served on a special assignment at Borderland, West Virginia, in the latter part of 1920.
He returned to Camp Sherman as exchange officer in January 1921, and in the following October joined the 29 th
Infantry at Fort Benning, Georgia. Here he enrolled in the infantry school in October 1924 and graduated the following June. One year later he also graduated from the cavalry school, Fort Riley, Kansas.
From July 1926 to September 1930 McClure served as an instructor at the
Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia. He was graduated from the two-year course at the Command and General Staff School, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in June 1932, and was assigned as Professor of Military Science and Tactics at Riverside Military
Academy, Gainesville, Georgia.
McClure entered the Army War College, Washington, D.C., in August 1935, and was graduated in June 1936, remaining at the Army War College as executive officer.
From July 16th, 1940, until August 2nd, 1941, he was personnel officer, G-1, of the
Fourth Army, with headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco, California. He was then assigned as military attaché in London, England on March 24, 1942 and in June
1942 he took on additional duties as military attaché to the governments in exile for:
Greece, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Norway and Yugoslavia.
In September 1942 he was designated intelligence officer, G-2, Allied Force
Headquarters, Office of the Chief of Staff, as chief of the information and censorship section. He returned to the European theater of operations in November 1943 and was assigned to COSSAC (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander). In April 1944 he was moved to G-6 (psychological warfare), SHAEF. He was given additional duty as director, Information Control Service, U.S. Group Control Counsel in Germany, in
March 1945. Upon the disbandment of SHAEF, he was Director of Information
Control, OMGUS.
McClure’s abilities were highly regarded by his peers. Bruce Lockhart, a former member of the British Political Warfare Executive, who could be acerbic in his post-war assessments of colleagues,
18
was quite complimentary toward McClure’s abilities in running the PWD and singled out McClure’s ability to foster cooperation between the
British and American forces.
19
McClure was also recognized by the United States for his contribution to the fighting. For his service in Tunisia, where, by his own admission the
18 Lockhart was particularly critical of Sefton Delmar and engaged in a particularly bitter war of words with this erstwhile colleague.
19 R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning , London: Putnam, 1947. p.295.
12

fledgling PWD was operating on a trial and error basis,
20
he was awarded the
Distinguish Service Medal in 1943, with the following citation:
For exceptionally meritorious distinguish services in a position of great responsibility. During the Tunisian Campaign, General McClure was charged with the formulation and direction public relations policy of the Allied Forces... conduct of propaganda and operation of censorship... he created a closely integrated American-British organization... developed and maintained harmonious relationships with press of the United Nations... largely responsible for effectiveness of the United Nations propaganda activities in territory of
North Africa operations... in occupied territories and the combat zone...
21
He was also later awarded the oak leaf cluster to the Distinguished Service Medal for his work in organizing SHAEF’s PWD.
McClure followed the orders he had received from Eisenhower in every detail.
Eisenhower’s instructions were to “rigidly control” all aspects of Germany’s information services. McClure’s tight control of the ICD can be observed in the memos that emanated from his office, which often involved themselves in minute policy details, which will become apparent in later examples of how he directed the ICD’s operations.
While he allowed for a great deal of operational freedom at the District Information
Services Control Command (DISCC) level, which sometimes has been interpreted as representing a lack of control of the ICD organization, he expected policy to be adhered to closely.
An interesting point in regard to McClure’s directives concerning ICD policy is that it appears that he took little time to draft his own policies. He gave this task to the civilian experts in his office. Almost every memo coming from his office refers to
McClure in the third person, though they take care to note that McClure himself had approved the policy or memo. In this way he was able to utilize his civilian experts, while at the same time maintaining the authority of the Military Government in the
ICD’s activities.
Invoking this dual authority, civilian and military, was not as unusual as it might at first seem. As noted earlier, there was at times considerable friction within the ICD due to its strange mixture of professional military personnel and civilian experts. The military people often found the civilians, who at home were presidents of large corporations, university professors, or Hollywood celebrities, to be undisciplined. On the other hand, the civilian personnel found that the professional military people did not always share their enthusiasm for an obscure collection of compositions that should be published or recorded.
22
The mixing of forms of authority in the memos, civilian expertise with the military authority, insured that whether the recipient was a member of the military or a civilian expert the message it carried would be respected.
20 Alfred H. Paddock, U.S. Army Special Warfare. Its Origins , 2 nd Edition, Lawrence: University
Press of Kansas, 2002. p. 12.
21 NARA, RG 260, Box 69.
22 Breitenkamp 42. He notes that the military personnel took little interest in the day-to-day working of the ICD.
13

McClure was able to assemble a team that was truly distinguished in various aspects of the communications profession. William S. Paley served as a colonel with the
PWD and the ICD in the capacity of Deputy Chief of the Information Control Division.
Paley was also the President of the Columbia Broadcasting System from 1928 to 1946 and then served as chair of CBS from 1946 to 1983. Prior to this his Deputy Chief had been Charles Douglas Jackson who was Vice-President of Time-Life Inc. with whom
McClure maintained a friendship long after the war had ended.
Another officer in McClure’s operation was Billy Wilder, who had returned to
Germany, as a civilian with the rank of colonel, to serve under CBS president William
Paley. During this time, Wilder wrote a 400-page manual to help reconstruct the
German film industry. Upon his return to Hollywood he directed the political satire A
Foreign Affair (1948), which served as a commentary on the American occupation in
Berlin. Its plot tells the story of a congressional committee’s visit to occupied Berlin to investigate G.I. morals. The idea for the film had already be percolating in Wilder’s mind while in Germany, which is attested to by the flurry of memos that were circulated regarding the initial proposal submitted by Wilder to the ICD regarding the film.
23
In fact, McClure himself took interest in the project and convened a meeting with the exclusive topic being the content of Wilder’s movie.
Not all of the senior personnel had the high public profiles of Paley, Jackson or
Wilder. Many of them were simply educators who had studied in Germany and had varying degrees of facility with the German language. Perhaps the most significant of these was Dr. Douglas Waples, who was a professor of social psychology at the
University of Chicago and served as chief of the US sector in Berlin and was one of the few who were associated with the ICD almost throughout its existence. Among other things, he planned and helped execute the move of a significant number of important publishing houses from Leipzig to Wiesbaden in May and June of 1945. This in itself ensured that the American zone would have a good starting point for its work in the reeducation of the German people.
There was, however, a further sub-grouping within the ICD. These were the refugees who had escaped Germany and found themselves in the employ of the PWD and then the ICD, those who had been prisoners of war deemed to be sufficiently anti-
Nazi in their political leaning to be entrusted with important re-education projects after the war. Billy Wilder could certainly be considered one of the former. The latter, however, for the most part, remained on the shadowy fringes, choosing not to stand in the limelight and not calling much attention to themselves.
Basic Policy
In one of the initial attempts to encapsulate the history of the ICD there is an explanatory note included regarding the state of primary documents relating to the basic policies of the ICD. It reported that “owing to an almost complete lack of documents relating to Information Control Policy, this section [the section in the manuscript dealing
23 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, RG 260 10/11-3/1.
14

with policy formation] is intended merely as an outline in its present form.”
24
This note reveals that 1) OMGUS and the ICD had not fully comprehended the enormity or scope of the task they had before them, i.e. trying to completely change the mode of thinking of an entire nation, 2) that the death of Roosevelt and the subsequent falling out of favour of the Morgenthau group in Washington created a policy vacuum at a critical time, and 3) the officers on the ground in Germany were often left to develop their own policies or deduce them from documents such as the Potsdam Agreement or the JCS
1067. All three of these factors may have led to at least the appearance of a lack of consistency or coordinated mode of operating in the field of information control in
Germany by the Americans. This would then have been further exacerbated by the large number of were considered to be “unsoldierly” civilian types, who were members of the
ICD.
In the absence of prepared policies, the ICD simply reached for that which was readily at hand. The basis for all subsequent information control policy was the Potsdam
Agreement. What flowed from this were the two cornerstones of ICD activity: “The first was to inculcate the German people with a sense of their own war and atrocity guilt. The second was to instil in the Germans the values of a democratic way of life, with the establishment of eventual freedom of expression.”
25
Here one finds that there are actually three policy positions in operation. Two of them are overt: 1) the Germans as a nation were guilty for the events of the Second World War, and 2) they needed to be provided a democratic model through the information media. The third is covert. The
Germans were a defeated nation with no right, at least initially, to freedom of expression. In any case, what is made clear from the outset is that the Germans in the
American sector would not be able to express themselves as they wished, but would express themselves in ways that the American occupation thought appropriate.
Accompanying these official policies were a number of underlying assumptions that guided the activities of the ICD in Germany. The details of how these assumptions were reached will be discussed further below and are perhaps best summarized by
Harold Hurwitz, when he suggests that the four powers in control of postwar Germany and charged with introducing democracy through their re-education programs had the following negative views of the German mind: a) Germans preferred an authoritarian structure, b) Germans preferred a hierarchical caste society, c) the Germans tended to be disposed towards collectivism.
26 This in turn, according to Hurwitz, predisposed the
American reformers and re-educators to emphasize liberal and egalitarian aspects of their own tradition.
27
24 This document will be referred to as ICD History II. RG 260.
25 ICD History II, 14.
26 Hurwitz 323.
27 Hurwitz 323 – 324.
15

The State of Germany’s Psychological Well-being and its Physicians
In a 1943 panel discussion for the Saturday Review of Literature , Horace Kallen observed, “The convalescence of the bled and broken world into a healthy new one will be determined largely by how its medicine-men interpret the German national character.”
28
What these comments emphasize is the trust that the American policymakers, or at least those who had some influence on the policymakers, had in the psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists that made up the various think tanks that provided the OWI,
29
OSS,
30
and the PWD and their analysis of the collective German psyche. It was individuals from these academic and medical disciplines, who would have a tremendous influence on how the initial policies towards Germany and the Germans were formulated. Though, as already indicated in the comments by Lucius Clay, some would rely on their own direct experience rather than the opinions of the “professors.”
Throughout the Second World War the Americans made numerous attempts at understanding what made the Germans tick as a nation. The most important of these,
“Future of Germany. Report of a Conference on Germany after the War,” was completed in 1944.
31
Though it was initially classified as secret and only circulated among the upper echelons of those in charge of the Anglo-American war effort, it was later published under the same name.
32
It attempted to render an understanding of what it called the “regularities in German national character” as well as offer “some specific applications of the regularities in German national character.” It also gave consideration to how controlled institutional change in a conquered Germany might be achieved and possible reactions of the American people to such an approach.
The study was taken quite seriously and echoes of its findings can be found in many of the directives issued from the various divisions of OMGUS. More significantly, the sentiments expressed in the final report reverberate in the field reports that were sent to their respective divisions. The “Future of Germany” formed the basis of not only how the American occupiers viewed and treated the Germans, but played a significant role in shaping the British reaction to the Germans as well. In February 1945, Lieutenant
Colonel Henry Dicks, a psychiatrist who handled many important and delicate issues related to psychological warfare for the British wrote an analysis of the “Future of
Germany” for the British War Office that was distributed to the appropriate divisions of the British Control Commission for Germany.
33
28 Kallen 4.
29 Office of War Information. It was established on June 13, 1942 by executive order and served to coordinate information released regarding the war. This included news releases, radio broadcasts and movies among other things.
30 Office of Strategic Services. The approximate equivalent of the British Special Operations Executive and precursor to the CIA.
31 Public Records Office, FO 1049/72. From here on referred to as “The Future of Germany.”
32 INSERT REFERENCE
33 Public Records Office, FO 1049/72. Colonel Dicks was charged with the care of Rudolf Hess during a portion of his wartime captivity and also later wrote a lengthy article entitled “Personality Traits and
National Socialist Ideology” ( Human Relations 3 [1950], 111-154) in which he publishes findings that
16

The members of the conference reads like a veritable who’s who of the
American medical, psychiatric, and social sciences of the time.
The following organizations were officially represented at the conference:

The American Association on Mental Deficiency

American Branch of the International League Against Epilepsy

American Neurological Association

American Orthopsychiatric Association

American Psychiatric Association

American Society for Research in Psychosomatic Problems

The National Committee for Mental Hygiene.
34
Individual members of the conference were:

Theodore Abel, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University.

Franz Alexander, M.D., Director, The Institute of Psychoanalysis, Chicago.

Alvan L. Barach, M.D., Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine, Columbia
University.

Lauretta Bender, M.D., Senior Psychiatrist, in Charge of the Children's Ward of
Bellevue Hospital, New York.

Sidney Biddle, M.D., Philadelphia.

Carl Binger, M.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry, Cornell Medical
College.

Richard M. Brickner, M.D., Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.

Lyman Bryson, Professor of Education, Columbia University.

D. Ewen Cameron, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, McGill University.

Frank S. Churchill, M.D., Former Physician of Juvenile Court, Chicago and
Former President of the American Paediatric Society.

Richard Crutchfield, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Swathmore College.

Lawrence K. Frank, Chairman, Joint Committee on Post-War Planning.

Frank Fremont-Smith, M.D., New York.

Thomas M. French, M.D., Associate Director of the Institute for Psychoanalysis,
Chicago.

M.R. Harrowe-Erickson, Research Associate, Department of Neuro-psychiatry,
University of Wisconsin.

Ives Hendrick, M.D., Boston. resulted from the study of German prisoners of war in British custody. He had been instructed by the
Directorate of Military Intelligence to undertake “any suitable studies which might help in the understanding of the enemies’ mind and intentions and in the conduct of psychological warfare.” (p. 111)
34 It is noteworthy that The National Committee for Mental Hygiene advocated strongly for eugenics programs and called for “Legislation denying the privilege of parenthood to the manifestly unfit” ( Hand
Book of the Mental Hygiene Movement and Exhibit [1913] 17).
17


Edward J. Humphreys, M.D., Director of Research and Training in Mental
Deficiency, Michigan State Hospital Commission.

Marion E. Kenworthy, M.D., Director, Department of Mental Hygiene and
Professor of Psychiatry, New York School of Social Work.

Lawrence S. Kubie, M.D., Sub-committee on Psychiatry, National Research
Council, Washington, D.C.

Bertram Lewin. M.D., New York.

Lawson G. Lowrey, M.D., Editor, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.

Marion McBee, Executive Secretary, New York City Committee on Mental
Hygiene.

Margaret Mead, Associate Curator of Anthropology, American Museum of
Natural History.

Adolf Meyer, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, John Hopkins University.

John A.P. Millet, M.D., Chairman, Emergency Committee of Neuro-Psychiatric
Societies of New York City.

Gardner Murphy, Professor of Psychology, College of the City of New York.

Harry A. Overstreet, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, College of the City of
New York.

Talcott Parsons, Professor of Sociology, Harvard University.

Tracy J. Putnam, M.D., Professor of Neurology, College of Physicians and
Surgeons, Columbia University.

George Stevenson, M.D., Medical Director, The National Committee for Mental
Hygiene.
Of those listed as participants, some would take leading roles in the planning of
Germany’s postwar convalescence. A few would even take active part in the ICD during the occupation. For example, Theodore Abel, Professor of Sociology at Columbia
University, had gone to Germany in 1934 and had collected some 700 political autobiographies by Nazi party members. He then used these as a basis for his book Why
Hitler Came into Power , which was published shortly before the outbreak of the Second
World War. Richard Brickner, an Assistant Professor of Clinical Neurology at Columbia
University, who is still quoted in regard to research conducted during the war on the intellectual functions of the frontal lobe, also wrote a psychiatric study on Germany entitled Is Germany Curable?
A further participant was Margret Meade, who was then
Associate Curator of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History and expert on primitive societies. Though she had no real practical experience with
Germany, it was felt that her ground-breaking work in anthropological research and photography allowed her to study conditions in Germany from a distance and pass some of these techniques on to the conference. In all, there were 30 full members of the conference and another 30 consultants and guests.
18

The study makes the usual claims of individual variation within a group and that it speaks of Germany as a whole rather than individual Germans. One of its most telling findings is that of the dichotomy between the Catholics and Protestants in Germany. The report concluded that Catholicism represented a wider view of the world than
Protestantism, which was more inward looking and isolated. However, it does mitigate this somewhat by suggesting that the findings were not entirely conclusive and warranted further study. It also made the delineation between northern and southern
Germans. It came to the conclusion that the German problem lay in the militarism of the northern Germany, ignoring that the Nazi movement’s roots were in he south. However, there was acknowledgement that such a finding was “too heavily male-typed to provide adequate interpretations for females.” Whatever its flaws might have been, it served as the fundamental way of looking at Germany for the ICD and most of the other American occupation establishments.
The first regularity in the German character that the conference document points out is the preoccupation that Germans appeared to have with status. The example the study provides concludes that Germans, when they meet someone for the first time, are preoccupied with the task of discerning where this person ranks in relation to their own social position. It was suggested, if a person of authority spoke with an individual of lower status in a manner that was too familiar, that this would be disconcerting, because it destroyed the hierarchy upon which the lower class individual’s own status depended.
It was further pointed out that once the Allies had gained the status of military victor, that they do nothing to depreciate that status, because it would in turn depreciate the status of the one who has acknowledged defeat. They suggest that forceful behaviour, while considered bullying in an American context, would not necessarily be viewed as such by the Germans. This technique is evident in correspondence that the ICD undertook with Germans of all ranks.
The report clearly employs Freudian techniques in trying to understand the dynamics of a German family:
[The German] can never rest secure in his father, because his father is not in control, but part of a status structure. The mother images are based on the role the mother plays vis-à-vis the father and vis-à-vis the child, within the house. When the father is away the mother is a loving companion , 35 when the father enters, the mother betrays the child to the father, and the mother, as treated by the father, finally becomes a suffering mother in the child’s eyes, and so is reaccepted, again becoming a loving mother, etc. As defender of the suffering mother, the child is vis-à-vis the father, etc. Double and multiple identifications are offered to the child continuously.
36
The report further concludes that the German is taught to move between the submissive role and the dominant role quite easily. Whether we consider this to be a good
35 Emphasis in the original.
36 “The Future of Germany” 18.
19

psychological analysis today is irrelevant, this is the information the ICD officers were given, and, at least initially, the Germans tended to bear out this prediction. In the reports from the DISCC offices one often reads that the Germans had been acting according to the expected stereotype in a situation where the officer needed to assert his authority.
The conference warned that American military personnel were going to encounter two types of Germans:
Type-A, who is
Emotional
Idealistic
Active
Romantic
They may be constructive or destructive
Anti-social
Type-B, who is
Orderly
Hard-working
Hierarchy-preoccupied
Methodical
Submissive
Gregarious
Materialistic
The type-A’s, they concluded, were the result of an indulgent mother and the type-B’s from an authoritarian father and a mother that preferred the father, which left the child to deal with abandonment issues. This method of analysing the German character went even further in its conclusions. It suggested “nazism made possible more type-A behaviour after adolescence than any previous regime.”
37
Interestingly, many of the stereotypes listed are still associated with the Germans today, even if the psychological jargon has been dropped.
Individual ICD officers were charged with the responsibility of making certain that only those Germans with the positive aspects of the German character were employed in the nation’s cultural industry and those with a preponderance of, or even just one or two, negative traits were sidelined during the re-education and reconstruction of Germany. This was to be accomplished through rigorous psychological examinations of those who wished to take leading roles in Germany’s cultural life, with the criteria for approval being set remarkably high. In fact, the interrogations conducted by the ICD at
Bad Orb reveal that German applicants who were thought to have been dominated by a parent at some point in their life, and had not shown appropriate resistance to the
37 “The Future of Germany” 20.
20

“overbearing” parent, were turned down as potential publishers even though all of the other indicators were positive.
38
The German attitude toward history was also identified as a significant and problematic aspect of the German character. The conference study concluded that the
German did not “handle the past as a fixed and irrevocable sequence of events, but as a series of events, each one of which may recur in a timeless, symbolic structure, so that in a way, Germans may be fighting the Thirty Years War, Napoleon, and World Wars I and II and III all at once.”
39
The report goes on to suggest that employing psychiatrists in the rewriting of German history textbooks would be helpful in terms of mitigating some of the paranoia that existed in how Germans taught history, which portrayed a
Germany under constant threat. This, in the opinion of the report, led to a very weak development of a sense of guilt in the German people, which they apparently had not seen in the German people before, because their “views of Germany [were] so heavily coloured by those who have rejected German culture or been rejected by it, and who have not been able to live within its definitions.”
40
These people being the refugees who had escaped Nazi Germany before the war.
The duality of the German character, as outlined above in the Type-A and -B personalities, needed to be treated or cured in the view of the conference report.
Furthermore, these peculiar personality types were evident in the preponderance of the
German people and that it was the fault of this duality in the German character that caused the repetitive outbreaks of German sadistic aggression against other people. The conference panel prescribed that the Germans needed to decrease the frustration of the
A-types at critical points in their lives while at the same time strengthening the egos of the B-types so that their feeling of being attacked and the need for them to cling to status could be eliminated. The report further recommended that the occupation assist in developing a character which could be considered “genuinely inter-personal.”
41
However, while the conference identifies these problems, it does not offer specific solutions. These are left to the individual practitioners to workout.
One of the conclusions of the conference was that the Germans have an underdeveloped sense of guilt. This aspect of the reports seems to have been taken quite seriously by the Morgenthau group and thus the policy-makers for Germany’s occupation. Instilling a sense of collective guilt in the German people became a top priority of not only the ICD, but a preoccupation of almost all of the separate divisions of OMGUS.
Studies of the German psyche continued as part of the ICD’s activities. The denazification unit of the ICD undertook “special studies” of the now defeated Germans in an “[attempt] to build up a body of scientific information concerning the German
38 Bad Orb, located approximately 50 kms. east of Frankfurt am Main, was the American base were intensive, week-long, interviews were conducted with license applicants by intelligence officers, political interrogators, medical doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists.
39 “The Future of Germany” 21.
40 ibid 21.
41 Ibid 22.
21

mind.”
42
It was a special project that consisted of a prominent American psychiatrist, a prominent American psychologist, and two sociological anthropologists. The document does not further identify those involved in the project. Their task was to analyze the
German mind in relation to the effects of environment on political attitudes.
43
The psychiatrist and psychologist devised a set of tests that they thought would reveal the “relative denazification of German youth, German Women, ex-soldiers and so on,” while the anthropologists “made a detailed field study covering German community and home life.”
44
In one of these studies they asked German children to “write a composition on what they hoped for the political future of Germany.”
45
Their conclusion was that Nazi ideas were still being taught in the homes. Unfortunately, more is not known about this project, because the footnotes in History II indicate that this item was not to be used in the final documentation about the ICD, because the supporting material for this project was already missing in 1946. However, it appears that the information was taken from an undated ICD report for visiting publishers, which also appears to have been lost.
Blacklists
Edward Breitenkamp, in his early study of the effect of information control on
German authors and publishers, notes that the ICD used various lists to determine the suitability of an individual to fill a role in the cultural machinery of post-war Germany.
However, the existence of these lists seemed to be controversial. Breitenkamp notes that these lists were not for general distribution, though the four occupying powers did exchange lists on a somewhat regular basis. The closest relationship in this regard was that between the Americans and the British, who assiduously honoured one another’s lists of banned individuals. This point, however, appears to be contradicted in History II, where it states that “[t]he Information Control Division furnished black lists to the other three powers, but received no information in return.”
46
In this particular case it is most likely an error on the part of the compiler of History II, since there is mention of these lists in the minutes of the meeting of the quadpartite Information Services, and British lists do appear in the American archival records. Evidence of this being the case is readily available in the ICD files.
47
However, this may indeed also have been the case of with the Russians and the French.
The ICD approached the task of cataloguing and classifying performers, publisher and filmmakers, to mention but a few of the categories, with thoroughness.
Evidence of their meticulousness may be found in the “White, Grey, and Black List for
Information Control Purposes” dated November 1, 1946, which was a supplement to the initial list created in August 1, 1946, though there was already a preliminary list created
42 History II, 34 (NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 69).
43 Ibid. 35.
44 Ibid. Emphasis in the original.
45 Ibid.
46 History II, 27.
47 RG 260 5/268-2/17 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
22

in November of 1944.
48
The classification criteria were initially set out in December 21,
1945 by Robert C. Martindale, who was acting Chief of the Intelligence section of the
ICD and a civilian serving with the Military Government. The new criteria superseded those put in place December 1, 1945, which in turn replaced a policy that was announced on October 1, 1945. It appears that there was an extremely fluid situation in regard to who might be licensed. However, it seems that the December 1945 set of guidelines was the final authoritative iteration.
This does not mean that there may not have been a certain amount of “fudging” going on in the creation of these lists. History II indicates that “[t]the task of denazification was complicated by the pressure on the Intelligence Branch to lower standards so that information services could be turned over to the Germans.”
49
Further evidence of this may be found in the hiring of Germans to run the radio services in the
American Zone of Control. Allegations were made that the Americans favoured those who had a right-wing slant, with the implication that they were Nazi sympathizers, in the appointments to the leading positions within the German Radio media.
50
In some respects this was a red herring used by supporters of the SPD to try to establish themselves in crucial media roles that were to help shape Germany’s future political direction.
By November 1946 there were still some ICD district offices using the older standards. This is apparent from the explicit manner in which the change from the older six category system needed to be noted. The ICD had pared the number of possible classification from six to five. Instead of being classified A, B, C, D, E, or F applicants were categorized as either White, Grey, or Black, with White and Grey being further subdivided.
Those classified as being “White” were sorted into A’s and B’s. A’s needed to have an impeccable record, which warranted licensing in the fields of press, publishing, major theatrical or musical enterprises. They were considered suitable for leading positions. The individual had to be determined as not having been a collaborator with the Nazis nor a beneficiary of Nazism. In addition, having been a member of one of the following organizations did not preclude a White-A designation:
Reichsbund der deutschen Beamten
NSV
Reichsrundfunkkammer
Reichspresskammer
DAF
Reichskammer der bildenden Künste
Deutsche Jaegerschaft
NS Rechtswahrerbund
KDF
NSKOV
Deutsche Studentenschaft
Reichsschriftumskammer
Reichstheaterkammer
Reichsfilmkammer
48 NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 69. The author has been able to identify six lists that ammended the previous versions. The last was issued in March of 1947. In total there are approximately
14000 individuals on those lists, who had applied for either licensing or registration in the postwar
German media in the US zone.
49 History II, 27.
50 The Americans were not the only ones to suffer through such allegations. The British experienced similar difficulties with NDR in Hamburg.
23

Reichsluftschutzbund
Reichsbund deutscher Familie
NS Reichsbund für Leibesübungen
NS Bund deutscher Technik
NS Lehrerbund
Potential “White A” Organizations 1
Reichsmusikkammer
Deutsches Rotes Kreuz
Reichsarbeitsdienst (if compulsory; if vocational, then Grey C not acceptable)
Deutsches Frauenwerk
Reichsdozentenschaft
However, rank in these organizations indicated Party membership and only allowed a ranking of Grey acceptable or lower.
White-B’s were suitable for licensing or employment in leading positions of all media except in the fields of press, publications, or film production. This initial differentiation shows which of the areas the ICD were to consider the most sensitive areas of cultural activity in terms of forming future public opinion. This classification indicated that the applicant had not been a member of the NSDAP or affiliates, except for the above listed organizations and the following additional organizations:
HJ and BdM
Rank in KDF
Deutsche Glaubensbewegung (Note: Membership in any principle suborganization: Grey C acceptable of better)
NS Altherrnbund
Deutsche Akademie Muenchen (before 1934; after
1934; Grey C acceptable)
Deutsches Auslandsinstitute (before 1934; after
1934; Grey C acceptable)
Deutscher Fichte-Bund (before 1934; after 1934;
Grey C acceptable)
Deutsche Christen-Bewegung
Reichskolonialbund
VDA (if abroad before 1939, Grey C not acceptable. If any rank was held, then the classification was Grey acceptable or lower)
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute (before 1934; after
1934; Grey C acceptable)
NS Frauenschaft (before 1936; after 1936; Grey C acceptable)
Amerika-Institut (before 1934; after 1934; Grey C acceptable)
Ost-Europa Institut (before 1934; after 1934; Grey
C acceptable)
The candidate could also have shown no evidence of collaboration with the Nazis or benefits under Nazism. Additionally, they were also considered suitable for a probationary White-A classification.
The second classification was “Grey”, which was also divided into two subgroups. Those deemed “Grey Acceptable” were suitable for employment but not in a policy making position or in an executive, creative or personnel capacity. They were really not suitable for licensing and were to be replaced by “Whites” at the first opportunity. They were NSDAP party members or members of one of the following organizations:
Party member or member of one of the above two lists or the following:
Deutsche Akademie Muenchen (after 1934)
Deutsches Auslandsinstitute (after 1934)
Deutscher Fichte-Bund (after 1934)
NS Reichskriegerbund
NSDFB
Deutsche Frauenschaft (after 1936)
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute
(after 1934)
Amerika-Institut (after 1934)
Ost-Europa Institut (after 1934)
24

Kyffhaeuserbund
If they held a rank in one of these organizations they received a designation of Grey
Unacceptable. If they had been a member of one of the following organizations, they applicant would need to explain the circumstances of their having become members:
NSDAP NSFK
Opferring
NSDStB
NSKK
Deutscher Gemeindetag
(Membership implies NSDAP membership)
Institut fuer deutsche Ostarbeit
Alldeutscher Verband
A rank in one of the above organizations warranted a Black classification. There could also be no evidence of Nazi or nationalistic convictions. This is where the small, nonparty, opportunists were placed.
Those considered Grey Unacceptable were not suitable for employment other than in ordinary labour as defined under Military Government Law No. 8. Those having belonged to the following organizations automatically found themselves in this category:
Reichsarbeitsdienst (vocational)
VDA (if abroad before 1939)
NS Reichsbund deutscher
Schwestern
NS Aerztebund
A final classification was “Black.” These individuals were simply judged to be unsuitable for any employment in any information control media. Members of the following organizations were automatically classified as Black:
Waffen-SS (unless drafted after 1943)
NSDoB
SA
Kameradschaft USA
Staatsakademiefuer Rassen- und Gesundheitspflege Werberat der deutschen
Weltdienst
Verband Zwischenstaatlicherverbaende
Sicherheitsdienst der SS
Wirtschaft
Reichsring fuer Propaganda
Allgemeine SS
Institut zur Erforschung der
Judenfrage
The individual could also not have held an office or rank in the Nazi Party, its subordinate organizations, organizations furthering militarism. In addition, the following conditions also disqualified an individual from activities regulated by the ICD:
An Officer of the Wehrmacht, unless a specific exception is made by Information Control
A marked beneficiary under the Nazis
One whom evidense shows to have been a believer in Nazi, racial, or militaristic creeds
An Officer or Non-Comissioned
Officer of the Waffen-SS
A participant in Nazi crimes, persecutions or racial discriminations
One who voluntarily gave substantial moral or material support to the NSDAP, its officials or leaders
While there may have been some confusion of policy at times, the discussion of where an individual might be categorized had already begun well before the end of the war in Europe. On February 11, 1946 Alfred Toombs, Head of Intelligence for the ICD,
25

released a document relating to the treatment of NSDAP members and their suitability for involvement in the cultural industries of post-war Germany.
51
There was a suggestion that May 1, 1937 be considered a cut off. That is, those who had joined the party after that date be disqualified from holding a publications license. However, he saw no room for members of the NSDAP in the new German media. In fact, as Eva-
Juliane Welsch notes, he managed to ensure that only those who actively opposed the
National Socialists in Germany were granted the privilege of a holding a license as a publisher.
52
Toombs was ever vigilant in ensuring that tight control was exercised over publishers and was always concerned that they were getting out of control as in directive he issued in May of 1946.
53
These concerns appear to have led General McClure to issue a lengthy document to all intelligence personnel on May 7, 1946 in which he provided great guidance regarding the nuances of applicant classification in order to facilitate the work of field interrogators and give a “uniform basis for their classification recommendations.” 54
If an individual had been a nominal member of the NSDAP, they could still be classified as grey unacceptable. However, if they had been an active Parteigenosse , or had been members of 4 other organizations associated with the NSDAP, they were immediately to be classified black. Even if they had only attained Anwaerter (candidate) status, they were to be treated as if they had been full members. For the Allgemeine SS rank-and-file there was an immediate black designation. For those who had been designated as fördernde Mitglieder der SS
(sustaining members of the SS) it was decided that they could be designated as gray acceptable. They, however, did allow for rare exceptions in the case of those who made large contributions (1000 RM or more), because these may have been the result of blackmail. It was advised that these cases should be carefully investigated and, if blackmail was indicated, it should be considered to have been a donation under duress. In situations such as this, it was possible to even issue a white designation, if the candidate’s political record was otherwise clean. In the case of the Waffen SS , those with memberships before 1943 were to be designated black, while those with memberships after 1943 were to be considered gray acceptable or gray unacceptable depending on their political record. If they had been members of SS
Standarte Kurt Eggers , these were SS war correspondents; they were immediately designated as black. All members of the SA were designated black with the exception of those who had been thrown out or resigned before June 30, 1934. These could be designated gray acceptable, or, if they had an otherwise good record, could be considered white. Further to this, the SA-Wehr - or Sportabzeichnung were considered meaningless, if not connected to the NSKK NS-Kraftfahrer-Korps (National Socialist
Motoring Corps), NSFK NS-Fliegerkorps (National Socialist Flying Corps), NSDStB
Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (National Socialist German Students'
51 RG 260 OMGUS 5/268-2/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
52
Eva-Juliane Welsch, „Die hessischen Lizenzträger und ihre Zeitungen,” Dissertation Universität
Dortmund, 2002, Page 35.
53 RG 260 5/269-2/8 Bundesarchiv Koblenz
54 RG 260 5/269-2/8 Bundesarchiv Koblenz
26

Association), or NSDDoB, NS-deutscher Dozentenbund (National Socialist Association of German Docents) did not disqualify an individual from receiving a white designation.
It was also noted that any rank in one of the major NSDAP organizations immediately meant an individual was designated in black. In the lesser organizations, the lower ranks could sometimes be qualified as gray acceptable or gray unacceptable on a case-by-case basis. However, an officer's rank was always to be considered black.

Reiterkorps : Membership in this group was considered unimportant unless it was combined with membership in another “important” affiliated organization such as the SA-Reiterkorps or the SS-Reiterkorps . Both of these required membership in either the SA or the SS.

Hitler Jugend (incl. Bund deutsche Mädchen ): Each applicant was to be studied carefully by the ICD. However, it was indicated that a rank above
Kameradschaftsführer
meant that the applicant was unsuitable for positions in the press, film production, and radio.

NSDStB and ANST: As with some of the other groups that involved young people in National Socialist Germany, applicants with this sort of background needed to be studied individually. So, there was no blanket categorization. There is, however, an indication that they were to be categorized as gray acceptable. What they consider to be decisive factors were the University attended by the individual and whether or not that particular university enforced membership in this group. They noted that some universities had enforced membership for a short period of time and some not at all.

NSDDoB: These were generally considered to be gray unacceptable other than if they had a combined affiliation with another major National Socialist organization. Then they were considered black.

NS Altherrenbund : The ICD considered membership in this group to be meaningless.

NSF ( NS Frauenschaft ): If an individual had been a member prior to 1936, it was considered meaningless. However, if they had obtained their membership after
1936 they were to be considered gray unacceptable. If they held any sort of rank, regardless of when they joined, they were categorized as black.

DF ( Deutsche Frauenwerk ): Membership in this group was considered meaningless unless the individual had obtained a rank within the organization, then they were considered gray acceptable.

NSKK: If the individual had been a member of this group from 1931 to 1934, they were considered gray unacceptable. However, after 1934, they were considered to be gray acceptable, unless they had formerly belonged to the Motor SA.

NSFK ( NS Fliegerkorps ): Members of this group were to be considered gray acceptable, except for those who joined in 1937 because they were members of an SA or SS flying unit.

NS Reichsbund Deutscher Schwestern (Incl. NS-Schwesternschaft ): Members of this organization were for the most part gray acceptable with those holding rank
27

being designated as gray unacceptable.

NS Ärtztebund : If an individual held a full membership, they were considered gray unacceptable, as opposed to those who were simply candidates, who were categorized gray acceptable.

RDB ( Reichsbund deutschen Beamten ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

DAF (incl. KdF) This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSV: This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSKOV ( NS Kriegs Opfer Versorgung ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSBDT ( NS Bund Deutscher Technik ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSLB ( NS Lehrer Bund ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSRB ( NS Rechtswahrer Bund ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

RDB ( Reichsbund deutsche Familie ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSRL (
NS Reichsbund für Leibesübung
): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

DSt ( Deutsche Studentenschaft ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

NSRK ( NS Reichskriegerbund ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

DG ( Deutscher Gemeindetag ): This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

Reichsdozentenschaft : This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant
28

they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

Reichskulturkammer (RSK, RPK, RTK, R_K, RK der bildende Künste , RFK):
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray unacceptable.

Amerika Institut : Membership in this organization was considered meaningless if it was taken up before 1934, after that, applicants were considered gray acceptable.
 Deutsche Akademie München
: Membership in this organization was considered meaningless if it was taken up before 1934, after that applicants were considered gray acceptable.

DAI ( Deutsches Auslandsinstitut ): Membership in this organization was considered meaningless if it was taken up before 1934, after that, applicants were considered gray acceptable.

Deutsche Christenbewegung and Deutsche Glaubensbewegung : With this sort of organization the ICD officers had to be a little bit more careful. If the applicant had been a member of any pagan organization, they would be considered gray unacceptable. If the Fragebogen indicated that the applicant was
"
Gottesgläubig
," then a careful investigation had to be undertaken to determine whether this meant the applicant was without religion ( gottlos ), in which case it was meaningless, or whether it meant that he adhered to any pagan organizations.

Deutsche Fichte Bund : Membership before 1934 was meaningless, after which the applicant was considered to be gray acceptable.
 Deutsche Jägerschaft
: Meaningless, unless the applicant held rank, then they were considered gray acceptable

DRK ( Deutsches rote Kreuz ): Membership was meaningless in terms of ICD consideration for licensing, unless the applicant held “higher rank.”

Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut: Membership before 1934 was meaningless, after which the applicant was considered to be gray acceptable.

Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage : Members of this organization were always classified as black.

Kameradschaft USA : Members of this organization were always classified as black.

Osteuropa Institut : Membership in this organization before 1934 was meaningless in regard to ICD classification. After that they were considered gray acceptable.
 Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit
: Members were considered gray unacceptable regardless of when they took their membership.

RAD ( Reichsarbeitdienst ): Was considered meaningless unless rank was held, or it was their vocation. They were then classified as gray acceptable.

RKB ( Reichskolonialbund ): This was considered meaningless unless the individual held rank, which gained them the classification of gray acceptable.
29


RLB ( Reichsluftschutzbund ): Only nominal membership of this group was designated as meaningless. If they held any rank before 1939 they were classified as gray unacceptable. If they obtained rank after that, they were classified as gray acceptable.
 Staatsakademie für Rassen und Gesundheitspflege : Classified as black

VDA (
Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland
): If they had lived abroad prior to 1939, they were considered gray unacceptable. If any rank was held, they were classified as black.

Werberat der Deutschen Wirtschaft (Classified as gray unacceptable)

Weltdienst (Black)
The “White, Grey, and Black List for Information Control Purposes” supplemental inventory dated November 1, 1946 had a total of 2529 entries of all classifications. Neither the very old nor the very young could escape classification by the ICD. The oldest to appear on the list is an 86-year-old book dealer from Immenstadt by the name of Max Wengenmayr, who was “Grey Unacceptable.” The youngest to appear on the list is Xaver Gruber, a circus business agent, from Langenerling, who at the age of 10 years was classified as “Grey Acceptable.” Gruber was by no means an anomaly. Most likely, the ICD considered him to be a front for his father, who might not have had a sufficiently clean record of his own to be licensed.
The statistics of the ICD’s “White, Grey, Black List” show some interesting trends. 1919 had been declared as a benchmark year for Allied occupation policy. It provided the cut off in terms of those they would consider to potentially culpable for
Germany’s crimes. Age, however, did not exclude individuals from the ICD vetting process. In addition to the cases already mentioned above, 186 of the individuals appearing on the list are under the age of 21. No one 18 years of age or younger was classified Black. Four people between the ages of 18 and 21 were designated Black.
Most of those under 21 received a White-B or Grey-A classification. At the age of 18, banning of individuals from Germany’s cultural machinery began. For example, at 18,
Valentin Salzberger of Pfaffenberg, a musician (it does not indicate whether it is the
Pfaffenberg in Baden-Wuerrtemberg or Bavaria), was considered enough of a threat to have been categorized as black. There is no indication of what he might have done to warrant the classification. It might have been nothing more than having lied on his
Fragebogen , which was considered a serious transgression.
The largest number of applicants fell into the White-B classification (37%), which allowed them to do most things in their profession; however, they were not allowed to make policy decisions. The smallest number is to be found in the category that allowed the greatest freedom and required the greatest trust on the part of the ICD.
Only 3.8% of the applicants were given a classification of White-A. About equal were those who were classified as Grey-A (23.8%) and those classified as Black (23.7%) and
Grey-U made up about 10% of those listed.
The largest single group on the list is that of musicians. To a large degree they skew the statistics. Of the 1103 musicians (43% of the total list) only 0.2% are granted a
30

White A designation. The overall average is 3.8% with the large group of musicians keeping the number artificially low. By the same token, very few musicians find themselves at the other end of the spectrum with only 1.6% being classified as Black.
Here the overall number is 23.6%. What this indicates is that musicians had a relatively easy time passing muster in order to be musicians, but where not necessarily a priority when it to assigning them leadership position. This could be a result of the profession itself. Publishers of books and newspapers were by the very nature of their profession cultural decision makers.
Of greater interest are these culturally sensitive professions. In the case of writers (10.4% of 67), editors (14.3% of 70), and journalists (12.0% of 83) their rate of
White-A designation falls within the norm when one factors out the musicians. They also have normal designation rates in the other classifications. On the hand, there is a group that stands out. Publishers (30.7% of 75) have a rate of White-A designations that outstrips all the others. This indicates that the ICD may either have become more lenient with this group in an effort to launch a publishing industry that was now being set up to compete with that of the Soviet sector, or there was something in the process itself that led to a high number of applicant being accepted. Though the former may be part of the truth, it is most likely the latter that led to these results. The vetting process for publishers, as will be described in some detail later, was quite different and more strenuous than for any other group. This in itself would have resulted in some selfremoval or selection.
Blacklists, or lists of proscribed individuals, were a common occurrence in all of the zones of control and did not follow a set pattern in terms of how the information was presented. The “White, Grey, and Black List for Information Control Purposes” dated
November 1, 1946, is the most comprehensive in terms of the information it provides. It gives the year, and place of birth, as well as the current address and profession of the applicants. Other lists, while not as thorough in terms of locating and identifying the applicant, did sometimes provide the reason for a license having been rejected and the organizations, or people, the applicant was in some way related to. Despite indications from some ICD officers, the lists current in the various sectors were exchanged on a regular basis with the understanding that lists established in one sector would be honoured in all sectors. This, however, may have been more theoretical in nature than actual practice. That is to say, the lists may have officially been exchanged, but may not have been passed on to the DISCC level or enforced once it did arrive there. In any case, there still seems to have been instances of individuals having been blacklisted in one sector moving to another sector and being able to work there with no difficulty.
55
While the lists emanating from the Soviets seemed to have had little effect on the blacklists in the western sectors and the French showed little interest in the cultural issues, there was considerable cooperation between the British and the Americans. This
55 History II 66-67.
31

may be seen in the number of British lists appearing the American archived files and vice versa.
56
The blacklisting of publishers went further afield than only those located only in
Germany. The “vetting” included Swedish and Swiss publishers as well, though the authorities were not able to enforce their procedures on these individuals and entities. A
February 1945 PWD (Psychological Warfare Division) document intended as preparation for post-war control procedures in occupied Germany provides insight into how far the Americans were willing to go.
57
They used the 1941 members list of the
Börsenverein der deutschen Buchhändler zu Leipzig
as the basis for their list of publishers to be investigated. Publishers such as Braus-Riggenbach (formerly Henning
Oppermann) were blacklisted though they were located in Switzerland. Braus-
Riggenbach was accused of being “strictly pro-Nazi” with the owner having close ties the former editor of the Swiss Nazi paper Neue Basler Zeitung . A further publisher,
Francke A.G. of Berne, was found to have “dispatched German propaganda periodicals to the United States” and was thus also blacklisted. Some of the firms had reached arrangements with the PWD, like Hug & Co. of Winterthur and Zurich. The owners,
Adolf Hug Senior and Junior, signed an undertaking with the Allies “submitting to
Allied control of their exports and neutral imports.”
While the ICD could censor the production of books produced in postwar
Germany, it had to also keep a close watch over material that survived the war. In an effort to control the trade of the surviving stocks of books the ICD regularly read and vetted communications between publishers and their dealers. An example of this is an intercepted invoice from the C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung sent to Das
Bücherkabinett
located at 14/16 Königstrasse in Hamburg. The censorship form indicates that the invoice was sent on the 7th of November 1945 and postmarked on the
8th of November. The intercepted document was examined on the 17th of November and was found to contain billings for four works by Walter Flex:
58
Demetrius
59
,
Frauenrevoire
60
, Wallenstein
61
, and a final item simply named Novels. The censor further notes “according to the second edition of the Neue Zeitung books by Walter Flex have been banned.” 62 Unfortunately the records do not indicate what the result of the investigations. Most likely it ended up the same as that of the Klostermann publishing house, which was found guilty of having produced works by Ernst Jünger, an author
56 An example from October 15, 1947 may be found in RG 260 OMGUS 5/268-2/17 Bundesarchiv
Koblenz.
57 RG 260 5/265-3/12 Bundesachiv Koblenz
58 Born 1887, died 1917. His works were used by the National Socialists to indoctrinate the youth with nationalist ideals.
59 Initially published in 1910.
60 This title must have been copied in error, since it does not appear that Flex published a book with this title.
61 Initially published under the name Wallensteins Antlitz. Gesichte und Geschichten aus dem
Dreißigjährigen Krieg in 1916.
62 Bundesarchiv Koblenz OMGUS RG 260 5/265-3/12.
32

who was banned, and was subsequently stripped of its license to publish.
63
In addition, a warning was sent out to publishers of the dangers of releasing material that the ICD did not approve of.
There are a few things that call attention to themselves here. The first is the meticulous nature of the ICD oversight of the publishing industry. A second point is that the ICD covered every avenue in trying to ensure that the German publishing industry complied with their list of proscribed authors. A final point is that the overt newspaper
Neue Zeitung was used to disseminate to the German publishing industry, as well as ordinary people, which specific authors were banned in postwar Germany. It was, after all, the mandate of the Neue Zeitung to communicate the wishes of the Military
Governments to the German people.
The Vetting Process
Many scholars have correctly concluded that the Americans were slow to react to the ideological void in postwar Germany. They note that the Soviets were much quicker off the mark, because they knew what they wanted to accomplish: the integration of
Germany into their sphere of influence and the establishment of a soviet-style government. Moreover, they had a large cadre of trusted Germans, who had escaped to the Soviet Union for political reason, who now became their willing collaborators.
Moreover, the Soviet occupiers did not seem to be bothered too much by an individual’s past political affinities, but rather were more interested in what that person might be willing to do for them now. One need only look at their courting of the famous conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Wilhelm Furtwängler, to recognize that they did not struggle with the same matters of political purity that the Americans did.
The British, on the other hand, were far more pragmatic in their approach and were willing to make deals, if not with the Devil then certainly with some of his henchmen, just to keep Germany functioning, so as not to drawn too much energy away from the rebuilding of their own devastated country. As noted earlier, the French according to American sources were too busy trying to exact reparations from their
Zone of Control to pay too much attention to this aspect of their occupation of Germany.
Those in charge of the vetting process in the American Zone, however, continued to try and improve their processes. To this end, Major Bertram Schaffner and Thomas Frank visited the British their counterpart between the 12th and 15th of May 1946 and submitted a report on 16 May 1946 to the chief of the intelligence section Alfred
Toombs.
64
The British organization was known as the German Personnel Research Branch and was under the control of the Intelligence Group of the Control Commission for
Germany British Element. It was located at Bad Oeynhausen and was under the overall command of Wing Commander O.A. Oeser. The report indicates that the organization consisted of a president of the board, a psychiatrist, an administrative officer, two testing officers, four psychological assistants, 8 secretaries, and 15 enlisted men, in all, 32
63 RG 260 5/269-1/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
64 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, OMGUS RG 260 5/268-2/17.
33

personnel. It is often indicated that the ICD’s complement was much larger than that of
British organization, as in Toby Thacker’s assertion that the ICD had 1700 officers at its disposal, 65 while a British Military Government report suggests that the British
Personnel Research Branch only had 16 officers working for it.
66
However, at least in the case of the vetting process, the American organization complained that the British employed far more people than the Americans. This may well be related to how the statistics were compiled, and one should trust the assessment of Schaffner and Frank in this particular case.
The report indicates that the British assessment center investigated 12 candidates per week, who all arrived on Monday afternoon and would that leave on the following
Friday morning. The Friday afternoon was reserved for staff meetings in order to discuss results of individual tests and to make decisions on each individual they had interviewed, with reports being written by the president and the psychiatrist on Saturday.
In comparing the two vetting sections, it is noteworthy that the British unit processed fewer individuals than the Americans on a weekly basis and also spent more time with each applicant.
Schaffner and Franks go on to carefully outline how each of the applicants is processed. It starts with all of the candidates being welcomed with a speech on Monday afternoon delivered by the president. In this talk the aims of the center were explained and it introduced the staff to the candidates. Following this, the candidates were then asked to fill out a 19 page highly detailed questionnaire, which dealt with their political background and the political activities of their parents and their nearest relatives. On
Tuesday morning, each candidate was asked to provide a five-minute oral resume of his background and professional life. This was done with everyone, including all of the staff, present. Following these initial introductions, parts one, two, and three of the written intelligence test were administered. The first part was called “matrix,” which was a nonverbal test, which used a visual pattern completion problems. The second part dealt with reasoning. It was used to test the higher intelligence ranges in deduction, synthesis, and analysis. The third part was a written word association test. Following this a fourth test was administered, which was an oral word association test. This was often replaced with the Thematic Apperception Test in the case of younger candidates.
The fifth and final test of the morning was a self-description by the candidate, first as his best friend would see him, and then as a strong critic would see him.
After Tuesday's lunch the candidates were divided into two groups. The first group began with individual studies, these included: a political interview of about one and half hours and a psychiatric interview of about one and half hours. It is also noted that the president and the psychiatrist interviewed approximately four candidates each on
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The second group had its individual studies in the latter half of the period. While the first group was being individually studied, the second group went ahead with further group tests. The first of these was a group discussion over
65 Toby Thacker, The End of the Third Reich. Defeat, Denazification, and Nuremberg. January
1944 - November 1946 . Stroud: Tempus, 2006. p. 31.
66 National Archives, Kew, FO/898/401.
34

a 90 minute time period. The groups were asked to spend approximately 30 minutes discussing each of three topics: personal happiness, relationship of family and state, and
Germany's contribution to European reconstruction. After this, each of the candidates was asked to give an impromptu talk or “lecturette" without any preparation. These talks would last five minutes and were on special assignments, for example “a school superintendent addresses his teachers on corporal punishment, a chief of police addresses policemen on black market activities.” 67
What followed was a sociological questionnaire. This questionnaire attempted to elicit as much information as possible about a candidate’s fundamental political trends and social outlook. They also then conducted a “miniature interrogation,” in which one of the candidates would interview another for approximately 20 minutes in the presence of the staff, in order to obtain information about the candidate’s personal interests, special hobbies, and recreational activities. The purpose of this interview was to evaluate a candidate's ability to conduct an interview. However, it also provided valuable information about the one being interviewed. All of this was then followed by the so-called “protest test.” Here, the individuals were asked to imagine themselves in a difficult situation and to defend their position in the face of stern, unsympathetic criticism and frustrating behavior on the part of the examiners. This was followed by a
“group-planning test.” One of the groups is asked to formulate a solution to a problem in county administration based upon letters, statistics, and a map of the county concerned.
The next test was a team negotiation test, in which one of the groups was asked to represent a local German government committee and the other to represent the British military government detachment. They were to work out a solution to a problem, which was presented in the form of legal briefs.
Following all of this, the entire group undertook a mutual evaluation. The candidates were asked to rate one another in terms of: leadership qualities, reliability, and friendship worthiness. After all of this the candidates received a concluding talk and were encouraged to ask questions or make suggestions. The candidates left the center at
10 o'clock on Friday morning. Finally, a board meeting was held. During the board meeting, each of the candidates was discussed and final recommendations were decided upon.
The report notes that there were some similarities between the ICD screening center and the procedures used at Assessment Ctr., #1, the official name of the facility visited by the Americans. The aims of the 2 groups and the standards employed were identical. It also indicates that the political/sociological, and psychological/psychiatric division of how the candidates were studied was also the same. Moreover, there was a general correspondence in how intelligence tests were administered. In addition, the sociological questionnaire resembled the “incomplete sentences” test of the ICD screening center and the “mutual evaluation test” was essentially the same as the ICD's
“sociometric” test.
67 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, OMGUS RG 260 5/268-2/17.
35

There were, however, differences between how the British and the Americans operated their screening centers. In the case of the British assessment center, it offered its services to all of the divisions of the military government and the control commission. It was noted that many of the assessment center’s candidates came from government agencies, such as the Reichspost and the Reichsbahn . From this, one can conclude that less emphasis was placed on selecting publishers. It was also noted that the assessment center seems to be adequately staffed. This point emphasized the dissatisfaction on the part of Major Schaffner with the staffing of the ICD screening center. The report also notes that the British assessment center placed relatively less emphasis on the political study of the candidate and more on the psychological study of the candidate. Moreover, the British center relied on a larger number of procedures, administered by a larger staff and took into consideration the conclusions and appraisals of at least 6 different observers in coming to its final assessment. This, Schaffner and Frank concluded, led to a greater objectivity in reaching its appraisals.
They also noted a high degree of organization and specialization of functions within the assessment center. They saw this as lending greater formality to the process of vetting candidates, as opposed to the greater flexibility of the ICD screening center.
They saw this as creating a process to which a greater number of assistants could be trained and an adequate number of replacements could be insured for departing staff members. It was also noted that, due to its larger staff, the assessment center could also engage in research and follow-up projects. Notably, the assessment center also employed what were called “lay analysts” rather than psychiatrists with medical training. The use of “lay” personnel ensured that a larger staff was available to the center.
The report also included to samples of the reports written by the president in regard to unidentified candidates, though one might also conclude that the reports were simply examples of what the British Assessment Centre considered to ideal candidates.
One of the candidates was classified as white and the other as black. It is also noteworthy that the British also used a five-point scale, but did not necessarily associated color with their assessments, with the exception of an individual's candidates testing in regard to psychological authoritarianism.
In the case of the acceptable candidate, he and his parents had joined the SPD in
1929 and had been staunch supporters of the party. The applicant had served initially as a youth leader and then from 1933 to 1936 an editor of an illegal newspaper in Hanover.
He and his parents had been arrested in 1936 and he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, of which he had served 8 years and 8 months, after which he was liberated. Of the more than eight years of imprisonment, four and a half were spent in solitary confinement.
As far as his personality is concerned, he was considered highly intelligent with a high ethical and moral standard, but also not inflexible in his thinking. He was also described as having a broad range of interests and was considered to be humanitarian in his thinking. Where they did find fault was in his emotional state, which was not surprising considering his imprisonment. The applicant was judged to being prone to
36

slight hysteria and showed occasional irritability, sharpness and obstinacy towards others. Though he had, in their opinion, only average leadership skills, he was recommended “as unconditionally suitable for employment at any level, and as a man who can make a most valuable contribution to the democratic reconstruction of
Germany.”
In this particular case, one should note that most likely the US vetting process would not have been as enthusiastic. Even though he had a remarkable record and appropriate experience, his time in prison, especially the time spent in solitary confinement would have allowed him a “White B” categorization at best. Very often, the Americans rejected individuals with this sort of background, because they felt that they were unpredictable in terms of dealing with other, a trait that this individual apparently clearly exhibited. In addition, if they were granted a license, it was suggested that they either be watched closely, or paired with another applicant, who might mitigate the original applicants emotional shortcomings.
The second example was of an applicant who was clearly unacceptable. He had been an Obertruppenführer in the Stahlhelm from 1932-1935. When the Stahlhelm became part of the SA, he accepted the rank of
Rottenführer
, but left in 1938. Moreover, he joined the NSdAP in 1936 and claims to have been a convinced Nazi until 1938, when “he claims to have become more critical.” Even so, he remained a trusted member until the end of the war.
As far as the personality of this applicant was concerned, the British assessors found him to be rather jolly and perky. However, below the façade the investigators found what they thought was a rigid reactionary, who was contemptuous of the feelings of others and that he was a “complete menace.” They also found him to be an opportunist at heart. The assessment was as brief as it was blunt: “This man is highly dangerous and should not be employed at any level or in any circumstances.”
The Americans, however, could be considered the idealists of the group. One is really left with the impression that they wanted to get it right. The Office of the Military
Governor, United States (OMGUS) was meticulous in screening out undesirables from the publishing industry and tried to apply “scientific” principles to their practices, as will be demonstrated in the following pages. It was a practice that continued until May of
1949.
68
While practices may have varied somewhat, Felix Reichmann outlined the basics of the procedure in
The Publisher’s Weekly
in November of 1946:
The applicant had to file three Military Government questionnaires and three detailed business and personal questionnaires with Publications Control. After a thorough and comprehensive interview by an official of Publications Control the applicant had to submit a publishing program for one year worked out in specific titles. Then the whole file was transmitted to Intelligence Branch, which again interviewed the applicant and his references. If both branches agreed that the applicant was eligible for a publisher's license a recommendation to this effect
68 Wehdeking and Blamberger 28.
37

was submitted to the Commanding Officer of the Information Control Division.
If Berlin Headquarters concurred with the opinion of the Land, a license was issued.
69
History II adds some detail to the how the applicants were handled and the results of the
ICD’s investigations. The reason the final decision was made in Berlin was due to the
Americans consulting what has become known as the Berlin Document Center to verify the information they had garnered from the process. This was the central repository of documents relating to all facets of National Socialist Germany that had been captured at the end of the war.
70
For the purposes of the ICD, the files of the Reichskulturkammer were the most significant source to verify the statements made by an applicant. Since everyone who had worked in the information services of the Third Reich had to be a member of the Reichskulturkammer , it would verify what the Nazis thought of a particular applicant or whether the applicant had lied about affiliation with the Nazi
Party. It should be noted that membership in one of the branches of the
Reichskulturkammer did not mean that an individual could not be given a “White A” designation.
71
What they were looking for was the basic honesty of the individual they were considering.
Passing the stringent test of character and receiving a license from the proper authorities did not mean that careful scrutiny did not continue. Each individual publisher was required to police himself in regard to what was published under the following guidelines set by the Military Government, which forbade the following topics:
1.
Criticism of the Allied Government and interference with the Military
Government.
2.
Racial or Religious discriminations.
3.
Propagation of militaristic ideas including Pan-Germanism and German
Imperialism.
4.
National-socialistic or related “ völkisch ” [sic] ideas.
5.
Fascist or anti-democratic ideas.
72
In Reichmann’s description one finds the innocuous line “the whole file was transmitted to Intelligence Branch which again interviewed the applicant and his references.” However, the intelligence interviews were more than simple consultations.
In fact, the intelligence interviews spoken of could take three days, or even a week, to complete and involved the potential licensees being isolated at one of the camps set
69 Reichmann 2811.
70 While the target was to gather evidence against the Nazi regime, th reality of the matter is that the Allies confiscated every document they found, many of them dated into the 19 th century.
71 See page 52 for a table indicating organizations that did not disqualify an individual from being designated “White A”. This designation allowed licensees to occupy the highest positions within an information services outlet.
72 Ibid.
38

aside for the vetting Germans for ICD purposes. The American installation was located at Bad Orb and the British conducted their interviews at Bad Oeynhausen.
The first potential licensees went through the Bad Orb facility on November 6,
1945. Archival documents indicate that the ICD continually tried to improve their ability to identify those who were and were not suitable for licensed functions under the
Military Government. In an evaluation of the ICD screening centre written some time after February 17, 1946, recommendations are taken from both officers running the program and potential licensees.
73
Some of the responses received from the candidate might be considered to be overly obsequious. One of those interviewed simply identified as Dr. S., stated that he had a high regard for the knowledgeable staff and “could have stayed there 3 weeks, rather than just 3 days.”
74
Dr. S. also made further comment in regard to the IQ tests administered during the interview process, suggesting that vocational item be included to ensure that those licensed were technically able to produce that which the ICD expected of them. Suspicion is cast on the his motives for wanting to stay longer by a later interviewee, an entertainer identified as G., who pointed out that he appreciated the food and accommodations, which were better than the average German experienced in everyday life.
75
Initially, the interview caused tremendous anxiety among many of the candidates. A Mr. P. was an early candidate that went through the facility, when the candidates were not told the purpose of the excursion they were asked to take. They
“were merely asked to take a trip of three days duration.” 76
He also commented on the clever way in which he was being questioned. The interrogators would, for example, engage him in a discussion about philosophy. He noted that he was impressed with the way in which the conversation was led in such a way that the interrogators could feel out his attitudes about society and human relations. The approach was generally friendly,
Mr. G, who had been questioned by a Dr. Levy and Mr. Bernard did not at all feel that he was before an examining committee, but that the approach likened that of a conversation between friends. While this was the general trend, Mr. P. reports that as he was preparing to leave, he was questioned a final time along the “old police lines.” The report indicates that this was indeed the case and was used as a demonstration using two of the applicants in order to determine how reliable the results of the previous three days of interrogation had been.
The reports generated by the vetting process also reveal how some of the officers in the ICD felt about how the whole denazification processes was functioning. A 1 st
Leutenant Paul E. Moeller, who was an intelligence officer attached to the Military
Government in Bavaria, felt that “mental nazidom must rate on par – at least – with proved Party membership.”
77
He went on to say that the ICD’s process was able to add
73 “Evaluation of the ICD Screening Centre.” NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 70
74 Ibid 1.
75 Ibid 2.
76 Ibid 2.
77 Ibid 3.
39

this layer to the official denazification process, should the Military Government issue that directive. This comment seems to indicate that the ICD process went beyond that of the official denazification process. Individuals going through the ICD process being held to a higher standard.
While at Bad Orb, candidates were subjected to an impressive array of psychological tests. These tests often determined whether an individual received a license. At some time around February 1946 a report entitled “Contribution of
Psychiatric and Psychological Study to the ICD Screening Centre” was written.
78
At this point fewer than 50 candidates had been processed. The case studies presented, 25 in total, amounted to a little more than 50% of the total number of applicants. The goals of the psychiatric and psychological tests were specific:
1.
Determination of mental status . This was considered a deciding factor in six of the 25 case studies. It was considered more important than the political reliability of a candidate.
2.
Determination of personality structure . This was intended to keep those characters out of office who were authoritarian, militaristic, domineering, brutal, or intriguers etc. The concern was that such characters would perpetuate a psychology that was sympathetic to power politics and aggressive wars. It was intended to favour those who had broad sympathies, tolerated criticism and were generally “democratic” in the sense of respecting their fellow men. It was noted that the reason some of the candidates had been classified as “White” was due to questions related to the fitness of their personality. This was the case in 8 of the
25 case studies.
3.
Determination of Nazi and anti-Nazi status . The ICD was aware that some of the candidates would attempt to simulate anti-Nazi attitudes. The problem was that they often had no concrete evidence. They determined that they could learn a great deal from individuals in relation to this from a study of their childhood history and personality through the use of special attitude tests. These tests often decided the issue or confirmed or challenged assumptions made as a result of political analysis of the applicants. All of the individuals in the case studies were seen as examples of this.
4.
Determination of special capacities or incapacities . In certain candidates special qualifications of leadership, originality, or what was simply called
“superior endowment” were brought to the attention of the referring agents.
Such candidates were marked as especially useful. Of course, the lack of these capacities or inadequate intelligence was likewise determined. Of the 25 case studies 7 were seen as example of this being significant.
5.
Evidence . The psychiatric studies were also to assist in determining the reliability of statements made by the candidates. Seven of the 25 individuals
78 NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 70.
40

represented in the study were there to determine the voracity of the applicant’s previous statements.
79
Of the 25 case studies, the professions break down as follows: 8 Publishers, 5 Theatre
Directors, 5 Radio Engineers, 5 Film Directors or Producers, 2 Actors or Entertainers.
The abstracts of the case studies reveal some interesting findings on the part of the psychiatrists and psychologists of Bad Orb. For example, one of the publishers had a number of doubtful points on his political record and appeared to collaborate with the
Nazis in order to maintain ownership of his publishing company. He, however, gave a favourable impression overall. The psychological assessment was said to have revealed a very passive personality that was never able to withstand any requirement of a despotic father. Though he was inwardly antagonistic toward authority, he could not be relied upon to withstand any pressure. This served to confirm that he had made concessions to the Party and had collaborated. His application was rejected on both political and personal grounds. Another publisher was recommended for a license even though it appeared that he had exploited “the Jewish situation through ownership of a
Jewish movie studio.” The political portion of the interrogation revealed that no exploitation had occurred, which was confirmed by the psychiatric study. In fact, it was discovered that he would make an ideal candidate for the ICD. The questionable ethics were simply overlooked in this case. A questionable past was not always held against an individual as will be seen later.
A third publisher was in a somewhat unique situation. He was found to be an ardent anti-Nazi. He had been severely beaten by the SA in 1933 and it was found that he still suffered from disturbances of his equilibrium and confusion in thinking as a result. The recommendation was that the license be granted but that he be given special guidance in his work.
The inability to work with others was deemed a liability for a fourth publisher.
While he had engaged in some questionable activities in the past, this alone was not sufficient to deny him a license. However, the ICD did not wish to encourage “one-man shows” too often.
The psychiatric diagnosis of individual applicants was also often decisive in that it was used to explain the actions of some who appeared to have an otherwise clear record. This was the case with an applicant who had initially served as the Chief
Engineer of a radio station. The problem was that he had taken out a membership in the
SA, though he had apparently taken no active role in the organization and had received no special advantage from the Nazi Party. He was, however, able to prove that he had rendered assistance to a resistance group. The psychiatric report found strong anxiety states in the individual. It concluded that he took out membership in the SA due to having been in a panicky phase and then later tried to undo the damage. Politically, he was a recognized as “Black”, but with the caveat that it was only in a “technical” sense.
He was refused the license as Chief Engineer, but was recommended for an assistant
79 Ibid. Adapted from “Contribution of Psychiatric and Psychological Study to the I.C.D. Screening
Centre.”
41

technical job. This was a task that could be performed by someone classified as “Grey
Acceptable” and not “Black”. It is apparent that the ICD was somewhat pragmatic in its approach to licensing and it may be the case that the tightness of the process is questionable, despite the officially strong stance taken by the Head of Intelligence,
Toombs.
Once the candidates passed through Bad Orb and were granted licenses, it was not the end of the examination. Scrutiny of the licensees continued for some time after.
In some of the case it was noted that they should be watched or “helped” once licensed.
“Helped” was often used in a euphemistic manner to indicate that a candidate could not be fully trusted, but might prove helpful to the cause. A statement such as this does not necessarily mean that it was actively watched on a continual basis, but, in at least one of the cases, it more than an idle threat.
There was significant doubt about the reliability of an applicant, who wanted to produce films in Germany. He had lived and prospered in Italy and France for seven years and then returned to Germany. He had worked as a “cutter”
80
and was not considered to have had any influence on the final product coming out of the UFA studios. He had passed the political portion of the examination. However, the psychiatric portion of the exam revealed that he was “rather unstable, immature, and not to be trusted in a leading position.” He was thus recommended for an assistant’s job. At the end of the abstract a parenthetical note is included which states, “Conclusion verified by later observation” and indication that he had been kept under close observation upon taking up his position.
81
Documents reveal that actual practice may in some instances have been more rigorous than described in the histories. ICD documentation clearly states that although an individual may have been cleared and officially denazified by the Spruchkammer , the
ICD could still deny the individual clearance to work in any of the areas under its control.
82
On the other hand, in some instances the ICD seemed to go to considerable lengths in justifying the inclusion of a candidate they might consider particularly useful.
There were other motivations for including or excluding candidates from the ranks of licensed publishers. Some of this had to do with the positive rather than negative goals of the ICD. Negative goals would be those that involved keeping publishers out who might attack Military Government policies or publish militaristic materials. Positive goals would involve the publication of works that would support the
“democratic” and anti-Nazi education of the German people. There was thus a large grey area of material that might be considered harmless enough, but of no particular help in moving the political goals of the ICD forward. The tolerance given these potential publishers would have been the shortage of paper. A November 16, 1945 report written by Heinz Berggruen and R.B. Redlich on nine potential licensees who had submitted insufficient publishing plans explains that of these 9, three did not submit a
80 Film editor.
81 “Contribution of Psychiatric and Psychological Study to the I.C.D. Screening Centre.”
82 RG 260 5/268-2/17 Bundesarchiv Koblenz
42

list of titles and were rejected immediately.
83
A further five were found to have programs that had little more than titles of very limited value. Of the nine only one was found to have a particularly ambitious publishing plan. Heinrich Ledig of Stuttgart proposed to revive the well-known Rowohlt Verlag. However, even with this application it was thought that “no particular effort has been made to search for books and other materials that will fit the present needs.” In the end, Ledig managed to get the enterprise off the ground. In total the Ledig application included 29 titles. Some of the samples provided in the report include:
 “Poems” by Erich Kaestner

Translations of Thomas Wolfe's novels

Friederic Prokosch's
84
novels

A new political novel by Oskar Marie Fontana,
85

A history of Astronomy

A History of Plagues and Epidemics

A Biography of Heinrich Mann.
In addition, he wished to publish a literary monthly entitled “Die Arena” and a children's magazine edited by Erich Kaestner entitled Der Pinguin .
This report indicates that in the end perhaps the final deciding factor was the usefulness of the works an individual wanted to publish. That is, if they did not demonstrate that they would help inculcate the ideas of collective guilt, denazification, or demilitarization they were not high priorities.
Censorship and Control
Censorship is a strange thing that takes place in almost all nations regardless of whether constitutions or parliamentary bodies are in place to protect against it. One can only speak of degrees of freedom and not the black and white world most would like to impose on the discourse surrounding censorship. Ironically, even the ICD in Germany recognized this when they categorized individuals as black, grey, or white and then further subdivided the grey and white rubrics into degrees of “whiteness” or “greyness.”
There is even evidence that some of the more idealistic ICD officers wondered whether what they were doing was in accord with the ideals they brought them to Germany.
86
83 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, OMGUS RG 260 5/265-3/12. Heinz Berggruen had emigrated to the
United States from Wilmersdorf in 1936. He was a friend of Picasso and a renown art collector. In 1944 he returned to Europe as an American Soldier. He was initially stationed in Berlin and then was transferred to Munich. Shortly there after he was one of the founding employees of UNESCO.
84 An American author who had spent considerable time in Germany and Austria in his youth.
Many of his novels were indeed translated into German between 1946 and 1954.
85 He went on to become a theatre critic, but did not enjoy much success as a writer. He also edited a work entitled
Heldenkampfe der Kaiserschützen1914-1918 : nach berichten von Mitkämpfern bearbeitet im Ministerium für Landesverteidigung .
86 Questioning the policy when they were in service could have been equated with insubordination.
It might well explain why a blind eye was turned to certain transgressions on the part of the German licensees. It is after the war, when these individuals began to write on their experiences that one gets the impression that some are still trying to justify what they were a part of. See Breitenkamp.
43

The ICD went through distinct phases in how it approached censorship in
Germany. Initially, there was a period during which nothing other than OMGUS sanctioned documents could be produced. This was supported by Law 191, which had been agreed to by the four Allied Powers. It effectively took control of Germany’s entire cultural industry:
The printing, production, publication, distribution, sale and commercial lending of all newspapers, magazines, periodicals, books, pamphlets, posters, printed music and other printed or otherwise mechanically reproduced publications, of sound recordings and motion picture films; and the activities or operation of all news and photographic services and agencies, of radio broadcasting and television stations and systems, of wired radio systems; and the activities or operation of all theatres, cinemas, opera houses, film studios, film laboratories, film exchanges, fairs, circuses, carnival houses and other places of theatrical or musical entertainment and the production or presentation of motion pictures, plays, concerts, operas, and performances using actors or musicians are prohibited.
87
While Robert Shandley limits his commentary to the German film industry, his sentiment can be applied more broadly when he suggests that almost six months before the end of the war the Allies had already blacked out the means by which the Nazis had created a German community.
88
The fact that the initial version of the Law 191 allowed the Allies to impose capital punishment on those who did not act in accordance with the law would have made certain of maximum, though not necessarily total, compliance. On
May 12, 1945 an amendment was passed that allowed for the licensing of the media and in November 1945 capital punishment was replaced with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
There is further evidence that the Allies carefully studied the Nazi approach to
“censorship” in the Reich. They then used what they had learned in the post-war as an effective means of controlling the German publishing industry. A secret document produced by the British CSDIC, based on interviews with the POWs 1st Lt. Wolfgang
Brandstetter, former manager of the Tauschntz publishing firm in Leipzig, and Lt. Heinz
Schroeder, son of the owner of a Berlin printing firm, provided vital insights into how censorship in Germany functioned. While the report is filled with many fascinating details, its most interesting feature is the description of censorship in Germany 1933-
1939 as having a “Sword of Damacles” quality, in that there was no censorship of works of fiction, and that publishers were allowed to publish what they wished.
89 It is only
87
Control of Publications, Radio Broadcasting, News Services, Films, Theaters, and Music:
SHAEF Military Government Law NO. 191, Amended (1).” In: Germany 1947-1949: The Story in
Documents.
United States Department of State, Office of Public Affairs, Publication #3556, European and British Commonwealth Series 9, March 1950.
88 Shandley 10.
89 RG 260 5/265-3/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
44

afterward, that a publisher might be declared politically unreliable. This would have led to financial ruin. This is effectively the same strategy employed by the ICD in the final phase of its licensing of German publishers. The effect was that publishers were very mindful of what they published, never going near the works that they were sure could pass muster with the ICD. Post-censorship was perhaps more desirable than precensorship for the Military government in that it always allowed the ICD deniability should difficulties arise. Moreover, it was perhaps the most effective approach to conditioning the German publishers into acting in ways that would assure long term compliance with the policies of the ICD, even after the ICD had been disbanded.
Practices and approaches to issues would become policy in German publishing houses and then simply the usual way of doing business. These practices would take on inertia all their own, making them almost immovable in the foreseeable future.
The goal from the very beginning was for censorship to remain as covert as possible. For this reason the ICD relied far more on coercion that the outright exercise of power. However, there is evidence that the ICD took overt action from 1945 to 1947.
However, after 1946 the incidents of overt censorship and sanction become more rare and the control exercised is more refined, though not necessarily less effective.
Publishers, booksellers, libraries, radio services and film studio were subject
ICD investigation and their licenses or registrations were very much held at the pleasure of the individuals who controlled the local ICD outposts. There is a subtle difference in the way that booksellers and libraries were controlled. The distribution points were registered rather than licensed. This meant that they did not need to initially meet the strict criteria set for those who actually produced the material. They operated under the assumption that they could prove that they were willing to comply with what was considered acceptable for the German people. The producers, on the other hand, had to prove before the fact that they were going to remain within the stated regulations and needed to prove that they had not been tainted through involvement with the NSDAP. A further consideration was that there were so many more distributors than producers. This made the decision to concentrate on the producers a matter of practicality. This led to what appears to be a rather uneven application of the regulations that blanketed the U.S.
Zone.
ICD reports and memoranda provide examples of how thorough the ICD was in its oversight of the German cultural industry. A November 25, 1946 report on violations and penalties for Bavaria, Greater Hesse, and Württemberg—Baden 90
provides the following statistics:
91
Statement of Violations
Kind of Violation
Falsefication of Fragebogen
Printing without permission
Illegal publications
Poor quality
Bavaria
1
9
4
Gr. Hesse
7
8
8
Wttbg.-Baden
2
2
2
3
90 This is the designation used during the initial occupation as opposed to the current Baden—
Württemberg.
91 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
45

Lending objectionable books
Selling of objectionable books
Distribution or sale without registration
Lending library without registration
Violation of MG regulations
Offence to U.S.A.
Political reasons
Using “Verlag” without permission
Antisemitic activity
Moral crime and fraud
Printing unacceptable authors 92
Publishing without license
Revocation of license
Suspension (timely)
Closing of business (timely)
Under property control
Fine in marks
Jail
Hard labor
Restriction of publications
Warning
Official reprimand
Circulation stopped
Statement of Penalties
23
7
1
14
7
2
3
25
3
3
7
3
5
2
1
1
2
1
1
5
4
20
12
1
5
1
2
2
Unfortunately, the document does not provide a chronological context with which to work other than the date on which it was created. Some of the associated documents from the various outposts note the start date for their reporting was July 1945. The statistics contained in the associated documents, however, do not support this time frame because of the sheer number of violations listed in the individual reports.
Although one may not be able to provide a specific time frame for the report, other than the end date, of greater interest perhaps are the types of violations that were actionable with penalties and how they are spread through the three Länder being reported. This last point may point to specific emphases of the officers in control in a given area. For example, in Bavaria there are 23 cases of objectionable books having been lent out by libraries, with no such violations reported in either Greater Hesse or
Württemberg—Baden. On the other hand, Greater Hesse reported far more violations that could be categorized as political in nature. This would include everything from applicant falsifying their past political affiliations on the Fragebogen to a category simply and aptly entitled “political reason.”
For a more detailed picture of the how German cultural industry weas monitored and sanctioned the “outpost” reports and correspondence between the various levels of the ICD provide the necessary details. A complete catalogue of what may be found in these files is far too large a task for the present work, so a few representative examples will have to suffice.
6
2
2
5
3
4
3
1
92 This and the following categories were added added later by hand. Though there are no numbers listed, individual reports from the “outposts” indicate that these were used operationally.
46

On the May 6, 1947 the ICD Publications Branch reported penalties meted out to various publishers in the US Zone. What is significant about this report is that it lists not only who was penalized, but why they were sanctioned. The Amatheo Verlag of
Schliersee, approximately 50 kms south of Munich, had its license revoked on April 18,
1946 for the following reasons: “Disagreement between the members of the firm,”
“Unauthorized publication: ‘Hints to the Tobacco farmers,’” and “The publishing program was very poor and not one book of the program has been produced.”
93
Even the famous Cotta-Verlag was not immune from the ICD. The licensed post-war custodian of the publishing house, Dr. Kurt Port, had his license revoked by the ICD on July 2, 1946 for “try[ing] to evade MG regulations” by “publish[ing] poems having militaristic character.”
94
The Leo Lehnen Verlag, which later published some rather significant titles in the 1950s had its license revoked revoked on November 7, 1946 for Lehnen’s activities with the NSDAP in 1938 and 1939. It found that he “did not fill out his
Fragebogen entirely honestly.”
95
While Lehnen had been dishonest in completing his
Fragebogen , Gustav Askani of Quell-Verlag, which later went on to be an important publisher of materials for the Evangelical church in Germany, was found guilty of perhaps a more serious infraction. Askani was found to have tried “to evade MG regulations by writing a letter to a Mr. Ilgenstein advising him to falsify his Fragebogen in order to get the permission to publish his book ‘Freudige Menschen.’” A Wilhelm
Ilgenstein did eventually publish Du bist meines Gottes Gab with Quell-Verlag in 1951, amoung other titles with other publishers, but for the time being Askani’s license to publish was revoked in September of 1946. The final example taken from this document is that of Hans Klassen of Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, who operated the Neu-Sommerfelder
Jugend Verlag. This appears to have been a publishing house specializing in the works for the youth of the Sommerfelder Mennonite church in Germany. The transgression in this case was “making incorrect statements about the backgrounds of his authors,” so on
June 5, 1947 his license was revoked.
96
The list of penalties reveals something else as well. At about this time Alfred
Toombs, Head of Intelligence for the ICD, indicated that it appeared that it was the religious publishers who usually did not abide by ICD regulations. The above list does suggest that Toombs may have been right in his assessment.
For the most part offenses against the ICD regulations, specifically Laws 8 and
191, were dealt with through the revocations of licenses and the closure of business premises. Some simply received reprimands. There was, however, a more severe aspect to the penalties handed down to Germans who did not abide by the rules. A document produced by the Office of the Military Government U.S. Berlin District on November
22, 1946 demonstrates how severe some of these punishments could be. For example,
Horst Grunsch, who operated a department store at Hasenheide 16 in the Neuköln district, had his license suspended for 4 weeks on August 28, 1946 as a result of what
93 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
94 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
95 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
96 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
47

was called “illicit trade in sheet music.” Most likely the music was of a militaristic nature. On the other hand, on May 21, 1946 Dr. Herbert Schmidt-Lamberg of
Schöneberg received one-year imprisonment for publishing without a license.
The ICD branch overseeing activities in Greater Hesse, administered by Lt. Col.
Anthony Kleitz, seems to have have been concerned with the number of licenses that may have been revoked in its district. In a report written on November 5, 1946 a handwritten note appears on the bottom of the cover page indicating that no licenses had been revoked. In fact, when one looks at the cover page for the Berlin area report, it also contains a refence to no revocation having taken place. It seems that there was considerable concern in regard to this type of action being undertaken. Though no explanation exists for these notes, it seems that the ICD felt it important to be able to say that they were not in the business of closing down publishers. Inspite of being able to say that they did not revoke licenses, some of their other actions would most certainly have ensured compliance on the part of publishers. In Darmstadt outpost a Walter
Messner of Bensheim was found guilty by the ICD of having “offended [the] USA” and was sentenced to 6 months in jail.
97
Though their penalties were less severe, both Kurt
Schauer of the
Börsenblatt des deutschen Buchhandels
and Vittorio Klostermann, both early and trusted licensees of the ICD, received official reprimands. In the case of
Schauer the publication of the Börsenblatt was temporarily halted for having been in violation of ICD instructions. Klostermann, who had published a work by an unacceptable author, Georg Friedrich Jünger’s
Die Perfektion der Technik , escape with only a reprimand.
In Bavaria the penalties seemed to be more severe than elsewhere in the
American Zone. The October 23, 1946 report from the Military Government ICD
Branch Chief in Bavaria,
98
Laurence Dalcher, reports that August Küper of Rothenburg o. d. Tauber was found guilty on December 11, 1945 of having printed an unauthorized calendar with advertising, for which he received a 10,000 mark fine in addition to 6 months at hard labour. Even the unauthorized mimeographing of reading material could lead to difficulties. Conrad Willecke of Munich was sentenced on December 19, 1945 to
1-year of prison at Stadelheim for the copying and sale of concentration camp literature.
Though it may not properly fit under the rubric of censorship, food was used as a means of keeping those in publishing, the news media, radio, and film in line with official ICD policy. People working in those industries were declared essential workers by the ICD. This meant that they received double rations and were allowed to eat in the military commissaries.
99
The ICD even took steps to have German media personnel declared Military Government employees during the noon meal period so that they could partake in the noonday meal at the Military Government’s expense. This was not just for those who worked on the periphery of the ICD itself, but those who worked for private concerns and were simply licensees of the ICD. This ensured their compliance when it came to matters concerning what the ICD would like to see brought before the
97 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
98 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
99 RG 260 5/269-1/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
48

people. It encouraged a self-censorship that was born out of self-interest, because no one receiving double rations in addition to free meals was going act in a way that would jeopardize this arrangement. It achieved a further goal. Since it was self-censorship it was not necessary to engage in overt censorship that would tend to undermine the message they were trying to convey.
Returning POW’s: A Case Study
In November of 1944, Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War, received a proposal from a group headed by Professor Warren A. Seavey of the Harvard Law
School. In the proposal Seavey suggested “that German prisoners of war in the United
States receive a fuller education on the ideals of democracy through a definite program.”
100
Stimson, subsequent to receiving the proposal, sent two letters to the
Harvard branch of the American Defense Organization of which Seavey was vice chairman. In these letters Stimson outlines his reasons for rejecting the proposal. The main reason he gives for his considering the Seavey proposal to be unworkable is that he, along with the War Department, felt that such a procedure “would be met with suspicion, hostility and resistance.”
101
While Stimson concentrated on how such a program would garner results opposite of what the United States wanted to achieve, it appears more likely that he was reacting to the suggestion that the Seavey group wanted to have civilians conduct a survey in the prisoner of war camps in an effort to determine which of the prisoners “might be amenable to re-education.”
102
Finally, Stimson points out that the War Department had “for a long time been separating cooperative and noncooperative prisoners,” 103 indicating that the War Department was quite satisfied with what was already being done.
Regardless of Stimson’s public rejection of the Seavey proposal, a plan that was in most respects identical to that suggested by Seavey was already underway. Evidence of this may be found in an article written for the New York Times by Dana Adams
Schmidt in 1946.
104
She interviewed former prisoners of war holding what were described as key posts in post-war Germany. Most reported that they had begun their reeducation program in August of 1944, a full three months before Stimson rejected such a plan as unworkable. Of course, this should not be surprising, because for a program like this to be effective it is best to have it operate covertly.
While most of those involved became minor functionaries and served in the
German police service. Some were in a position to have a much greater impact. Indeed, one might conclude that the “Special Prisoners” project had a significant impact on the overall development of Western Europe. For example, in the “Photographic Record.
100 Special to The New York Times . “Stimson Rejects Plan to Teach Nazi War Prisoners
Democracy.”
New York Times 30 November 1944: 5.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid.
104 Adams Schmidt, Dana. “German Captives Push Democracy.” New York Times 9 June 1944:
33.
49

Former Special Prisoners Engaged in their Present Jobs as Civilians” one finds a picture of Dr. Walter Hallstein of the Universität Frankfurt am Main, who later became the first
President of the European Commission, in his office.
105 Though the records give only sparse information, and could not anticipate his future importance in the development of
Europe, it is clear that Hallstein was considered one of their successes even at this early juncture.
While quite a few special prisoners took on leading editorial roles in Germany’s cultural industry, Alfred Andersch and Hans Richter take a special place within this group of special prisoners for two reasons. Andersch and Richter were the motivating force behind the Gruppe 47 , which was the most important literary organization in postwar Germany dedicated, at least initially, to encouraging young German authors. The second is their apparent falling out with the Military Government authorities. Both had been part not only of the prisoner of war newspaper Der Ruf , but were also later part of the so-called “Rhode Island Project.”
Once a part of the “Rhode Island Project,” or, as it was referred to by some, “ die
Gehirn-Fabrik ,”
106
prisoners attended lectures given by a number of educators from leading American Universities. In fact, Peter Demetz notes that Andersch attended the lectures enthusiastically.
107
The hope was to establish a new intellectual elite in
Germany. Some of the topics covered were: American Studies,
108
American History and
Political Science, 109 German History.
110 This new elite, it was hoped, would owe their allegiance to the American democratic system. It was further anticipated that they would in turn be able to impose these values on German cultural and political life after the war.
The re-education process for a German POW began shortly after the soldier was captured. Following an initial questioning, it was determined to what degree the individual adhered to National Socialist doctrine. At this point the prisoners were separated into two distinct groups. One group consisted of those who were deemed antifascist. These were designated “White.” The other, much larger, group was comprised of general prisoners who did not display the requisite political attitudes. They were designated “Black.” In total there were an estimated 375,000 German prisoners held in the United States.
111
Of this, according to Wehdeking, approximately 15,000 were
105 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, RG 389 290/34/29/4 Box 1604.
106 Wehdeking 23. “Die Gehirn-Fabrik” was used in referring to Fort Getty.
107 Peter Demetz, After the Fires: Recent Writing in the Germanies, Austria and Switzerland (San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986) 8.
108 Taught by Howard M. Jones, Harvard University and President of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
109 Taught by Thomas V. Smith, University of Chicago, he was also director of the program.
110 Taught by Arnold Wolfers and Fritz Mommsen both of Yale University and Henry Ehrmann of the Institute of World Affairs, New York.
111 Volker Christian Wehdeking, Der Nullpunkt. Über die Konstituierung der deutschen
Nachkriegsliteratur (1945-1948) in den amerikanischen Kriegsgefangenenlagern . (Stuttgart: J.B.
Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1971), 3.
50

segregated as anti-Nazis and were housed in separate camps.
112
The number suggested by Wehdeking is debatable, since it is reported that approximately 26,000 German prisoners went through the re-education program according to news reports of the time.
113
There was also a practical aspect to their education. Numerous specialists were brought to the camp from Washington D.C. to instruct the “students” in English.
Moreover, American military personnel also gave lectures on administration and military government in preparation for the roles they might take in Germany upon their return.
114
The prisoners who successfully completed the course of study began returning to Germany in October of 1945 and were expected to aid in the governance of occupied
Germany.
115
As mentioned above, two of the more notable figures to emerge from the Rhode
Island Project were Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter. Together they were the ostensible editors, under the watchful eyes of Allied Information Control Officers, of the initial version of Der Ruf , the most extensively circulated of the POW newspapers. This journal, however, was to take on a second incarnation after the end of hostilities. Upon their return to Germany, Andersch and Richter obtained one of the first licenses to published and continued Der Ruf as a literary journal. In it, they hoped to create a forum in which not only literary issues were discussed but the deeper philosophical problems facing post-war Germany. Publication continued until April of 1947, when the Military Government cancelled its license.
116
The reasons for this are debatable and unclear. Wehdeking (139) reports that it was due to the nihilistic tone of the articles appearing in its pages. However, Ralf
Schnell, in Die Literatur der Bundesrepublik Autoren, Geschichte, Literaturbetrieb , reports that Der Ruf was suspended due to its critical position towards Allied politics and the concept of collective guilt as sponsored by the western Allies (Schnell 82). One of the more recent monographs on the situation of non-ICD journals in Germany sheds little additional light on the situation. Clare Flanagan simply reiterates the already existing theories, but does note that the cut in the number of copies allowed to be published by the authorities may well have been a warning to the editors of Der Ruf
(Flanagan 152).
There may be some merit in Wehdeking’s assertion. The ICD did want uplifting stories to appear, especially as the world teetered on the brink of the Cold War.
Schnell’s position is a little more difficult to defend, because Military Government
112 Wehdeking 6.
113 Adams Schmidt, Dana. “German Captives Push Democreacy.” New York Times 9 June 1944:
33.
114 Wehdeking 23.
115 “German Captives Trained Here.” New York Times 21 October 1945: 5.
116 The reasons given for Der Ruf 's license being lifted are unclear. Wehdeking (139) reports that it was due to the nihilistic tone of the articles appearing in its pages. However, Ralf Schnell, in Die
Literatur der Bundesrepublik Autoren, Geschichte, Literaturbetrieb , reports that Der Ruf was suspended due to its critical position towards Allied politics and the concept of collective guilt as sponsored by the western Allies. (Schnell 82).
51

documents reveal that its policy was deeply divided on this point. The clarification that eventually came from the ICD on the 16 th
of January 1946, fully one year before the ban on Der Ruf , unequivocally states as that “one cannot condemn all Germans – invoking a racial theory in reverse.”
117
The reasons for the ban as stated by Schnell would thus be inconsistent with ICD policy. The fact that the ban on Der Ruf is cloaked in some mystery leads one to speculate on how someone who had been held in such high regard by the American could have found himself in the situation of having been banned a short time later.
There is some evidence of the regard the Americans involved in the Gehirnfabrik had for Andersch. He was considered a special prisoner, who was to be used in
Germany for military purposes. He had to go though a special battery of examination that tested and graded
118
his knowledge of:
1.
English…………………………………….B+
2.
American History………………………….1
3.
German History……………………………2
4.
Military Government………………………1.5
It was further noted that Andersch had excellent knowledge of Munich (he had lived there for 23 years), Frankfurt am Main (2 year residence), and Hamburg (he had resided there for 5 years). Interestingly, it does not mention the fact that he had been interned in
Dachau in 1933 for 6 moths due to his activity with the Communists in southern
Germany. In addition, it notes that he had a wife who was part-Jewish with the statement that this precluded his membership in any Nazi organization. In this case it was used to his benefit. It is certainly a far cry from the “mongrel of Jewish descent” he refers to in other documentation of his time as a prisoner of war.
119
Moreover, he does not mention that he had divorced her in 1943. However, in this case he is bound to receive more sympathy from the Americans if they believe his story. He does note his membership in the DAF, which did not preclude him from receiving a “White” designation. It is also interesting to note that Andersch at this time already lists as
“avocational experience of military significance” writer, novelist, and radio script writer.
The Andersch case noted above demonstrates that the American system of vetting candidates may not have been as tight as they would have liked to have believed.
The comments made by the investigators responsible for deciding who would become part of the reeducation of Germany were glowing. On the cover of the Andersch file the remark “good man” is found. It seems the Americans may have made a monumental
117 “The American Soldier in Germany” a policy document published by the ICD on January 16,
1946. NARA, RG 260.
118 The Languages were always assigned a standard letter grade. The other subject were rated according to a 5 point scale: 1=Superior, 2=Excellent, 3=Very Satisfactory, 4=Satisfactory,
5=Unsatisfactory. The complete dossiers are available at NARA, RG 389 290/34/29/4 Boxes 1449-
1466.
119 Willi Seebald, On the Natural History of Destruction , 120. It is noteworthy that the handwriting found in the documents uncovered by Sebald match that of the examinations Andersch wrote as a special prisoner of war in 1945.
52

error in sizing up Andersch, or there is more to the story than has been revealed so far by archival documents. There is the possibility that the Americans were “cooking” the official records in a way that allowed them to use Andersch. The problem was that, though Andersch did not reveal his activities in the Communist Party to the Americans, it most likely came to light after the occupation. To avoid a possible embarrassment as the Cold War started, ties with Andersch were cut.
There are many of these “Special Prisoners” documented in the American files.
In fact there is even a file entitled “Photographic Record. Former Special Prisoners
Engaged in their Present Jobs as Civilians”, which depicts many of these products of the
Gehirnfabrik at work in Germany after the end of the war. They range from anonymous
POWs charged with the responsibility of building an ordinance depot in Griesheim near
Frankfurt am Main to Dr. Walter Hallstein, who was appointed President of the
Frankfurt University and was recognized as one of the leading “Europeans” in
Germany’s political reconstruction and Hans Bott who shortly after his return to
Germany worked closelt with the Minister of Culture and Education in Baden
Wuerttemberg and later made it into the political inner-circle of the Adenauer government. But of greater direct relevance to the current topic, were individuals like
Ernst von Bressendorf, who was a Publication Advisor in the Publication Section of the
ICD in Stuttgart. It is clear that the Americans had an extensive plan for how they were going to go about transforming Germany into a model democracy, eventhough it may have look disorganized at times.
Publishers
If it one were to conclude that the Allies were slow to react to the ideological void in post-war Germany, it is only because the Military Government tried to be as meticulous as possible in screening out undesirables from the publishing industry. Felix
Reichmann outlines the procedure;
The applicant had to file three Military Government questionnaires and three detailed business and personal questionnaires with Publications Control. After a thorough and comprehensive interview by an official of Publications Control the applicant had to submit a publishing program for one year worked out in specific titles. Then the whole file was transmitted to Intelligence Branch which again interviewed the applicant and his references. If both branches agreed that the applicant was eligible for a publisher's license a recommendation to this effect was submitted to the Commanding Officer of the Information Control Division.
If Berlin Headquarters concurred with the opinion of the Land, a license was issued.
120
Having past the stringent test of character and received a license from the proper authorities, however, did not mean that it was business as usual. Each individual publisher was required to police himself in regard to what he published under the
120 Felix Reichmann, “The First Year of American Publications Control in Germany,” In:
Publisher's Weekly [Nov. 16, 1946]; 2811.
53

following guidelines set by the Military Government, which forbade the following topics:
1. Criticism of the Allied Government and interference with the Military
Government.
2. Racial or Religious discriminations.
3. Propagation of militaristic ideas including Pan-Germanism and German
Imperialism.
4. National-socialistic or related “völkisch” ideas.
5. Fascist or anti-democratic ideas.
121
To assure that the guidelines were adhered to, Publication Control Officers scrutinized the content of the books before they were released. If it was found that they were unacceptable, depending on the severity of the offence, the publisher ran the risk of receiving anything from a severe reprimand to having his license revoked.
122
However, one should bear in mind that technically the Military Government could have imposed the death penalty if it thought it warranted.
123
Although this extreme penalty was never used, the simple fact that it could be invoked was a severe deterrent, which insured that the publishers erred on the side of safety.
Considering the penalties for transgressing the Military Government guidelines it is little wonder that the literature of the immediate post-war was not up to standard, as indicated in an interview given by Sidney Sulkin, who studied the German publishing industry under the auspices of the American Information Control Division.
124
In an effort to remedy the malaise of the post-war literary scene in Germany, Dr. Georg Kurt
Schauer, the licensed publisher and editor of the
Börsenblatt für den deutschen
Buchhandel , the German book trade paper, published an article on the problems facing the German publishers in the January 1st, 1947 edition of the
Börsenblatt
.
125
In his commentary, Schauer sketches out what he calls the four most necessary themes to be dealt with in Germany immediately after the war: “relationship of the individual to his
God; his relationship to immediate family and close friends; his status in community,
121 Reichmann 2811.
122 Reichmann 2811.
123 “Control of Publications, Radio Broadcasting, News Services, Films, Theaters, and Music:
SHAEF Military Government Law NO. 191, Amended (1),” Germany 1947-1949: The Story in
Documents (United States Department of State, Office of Public Affairs, Publication #3556, European and
British Commonwealth Series 9, March 1950) 594-5. In this law, which controlled the dissemination of information in the Allied Zone of Occupation, the power to assess penalities for the transgressing publication control was granted to the Military Government. It gave the Military Government the authority to impose punishments, which included the death penalty, as it deemed fit.
124 Helmut Lehmann-Haupt, “Problems Confronting Publication Control in Germany,” In:
Publisher's Weekly [March 29, 1947]; 1789.
125 Reference to this article and an outline of its content is found in Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt,
“German Publishing Begins to Revive,” In: Publisher's Weekly [March 16, 1946]; 1617. I have not as yet obtained the original, but will include a more in depth analysis when it arrives through inter-library loan.
54

state and workshop; his relationship to nature and the material world.”
126
The topics listed by Schauer indicate the areas which publishers could consider safe.
The “unofficial” guidelines set down by Schauer are reflected in much of what was subsequently published in Germany. The works of both Borchert and Böll demonstrate how some of the points of Schauer's policy were put into practice. In
Borchert's short story, “Das Brot,” one sees an example of how the familial theme is worked out. In addition, Borchert's play,
Draußen vor der Tür
, demonstrates an individual's coming to terms with God. Böll's “An der Brücke,” although it stretches the above guidelines, in that shows an individual trying to make contact with a stranger, falls under the rubric of literature which explores the difficulty of how the individual relates to others in society. One can see that Schauer's article was more than simply an academic exercise and had implications that are noticable in post-war literature.
In addition to the above restrictions on what might appear in post-war publications, other measures were employed to ensure that material suitable for reeducation received priority. The size of any edition distributed by a German publisher was limited to 5000 copies.
127
The reason given was that there was an accute paper shortage in Germany after the war.
128
However, special permission could be obtained to publish oversize editions. Reichmann notes that exceptions were made in the case of several anti-Nazi pamphlets, which were permitted editions of 20000 copies.
129
Although larger runs were allowed in the case of decidedly pro-democratic publications, their numbers stand in stark contrast to editions of official OMGUS
130
publications.
One of these “official” publications, Neue Auslese , which was based on the Readers
Digest format, enjoyed a circulation of 280000 as early as February of 1946. There appears to have been enough paper to publish what Baukage, a pseudonym used by an
American broadcaster in Germany, termed “the right kind of food for the right kind of thought.”
131
Creating a Literary Tradition: Post-World War II German Literature
In most of the critical discussions, scholars approach the problems presented by post-war German literature with a view to distilling the “truth” contained in what appears on the published page. They are clearly concerned with the content or meaning of the literary text. Few, if any, pay much attention to the question of how the respective piece of literature got into print or what effect the mechanisms of the publishing industry have had on the final product. In most of the historical and critical accounts of that period the published work is simply accepted as a true expression on the
126 Lehmann-Haupt (March 16, 1947) 1617.
127 Reichmann 2811.
128 Norman 47.
129 Reichmann 2811.
130 OMGUS = Office of Military Government, United States.
131 Baukage, “What Germany is Reading,” In: The Saturday Review of Literature [Feb. 23, 1946];
43.
55

part of the author. Such an assumption holds that the post-war German author was free to express and publish thoughts that were of his or her own choosing. It also presumes that authors control a nation's literary corpus and ignores the fact that the publisher as well as the author is trying to earn a living through the production of materials they hope readers will pay for, in other words market mechanisms and cultural policies of the occupation forces have been ignored. It will be demonstrated in the following deliberation that elements of psychological warfare and continued propagandization were deciding factors in post-war literature. Moreover, it will be shown that the resulting post-war literature in Germany was a product of American re-education efforts.
When one consults the standard histories of post-war German literature one could safely conclude that German literature was once more allowed to flourish with little or no political impediments. That is to say, with the end of the Nazi regime,
German authors were once again allowed to produce literature which did not pander to a narrow political purpose. Simultaneous to the regeneration of literary production a theoretical debate ensued, which wrestled with how literature not only dealt with the events and guilt of the previous tyranny but also how the individual author could appropriately deal with the linguistic legacy left by the Nazi regime. Again, this debate is presented as internal by scholars, that is, German authors and critics debated problems unique to German language and literature. However, recently these assumptions have been questioned with more evidence coming to light that literary production, under the guise of free expression, was a vital part of Allied re-education efforts.
What has been largely neglected by scholars are the ideologies and mechanisms which lay behind the exterior of literary production. Many literary histories deal with the individual author or the literary collective and what is presented to the reader in its final form. What is not investigated is how one work rather than another is seen as worthy of publication and circulation. The lives of authors are often subject to the strictest scrutiny while the motives, ideologies, and necessities of those responsible for making the finished product available to the reading public goes unexamined. In the case of German post-war literature, an understanding of the publishing milieu is important, because the Military Government and publishers determined the direction literature was to take, while the authors wrote works which fell parameters by publisher who were carefully scrutinized by the Publications Control Division of the Military
Government.
One of the few scholarly works to examine Allied manipulation of post-war literature in Germany is Volker Wedeking's Der Nullpunkt. Über die Konstituierung der deutschen Nachkriegsliterature in den amerikanischen Kriegsgefangenenlagern . In this work, Wehdeking outlines how the American government, through its POW camps took an active role in shaping the literature which was to appear in Germany after the war.
He presents a great deal of historical data, which leads to the conclusion that American re-education was more than a secondary consideration, as is often insinuated, and that preparations for the management of German cultural life after the war was well coordinated. However, Wehdeking does little in the way of analyzing what affects the
American endeavour had on German literature. What he certainly accomplishes though
56

is to uncover that the solution to the problem of post-war literature in Germany is not to be found in only the exegesis of the texts made available through publication.
When discussing Allied censorship in post-war Germany, critics most often take on an apologetic tone, recognizing the fundimental contradiction between the goal of democratization and the means used to reach that goal. Dieter Breuer points out that the situation of the author and his work changed little with the advent of the Befreiung . He concludes that, “Die Literatur sollte nach wie vor als ein behördlich zu kalkulierendes
Mittel zu, wenn auch ehrenhaften, Zweck dienen.”
132
In addition, he opines that with the beginning of the cold war in 1947, the Allied Miltary Governments were able to shift the thematic direction of post-war German literature away from the original purpose of re-education and focus it on either anti-communism in the west and anti-capitalism in the east.
Although Breuer's analysis of post-war censorship on a whole remains objective-
-he limits himself to a factual account of the policies and mechanisms used by the
Military Governments--he demonstrates an ideological bias when describing censorship in the Soviet zone of occupation as opposed to the western zone. Whereas the goals of the western allies are described as ehrenhaft , he uses the term “ Gleichschaltung
” 133
in conjunction with the activities of the Soviet occupation. In doing so, Breuer equates
Soviet censorship with the well documented activities of the Nazi regime while portraying the censorship of the western Allies as a regrettable error. Breuer's view is symptomatic of how the cultural policies of the western Allies are portryed by critics and discloses a certain reluctance to investigate the implication of those policies.
Breuer's findings, however, stand in constrast to those reached by Volker
Wehdeking and Günter Blamberger, who declare, “Erst mit dem 8. Mai 1945 besteht wieder die Möglichkeit, ohne Lebensgefahr offen und engagiert zu schreiben.” 134
This statement, however, does not entirely ring true. As will be looked more closely later, the military Governors in the western zones had the authority to execute those who published unlicensed material.(cf. ????) Additionally, the term “engagiert” is somewhat vague. According to Allied policies, publishers were forbidden from distributing works that were critical of any one of the occupying powers. Such a strategy would have limited the topics an author could discuss in a work to the political, social, and cultural situation of the Nazi era, of which he or she would have to take a negative view, or extoll the virtues of the Allied political system and cultural values. In either case, the author served the purposes of Allied re-education.
Ralf Schnell, in his history of post-war West German literature, touches on the subject of Allied literary policies. Though he recognizes that the American military occupation Government made an attempt at managing German culture, he concludes that, “Doch nicht nur alte Nazis, Mitläufer or unbelehrbare Konservative, sondern auch
132 Dieter Breuer, Geschichte der literarischen Zensur in Deutschland (Heidelberg: Quelle &
Meyer, 1982) 239.
133 Breuer 241.
134 Volker Wehdeking and Günter Blamberger, Erzählliteratur der frühen Nachkriegszeit (1945-
1952) (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1990) 201.
57

Intellektuelle der 'jungen Generation' wandten sich gegen die amerikanischen
Vorstellungen.”
135
Schnell, however, makes the assumption that re-education process was aimed directly at indivdual author and neglects to consider the influence exercised by the publisher on the author, with the publisher under the firm control of the Military
Government's Publications Control Division. He is thus overlooking an important aspect of the literary scene.
The second aspect of the reshaping of post-war German literature was the practical application of the policies developed before the end of the war. This period runs from mid-1945 to early 1947. It was in this two year time span that the Allied
Military Government most overtly managed and directed the German publishing industry. Additionally, the Military Government actively distributed materials, which it deemed suitable for the democratization and re-education of the German populous.
Mid-1947 marked the beginning of the final stage of the Allied involvement in the German literary scene. By this time the Allied cultural control structures were in place, which secured the continuation of the re-education process. The Information
Control Division of the Military Government had insured that only acceptable and reputable publishers were in operation. This, however, is not to say they did not continue to exercise a powerful influence on what appeared in print. They allowed the appearance of a seemingly independent publishing industry, which they could control through logistic means, that is by allocation of paper and printer's ink, rather than through direct control.
The Second World War may be described as the first modern war. Although some might argue that this is not the case, because the First World War, the Franco-
Prussian War, or even the American Civil War exhibited modern traits, because industrial production and technology was a major player, it is in the Second World War that was fought on the basis of discordant political ideologies. As Walther Dorn surmises,
It [the Second World War] no longer transpired exclusively under the balance-ofpower system as a war between sovereign states that could be resolved by the normal treaty-making devices that had become traditional in the nineteenth century.
136
He opines that the crucial question was, “how National Socialism was to be expunged as an active force from the political and economic life of post-war Germany?”
137
In coming to such a conclusion, Dorn highlights the high degree to which economics, politics, and re-education were related in the Allied approach to post-war Germany.
Accepting such a correlation, one must regard Allied policy holistically rather than as strictly economic or political. They were specifically designed to operate in concert
135 Ralf Schnell, Die Literatur der Bundesrepublik. Autoren, Geschichte, Literaturbetrieb
(Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1986) 82.
136 Walter L. Dorn, “The Debate over American Occupation Policy in Germany in 1944-1945,”
In: Political Science Quarterly 72 [1957]; 482-3.
137 Dorn 483.
58

towards the goal of German democratization and re-education. It is on this basis that one ought approach the following strategies, which were incorporated into official
American policy. Though the proposals appeared to address only economic, political, or legal issues, they formed the ideological background which dictated the themes dealt with by the post-war authors.
The first of the three suggested approaches has been dubbed “the out-law theory of National Socialism.”
138
This plan was limited in scope and based itself on individual responsibility. It advocated the bringing to justice of all Nazis, with the degree of complicity being a factor in how they were dealt with. This policy influenced the
London Charter, which resulted in the subsequent war crimes trials at Nuremburg.
The second view of how to deal with the Third Reich was based on the neo-
Marxist school of thought.
139
As can be expected, they understood the rise of Naziism as a product of social tensions created by the capitalist society in Germany.
140 They insisted that, by imposing an economic democracy (ie. a radical redistribution of wealth) on post-war Germany, a social revolution should take place. As is plainly evident, they most strongly advocated a socialist approach to governing Germany, which also required a reorientation of how the individual related to traditional economic power structures. That is to say, the German people were to be taught to question their traditions. Such an underlying ideology is evident in many of the literary works which appeared shortly after the war, where the policies and tradition of the previous generations were questioned. This questioning of the wisdom of past generations is most evident in two of Wolfgang Borchert's manifestos, “Generation ohne Abschied” and “Das ist unser Manifest,” where he indicts German cultural values for the suffering of the survivors of the war.
141
The third position taken in regard to how post-war Germany was to be treated, one which had the greatest influence on the policy makers in Washington and which may be seen as the precursor to the Morgentau plan, was that advocated by Lord Robert
Vansittart of Great Britain. The two foundational premises of his approach were that the
“deep-seated German disease that had been more than a century in the process of incubation” 142 needed to be cured and that all Germans had been so deeply infected with
138 An expression of this position may be found in a memorandum of January 22, 1945, addressed to the President of the United States from the U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, Attorney General,
Francis Biddle, and Secretary of State, Edward Stetinius. (Report of Robert H. Jackson to the
International Conference on Military Trials [Washington, 1949]; 3ff.
139 Dorn indicates that the leading proponents of this approach were Franz Neumann, Gunther
Reimann, Harold Laski, and Max Lerner. (Dorn 484).
140 Dorn 484.
141 “Generation ohne Abschied,” In: Das Gesamtwerk (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1949) 59-61.
“Das ist unser Manifest,” In: Das Gesamtwerk , 308-315.
142 Dorn. 485. The genesis of this position in regard to Germany may be found well before the
National Socialist regime took power. In the years leading up to the First World War politicians and scholars in Britain made reference to the so-called “German problem.” Even in that early period they allude to being ideologically based. Dr. Charles Sarolea in The Anglo-German Problem (London:
Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1913) opines that the cause of German militarism and “perverted nationalism” lay in their Nietzschian “will to power.” (351).
59

National Socialism that one could only consider all of them as guilty of having waged war against democracy. He felt that the only cure could be a thorough “Umbildung” of the German psyche as the result of a lengthy occupation.
143 One can easily see how the doctrine of collective guilt sprang from this approach and thus how Vansittart's proposal served as the cornerstone of the Military Government's treatment of occupied Germany.
Although it cannot be argued that any of the above doctrines was fully realized in what was to become official occupation policy, all three played a part and thus affected the way in which the German people were expected to view themselves individually and collectively after the war. The interplay of these sometimes disparate ideological positions has in part led to the confusion expressed in post-war literature.
The publishers and writer, without question wanted to please their occupiers; however, they were unsure of exactly what it was that the Allies wanted. It also left authors not knowing where to place the blame for the Nazi nightmare, which comes across clearly in a great deal of the literature immediately after the war. An example of this confusion of ideologies is found in Wolfgang Borchert's
Draußen vor der Tür
. In the play,
Beckmann, a soldier returning from Siberia, calls on various persons who are stereotypical caricatures of a German army officer, a Cabaret Director, and even of God.
In each case, Beckmann lays blame for some of the events of the Second World War at their feet. However, in each case they are unwilling to accept responsibility. In the end,
Beckmann recognizes his own guilt, but at the same time the reader is left with the uneasy feeling that there is a greater collective guilt, which does not reside within any one individual. Borchert does not provide a solution to the conflict of where blame is to be placed, not even God accepts it, and thus reflects Allied policy, which was unclear on who was to be held responsible for the activities of the Nazi regime.
Until May of 1945 most of how Germany was going to be treated can be considered abstract theory; however, after that date General Lucius Clay, the American
Military Governor of Germany, had to turn theory into practical application. He quickly found that he had to take the middle ground between high political/ideological platitudes and governing a defeated nation.
What is most often considered in studies on Allied re-education in Germany is the de-nazification of the German school system, which was carried out with varying degrees of vigour by local military commanders. These efforts, however, have a longer term effect and would have little impact on the immediate post-war period.
Additionally, a number of studies have been conducted on the impact of translations of
American literature in the post-war period. However, this variant of the
Americanization of German literature can only be considered a limited success, because few American authors; such as Carl Sandberg and Ernest Hemingway, were willing to give up the German translation rights.
144
As of February 1946, only 34 American titles
143 Dorn 485.
144 Albert Norman, Our German Policy: Propaganda and Culture (New York: Vantage Press,
1951) 49.
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were available to the German publishing industry for translation.
145
What is more significant, is the manner in which the Military Government approached the indigenous publishing industry, because this would most directly affect course post-war literature would take.
The first consideration for the occupying forces were those of providing at least minimal levels of food and clothing for those still alive in Germany's cities. The general consensus was that Germany's physical needs had to be met before attention could be turned to the job of re-education. This attitude is echoed in the reports sent back to the
United States via foreign correspondents. A report published in the February 16th, 1946 edition of The Saturday Review by James Marshall is indicative of how the Allied priorities in Germany were reported to the American people;
Of course I understand that we should not show kindness to our former foes, or even to the children of our former foes, but plagues show no such fine distinctions. Some of the higher officers of our Military Government in
Germany are worried about what might happen if a severe epidemic should break out in Germany. We can all recall what the influenza epidemic did even to well-fed Americans during the last war. Furthermore, there is no use talking of re-educating the Germans as long as they are cold and improperly nourished.
Their prevailing attention will be given to their discomforts and misery, not new ideas and attitudes.
146
Reports, such as the one cited above, give the impression that the American Military
Government was, eight months after the surrender of Germany, not actively involved in any re-education at all. Indeed Marshall, in concluding his article, bemoans the ideological void in Germany which the Soviets were poised to fill.
147
Again indicating that the American Military Government was doing nothing in the area of German reeducation.
Such reports, however, serve to uncover the means by which the Military
Government was approaching the problem of re-education. The Allied efforts were intended to be covert, giving the impression that re-education was low on their list of priorities.
There can be no question that the material contained in Neue Auslese was an overt attempt at re-orienting Germans not only away from their own Nazi past but away from Soviet political influence. Two of the titles appearing in the first edition are:
“Germany and Western Ideas;” and “The Free State.” Moreover,
Neue Auslese was used by the British in their education of German POW's held on the British Isles.
148
Such actions demonstrate that, though trying to make their efforts as inconspicuous as
145 Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, “German Publishing Begins to Revive,” In: Publishers Weekly
[March 16, 1946]; 1618.
146 James Marshall, “The Europe We Are Fleeing From,” In: The Saturday Review [Feb. 16,
1946]; 24.
147 Marshall 25.
148 Baukage 43.
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possible, the Military Government by favouring certain types of material exercised considerable control over what was read by the German population. Furthermore, by
“demonstrating” to the indiginous publishing industry what the German population
“wanted,” the Allied Information Control Division created the appearance that what they wanted published was also going to be profitable for the German publishers as well.
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Conclusions:
As demonstrated in the discussion, it is simplistic to believe that post-war
German literature was an expression of purely German cultural values. Considering the
Allied efforts to re-educate Germany and Germany's total dependance on America for its physical necessities, one can only conclude that post-war German literature is a reflection of an American ideology. That is not to say that German post-war literature is in some way inferior, because of ideological interference. But it does explain the embracing of terms used to designate the post-war period; such as Stunde Null, tabula rasa and Kahlschlag, which were attempts to present German literature as having been de-nazified. One must thus come to the conclusion that the problems of post-war literature lies with those who, for reasons of the policies promoted by the Allies during the occupation, are reluctant to accept that German literature was an ideological battle ground, which only became active after May of 1945.
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The Sources
There were at least three early attempts by officers attached to the ICD to document the activities of the Division. These were written anonymously with the expressed purpose of synthesizing an annual report for the OMGUS and have until now remained unpublished. Relegated to the archives, they have only sparingly been used as references for studies on the various aspects of the ICD’s activities. The three unpublished histories used in this work have been designated as History I (covering
December 1944 to June 30, 1946), History II (July 1, 1946 to June 30, 1947), and
History III (July 1, 1947 to June 30, 1948). They provide not only a synthesis of the activities of the ICD and its various branches, but demonstrate the American’s shifting attitudes as the Germany becomes ground zero for the initial phases of the Cold War.
History I, a total of 151 typescript pages, provides the most comprehensive, though general, overview of not only the activities of the ICD, but also the underlying motives of the organization. While its official reporting begins on the 8 th
of May 1945, it provides some background on the origins of the unit as the Psychological Warfare
Division prior to that date.
In this report it becomes quite clear that the ICD is purposely taking on the idea of waging Kunstpolitik .
149
They're control of the media and information was designed to be an equally strict program of control and supervision. The difference between controlled and supervision is a topic that is taken up by Tania Long in a February 23,
1946 article written for the New York Times. Supervision, in her view, was the positive side of the work of the ICD. It entailed encouraging and directing the German efforts towards democracy and away from National Socialism and militarism. Control was the inverse of supervision. It entailed licensing, restricting, and on occasion punishing the fledgling German media.
150
It was, however, emphasized that they were there for control of the German media and not the non-German press.
Overall, the tone of the document is quite idealistic and refers to the advancement of the cause of all of the Allied nations, which was to change in the two subsequent histories.
151
This would be entirely in keeping with the initial idealism of those employed by the ICD. Again, in reports in newspapers in the United States the idealism of some of the officers is noted. This also becomes a problem for them later on as these men begin to be replaced in 1946 as they gain enough points to be discharged from the Army. It was hoped that some of these initial recruits could be convinced to reenlist; however, frustrations with the lack of policy from Washington and a lack of resources from the Army led many of these idealists to later, in the words of C. L.
Sulzberger, to fling up their hands and quit.
152
Of interest as well is that no attempt was made to hide the fact that the US
Military Government was controlling the radio and newspapers in their zone. This was completely in keeping with the psychological, sociological and anthropological studies
149 History I, 1.
150 Tania Long (Feb. 23, 1946)
151 History I, 8.
152 C. L. Sulzberger, “US psychology fails in Germany,” New York Times, March 6, 1946.
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undertaken before the end of the war.
153
It was concluded in the studies that the German mind understood only the direct approach and a more nuanced approach would lead to the ICD officials needing to explain their actions. This was considered undesirable in that it gave the Germans an opportunity to argue the correctness of the actions being taken by the Military Government. This was simply the carrying forward of the
Psychological Warfare Division’s policy in how to deal with the Germans they now governed. The official policy was that they were going to control German thought and expression in all media and make no excuses about it. This position was mitigated to some extent by the Potsdam Agreement, which exposes a fundamental contradiction of the ICD’s, which is far more rigid than the approach outlined in the Potsdam document, which is not as nebulous in it definitions of freedom of expression.
Initially, the ICD had planned prepublication scrutiny of everything that was going to be produced in their zone of control. According to History I, however, this seems not to have happened, with Psychological Warfare Division and then the ICD going directly into stage two of phase one. The initial plan was to have three phases of control with the third phase having three stages
154
but different parts of U.S. occupied
Germany moved through these stages at different times. For example, Aachen, which had already been occupied in 1944, was the initial trial area for their policies and practices. As the American occupation was in its beginning phases in the rest of its zone of control, Aachen was already well into the third phase by the time its administration had been handed over to the British.
Information control officers seemed genuinely surprised that the movement through the various phases did not happen more quickly.
155 Much to their chagrin it seemed they were very few suitable Germans available to take over the task of running
Germany's media. Does that they did find, in their estimation, lacked the necessary influence to carry through the re-education process or had little self-confidence in what they were doing. Both of these traits were seeing as counterproductive to accomplishing the goals of reorienting Germany's media. The problem here of course was that those who had influence had most likely been tainted by their involvement in one way or another with the National Socialists in Germany and those who had remained clean, due to having withdrawn from public life, were either broken broken or completely out of touch with an industry that had continue to move forward in their absence.
Coupled with a lack of suitable publishers was the dearth of physical plants in which to produce both the printed and the spoken word. Those few who did have access to printing presses and radio transmitters were almost universally considered unsuitable in the eyes of the ICD for political reasons. Those who were suitable most often did not have the financial resources or connections to start a new concern. The ICD had a novel solution to this problem. While all other divisions of OMGUS could only requisition property for their own use, the ICD was in the unique position of redistributing seized
153 Insert info on the studies
154 For an explanation of the phases see page 106 of History I.
155 History I, 8.
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property to German nationals.
156
The ICD not only included the physical plant in this, but also provided these businesses with equipment, existing trade names, contracts, and copyrights, provided that these new publishing houses and newspapers continued to further the mission of the ICD.
The Potsdam agreement set into motion a series of meetings between the four occupying powers. It was in these meetings that an agreement was to be reached in regard to how information and the media were to be controlled in a coordinated manner.
This achieved only a modicum of success. It seems that a great deal had been agreed to in the unofficial committees working on the various problems of information control in
Germany. On April 29, 1946 there was to be an official meeting of the Information
Control Committee of the Four Powers. While the four occupying powers agreed to many of the mechanisms that needed to be in place, the Soviet representatives refuse to accept the agenda that had been put forward for the meetings. This marked the day from which the four occupying powers recognize that they would have to put individual policies into practice. Very quickly the British and the American Military Governments agreed to coordinate their own policies, with the French playing along to some extent, but remaining to some extent separate from the other two. The Soviet military government remained outside of most agreements, but would on occasion to demonstrate some levels of coordinating information control activities, when the ends supported their own goals. Despite this, April 29, 1946 really marks the beginning of the war of words between the Soviet zone of control and the US and British sectors.
Moreover, it marks the first subtle shift of US policy of denazification of German media to one in which the media under their control took on an anti-Soviet position. When one places the three histories side-by-side one is immediately struck by the fact that History
I is very educational in nature and almost has the tenor of a pedagogical manual, whereas, in Histories II and III one senses the development of an ideological battlefield.
It becomes clear at this point that the Information Control Division was also to serve an intelligence function in Germany. This function, at least initially, was rather modest in scope. The ICD was to provide intelligence regarding the resources needed to reestablish each of the media under its control in Germany. It had a further responsibility of collecting, evaluating, and disseminating political intelligence. These functions, however, are significantly expanded in the following two years.
While many limitations were placed upon the German licensees, the most significant of these was the nature of the entity that could be granted a license. ICD policy clearly stated that licensing was reserved for "natural" persons.
157
This meant that no corporations could apply for a publishing or broadcasting license. This supported the ICD's position that individual people were to be held responsible for what was printed or broadcast in Germany. This meant that individuals would be held responsible for what was being published. This also meant that individuals could be jailed as punishment for their actions, something that it is very difficult to do in the case of a corporation. The full array of modes of prosecutions were to be used, and indeed
156 History I, 9-10 and 41.
157 History I, 6.
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were used, in enforcing ICD regulations.
158
The resulting punishments ranged from reprimands to revocations of licenses, with some being persued as criminal prosecutions that could result in imprisonment.
One of the trickiest issues that the Information Control Division had to deal with was what one did with the most egregious of offenders. Under normal circumstances this should not pose too much of a problem. However, in this case it did. The churches undertook publications of all sorts
159
and most likely felt they were beyond the reach of the Information Control Division, or they may have thought that the bulletins and
Sunday orders of service were not the intended targets of the information control division. In this particular case they would have been wrong in making such an assumption. But the ICD was at a loss as to how to approach churches that were not conforming with their wishes. While there may have been conversations between ICD officers and the church leadership, nowhere does it indicate that the ICD attempted to prosecute the churches for their illegal activities. Instead, they might have ration available paper, or approach the printers used by the churches. This would have had a minimal effect, since in most cases Church publications were done in-house. It might also have been the case that many of the ICD officers would have had inhibitions about dictating regulations to the church considering the strong stand in the United States taken in regard to separation of church and state.
History II appears to be less official in nature. Though it repeats some information found in History I, its focus is on the activities of individual branches of the
ICD. It runs a total of 75 pages, though not all of the pages are filled. It is quite cursory in some areas of the ICD’s activities, but it does fill in areas not covered in History I.
Moreover, its purpose seems to be different than that of the initial history. It focuses on issues such as the gathering of intelligence, denazification, how the blacklists were compiled, and the study of the reactions the German people had toward the occupation and how the ICD might be more effective. While History I can be deemed to be very idealistic in how it expresses the activities of the ICD in Germany, History II concerns itself with the political realities of the time. Where History I appears more outward looking in its perspective, History II describes the ICD on an operational level and how its various branches functioned as an organization.
While the Histories I and II describe much the same time frame, History III is chronologically removed and deals with the situation in the American Zone of Control as it had developed to the end of June 1948. It ends approximately where the Berlin crisis begins, after which the focus of the western occupation was changed to one of fighting the Cold War. History III provides insights into how the tensions began to mount between the United States and the Soviet Union and how the focus shifted from combating Nazism to fighting Communism.
A comparison of the three histories yields evidence of some interesting trends in how any American occupation forces were dealing with their former allies, primarily
158 History I, 7.
159 History I, 7.
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their relationship with the Soviet Union, but also how they work together with the
British and French occupation forces.
In the initial history that covered the period to June 30 th 1946, the emphasis is on ensuring that the Germans realize they've been completely defeated and that there is a certain collective guilt that all Germans share. Moreover, it is Nazi-ism that is clearly targeted as the evil that resided in Germany. However, in the second history there are some changes that can easily be noted in the American approach to the Germans. There is still a sense that they want to ensure that the Germans realize that they've been completely defeated, but any language referring to collective guilt on the part of the
Germans has disappeared. By the time the third history dealing with the period from
July 1, 1947 to the end of June 1948 is written, there is what can best be described as a seismic shift that has occurred in how the ICD is dealing with not only the Germans but the Soviet occupiers as well. When the references are made to Nazi-ism, and the references are indeed sparse in comparison to the first two histories, it is usually done in comparison with Communism. The message of the third history than one of an anti-
Communist position being taken by the military government in American occupied
Germany rather than one which is still having to deal with the legacy of Nazi-ism.
As a general policy the ICD was preparing Germany for what is described in the second history as the establishment of eventual freedom of expression. The wording found in the report makes it clear that freedom of expression may be a goal but it has not yet been achieved in Germany. This however is encouraging when compared with the first history where very few references are made to eventual freedom of expression. In the third history it is clear that the ICD has allowed greater freedoms in the various media under its control, but that it still fulfilled an important oversight function.
The reason for using History I as the primary document and publishing its contents are the following:
1.
The author appears to have access to all of the relevant classified documents regarding the operations side of the ICD. Much of what was published prior to 1983 had to rely on the memory of individual authors to fill in details related to the ICD.
160
2.
It is largely a description of the administrative structures of the ICD and and its regulations and how they evolved over time. The statistics that it contains have been checked against the sources the author would have used to compile his statistics and have proven reliable. The numbers reported in the history reliably reflect the reports that came in from the field offices and other sources. This has proven difficult with History II and III.
160 In fact, most of what was published on the ICD until the 1990’s was by individuals who had either a formal or informal role in the ICD.
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3.
History I has begun to serve as somewhat of a benchmark for researchers working with various aspects of media in post-war Germany.
161
While lists are often not the most interesting thing to read, they are revealing in this instance. They show the extent to which the Americans went in not only demilitarising the German cultural industry, but also the extent to which they attempted to Americanise it.
The reason for the existence of the ICD according to the “History of the
Information Control Division” was to re-educate the German people along democratic, non-militaristic lines. Re-education in this case has a specific definition, that being the denazification of all of Germany’s information services. Related to this is the description of the dismantling and re-establishment of Germany’s information production and distribution system. In doing so it focuses on the institutions and logistics rather than on the impact on individual Germans. Moreover, it says little about the internal debates that took place and the differences of opinion that were apt to arise in what was a very “academic” environment.
162
What is found here is very much an American perspective. There appears to have been little influence from the British contingent, with whom most of the ICD officers had worked with rather closely prior to Germany’s capitulation. The text also speaks of
“freeing” or “liberalizing” the German media from Nazi control. The ICD is presented as creating a new “objective” system, which is blended with re-education. There is no internal evidence in the text that suggests that this may have been found contradictory by some of the young officers. The assumption of the superiority of the American way of doing things is quite overt. In fact, the American way of doing things and democratic principles are portrayed as synonymous, with the approach to information dissemination being key to democracy. The system that is to be created is not only to be denazified, but Americanized, reflecting U.S. priciples, structures, and ideals.
All of this meant that the German cultural institutions were to be completely overhauled. Nothing is more indicative of this than the question regarding the
Goethehaus in Frankfurt am Main. Without the assent of the American occupation, there would have been no Goethehaus . In fact, there was considerable debate within the ICD regarding Goethe’s place within the German literary pantheon. In the end there seemed little that could be done about the official canon of German literature. The ICD concentrated on controlling those who would occupy key offices on the production side of Germany’s cultural industry. This, they thought, would have the greatest chance of having a long term impact on German culture.
The 1947 history may have overstated the ICD’s effectiveness; however, recent events in Iraq, and Germany’s refusal to participate, cause one to ponder whether the lesson of demilitarisation advocated by the ICD did take hold in the German psyche. After all, the experiment the ICD had embarked on was not one that one could prove within a few
161 Larry Hartenian relies heavily on this work in Controlling Information in U.S. occupied
Germany, 1945-1949: Media, Manipulation and Propaganda (2003).
162 Make reference to Koblenz microfiche where there is a difference regarding the approach to movies being shown in Germany.
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short years, but one would need to wait for a whole generation to grow up in this new regime and then come to political power.
Introduction:
The ICD quite consciously embraced the idea that they were engaging in
Kunstpolitik and their control of the media and information was purposely designed to be “an equally strict program of control and supervision.” 163
Throughout their active period in Germany the ICD remained consistent in what they controlled. They did, however, emphasize that they do not control non-German press, which is reiterated a number of times.
164
The American takeover of German media services had been carefully planned, with initial strategies being developed as early as 1943. In all, there were to be three distinct phases to the ICD’s activities. The first phase was to see a complete shutdown of Germany’s media, which was accomplished in a “piece-meal” fashion as more and more of Germany came under Allied control with Military Government Law No. 191, issued under the authority of the Supreme Commander in January 1945, providing the authority for the ICD to do so. This law “was amended in June 1945 to include television broadcasts and the sale and distribution of publications and sound recordings.”
165
The second phase of their plan would see the Allied Forces overtly operating
“certain selected instruments of public information.” In doing so, they also had complete control of its content.
The third phase involved a gradual return of the media to German control through careful selection of licensees who had been chosen for their anti-Nazi, democratic-mindedness.
Once all of the German information sources had been shut down, the Allies needed to fill the void they had created. In order to fill this gap, the psychological
Warfare Division (PWD), which was renamed the Information Control Division on July
13, 1945, published “clearly-labelled overt weekly newspapers,” so as to “fulfill the immediate need for disseminating news and information in Germany and for transmitting Military Government (MG) instructions and regulations to the populace.”
The same was done with German radio.
The third phase was itself divided into three stages. At first conditional licenses were issued, though one might correctly argue that all of the licenses were conditional based on the revocation of licenses held by those who did not follow the ICD regulations, and the PWD “retained the right of pre-publication scrutiny of all material published by such licensee.” 166 This right does not seem to have been used very often, if at all, due to how impractical it proved to be and seems to have been skipped over in most areas. The second stage involved post-publication scrutiny of publications, a
163 History I, Page 1
164 History I, Page 2
165 These two decrees became known as A Law No. 191 Amended (1).”
166 In actual practice the conditional licenses were never utilized.
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practice that was employed most often, because of its pragmatism and the fact that there was a built in penalty for most adhering strictly to the ICD’s guidelines. In fact, it most likely ensured that almost all publishers did not venture near any of the gray areas or ambiguities that might be found in regulations such as these. The final stage saw the removal of any restrictions and controls.
By the end of PWD, which came with the dissolution of SHAEF, 167 the information control program had entered its second, or overt phase, all along the line, and in one instance, the newspaper at Aachen, it had entered the third phase. Since
Aachen fell in the British Zone when Germany was ultimately divided into Zones of
Occupation, PWD's successor in the U.S. Zone took up the task of information control with all media still in the second phase.
The ICD had initially planned for prepublication scrutiny, but this seems never to have taken place according to reports and memos issued by the various offices operated by the ICD. In point of fact, the whole first phase was barely perceptible as it had initially been planned and the ICD moved straight to the second phase, which involved only post-publication scrutiny of already published material.
168
Moreover, the entire area that fell under the ICD’s jurisdiction did not move through the various phases in lockstep. Rather, they allowed local situations to dictate how they moved forward.
For example, Aachen was already in phase three, when it was handed over to the British.
It did, however, serve the very important function of being a training ground for the ICD officers, who eventually took control of other more significant regions within the
American Zone of Control in Germany.
169
ICD officers seemed genuinely surprised that the movement through the various phases did not move more quickly than it did. What they encountered was a shortage of suitable candidates. It is not necessarily the case that they could not find individuals who were suitably “clean,” but that the individuals they were left with lacked the necessary influence to start a media outlet and/or they had such low self-confidence, which the
ICD saw as a prerequisite, that they were considered ill-suited to rebuilding Germany’s information and media services.
170
From the outset, the granting of media licenses was reserved for “natural” persons. No corporations would receive a license from the ICD. This ICD policy emphasized that individual Germans were to be held liable for what was printed, broadcast, or performed on stage.
171 This allowed the ICD to impose meaningful penalties that went beyond financial fines and the dissolution of corporations. This also insured that individuals who had stepped outside of the rules put in place by the ICD could not simply cover up their misdeeds behind the impersonal façade of corporation and then simply re-enter the German media under the cloak of another company.
167 13 July 1945.
168 History I, Page 5
169 History I, Page 5
170
History I, Page 8
171 History I, Page 6
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The penalties for transgression of the regulations were outlined in full and the complete range, “from warnings and reprimands for minor infractions, to fines, suspension of license or right to engage in the activity for periods ranging up to three months, revocation of license or permanent suspension, and when warranted, to criminal prosecution of the registrant,” was used.
172
Regardless of who you were, if you are engaged in any sort of publishing or broadcasting without a license, you were prosecuted. It seems that the biggest offenders in this area were the churches, which drove the ICD officers to distraction, since many of them must have realized the mimeographing of a church order of service may have fallen within the letter of the law, but that the laying of criminal charges in these cases was not necessarily a reflection of the spirit of the law.
173
The ICD was unique in relation to the other organizations within OMGUS, in that they used requisitioned wealth or property not for the benefit of the occupation forces, i.e. in order to support the occupying troops directly, but used it to establish
Germans in business. They did this in order to address the problem of many of the licensees not having enough capital to be self-supporting. So, the ICD insured that this did not become a barrier to their successful launch of a publishing house, newspaper, or other form of media outlet.
174
Not only were facilities included, but equipment, copyrights, contracts, and trade names as well. All of this was justified by the furtherance of the mission of the Information Control Division.
175
Within two weeks of the cessation of hostilities in Europe, the Psychological
Warfare Division began disseminating directives related to how it wanted to develop
Germany's new media. On May 22, 1945 the first directive was issued to its various branches in occupied Germany. Its first order of business was to set the tone for the socalled overt media. This included the radio broadcasts, newspapers, and whatever other means the US Military Government used to communicate with the German population under its control. Its first two goals were to create a passive acquiescence among the
German people toward the occupation forces. The second was very practical in its aim, that being the stimulation of food production in Germany. In addition to this, the various units of the Psychological Warfare Division were beginning to focus on the re-education process in Germany. To this end two primary goals were enumerated: the inculcation of a sense of collective guilt among the German people and exposing the fatal consequences of Germany's Nazi and militaristic leadership.
176 As will be seen later, these goals were modified (January 1946) with the beginning of the Nuremberg process and then virtually eliminated with the prelude to the Cold War as the friction between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated.
172 History I, 6
173 History I, Page 7
174 History I, Page 9
175 History I, Page 10
176 History I, Page 10
72

Six days later a second directive was issued in which the Psychological Warfare
Division retreats to some extent from its original hard-line.
177
In some ways this highlights the confusion of policies that existed in the early days of the occupation. It also added to the hesitancy on the part of potential publishers in Germany to come forward. Having become accustomed to official government sources telling them what to publish, many simply waited until they had some sense of where the occupation government wanted go in terms of Germany’s new political structures. The tone of the second directive was less negative than the first. While it stood firm on the issue of obtaining passive acquiescence from the German people, it also talks about waking the sense of duty among those with anti-Nazi sympathies and was aimed at encouraging them to once more begin to write. The directive was also not silent on the issue of war guilt. There was, however, a subtle shift in how it was presented. It remained firm on the position that all Germans were guilty, but it now allowed for two different iterations of guilt. The Psychological Warfare Division at this point began pushing the concept of active and passive guilt. Those who were considered to have been active criminals were to be punished, whereas the others could make up, or atone, for their crimes through hard work, restitution, and a change of heart. General Eisenhower later established the criteria of atonement for this latter group of Germans in a speech given to the German people on August 6, 1945.
178
On January 16, 1946 the ICD released its policy document formally called
“Guidance Document #4” or less formally entitled “The American Soldier in Germany.”
In addition, the ICD also circulated a document that explained the reasoning for its position to a smaller circle within the higher echelons of OMGUS.
179 What the policy document essentially did was outline the role of the American soldier in reorienting
German thinking. While other scholars, such as Ziemke, have discussed “Guidance
Document #4,” none have looked at the document that provides the rationale that lies behind it.
The “rationale memo” is a frank discussion of why the American occupation needed to modify its position in regard to German war guilt. It goes to the fact that, initially, all Germans were considered to be guilty of having waged war against humanity. This was made clear in the initial documents that brought the ICD to life.
However, eight months after Germany's unconditional surrender the American occupation found it necessary to begin making distinctions between those who committed the crimes against humanity and those who simply held the same citizenship as those who committed the crimes. Though it is not explicitly stated, its production coincides with Eisenhower’s speech on German war guilt. In all of this, the ICD recognized that this shift in thinking was going to be difficult, because it required a nuanced understanding of Germans as individuals and not a collective. It also recognized the fact that there might actually be groups within Germany that had been pro-democratic during the Nazi regime and that they now constituted the primary hope
177 History I, Page 11
178 History I, 13.
179 NARA RG 260.4.4.69
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for creating a peaceful Germany. Moreover, it was acknowledged that for individual
American soldiers to either hate or love all things German did not necessarily constitute movement towards achieving the goals they set for the ICD, the elimination of Germany as a threat to peace in Europe.
The “rationale document” also argued that there were good grounds for differential treatment of Germans in order to achieve the goals of the occupation more quickly. The premises of the argument put forward took into consideration both the
Potsdam Agreement and the Joint Chiefs of Staff document 1067. It also had to perform a delicate balancing act between the indictments of the International Tribunal at
Nuremberg and the public statements made by both Presidents Roosevelt and Truman.
The reasoning behind this new policy is as follows:
One cannot condemn all Germans–invoking a racial theory in reverse– and expected a democratic Germany to spring up miraculously. The high assurance that Germany will not again become a menace to the security of the United States and the world was to destroy the forces that can prevent its emergence in selecting and encouraging individuals and groups of true democratic aspirations and helping them to grow strong.
180
In addition, there was the fear that the United States would in some way be obligating itself to occupying and thus running Germany for the foreseeable future, if appropriate individuals were not found and supported in the early days of the occupation. There was the very real fear that the American presence in Germany would become permanent.
Oddly enough, this did happen to some extent anyway, but it was the result of Cold War with the Soviet Union and not because the Germans had not abandoned their militaristic ways.
Through all of this there is also a recognition that the process they were putting in place was not infallible and that there was always a prospect for error. They felt the best course of action was to eliminate influences that might stand in the way of German individuals and groups that were dedicated to establishing Germany as democracy.
The rationale for “The American Soldier in Germany” goes so far as to quote
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Robert H. Jackson, who was the chief American prosecutor of the International Military Tribunal. Here they chose to use as a guiding principle what was to become a defining statement of how the Americans were beginning to understand Germany: “We have no purpose to incriminate the whole
German people. We know that the Nazi party was not put in power by a majority of the
German vote… if the German population had willingly accepted the Nazi program, no storm troopers would have been needed in the early days of the Party and there would have been no need for concentration camps or the Gestapo.” 181
So, it was decided that, though there were many shortcomings that could be pointed to within the German trade unions, churches, schools, and public service during the Nazi era, the occupation was going to have to work with the material at hand. They chose to believe the words of
180 NARA RG 260.4.4.69
181 NARA RG 260.4.4.69
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President Roosevelt when he said: “… and all people, without exception, their lives some instinct for truth, some attraction towards justice, and some passion for peace– buried as they may be in the German case under a brutal regime.” 182
Having had eight months to decide what action to take, the ICD determined that their best chances lay with the trade unions and the youth of Germany. The ICD had concluded that for the democratic processes to really take hold in the country the trade union movement was an “inevitable accompaniment of the industrial system in every democratic left.” 183
They further relied on the judgment of Brig. Gen. Frank J.
McSherry, who was the manpower division director of OMGUS, who believed that the industrial workforce of Germany was a powerful force for democracy. Moreover, it was one of the few groups in Germany that had acknowledged its role in Germany's atrocities and admitted its war guilt.
Though it is easy to understand how the ICD might want to target the youth of
Germany, because of the long-term benefits that would be accrued, the ICD also saw the youth of Germany as perhaps being the most injured group they were dealing with. They understood that the young people in Germany during the Nazi regime had seen “no effort spared to distort their outlook by falsifying history, glorifying war and racial prejudice, inculcating intolerance and indifference to people as human beings and crushing all the finer instincts and potentialities which exist in every people.”
184
It was further recognized that very few of Germany's young people would have had any understanding of what American or British style democracy was like, or what it consisted of. The youth of Germany were also seen as a large leaderless group that rejected the discredited Nazi leadership, and were now looking for direction and something to hold onto. The ICD noted that the youth of Germany were looking for some sort of movement to latch onto. It is here that the common American soldier was to play a vital role. It was the curiosity that young Germans showed for the American way of life that would give these common soldiers away of reorienting young people not only in their attitude towards the United States, but the world. Thus the American soldier was to take a sympathetic interest in these young people. Officers and ordinary
GIs were encouraged to set up youth organizations. These organizations were to be run by what is called “the product[s] of democracy,” or as General McClure put it “the ambassadors of democracy” and were to inspire respect and confidence in Germany’s new generation. Moreover, these initiatives were calculated to “teach young Germans … that democracy is not something imposed by decree but something which springs from the individual desires of the people who make up a nation.”
185
On the 28th of June 1945 and a third directive was issued by the PWD.
186
Here it is indicated that the PWD was beginning to undertake what it called “reconnaissance.”
They were at this point actively looking for potential licensees and the directive
182 NARA RG 260.4.4.69
183 ibid.
184 ibid.
185 ibid.
186 History I, 11-12
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indicates that some were already beginning to emerge. This was an important step, because at the foundation of their policies was the notion that a German media would have a far greater effect on the occupied Germans than one that was overtly American, or, as restated later, the Germans could best be educated by other Germans.
187
This directive once more stressed collective guilt as a primary goal of the new media’s message. In addition, it began to outline what the official policy was going to be of how the PWD, and then the ICD, would communicate with the German people. The newly established German newspapers were to carry the message of Allied past, current, and future intentions in regard to recreating Germany. That is, they would not just tell the
Germans of their intentions, but would explain them as well. This position appears, however, to contradict earlier policies that directed the Allied troops not to engage in debate with the Germans about their occupation policies in Germany.
The directive also justified the reasoning for the manner in which newspapers licensing was undertaken. Newspaper publication licenses were never issued to individuals, but rather to groups of individuals. Moreover, these groups would consist of individuals representing different political persuasions, which, at least initially, also involved Communists. The intention was to create a equilibrium of views within each group and to establish internal checks and balances within the controlling interests of each newspaper. It also meant that an individual member of the group could have his license revoked without putting the publication of the newspaper in jeopardy. This proved to be a handy loophole when the communists were systematically removed from the newspapers. There was, however, a further more subtle reason for implementing this model. In creating groups representing various different political viewpoints they hoped to diffuse any resentment that might be directed towards an individual by the reading public based on their differing political or religious beliefs. In addition, individual newspapers could not be considered the official organ of any particular political or religious point of view. If difficulty still arose, then the Military Government acted to protect newspapers from political pressure groups.
188
This last point created great difficulty for the ICD, especially in the years to come in the area of radio broadcasting, a medium that all of the political parties sought to control. However, even with the careful attention given to creating a balanced environment within each of the newspapers, the political drift to the left and right was noted by the ICD by the end of June 1946.
Three months passed before the issuing of a fourth directive on September 4,
1945. This edict addresses the issue of the Potsdam Agreement and its implementation within the scope of the ICD’s mandate.
189
Article II A of the Potsdam Agreement, which established the political principles by which Germany was to be governed, was particularly important in formulating new policies, as may be seen in the following excerpts:
3.ii. To convince the German people that they have suffered a total military defeat and that they cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought
187 History I, 33.
188 History I, 40.
189 History I, 12 to 13.
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upon themselves, since their own ruthless warfare and the fanatical Nazi resistance have destroyed German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable.
3.iii. To destroy the National Socialist Party and its affiliated and supervised organizations, to dissolve all Nazi institutions, to ensure that they are not revived in any form, and to prevent all Nazi and militarist activity or propaganda.
3.iv. To prepare for the eventual reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis and for eventual peaceful cooperation in international life by
Germany.
7. German education shall be so controlled as completely to eliminate Nazi and militarist doctrines and to make possible the successful development of democratic ideas.
10. Subject to the necessity for maintaining military security, freedom of speech, press and religion shall be permitted, and religious institutions shall be respected.
Subject likewise to the maintenance of military security, the formation of free trade unions shall be permitted.
Since the Potsdam agreement granted freedom of speech, press, and religion to the occupied Germans, the ICD now had to develop policies that brought the sometimes seemingly contradictory dictates of the agreement into some semblance of order. For example, German education was to be controlled in order to eliminate Nazi and militarist doctrines; however, this seemed to run counter to the freedom of speech and press that they were not to enjoy. While an argument could be made that certain freedoms could be curbed for reasons of security, there was no real guidance in terms of boundaries relating to political viewpoints that could or could not be expressed. In reality, just about anything could be presented as a security issue and thus suppressed.
The policy that was eventually put in place allowed “all important groups” to have access to the media and that they were to be given the opportunity to express themselves on important matters. The problem with the policy as it was drafted, was the use of vacuous terms such as “important groups” and “important matters.” This still allowed the ICD to determine who might have access to the media, because they determined which the “important groups” were, and what was allowed to be commented on, because they determined what was to be considered an “important matter.” This effectively meant that very little needed to change in terms of how the ICD operated, while lip service was paid to the establishment of greater freedom for Germany’s media and its ability to represent a full spectrum of political views.
The initial absolute control over publishing that blanketed everything that could appear in print was eased over time, especially as the Military Government moved towards holding elections in its zone. At first, as may have been surmised from initial
PWD policies, this included political pamphlets and even posters that political parties might use. However, on November 2, 1945 the ICD did relinquish some control over what political parties could publish. From this point onward, German political parties could print posters and pamphlets without prior ICD consent, but, the quantities they
77

published were strictly controlled. Moreover, news was strictly prohibited from appearing in pamphlets or on posters.
190
If the political parties wanted to publish books or magazines, they needed to designate an person to take responsibility for these publications, and that individual then needed to go through a vetting process, just as other “non-political” needed to. This was completely in keeping with the ICD’s policy of individual responsibility. That is, they did not want to deal with a corporate entity, but wanted to be able to prescribe any given work to a particular individual. This made control, and when necessary prosecution, more efficient and thorough.
As decreed by the Potsdam Agreement, a Four Power Directorate of the Allied
Control Council had been organized. In theory, this would be the body that would coordinate the efforts of the ICD with its equal numbers in the other three Zones of
Control. By June 30, 1946 there had only been a modicum of success in organizing this group. Despite this there was an informal group made up of the four directors that controlled the media in their respective zones. This group did manage to achieve a modicum of official recognition regarding the banning of Nazi material. This was most likely the case, because it was an issue that was at the very top of the priority list of each of the occupying powers, and could have held up reconstruction efforts in Germany indefinitely. However, due to the disorganization of the Four Power Directorate, this was not promulgated on a quadripartite level, but had to be enacted unilaterally by each of the controlling powers.
191
The ICD officially came into being on the 12th of May 1945 and operated as a parallel organization to the PWD for two months. It consisted of a special staff division of ETOUSA (European Theater of Operations United States Of America), which was in turn redesignated two months later as USFET (United States Forces European
Theater).
192
It was only on the 13th of July 1945 that the Anglo-American Psychological
Warfare Division ceased to operate. In the intervening two months the personnel of the
Psychological Warfare Division were reassigned to the ICD, which was in charge of operations, and the ICS (Information Control Services), which was in charge of policy and planning. Though technically two separate organization, they were both under the overall control of General McClure. Since the Psychological Warfare Division had been a joint operation, the British personnel were transferred to the ISCB (Information
Services Control Branch) of the British Military Government in Germany.
As 1945 came to a close a significant change was in the air for the ICD. Until then General McClure and his staff had operated independently of the Military
Government structures in Germany, answering directly to the Military Governor,
Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and finally General Joseph T. McNarney. It was under McNarney that on December 11, 1945 the ICD was no longer a separate staff division and its responsibilities were now transferred to OMGUS (Office of Military
190
History I, 16-17.
191 History I, 17
192 History I, 20
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Government United States).
193
Though this move was purely administrative, it did mark the beginning of the ICD’s operations in a governing rather than a security role.
The opinion that the ICD had of the general German population dictated to a large extent how the individual officers approached the job of re-educating Germany.
194
In the ICD’s view, almost the whole population of Germany was incapable of reading
“the facts” and then forming their own opinion. Much of this mindset can be ascribed to the studies, both military and civilian, that had flowed into what was then still the PWD.
These consisted of documents such as “A Report on Germany after the War,” which was published in July of 1945, but had already been circulated as a secret document among those in the American and British forces, who were preparing to govern postwar
Germany in late 1944.
195
In the ICD’s view, the German population had become so accustomed to being told what to think that it was unnecessary to change its approach to something that required the average German to make too many choices on his or her own. It also required that not only the physical wreckage found in postwar Germany, but the ideological wreckage as well, be cleared away. This being one of the underlying reasons for why they forced the cessation of all publishing in their zone.
In the beginning of the second year of the occupation, the efforts of the ICD continued focus on driving the point home that the German people have been completely defeated. However, different from the first year, there was a recognition of the establishment of eventual freedom of expression in at least the American zone and the clear acknowledgment that they are not there yet.
196
Another issue that the ICD needed to confront in their second year of operation was the issue of there not been one single written policy that governed their activities.
197 Rather, they were guided by a disparate collection of memos and letters that had been exchanged by their various offices, with the occasional directive being given by General McClure or OMGUS. The most important document was still the Potsdam Agreement, which served as the final arbiter in questionable situations. In addition, the ICD was tasked with working together with the other occupation powers in order to reach a coordinated policy. Though the
Americans did have a plan in place as early as November 1944, it was in effect only in their zone of control and did not represent a coordinated agreement on how to deal with media control in the other zones.
Newspapers
As noted earlier, the first experiment in publication control was undertaken in the first city captured by the Western Allies.
198
In the city of Aachen the PWD
193 History I, 24-25
194 History I, 28-29
195 A report had already been written by Lt. Col. Victor Dicks, who was one of the primary advisors to the
British War Office concerning psychological warfare, before February 1, 1945. National Archives, Kew,
FO 1049/72.
196 History II, 14.
197 History II, 14-15.
198 History I, 29
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established Heinrich Hollands, who was a 68-year-old former composing room foreman,
“who admittedly had no editorial experience” and whose only apparent qualification was that “[he had] retired soon after Hitler came to power,” 199 as the first licensed publisher in what was not yet postwar Germany. According to Time magazine,
“He gave up his job as foreman of an Aachen newspaper composing room, and retired on a small pension rather than serve the Nazis. U.S. Psychological
Warfare officers found him, when they went looking for a German to help them print a four-page weekly, the Aachner Nachrichten . Soon he was doing some of the editing; Army officers found it was easier to make an editor out of the printer than to make non-Nazis out of the available German editors.” 200
With this experiment the ICD did learn that they needed to separate news from opinion and editorial. Previously, German newspapers had mixed the two in a manner that interpreted the facts for the reader. The PWD and then the ICD wanted to model the new
German media along the lines of that found in the United States, where opinion and editorial pages were clearly designated.
At least initially there had been a significant number of overt newspapers published in the American zone. In August 1945 there were 10 of these overt publications.
201
However, by September 1945 this number had dropped to five and by mid-November there was only one. The use of the term “overt” is interesting in that it implies that there must have been such a thing as a “covert” newspaper. One might suggest that the use of this term is simply a slip of the tongue, if it were to appear only once or twice in documents produced by the ICD. This, however, is not the case. The term “covert” is consistently used as a description of the newspapers not directly published by the ICD and the Military Government. Moreover, there does not appear to be any evidence that the ICD published newspapers that could truly be identified as covert. That is to say, they did not publish a newspaper and then try to hide the fact that they were in control of its news and editorial content. Rather, covert refers to a licensed newspapers run and owned by Germans, since no other newspapers were published in the American sector, they were either overt or German press.
But, what is one to make of the term covert, if the terms “German” and “covert” are the only terms used in the ICD files and those files clearly indicate that “overt” is synonymous with “American”? Then one can make the logical conclusion that “covert” would be the counterpart of “German.” If German newspapers were considered covert, then, the ICD must in some way have controlled the content of the news and the opinions expressed by the German editors.
Content control of the German media of was accomplished through a threepronged approach. The first was the rather blunt instrument of rescinding the licenses of individuals involved in publishing newspapers, magazines, journals, books, and radio broadcasting, and/or criminally charging them under Military Government Law 191.
Though this was done, it would not have ensured that the material they wanted
199 The New York Times . June 28, 1945.
200 Time . July 9, 1945.
201 History I, 32
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published actually appeared and even then it would have undermined the “covert” nature of the news that appeared. It would, however, have had a chilling effect on the other publishers and ensured future compliance. For the most desirable effect, the techniques employed would have needed to be more nuanced and needed to appear separate from the day-to-day administration of any given media outlet.
There is evidence that the Allies carefully studied the Nazi approach to
“censorship” in the Reich. They then used what they had learned in the post-war as an effective means of controlling the German publishing industry. A secret document produced by the British CSDIC, based on interviews with the POWs 1st Lt. Wolfgang
Brandstetter, former manager of the Tauschntz publishing firm in Leipzig, and Lt. Heinz
Schroeder, son of the owner of a Berlin printing firm, provided vital insights into how censorship in Germany functioned. While the report is filled with many fascinating details, its most interesting feature is the description of censorship in Germany 1933-
1939 as having a “Sword of Damocles” quality, in that there was no censorship of works of fiction, and that publishers were allowed to publish what they wished.
202
It is only afterward, that a publisher might be declared politically unreliable. This would have led to financial ruin. This is effectively the same strategy employed by the ICD in the final phase of its licensing of German publishers. The effect was that publishers were very mindful of what they published, never going near the works that they were sure could pass muster with the ICD. Post-censorship was perhaps more desirable than precensorship for the Military government in that it always allowed the ICD deniability should difficulties arise. Moreover, it was perhaps the most effective approach to conditioning the German publishers into acting in ways that would assure long term compliance with the policies of the ICD, even after the ICD had been disbanded.
Practices and approaches to issues would become policy in German publishing houses and then simply the usual way of doing business. These practices would take on an inertia all their own, making them almost immovable in the foreseeable future.
Though it may not properly fit under the rubric of censorship, food was used as a means of keeping those in publishing, the news media, radio, and film in line with official ICD policy. People working in those industries were declared essential workers by the ICD. This meant that they received double rations and were allowed to eat in the military commissaries.
203
The ICD even took steps to have German media personnel declared Military Government employees during the noon meal period so that they could partake in the noonday meal at the Military Government’s expense. This was not just for those who worked on the periphery of the ICD itself, but those who worked for private concerns and were simply licensees of the ICD. This ensured their compliance when it came to matters concerning what the ICD would like to see brought before the people. It encouraged a self-censorship that was born out of self-interest, because no one receiving double rations in addition to free meals was going act in a way that would jeopardize this arrangement. It achieved a further goal. Since it was self-censorship it
202 RG 260 5/265-3/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
203 RG 260 5/269-1/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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was not necessary to engage in overt censorship that would tend to undermine the message they were trying to convey.
In the first four months of the occupation the ICD headquarters reserve the right to grant licenses to German publishers.
204
This changed on September 11, 1945 when licensing authority was delegated to the commanders of the various military districts.
The ICD headquarters, however, reserve the right to approve the city in which a publisher was licensed. In this way they were able to insure that they would have reasonable coverage across the entire occupation so.
The first license granted to a German publisher was for the Frankfurter
Rundschau , which was issued on August 1, 1945.
205 General McClure personally presented the license to the seven licensees (Emil Carlebach,
206
Hans Etzkorn,
207
Wilhelm Karl Gerst,
208
Otto Grossmann,
209
Wilhelm Knothe,
210
Paul Rodemann
211
and
Arno Rudert 212 ), three communists, three social democrats, and one anti-fascist Catholic.
The Military Government provided some of the copy for the Frankfurter Rundschau 's first edition and in one of those articles the Military Government noted that the appearance of the Frankfurter Rundschau on newsstands was a clear indication of the collective rehabilitation of the city of Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt was to have one further distinction. As a result of a ICD policy, which set as its goal the establishment of two newspapers in every city with a population over 100,000, Frankfurt became the first city in American occupied Germany to achieve this on April 15, 1946 with the publication of the first edition of the Frankfurter Neue Presse .
213
204 History I, 33.
205 History I, 33-34
206 Carlsbach was a Communist and of Jewish ancestry. He had survived continuous imprisonment since early 1934, the last 8 years were spent in Dachau and then Buchenwald.
207 Etzkorn had been a bookseller and then from 1924-1933 he had been active in the SPD Verlag in Berlin.
208 Gerst was an active Catholic. At the end of October 1946 he was removed as a licensee due to suspected association with the Nazi Party in 1933-1934, as revealed during a the Spruchkammer hearing. In 1949 he attempted to found a West German version of the SED and ran as a
Communist candidate in Fulda.
209 Grossmann was not a Communist, but is reported to have had strong sympathies for the KPS’s platform.
210 Knothe had been an active member of the SPD since 1906 and was imprisoned a number of times during the Nazi period in Germany. He resigned his license on March 1, 1946 in order to devote himself to politics.
211 Rodemann had worked for a number of social democratic newspapers already prior to the beginning of the First World War. In 1919 he was elected as a representative to the Weimar
National Assembly. Dueto his political engagement, he was arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned and then sent to a concentration camp. After his release, he remained under Gestapo observation and was forbidden to work as a journalist.
212 Rudert was one of the Communists grant the license for the paper. He, however, went along with what has been termed Zuckerbrot und Peitsche approach of the ICD and managed to retain his license. He was, however, thrown out of the Communist Party for acquiescing to the wishes of the
American occupation forces.
213 History I, 37.
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It is also notable that many of those identified and licensed by the ICD went on to notable political careers. For example, one of the three initial licensees
214
of the
Rhein-Neckar Zeitung (RNZ), Theodor Heuss, became postwar Germany's first
President.
215
He had been politically active and had worked as a newspaper editor in
Weimar Germany. The first issue of the new newspaper made a point of speaking out about the disintegration of the free press under the Nazis. It is, however, truly ironic that
Heuss had voted for the enabling act of 1933, which gave Hitler his dictatorial powers.
216
During the Nazi regime, Heuss continued to write for the few remaining liberal papers in Germany, but was eventually blacklisted by the Propaganda Ministry.
He did continue to write under a number of pseudonyms and was even published in the
National Socialist weekly Das Reich . Becoming President of the Federal Republic of
Germany meant that he had to divest himself of his interest in the newspaper a point which Hermann Knorr , thus Knorr was able to gain control of the RNZ. In this particular case, one has a prime example of the sorrts of compromises the ICD was willing to make in order for them to get German newspapers up and running.
By July 1, 1946 there were 35 newspapers operating in the American Zone and the ICD considered the first phase of licensing to be completed, with the exception of second newspapers in Stuttgart and Munich.
217
At this point the newspapers did not yet operate as dailies, except for the Tagesspiegel in Berlin. Though the goal was to have all newspapers operating as dailies, acute paper shortages slowed the process down. With the exception made for the Tagesspiegel when can see that the American Military
Government was already engaging in an ideological battle with the Soviets for control of the German mind, even though the official policy of the four powers stated that
German newspapers should not attempt to create division between the allied occupying powers or United Nations.
218
Despite the fact that licensing of newspapers in the American zone of control was almost completed, it was never, at least initially, the intention of the ICD to completely exit the production of overt newspapers. As it did phase out its overt newspapers, it retained Die Neue Zeitung , under its full control.
219
The intention was, as indicated by the policies and aims established by Eisenhower, 1) to retain at least one official Military Government voice in the print media, 2) provide an example of how newspapers were to objectively and truthfully report the news, 3) widen the Germans’ view in regard to things they had not been exposed to during the Nazi regime. Edward
Breitenkamp, a former ICD officer, in his brief outline of how the ICD functioned,
214 Along with Heuss, who was a member of the Demokratische Volkspartei and then the Freie
Demokratische Partei , Rudolf Agricola, a leader within the KPD in Baden Wuerrtemberg, and Hermann
Knorr, who was a member of the SPD and their top candidate in the November 1946 Land elections.
215 History I, 34
216 It is noted that Heuss spoke out against voting for the enabling act within his party caucus. In the end, he decided to maintain party discipline and voted for the Enabling Act.
217 History I, 38.
218 History I, 39.
219 Die Neue Zeitung was published in Munich from October 17, 1945 until January 30, 1955 and included in its banner the phrase “ Eine amerikanische Zeitung für die deutsche Bevölkerung.
”
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noted a possible fourth reason for maintaining Die Neue Zeitung has a functioning newspaper. It was to remain in place in order to demonstrate to the Germans that their newspapers could be shut down at a moments notice and that the ICD could become the sole provider of news to the German people.
220
In other words, the newspaper could be shut down in a particular city and additional editions of Die Neue Zeitung could be produced and distributed to fill the void left by the newspaper that had been shut down.
At its peak in February 1946, Die Neue Zeitung had a circulation of 1.6 million.
In fact, the dealers that sold and newspapers reported that they could have sold twice as many copies. Die Neue Zeitung , selling at 20 pfennig per copy, grossed 2 million RM per month for the Military Government. He profits generated from the sales of the paper was in turn used to operate the ICD’s overt media outlets and there are indications that it was also used to establish German publishers in their own facilities and thus furthered the goals of the ICD.
221 It also ensured that the ICD had readily capital that it did not have to access through normal Military Government channels in order to secure copyrights, translation rights, and performance rights for works they wanted to have appear in Germany. In addition, the ICD provided for 15 leases for newspaper publishers. In this way the ICD had a direct hand in establishing publishers they were convinced would convey the message to the German people that the wanted.
222
The ICD also levied to 20% tax on the gross receipts of newspapers, in order to establish a fund to help pay for future publishing plants and equipment.
Circulation of German Newspapers in the US Zone (June 30, 1946) 223
City
BAVARIA
1. Ansbach
2. Aschaffenburg
3. Augsburg
4. Bad Reichenhall
5. Bamberg
6. Bayreuth
7. Coburg
8. Garmisch-Partenkirchen
9. Hof
10. Ingolstadt
11. Kempten
12. Landshut
13. Munich
14. Nuremberg
15. Passau
16. Regensburg
17. Rosenheim
18. Weiden
19. Würzburg
Name of Newspaper
Fränkische Landeszeitung
Main Echo
Schwäbische Landeszeitung
Südost Kurier
Fränkischer Tag
Fränkische Presse
Neue Presse
Hochland Bote
Frankenpost
Donau Kurier
Der Allgäuer
Isar Post
Süddeutsche Zeitung
Nürnberger Nachrichten
Passauer Neue Presse
Mittelbayerische Zeitung
Oberbayerisches Volksblatt
Der Neue Tag
Main Post
Licensed
24 Apr 46
24 Nov 45
30 Oct 45
10 May 45
08 Jan 45
18 Dec 45
25 Jan 46
08 Oct 45
12 Oct 45
11 Dec 45
13 Dec 45
15 Jan 46
06 Oct 45
11 Oct 45
05 Feb 46
23 Oct 45
26 Oct 45
31 May 46
24 Nov 45
Circulation
60,000
60,000
199,700
55,000
75,000
73,500
65,700
42,900
106,000
45,000
65,000
70,900
410,000
165,000
90,000
200,000
40,100
60,000
103,100
220 Breitenkamp 39.
221 History I, 51.
222 History I, 41.
223 History I.
84

GREATER HESSE:
1. Darmstadt
2. Frankfurt
3. Frankfurt
4. Fulda
5. Giessen
6. Kassel
7. Marburg
8. Wetzlar
9. Wiesbaden
WÜRTTEMBERG-BADEN:
1. Heidelberg
2. Heilbronn
3. Karlsruhe
4. Stuttgart
5. Ulm
ENCLAVES:
1. Berlin
2. Bremen
35 [Newspapers]
Darmstädter Echo
Frankfurter Neue Presse
Frankfurter Rundschau
Fuldaer Volkszeitung
Giessener Freie Presse
Hessische Nachrichten
Marburger Presse
Wetzlarer Neue Zeitung
Wiesbadener Kurier
Rhein-Neckar Zeitung
Heilbronner Stimme
Badische Neueste Nachrichten
Stuttgarter Zeitung
Schwäbische Donau Zeitung
Der Tagesspiegel
Weser Kurier
17 Nov 45
15 Apr 46
31 Jul 45
30 Oct 45
02 Jan 46
26 Sep 45
15 Sep 45
02 Jan 46
01 Oct 45
05 Sep 45
28 Mar 46
01 Mar 46
17 Sep 45
10 Nov 45
27 Sep 45
15 Sep 45
70,400
150,000
250,000
46,700
20,000
199,300
40,000
22,500
92,500
169,300
38,600
92,000
319,000
76,100
450,000
153,000
4,177,200
In order for German newspapers to remain in good standing with the occupation forces, they had a few hard and fast rules that they needed to follow. The official policy regarding what German newspapers could not publish were:
1.
there were to be no national socialist ideas contained in any of the stories
2.
so-called “Völkisch” ideas which related to racism or race hatred were forbidden
3.
fascist or antidemocratic ideas were forbidden
4.
pan-German or opinions of an imperialist nature, which were considered militarist, were also forbidden.
5.
No criticism of the Military Government’s policies or personnel were to be tolerant.
224
While there were violations of the above noted ICD policies, most came in the form of not separating news from opinion and for the most part were considered to be minor infractions of the rules.
DANA (Deutsche Allgemeine Nachrichtenagentur), which later was renamed
DENA (Deutsche Nachrichtenagentur) after its amalgamation with the corresponding agency in the British sector, was considered very much a journalism school. The average age of those working for DANA was only 26 1/2 years
225
and the German press agency employed in total 180 employees. Of these, 130 were German. This was also the main conduit, or choke point, into the German newspapers for world events. Since the
ICD closely controlled it, they could maintain control over the information used to form
German opinion of world events. In spite of being free and having worked out most of
224 History I, 39-40.
225 History I, 43.
85

its difficulties by June 30, 1946, DANA was still under direct press control supervision and subjected to pre-broadcast scrutiny.
226
In reality, DANA was not so much a world news –gathering agency than a channel for the New York Times and Herald Tribune into the American occupation zone.
Moreover, as long as the ICD operated DANA, the US press services agreed not to enter into agreements with individual German newspapers.
227 Agreements such as this ensured that the ICD had a relatively easy means of overseeing information that was disseminated to the German press.
The plan was to turn DANA over to German control as quickly as possible. This, however, proved to be more difficult than expected. By the 20th of October 1945 a new board had been put in place for DANA and by November 10 a three-member executive had been chosen to plan its organization and draft a charter. Since many of the laws enacted by the National Socialists, which gave absolute control of the content of news disseminated in Germany to Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry, had not been nullified, there were some difficulties in accepting information from foreign sources. While it did cause problems, it could also work to the benefit of the ICD, since it could cloak itself in the legitimacy of working from within existing German laws. The most serious problem, however, was one that had its roots in the United States. The Trading with the Enemy
Act had been brought into force in 1917 and it prevented American individuals and corporations from doing business with countries that had been designated as enemies and Germany was only taken off of the list of enemies in 1949. This meant that DANA could not, without special permission, deal with American news sources, because US law would have considered the American newspapers to be doing business with the enemy. Thus the ICD served as an important intermediary for news from US sources to
Germany. It, being a part of the US military, did not have to worry about the restrictions resulting from the American law.
Journals and Magazines
The ICD considered books to have a far greater influence on the German mind than either newspapers and periodicals. Earl Ziemke had already pointed this out in his study of the US occupation of Germany, though he equivocates this position by suggesting that it only made it seemed that way to the ICD.
228
Newspapers and periodicals were meant to be disposable and had a limited shelf life, not only in the shops but in the home as well. A book, on the other hand, tended to be kept and circulated over a longer period of time and thus would have a greater opportunity to have a lasting impact. For this reason the ICD devoted special attention to books that were to be published in the area occupied by the Americans. In the American zone that meant the ICD had approximately 500 publishers under its control. Of these, about 250 produced what could be classified as informational and inspirational books, magazines, and pamphlets. These were the publishers of greatest interest to Military Government,
226 History I, 47.
227 History I, 45-46.
228 The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946, 374.
86

because they would be vital to the whole process of German re-education. Again they found a similar problem to that which faced newspaper publishing. Politically untainted publishers were very hard to come by as a result of the 12-year Nazi regime.
229
The ICD was aware of differences that existed between the four occupation zones.
230
They were, for example, cognizant of the fact that they, at least theoretically, emphasized political purity above all else when licensing publishers, though this was not always the case in practice. This stood in contrast with the Soviet approach, which stressed the ability to produce materials and did not appear to care about the political purity of an individual publisher as long as the censors passed the material produced now. The British approach was pragmatic and tended to be a balance between the
American and Soviet strategies. Though the British did place some weight on the potential publisher's political record, they also considered the ability to actually produce material as important. In regard to the French occupation zone, the ICD’s view was wholly negative. The general belief held by the ICD was that the French were more interested in taking care of their own physical needs and placed little or no emphasis on controlling the activities of the various media in their zone. Later this was to have the effect of the French zone being seen as a haven for suspect personalities, who had been blacklisted, or were in danger of being blacklisted, and the other occupation zones. This is mentioned in many internal and external memos emanating from the various ICD sections and is on occasion bluntly indicated in letters to the French military governors as will be discussed in greater detail later.
The emphasis on production allowed the Soviets to very quickly get a publishing industry off the ground in their zone. However, they were plagued by the time it took for a manuscript to be passed by the censors. This was to prove a persistent problem in the
Soviet zone. Though the publishing industry was slow to get off the ground in the
American zone, by October 1945 only 10 of the 950 applications received by the ICD for publishing licenses had been approved in the US zone, their publishers showed a greater level of self-reliance. This led to the production accelerating sharply once the licensed publishers had been established. This is demonstrated by a number of licenses granted in subsequent six months, which averaged approximately 34 licenses per month with a peak of 47 being reached in the month of March 1946. By this time a total of 215 publishers had been licensed in the US zone. The following three months saw only a very modest increase in licenses granted, with only a little over nine licenses issued per month for a total of 28 additional licenses.
231
This was as a result of an order to slow down the licensing process, which had been issued as result of the acute paper shortage in Germany at that time. Furthermore, the ICD policy of post publication censorship created a far more reliable group of publishers, because they were held responsible, financially and criminally, for the production of acceptable material. The ICD, after all, could have an entire run of books pulped as a result of them being found unacceptable.
This might mean not only a reprimand, or some other penalty, but also a considerable
229 History I, 54-55.
230 History I, 57-58.
231 History I, 60.
87

loss that might put the financial viability of a publishing house in jeopardy. This resulted in far fewer time consuming and potentially embarrassing criminal prosecution being necessary. So, instead of the Military Government being seen as following heavyhanded National Socialist practices, they simply caused an offending publisher to go bankrupt.
Another link in the delivery of books to the German reading public were the book dealers. They were also required to register with the ICD. By the middle of August
1945 approximately 1200 were registered and by the last week of September 1945 over
3000 book dealers had been granted permission to carry on business in the US zone.
232
This ensured that the ICD had an overview of the complete delivery system and were relatively certain that no undesirable books were being offered for sale. Since the working as a bookseller in postwar Germany offered one of the few opportunities to make a good living, due to the high demand for reading material, it would have been rare for a bookseller to jeopardize his or her financial well-being in order to make a few extra Reichsmark . Moreover, they would have been licensed based on their political reliability as well and thus would have been at low risk of disregarding ICD regulations.
This having been said, there were occasional sweeps undertaken by the ICD, which ensured that those involved in distributing books were aware that the Military
Government was watching and prepared to take action as part of overall intensified denazification efforts. As a result over a hundred book dealers in the Frankfurt area alone lost their registration status for political reasons. One of the reasons for this spate of deregistrations was a process used to approve their applications in the first place.
Since there were so many book dealer applications to process, the general procedure was to grant permission and then do a more thorough review of the applications later.
The ICD also operated three overt periodicals: Die amerikanische Rundschau
(devoted describing the American way of life), Neue Auslese (its format was similar to
Reader’s Digest ), and Heute (which had a format similar to Life or Look with an emphasis on pictorial representations).
233
These journals were not included in the press section of the ICD’s mandate, but as part of the publications unit. This was due to the magazine format not reporting on the news, though it did offer comments on current events.
The first periodical published in the US Zone was Die amerikanische Rundschau in August of 1945. It was closely followed by the debut of Heute on September 14. In choosing these two magazine formats, the ICD was providing the German populous with what it was looking for, though evidence to support this only came later from the
Surveys Section. In the retrospective research, it was determined that more than 50% of women in western Germany indicated that they were looking for an illustrated magazine, with over 32% of men and women combined noting a preference for a general interest magazine.
232 History I, 58.
233
History I, Page 61-64.
88

Both of these journals made their initial appearance in Berlin before appearing in other German cities. This is significant, since the production plants were located in
Munich. It demonstrates that the ICD had already at this early date identified Berlin as being the ideological battleground between East and West and that OMGUS and the
ICD recognized the significance of convincing the Germans that their approach to organizing a society was the pattern that should be adopted by the Germans.
Initially, the Germans were disappointed by the emphasis these early journals placed on war themes, in particular the initial issues of Heute . Considering that the
Germans were living in the midst of the destruction caused by the war, it is not surprising that they did not think much of looking at more such images in a magazine, especially if that magazine was meant to appeal to women. However, it is also not surprising that the initial efforts made by the ICD to produce a magazine would focus on war themes. The guiding principles dictated that they combat militarism within German society. What better way to do this than to show the German people the results of their militarism. The ICD, however, reacted to the feedback they were receiving from their readership. It was not long before they began to modify what appeared in their magazines.
While some may interpret this as the American occupation forces backing away from what was one of their core principles, it appears to be that they quickly realized that a blatantly aggressive and confrontational approach was not working. It might have worked if all of the allies had shared the same political and ideological principles, but in in postwar Germany the unity that had been hoped for in the planning stages simply did not exist once the reality of governing Germany began to highlight the differences that existed between the four powers.
Instead of re-educating the Germans within an environment that provided few other options for the learner, the ICD found itself in an environment in which it was competing with the Soviet occupation information services for the support of the
German people. This led to a situation in which the ICD had to be far subtler in how it presented German war guilt and atrocities on the one hand and the attractions of the
American way of life on the other. They needed to be able to present propaganda that not only attracted Germans to their side but also caused the Germans to reject the Soviet system.
There were a number of journals that received special attention from the ICD.
234
One of these appeared early in the American occupation and was entitled Die Wandlung .
Initially licensed to Dolf Sternberger, a political scientist, and Lambert Schneider, who was one of the publishers that the American forces evacuated from Leipzig into what was to become their occupation zone during the brief two months that they occupied the city and owner of Verlag Lambert Schneider. It has the distinction of being the first literary magazine to be published in the US Zone. If one considers the composition of its editorial board; Karl Jaspers, Werner Krauss, Alfred Weber, and the authors who published in it; Hannah Arendt, T. S. Eliot, Marie-Luise Kaschnitz, Dolf Sternberger,
234 History I, 65.
89

Wilhelm E. Süskind, Gerhard Storz Alfred Weber and Viktor von Weizsäcker, one can quickly see that it was intended to be one of the elite journals in Germany. More than that, it was to serve as one of the hothouses for developing writers in postwar Germany and provided an alternative view of the world to what had been presented to the German people during the national socialist era. In its pages one can also note the development of the first elements of Das Wörterbuch des Unmenschen published in 1957, which made Sternberger, Wilhelm Süsskind, and Gerhard Storz well-known.
A further significant journal that appeared in this initial phase was Horizont , which was aimed at German youth. The journal was licensed in September of 1945 with its first edition of 50,000 copies appearing in Berlin on December 9 of the same year.
With the goal of gradually inculcating young Germans with new ideas, it began redefining old ideas. To this end the magazine included a section entitled “Heros without Weapons,” which deemphasize the militarist traditions of the German past by suggesting that there was a new kind of hero that young people could look up to.
One of these new heroes could very well have been the magazine’s assistant editor, Eduard Grosse, who, at the age of 18, was writing about his experiences in a concentration camp. In fall of 1944 he had been arrested for distributing flyers that were considered subversive by the Nazis. No less a figure than Heinrich Himmler himself declared Grosse, who was 16 at the time, to be an adult and to be treated as such by the judicial system. Grosse, together with a friend Ralf Dahrendorf, was initially sentenced to death, but both were set free by the end of January 1945 as a result of Grosse’s father being able to bribe the right officials. Grosse wrote tirelessly, promoting democracy among the youth of Germany and worked closely with American Military Government officials as a translator and researcher.
Sie , a journal that targeted at women, appeared for the first time in December of
1945. Its purpose was to aid German women as they dealt with family life in a country that now lay in ruins.
235
Interestingly, the first edition dealt with the returning German soldier. Obviously, one of the major concerns that German women had is the fate of their husbands or sons. While it addressed such issues as assisting their men with the transition into civilian life, it had a further purpose. It created hope. In all of the uncertainty of whether their men were alive or dead, the hope created by preparing to receive them, when they did return, served to pacify the female population and also establish a home life that was more in keeping with the American ideal.
The Frankfurter Hefte , which appeared for the first time in April of 1946, also was a project that interested the ICD.
236
The original licensees for the journal were
Eugen Kogon, who had survived Buchenwald concentration camp and was nominated by the British for King’s Medal for Courage in 1945, and Walter Dirks, a theologian and left-wing catholic journalist. The Frankfurter Hefte was one of the more left wing offerings in the US Zone and represented the ICD’s attempt to present a relatively wide assortment of political opinions. While Dirks was not an active opponent of the National
Socialists, having continued to work as a music critic and occasional editor of the
235 History I, 67.
236 History I, 68.
90

Feuilleton section of the Frankfurter Zeitung to 1943, after which he was forbidden to write by the National Socialist regime, his co-licensee, Kogon had established himself as an opponent of the Nazis. Having spent six years in Buchenwald, he was exactly the kind of individual the ICD would consider to be reliable.
237
The first edition of the Frankfurter Hefte certainly provided the ICD with what it wanted to read in the new German media. In amongst the articles written by Germans, one finds debates regarding whether Frankfurt am Main should become the new capital of Germany and a short essay regarding the post Thirty Years War literature of
Grimmelshausen and poetry of Paul Gerhardt. The editors were also very careful in including pieces written by American authors. Two in particular stand out: a portrait of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in which Roosevelt’s legacy is compared with that of Hitler, by Richard A. Gaumont and John L. Brown's essay on poets of the resistance in German occupied Europe.
By June 30, 1946 there were 128 different magazines and journals licensed by the ICD. The largest groups were categorized as religious (47) or professional and occupational (42).
238
A further 13 were classified as literary and musically oriented.
Nine journals had the German youth as their target market and seven were categorized as political. The smallest categories were those directed toward women (5) and those considered to be illustrated (4) which followed the pattern of Look and Life . While there may not have been many publishers in this last group, they also had the biggest press runs.
Book Publishing
Restarting the German book publishing industry was no easy task. The ICD quickly realized that many different aspects of producing a new published work needed to come together in an environment that that had had its physical and mental capacity to do so thoroughly disrupted. “New writers had to be found, manuscripts written,” and above all “the product read carefully by the licensed publisher to see that it did not violate military government directives.” 239 The licensed publishers were in this case being given an opportunity to become quite wealthy and powerful within the new
Germany and this meant they were going to be especially careful with the “product” that they produced.
The first license was issued on July 13, 1945 to representatives of four religious denominations in the Munich areas, authorizing them to publish catechisms, hymnbooks
237 In the last few months of the war Kogon managed to distinguish himself by saving the lives of a number of Allied prisoners of war held at Buchenwald, where he worked as a private secretary to
Sturmbannführer Ding. He was even nominated by Squadron Leader F. Yeo-Thomas, one of the individuals he was instrumental in saving, for the King’s Medal for Courage. The nomination was turned down after considerable investigation, because it was doubtful that such an award could be made to an
Austrian (the official documents identify Kogon as Viennese, though he had been born in Munich).
National Archives [London] HS 8/401.
238 History I, 69.
239 History I, 69.
91

and other religious literature.
54
The second license, and the first in Baden
Wuerrtemberg, was granted to Hermann Meister of Heidelberg, who had begun his publishing career at the age of 19 in 1909 together with Herbert Grossberger. While this first endeavour, Pendel-Verlag, produced only one work, Meister’s second publishing business, Saturn-Verlag, was more successful and has been considered one of the leading proponents of literary expressionism in Germany.
240 During the Nazi-era,
Meister confined himself to publishing an eclectic program, with his love of rugby taking the lead in his interests. In 1938, Grossberger left Germany, due to his Jewish ancestry, and settled in Palastine. This left Meister to run the publishing house until it too was closed by the Nazis in 1943. His postwar publications under the new name of
Verlag Hermann Meister, produced works that were unremarkable in their literary value, but were intended to provide new hope for Germany. Moreover, many of the early titles like Das weisse Herz (1946) and Die Rückkehr: Erzählung (1946).
The first eight books and eight pamphlets released by the newly licensed German publishers appeared in October of 1945.
241
Initially, because of the severe paper shortages, editions were limited to a maximum of 5000 copies, unless special permission was obtained for larger press runs. Such permission was granted for works that were of particular interest to the ICD’s re-education program. For example, the attempt of anti-
Nazi authors to clarify recent German history for German readers, Der Reichstagsbrand
(The Reichstag Fire), a factual exposé of Nazi crimes, was published in an edition of some 200,000 copies. In November a further 24 books and pamphlets were produced, which was followed by a considerable jump for the month of December of 51 new titles and another 38 titles were released in January 1946.
The ICD kept a careful account of the types of books that were being produced.
The largest number of books fell into the category of literature and the humanities with a total of 38 being published by the end of January 1946. This rubric was followed closely by the social sciences at 22 with books concerning the current problems in Germany at
18. Youth and children's books and language books accounted for 15 and 11 books respectively. While religious literature made up a large portion of the journal titles being published, they only accounted for 11 titles in the books and pamphlets market, the same number as those in the category of informational calendars. Under the category of miscellaneous only three books can be found.
Of significance as well is the huge jump in publications between March of 1946, when there were 255 new pamphlets and books in circulation, and the end of June, when there were 729 new pamphlets and books and circulation. This meant that in the months of April, May, and June a total of 474 new publications appeared, an average of 158 per month. Compared with the previous nine months, 242 where the average production
54 Information Control functional Annex to the Monthly Report of the Military Governor , No. 1
(20 Aug 45), “Publications,” p. 5.
240 Krischke, Roland: Ein Meister seines Fachs (Serie: Vergessene Verlage(4): Meister-Verlag)
Börsenblatt 87/2. November 1999 S. 16-20
241 History I, 71.
242 The first licenses were only issued in June of 1945.
92

amounted to approximately 28 publications per month, the situation had improved significantly.
The emphasis on educational topics fell into those areas that would assist in the rebuilding of Germany and it is not surprising that many of these focused on agriculture.
However, politics and American democratic structures were also a significant part of the publishing program encouraged by the ICD. For example, one of the first translations to be published in Germany after was Margret Meade's And Keep Your Powder Dry , which detailed the American way of life from an anthropological perspective. Since she had been a significant member of the committee of academics that produced a report on how
German society was to be restructured after the war, it might not seem unusual that she made the rights to her book available to the ICD, which in turn handed it over to a
German publisher. Central to this work was the controversial premise that culture was the primary motivator for the formation of an individual’s character, a conclusion that fit perfectly into the position taken by the ICD. The rights were given to Kurt Desch, who had received the first publishing license in Bavaria from the ICD and “taken over” the
Zinnen Verlag in Munich. It is also reported that Desch never suffered under the same paper shortages that the other publishers did,
243
a situation that could only have come from a strong working relationship between him and the ICD.
The ICD did invite the opinions of their licensees in regard to what was needed in the German book market. What the ICD heard was that German publishers felt there should be more emphasis on reading material for the worker. It was their impression that the average worker was not being reached effectively. In essence, they were saying that the initial efforts at restarting the German publishing industry had targeted Germany’s elite and had ignored the common person. That is, they wanted to shape the opinions of those who would in turn shape the opinions of the working classes. This could be seen as a cost-effective way of reorienting Germany’s social foundations, but did not maximize the profits of the publishers. For the publishers to maximize their profits, they needed to expand the base of their readers. This was a significant point for another reason. The ICD understood that the book-buying market was different in Germany and recognised this fact in there 1946 report:
Military Government regarded the field of publications as a highly important means of reeducating Germany. Generally, it was considered that books exerted a greater influence in Germany than in the United States, and did more to mold public opinion than newspapers and periodicals. The Germans were always avid readers and books had long played an important part in German life among all classes. Extensive private libraries were owned by many middle-class families, and few German homes were without their shelves of books. Normally,
Germany published more books, both titles and number of copies, than the
United States.
49
243 Reinhard Wittmann, Geschichte des deutschen Buchhandels , München 1991, Page 366.
49 Before the war, the average number of different titles published annually in Germany was
17,000, as against an average of about 9,000 in the United States with twice the German population.
93

However, they did not fully appreciate how different. It seems that the German publishers instinctively understood that for a democracy to work it is not only the elites, but it is also the common working person who has a say in how the country is to be governed. For democracy to take hold, it was necessary to create a well-informed and educated lower class as a balance to the power of the elite. While one might argue that it was simply a matter of making as much profit as possible that motivated the German publishers, one must also bear in mind that the licensed publishers in Germany held their positions based to a greater degree on their political idealism.
German authors who were published during this early period tended to concentrate on Germany's current problems.
244
For example, special note is made of
Gertrud Bäumer’s
Der neue Weg der deutschen Frau , who had already been any significant member of the German feminist movement, politictian, and author in the
Weimar era, and Hugo Hassinger’s Der alte und der Neue Weg, Betrachtungen eines
Volkserziehers . These titles all pointed to a new path for Germany and fit perfectly into the ICD’s publishing plans. Further books that the ICD highlighted as very significant to their mission during the initial year of the occupation were: Gustav Radbruch's Der
Geist des Englishen Rechts (The Spirit of English Law), he had served as the Justice
Minister during the Weimar period and this book eventually went through 5 editions and was still read in German Law Faculties until well into the 1960s; Fuehrer und
Verfuehrte (The Leader and the Misled) by Hans Windisch, which analyzed German social politics; Zur Genesung des Deutschen Wesens (The Rebirth of the German Spirit) by Karl Barth, Protestant clergyman, and Die Idee der Universität (The Idea of the
University) by Karl Jaspers. Also by the end of June 1946, translation and publication rights for some 40 selected American titles had been sold to licensed German publishers.
One of the titles, The American Character by Dennis Brogan, sold 10,000 copies within three weeks of its appearance in German translation.
The books of this period did not only concentrate on political matters, but fictional literature also took an important place in the publishing programs. The classical authors and their works were seen as having a didactic purpose. So, it is with this in mind that one must read the early postwar publications of literary giants such as Goethe,
Uhland, Moericke, and Eichendorf. The publishers concentrated on reproductions of works that might be considered safe, rather than invest a great deal of time and effort in authors that were as yet politically untried.
245
The topics chosen for publication in the first year after the cessation of hostilities is interesting in that it appears to be the opposite of the topics covered in the journals.
The main topics of the new releases indicate that, with 271 publications, religion was the area in which most publications appeared. However, this may be a misleading figure, because it appears that all manner of publication the churches would normally produce; such as hymn books, catechisms, and church calendars were included in this number. In
244 History I, Pages 73-74.
245 Even here one might consider the comments made by the Cabaret Director to Beckmann in Wolfgang
Borchert’s Draußen vor der Tür .
94

second place, with 147 new publications, was fiction, poetry, and drama. 44 new publications for children and youth also appeared during this period, which does not included textbooks and teaching materials. Tightly grouped together were philosophy and literary criticism at 34, textbooks at 32, and reference books and dictionaries at 31.
Notable, but not unusual given the political situation in Germany, is the fact that the
ICD had a separate category entitled “National Socialism and other problems,” which included 29 separate titles.
In some respects one can actually consider the categories of religion and literature to be very similar nature, at least from the perspective of the ICD. These types of books were seen as providing a new moral compass for the German people and served as a place where the intellectual elite of postwar Germany might try to convince, and in turn be convinced, of new ways of conceiving of a new German society.
The ICD knew that the Germans had a long tradition of a publisher’s association that had regulated the publishing industry in Germany for over 100 years prior to 1933.
Thus, one of the first steps taken by the ICD was to re-establish a means of communication for those involved in the publishing industry to communicate.
246
This was to be accomplished through the reestablishment of the
Börsenverein
of the German book trade and, perhaps more importantly, the publication of the
Börsenblatt für den deutschen Buchhandel . A significant problem that faced the ICD was the fact that both had been headquartered in Leipzig, which was scheduled to be handed over to the Soviet forces. However, initially Leipzig had come under the control of the American forces.
The US forces held the city from the 17th of April until their withdrawal on July 2,
1945. In the meantime, the ICD had received permission to transfer is much of the
German book trade from Leipzig to Wiesbaden. This gave them approximately 2 1/2 months to organize the move to the sector they were scheduled to hold.
The ICD did eventually manage to identify some reliable book publishers who had been responsible for the greater part of Germany's exports. They were able to determine that at least some members of the
Börsenblatt had attempted to maintain the traditions of the pre-Nazi era. In their opinion, Dr. Georg Kurt Schauer is was the right man for the job and he subsequently became the first postwar editor of the publication.
On August 5, 1945,
247
Schauer received one of the first four publication licenses issued by the ICD.
The influence of the Börsenblatt should not be underestimated. At least initially, the
Börsenblatt carefully followed the guidelines and requests of the ICD. In its first postwar edition it publish all of the military government regulations for the book trade in the US zone and thus became the authority in some ways as to what could and could not be published. In addition, it regularly released lists of licensed publishers and authorized book dealers, in order that its members could easily remain within the regulations set down by the military government in the distribution of their material. The
Börsenblatt
,
246 History I, Pages 75-76.
247 History I states that it was July 1945. However, the Neue Deutsche Biographie , created by the
Histrorical Commission of the Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften provides the date of August 5,
1945.
95

according to the ICD, was considered an integrative force in Germany’s new publishing industry and one that could have a powerful liberalizing effect on German publishing.
One of the problems faced by the ICD in organizing the booktrade in their zone was the fact that the military government laws did not allow for trade organizations above the Land level.
248
This meant that they would always be a certain level of fragmentation between the booktrades in the various Länder they controlled.
American Information Centers
One of the more overlooked parts of the ICD’s activities is the function of the
Information Centers they ran. These centers were put in place to provide Germans with a record of American life and provided Germans with American literature.
249
In addition, they provided access to American innovations in education and politics. In other words, they were to present American culture to the German people.
There was, however, another perhaps more important function served by the information centers. Intelligence gathering was important and allowed the ICD to monitor not only the attitudes of Germans, but also what sorts of things interested them.
This intelligence function provided the ICD with the information necessary to begin fine-tuning their operation and keep their finger on the pulse of the German reading public.
Film, Theater, and Music Control.
The ICD was quite aware that film, theater, and music had been a used extensively by the Nazis to create an ideological environment conducive to their goals.
250
The ICD felt that this had been the most important tool used by Joseph
Goebbels and the Ministry of Propaganda, especially the military documentaries they had produced. This appears to be contrary to current opinion, which tends to focus on the entertainment films or historical dramas.
The first area on which the ICD focused was creating a complete inventory of the facilities available to them. It was important for them to know which resources they had at hand in order to begin using these media to their own benefit. A second priority of the ICD was the production of Welt im Film , which initially had been produced in
London and which was moved to the Bavaria in July of 1945, with the 18th edition being the first to be produced within Germany. Welt im Film was a weekly news digest that, at least initially, reinforced the idea of Germany’s complete defeat 251
and emphasized the magnitude of Germany’s war crimes.
252
Later, one could argue along with Brigitte Hahn that the newsreels could be seen as aimed at creating an alliance
248 History I, Pages 76-77.
249 History I, Page 78.
250 History I, Page 82.
251 Welt im Film #2.
252 Welt im Film #5, #6, and #18 among others.
96

between Germany and the Americans,
253
but this may only be the case as the tensions between the Soviets and the Americans moved toward the Berlin blockade of 1948.
In order to accomplish this, the ICD also began screening prospective film production licensees, with the initial vetting being based on the technical and artistic qualifications. If these needs were satisfied in the minds of the ICD, the applicants would then be sent to Bad Orb, an American installation run by the intelligence branch of the Army, to determine if the applicants were politically and psychologically suitable for the task at hand. The ICD also immediately sent out field officers to begin the task of repairing the film studios in both Munich and Berlin. The ICD requisitioned both the
Tempelhof and Geiselgasteig facility as well as the Reichsanstalt für Film und Bild in
Wissenschaft und Unterricht .
Despite the early efforts to repair and use whatever facilities were available, filmmaking was slow to get off the ground in Germany.
254 What was missing was someone the ICD could trust and was familiar with the German film industry to take over the operation of the ICD's mandate. The problem of course was that it required someone with a great deal of technical skill, who could very likely earn a very good living making films in Hollywood. In November of 1945 the ICD contacted Eric
Pommer,
255
a well known German film producer who is now an American citizen. He agreed to return to Germany to help restart film operations in June of 1946, but did not arrive until July 4. No German films, other than newsreels, had been produced up until this time and it was anticipated that the first productions would begin in early 1947. In the meantime, six applications as film producers had been approved by the ICD, but no license had yet been issued by the end of June 1946.
Newsreels were given top priority in processing and printing.
256
General
McClure considered the newsreels so important that, when the Interim International
Information Service in Washington wanted to reduce it to one reel, he stepped in and vigorously argued that the newsreel was the primary means of getting the American point of view across to the Germans. McClure considered it the “right form for obtaining maximum psychological effectiveness.” He was not alone in this, since the
Political Information Division of the British Foreign Office held the same position.
Newsreels had fairly strict guidelines in regard to content. Fifty percent of each newsreel was to be devoted to domestic German news, with another 25% set aside for
Anglo-American reports. The remaining 25% was devoted to world news.
257 The newsreels not only served the purpose of bringing across the Anglo-American view of the world to the Germans, but in Austria as well since there was a second, somewhat revised, edition of the same newsreels produced for distribution in there.
253 Brigitte Hahn, “Dokumentarfilm im Dienste der Umerziehung. Amerikanische Filmpolitik 1945-1953”
In: Heiner Roß (ed).
Lernen Sie diskutieren! Re-education durch Film , Berlin: Cinegraph, 2005. 19-32.
254 History I, Page 85.
255 Pommer had produced such films as: Das Kabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), Dr. Mabuse (1922), Die
Nibelungen, Siegfried (1924), and Metropolis (1927).
256 History I, Page 86.
257 History I, 87.
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In June of 1946 a meeting was called by OMGUS in order to establish an agreement between the Civil Affairs Division of the War Office (WARCAD) and the
British Control Office, which was to determine the policies and objectives of future newsreels.
258
The agreement was that “ Welt im Film [was] to contribute to the enlightenment of Germans and Austrians by presenting news in pictures from throughout the world including the four zones of occupation in Germany, and from
Austria.” Moreover, it was to present “the Allied purpose, standards and ways of life” and was to show efforts at reconstruction. Significantly, the agreement also notes that the focus should be on reconstruction and restoration undertaken by the local population. They did not necessarily want to concentrate on efforts that had been initiated by the occupation forces, but wanted to emphasize what individuals were doing for themselves. In other words, they did not want to create the expectation within the occupied population that the Anglo-American occupation forces were going to reconstruct Germany and Austria for them.
This approach would have had another effect in that it presented the Anglo-
American occupation forces as not necessarily reconstructing Germany and Austria in their own image. The impression would have been one of Germans and Austrians rebuilding their countries as they thought best. This of course would serve to mask everything else that was going on in the background in terms of the political and ideological guidance being provided through the various Military Government divisions, in particular the Information Control Division.
In May of 1946 WARCAD created a list of 120 reels they wanted to produce as documentaries. This list was divided into films that were to be produced in the United
States and the films that were to be produced in Germany. The subject list of films to be produced in America covered a wide variety of topics, everything from American dance to life on a small farm in America to how to conduct town meetings. The German list was just as wide-ranging, but focused for the most part on practical matters. The list included topics such as the: “The Future”; “Justice”; “Reparations”; “The D.P.
Problem”; “The Law”; “De-Nazification”; “The Zonal System”; “Freedom of the
Press”; “Freedom of Speech”; “Freedom of Religion”; “Education in Democracy”; “The
Schools”; “Labor”; “Industry”; “Agriculture”; “The Mines”; “Rebuilding the Railroads,
Bridges, Roads, Canals”; “Reforestation”; “Commerce”; “Public Utilities”; “Housing”;
“Public Health”; “Science and Research”; “Painting and Sculpture”; “Music and the
Theater”; and “Film and Radio”.
259
A further problem that confronted film division of the ICD was the actual physical space in which these films were to be shown.
260
It was estimated that 80% of the movie houses in Germany were controlled or owned by Nazi party members or adherents. This made them unacceptable to the ICD. The only step that the ICD could take at this point was the requisitioning of the necessary property under the property
258 History I, Pages 87 to 88.
259 History I, 86.
260 History I, Page 89.
98

control regulations. Once this was accomplished, a custodian acceptable to the ICD was appointed and an ICD registrant was installed to manage the movie theater.
On June 30, 1945 the ICD opened the first 15 cinemas in its occupation zone.
Initially they only showed carefully screened documentaries. However, by the end of
December 1945, with 345 cinemas reopened, the first few German-language feature films approved by the Military Government of were being shown.
261 This only happened after a careful screening process that followed strict standards set down by General
McClure. The films that the German audiences were to see needed to satisfy one of two fundamental criteria. The first of these was the establishment of German war guilt in the second was to demonstrate the value of democracy.
One of the major problems the plagued the ICD’s efforts was the shortage of suitable films. By July 1946 there were only 15 German feature films in distribution, all of which had been produced prior to the occupation. A further eight German produced documentary films were in circulation, in addition to 30 juvenile short subject films. moreover, there were 48 US produced films that had been listed in 1944 as appropriate viewing for German audiences (in reality only 33 of these films were available by the end of June 1946). All of these film titles consisted of approximately 6 copies each. This meant that German movie houses only had 288 actual films available for showing, which needed to be circulated among the 668 movie houses opened in the US zone of control. It meant that the German audiences did not get much variety, nor were they able to watch films on a regular basis. Because of this acute shortage of film titles, further
German films were released to keep cinemas operating. As an interim solution, the ICD policy required German movie theaters to show American films for at least two weeks prior to showing a German film. Moreover, a movie theater that was being reopened could not do so with a German film. This ensured that the German population was exposed to American films that contained the message the ICD wanted to keep uppermost in the minds of the German population, before they were allowed to watch a film that was nothing more than pure entertainment.
262
In addition to the above policy, the ICD also looked outside of its occupation zone for help in order to supplement the films they already had in circulation. One of the solutions was to organize a film exchange between the four occupying powers.
263
This was done under the auspices of the quadripartite agreement and done on a rental basis.
The rental of a complete program costs 50% of the gross receipts after taxes have been deducted.
264
The monies earned through the scheme were then deposited with the finance branch of the occupation zone, which would then meet on a regular basis to balance the earnings generated by these films in the various zones. The money accrued in these accounts were then put at the disposal of the ICD. There is no indication of what
261 By July 1946 there were 15 German feature films in distribution, all of which had been produced prior to the occupation. A further eight German produced documentary films were in circulation in addition to
30 juvenile short subject films.
262 History I, 92.
263 History I, Page 92-93.
264 History I, 93.
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these finances were used for; however, one can assume that they were used for the daily operation of the ICD's film section, the acquisition of the rights to show new films, and in some cases most likely to pay for the importation of films from Switzerland, which was a third way of providing a greater diversity of films.
Under an arrangement with Praesens Film of Switzerland, the ICD imported the films The Last Chance (1945) and Marie-Louise (1944). The Last Chance , released in
Germany on April 11, 1946, went on to win the Grand Prize as well as the International
Peace Award at the Cannes Film Festival in October of 1946. The film deals with a
British and an American soldier who escape from a Nazi prison train. They then find themselves leading a multinational group for the Italian underground. Marie-Louise went on to win an Oscar at March 7, 1946 Academy Awards for best writing, original screenplay. It tells the story of a young French girl, who is evacuated from her home in
Rouen France to Switzerland as a result of the war in Europe. Both of these films bring home the consequences on a very personal level of a war Germany foisted on the rest of
Europe. Both also emphasize the isolation of Germany within the world community. In this case, the ICD use the proceeds to help concentration camp victims.
The reaction of German audiences was not always favourable, especially towards the war films produced in the United States. There was, however, a specific purpose that the ICD had in mind when they brought them to Germany. It was felt that this type of film would be of some psychological benefit in that they were meant to show the machinery that had beaten the Wehrmacht. The ICD considered them especially important while the US was still at war with Japan. These films, for the most part, were later withdrawn; at least the films that dealt purely with war subjects. It is interesting to note that there was a fundamental, but perhaps necessary, contradiction in bringing these films to the German public. While the ICD was trying to eradicate
German militarism, it also emphasized American military strength.
By March 1946 11 carefully selected German films were in circulation: feature films included “Here Comes Mr. Jordan”, “Shadow of a Doubt”, “Seven Sweethearts”,
“The Gold Rush”, “It Started With Eve”, “You Were Never Lovelier”, “Young Tom
Edison”, “Pride and Prejudice,” and “It happened Tomorrow,” and the documentaries consisted of: “A Child Went Forth”, “Attack (Battle of New Britain)”, “Cowboy”,
“Pipeline”, “Democracy in Action”, “The Town”, “Autobiography of a Jeep”, “Building of Boys”, “Steel Town”, “City Harvest,” and “Toscanini.”.
265 By June 30, 1946 a further
139 German films had been screened and censored by the ICD.
266
While books (used as sources for screenplays) or screenplays written by Nazi party members or proven supporters of the Nazi party and “scenario writers, directors, or star performers under persecution by allied occupation authorities” were forbidden, other artistic and technical workers were allowed to continue to work. However, their credits for the films were removed. The situation was similar to that of ancient Egypt. If a Pharaoh's name and image were removed, it would be as if they never existed.
265 For a listing of these films see page 94 of History I.
266 History I, Pages 94 to 95.
100

Theater
The ICD noted, when they quoted Schiller, that “[T]he theater in Germany was not considered purely an entertainment medium, but rather a ‘moral institution.’” 267
They saw this in conjunction with the fact that very few theaters in Germany were privately owned. This meant that they were under the direct control of the municipality,
Land , or the state itself. Moreover, they reasoned that this made it easy for the Nazis to take over the theater. Conversely, it was felt that the same would be the case in the postwar, because the theater people were accustomed to taking orders. Though this was the overall impression the ICD also recognized that very few Nazis had become successful writers for the stage.
The ICD also recognized that there was a strong relationship between theater and music, which resulted in them treating them as a single entity. This did make sense in that very often the same facilities, out of necessity, was used for both, or in some cases, like Opera, they represented a melding of the two.
By the time the war was over most of the physical facilities had been destroyed, since theaters tended to be in the center of town with the heaviest concentration of bombing being focused there. Additionally, since eight months before the end of the war the Nazis had decreed that all theater should be closed, most of the members of the ensembles had scattered throughout Germany. The ICD also noted that, because of the isolation of German musicians from the rest of the world during the Nazi era, and the order given by the Nazis that music was to be written that enhance the Nazi cause, there were a few musicians left to carry out what the ICD felt the main function was to be, which was to produce “something creative and of free expression.” 268
As with other areas of responsibility, the initial primary function of the ICD was to find suitable people, so that the theaters could once more be opened.
269
There was, however, one further obstacle, which was the entertainment of the occupying troops as a
Military Government priority. In the case of entertainment for the troops a wider variety of entertainers were used, since none of the restrictions on the political pedigree of an actor or musician were applied, as was the case of entertainment for the general German public, though there were equally strict rules against this practice. For example the
610th Tank Destroyer Battalion employed the Nuremberg Opera Company, which included many Nazis, for their variety shows.
Furthermore there were the cases of Walter Morse-Rummel, a pianist, and Guila
Bustabo, a violinist, who had been banned from the stage in postwar Germany. Both performers, though they were American citizens, had remained in Germany during the war under Nazi protection.
270
In fact, Morse-Rummel had accepted German citizenship in August of 1944. While Morse-Rummel had never become a member of the Nazi party, ICD investigations revealed that remaining in Germany had financially enriched him. Apparently his annual income was listed as somewhere between $80,000 and
267 History I, 96.
268 History I, 97.
269 History I, Pages 97 to 98.
270 The New York Times , “Two US Musicians Barred in Germany,” December 15, 1945.
101

$100,000. This put him well beyond the lower limit the denazification process had set for revealing a person of interest.
The case of Guila Bustabo was more difficult, since she had remained an
American citizen. She was beyond the scope of a denazification process, since she was not a German and her brother made a number of attempts at having her repatriated to her home in Wisconsin. Archival documentation indicates that no high priority was given to her, due to the fact that she had remained in Germany of her own volition. Guila
Bustabo, a gifted American violinist, also made her way into the ICD's files.
271
On
November 21, 1946 a letter was written by Maj. Edward Peeples to her brother, Jack
Bustabo, of Chicago Illinois, who had written a letter to the Military Government in
Germany in regard to her blacklisted status. In the letter, Peeples outlines the reasons for categorization. Over time it has been suggested that it was her mother's decision to remain in Germany during the war that led to the young violinists a situation. Moreover, it has been argued that she suffered from a bipolar ailment, which was exacerbated by her mother's domineering personality. However, the ICD did not take any of this into consideration and gave very specific reasons for its decision. In general, the reason for her classification was that she had “collaborated with, were made [her] talent available to the Nazis.” According to the policies in place at the time this meant immediate removal from any role in German cultural activities. It was also noted that an investigation of Bustabo was triggered by a concert she gave in Germany in the fall of
1945. The results of the investigation were the following: she had not obeyed instructions from the American Consulate in Frankfurt to return to the United States, a full month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor she had appeared with the Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra as a soloist, that she had given concerts in Germany and other occupied countries by special permission from the propaganda ministry, that she had performed on the radio in Paris during the war, and finally it was related that she had had “many influential friends among Nazi officials as well as German military personnel who regularly exploited her talent for the German propaganda machine. She was considered as politically reliable by the Nazi security office.”
272
The ICD was also aware that the effect they had on individual musicians and actors was limited.
273
Many who had been refused licenses, or suspected that they would be refused a license, simply went to US special services officers and received permission to perform before American soldiers. The ICD did eventually reach an accommodation with special services and a ban on blacklisted or unlicensed entertainers was promulgated on September 1, 1945. This being the case in the US zone, these entertainers simply moved on to the French, British, or Soviet sectors. For many, the
Soviet zone was simply not an option for either ideological reasons or simply out of fear. Within a short time it also became clear that the British and the Americans were working very closely on this matter and were exchanging the names of those who had been blacklisted in their sectors. This left the French zone as the only refuge, since they
271 RG 260 5/265-1/16
272 Edward Peeples, Letter to Jack Bustabo, November 21, 1946, RG 260 5/265-1/16.
273 History I, Page 99 to 100.
102

did not appear to make any effort to check an individual’s political background. Among both the US occupiers and the general German population the French zone became known as a Nazi haven. This point is substantiated by Edward Breitenkamp, 274 a former
ICD officer, and in the numerous memos exchanged between the zonal commanders and their adjutants regarding the issue.
With many of the performers blacklisted, one would expect that there would be a severe shortage in the US zone. However, with the destruction of many of Germany's theaters there was really no place for them to perform in any case. This meant that the
ICD could be somewhat selective in who it licensed or registered as a performer.
It is quite clear that ICD officers had a great deal of difficulty not succumbing to some of the temptations that would make their job easier. While the ICD claimed to draw hard line on whether an individual had been a Nazi or personally benefited from the Nazis at the highest administrative levels, the lower ranks found themselves having to overcome the urge to forgive or ignore questionable behavior because of someone superior talent.
275
Requests for exceptions were constantly being brought to their offices as in the case of Wilhelm Fürtwängler.
While there are a few things that all four occupying powers could agree on, an example of this would be Wilhelm Fürtwängler, the famous conductor of the Berlin
Philharmonic, who had been blacklisted by the Americans for holding office during the
Nazi regime, but was actively courted by the Soviets, 276 there were moments where they seem to coalesce and agree on who they did not want to have as part of the emerging entertainment scene in Germany. There were many who had been added to the military government blacklist, but few were actually singled out for special attention. One of these was Norbert Schulze who had composed Bombs over England as well as Lili
Marlene . His name was added to the October 1945 blacklist by a quadripartite subcommittee agreement in Berlin.
One thing that the ICD could count on was musicians and theater people being quite willing to inform on one another about their political background and failings, because this could often mean the difference between just being another member of the string section, or a bit player on stage, and taking over the first chair in the orchestra or receiving the lead parts in a theatrical production. It was a matter of these performers finding a way of moving out through the ranks by ensuring that those above them were removed from the scene. One of the most common infractions that the ICD was able to charge performers with was falsification of information on the Fragebogen they all had filled out prior to being licensed or registered. The ICD estimated that between 3% and
4% of the registered performers had provided false information. Usually this was in connection with membership in a Nazi organization with investigative priority being given to those who had been informed on. Those caught having made fraudulent statements were charge before the military government courts and prosecuted. This led not only to them being banned from the stage, but also often resulted in significant
274 Breitenkamp 60.
275 Breitenkamp 52-53.
276 Berliner Zeitung 26.2.1946 and 12.3.1946.
103

financial penalties or time spent in prison. In addition, because theater licensees were held personally responsible for what went on in the theater, it served as a reminder to them that no Nazi or militarist was to be connected with any of their productions.
277
Added to this was another layer of bureaucracy, which applicants needed to clear before they could be licensed or registered. This was the so-called
Prüfungsausschuss, which carried out preliminary examinations and vetted potential licensees and registrants and then made recommendations to the field ICD units.
278
Clearly, field units were not bound by these recommendations, but for the most part followed them. There may have been some initial difficulty in how these examination boards interpreted
Allied regulations, because it is noted that “by the end of March 1946 that most of its
[the
Prüfungsausschuss
] recommendations were being made in conformance with military government regulations.” 279
But then again, it had only begun operating at the beginning of March, so it would seem that those selected for these examination boards very quickly understood what the ICD wanted.
It was some time before the theaters were opened for stage plays. The problem was that no new acceptable plays had been produced and none of the plays produced in either the United States or Britain since 1932 had been translated into German.
280
It would clearly take some time before new material would be available. Thus, the ICD and the German theater going public would have to satisfy itself with carefully screened works had been produced prior to the Nazis taking power. On September 5, 1945 the first theater production was staged in Frankfurt. Toni Impekoven, the licensed theater director for the Frankfurt area, presented in comedy Ingeborg by Curt Goetz. Impekoven had been a well-known opponent of the National Socialists, with his plays being banned in Germany immediately upon the Nazis coming to power. In fact, Impekoven’s wife,
Frieda, had been implicated a number of times for having hidden Jews in their Frankfurt home.
281
As for the comedy, Ingeborg , it had been written in 1920 and it premiered on
October 8, 1921 and was the first play presented at the Theater am Kurfürstendam in
Berlin. Ingeborg , in fact, was quite popular in the US zone. It was also used to reopen the theater season in Ulm. It was also performed in many smaller towns in the vicinity of Kassel. This, however, was not always without its problems. For example, the Mayor of Frankenberg attempted to prevent its performance in his town. He argued, along with a number of other citizens, “that the play was immoral” and should be banned.
282
The
ICD, however, would have none of this and saw that the performances went ahead. In fact, it became one of the staples of early postwar theater productions in Germany and was also the first theater piece performed in Ulm where it was followed by
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew .
277 History I, 103.
278 History I, 103-105.
279 History I, 105.
280 History I, 105.
281 Meir Wagner, The Righteous of Switzerland: Heroes of the Holocaust , Jersey City: KTAV Publishing
House, 2000. pp 17-19.
282 History I, 106.
104

Ingeborg was not the only work to cause difficulties for the ICD. The Catholic youth movement in Karlsruhe demonstrated against the premiere performance of Bertolt
Brecht's Dreigroschenoper . Once again the charge brought against the play was that it was immoral. In this case the police had to be called in to prevent a riot.
283
The initial productions of plays in the US sector, however, tended to focus on the classics. For example, the Staatstheater in Kassel started with Goethe's Iphigenia auf
Tauris and Wiesbaden's Deutsches Theater opened on November 18, 1945 with
Goethe’s
Die Geschwister , a one-act play with a cast of four from 1776. Not only was
Goethe popular, but a number of Shakespeare's plays were performed as well. In
Stuttgart one of the early productions was of As You like It as well as a presentation of
Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew as its second production.
284
There was, however, a wide variety of plays on offer as Germany’s theater came to life once more. In the Giessen Stadttheater Artur Schnitzler's Liebelei was performed on the 25 th
of November, and Stuttgart premiered Orpheus and Euridice and
Shakespeare's As You Like It . In Wiesbaden the
Der Lügenpeter
[Pinnochio] by Toni
Impekhoven was performed on the 24 th
of December and Menagerie , a group of three one-act plays, followed on the December 31. In Heidelberg, Moliere’s 1668 comedy
L'Avare received its first performance on 17 December. Also in the pre-Christmas period, Kassel's Staattheater premiered Rotköpfchen on December 6, followed this with
Heinrich von Kleists's Der zerbrochne Krug . The premiere of Ferenc Molnar's 1926
Spiel im Schloss , which had been a huge hit world wide in the late 1920s, was performed in Wiesbaden on December 8. Stuttgart's premieres early in December 1945 included
Emil Herrmann’s
Das Gotteskind , a Christmas play, and several French comedies.
By early December, Munich was already well on its way to recovery and the
ICD reported that it had taken on an almost “metropolitan atmosphere.” By this time
Munich’s opera had already performed Puccini’s La Bohème and Eugen d’Albert’s
Tiefland.
The Volkstheater in Munich was also attracting considerable audiences. The
Münchner Theater
was using a gymnasium for its performances and had a repertoire of three plays by this time, with the Bürgertheater running five plays.
The ICD also made certain that American plays appeared on the German stage.
Through the Office of War Information (OWI) and the American Dramatists Guild, the
ICD requested that the German rights for the plays: Our Town , Abe Lincoln in Illinois ,
Yellow Jack , The Time of Your Life , The Patriots , The Voice of the Turtle , I Remember
Mama , and Dear Life be secured for staging in Germany. They then set about satisfying the conditions under which the plays could be made available to German producers.
Financially, they needed to create blocked accounts into which the royalties could be paid in marks. These monies would then be held in the name of the Dramatists Guild in an account for the individual authors. Securing German rights from the authors was difficult enough, The ICD then needed to have them translated and printed. The
Dramatists Guild was of the opinion that it would be a time consuming undertaking, and
283 History I, 106.
284 For a more thorough listing of the plays performed in the US zone, see History I, 105-109.
105

indeed it was. The PWD/ICD had begun work on this in March 1945; however, by late
September 1945 they still had no authority to show American plays in Germany. The problem was that performance rights had been granted to Germans prior to 1933 and that these agreements, provided the rights holder was still alive, were still contractually binding. Moreover, the holders of the rights might have been blacklisted and could thus not stage the play, while at the same time being unwilling to sell the rights to someone else. So, the play could not be staged. Though the ICD could simply hand over the physical printing plants to desirable publishers, it was more complicated in this case, since the American individuals and copyright law was now in effect. Something the ICD had no control over. The fear was that the German performance rights holders could simply wait out the occupation and move ahead with their own program once the ICD was no longer an issue. Even though common sense seemed to suggest that “since no plays by American authors had been staged in Germany since 1933 […] all rights on
American plays had lapsed”, a new contract needed to be established with the
Dramatists Guild. Until that happened, it was “not possible to secure American plays for production in the U.S. Zone.”
Nevertheless, a list of American plays was eventually cleared for production in
Germany. These first ten plays were: Thunder Rock (Robert Ardrey 1939), Our Town
(Thornton Wilder 1938), Yellow Jack (Sydney Howard and Paul de Kruif 1934), Awake and Sing (Clifford Odets 1935), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (Robert E. Sherwood 1938),
Three Men on a Horse (George Abbott and John Cecil Holm 1935), Ethan Frome (a dramatization of Edith Wharton 1911 novel), Knickerbocker Holiday (Kurt Weill and
Maxwell Anderson 1938), Uncle Harry (Thomas Job 1942), and On Borrowed Time
(Paul Osborne 1938). Soon after, on 13 June 1946, the first American stage comedy in
Germany premiered, Three Men on a Horse , in the Deutsches Theater in Berlin with
Axel Ivers, who had translated the script and played a leading role in the production, directing. The play proved to be a great success in Germany and eventually a German film adaption was produced in 1959 by the Berliner Union-Film Studio in Tempelhof,
Berlin.
Seven other American plays with German translations were performed in the spring of 1946:
285
Thunder Rock was performed in Bad Kissingen, Berlin, Bremen,
Erlangen, Frankfurt, Giessen, Hamburg, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe,
Kompten, Krumbach, Memmingen, Muenchen, Regensburg,
Stuttgart, Suessen, and Ulm.
Three Men on a Horse was performed in Berlin and Wiesbaden.
Awake and Sing appeared in Berlin, Heidelberg, Mannheim, and
Stuttgart.
On Borrowed Time was produced in Berlin, Frankfurt, Heidelberg,
Mannheim, Stuttgart, and Weisbaden.
The Time of Your Life by William Sareyan appeared in Berlin,
285 Film, Theater and Music Branch Report for June 1946.
106

Heidelberg, and Stuttgart.
Our Town was performed in Augsburg, Berlin, Bremen, Esslingen,
Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Hersfeld, Karlsruhe, Kassel, Munich,
Nuremberg, Offenbach, Regensburg, Schwetzingen, Stuttgart, Ulm, and Wiesbaden.
Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder was presented in Berlin,
Darmstadt, Munich, Stuttgart, and Wiesbaden.
While these plays had already appeared on stage in Germany, another 20 plays were either awaiting production or still in the translation/printing phase. Eugene
O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness ( O Wildnis ) had been translated and was available in printed form for the German theaters, along with My Heart's in the Highland (William Saroyan
1939), Adding Machine (Elmer Rice 1923), Uncle Harry , The Barretts of Wimpolestreet
(Rudolf Besier 1930), Morning's at Seven (Paul Osborn 1939), Men in White (Sydney
Kingsley 1933), and Angel Street (Patrick Hamilton 1941). A further twelve American plays were in the process of being translated: Abe Lincoln in Illinois , Biography (Samuel
Behrman 1932), Ethan Frome , Embezzled Heaven (Ladislaus Bush-Fekete and Mary
Fay 1944), End of Summer (Samuel Behrman 1936), Family Portrait (Lenore Coffee and Willian Joyce Cowen 1939), Mourning Becomes Electra (Eugene O’Neill 1931), No
Time for Comedy (Samuel Behrman 1940), One Sunday Afternoon (James Hagan 1933),
The Patriots (Sydney Kingsley 1943), Reunion in Vienna (Robert Sherwood 1931), and
Why Marry (Jessie Lynch Williams 1917).
The ICD, however, also tested the quadripartite agreements that allowed material produced for the various occupation information services branches to have some of their works produced in the other sectors. Thus the Staatstheater at Dresden was given permission to perform Our Town , which was the first performance of an American play in the Soviet Zone. This was followed by further scheduled engagements in the Soviet zone and by June 1946 Halle, Eisenach, Magdeburg, and Leipzig had arranged for performances of American plays. Moreover, an arrangement was also worked out by the
ICD in the Bremen Enclave with the British 8 th
ICU (Information Control Unit) for the performance of American plays by German licensed theaters in Hamburg. In this case, applications were made by the theaters through the British Information Control Units, and scripts were to be furnished by Information Control Branch, Bremen. There was also a plan for the same arrangement with the 30th ICU (Hanover).
Music Control
Initially, instructions issued by the ICD in reference to music in postwar
Germany were relatively simple and straightforward. All military marches and those used by the National Socialists were banned. In addition, all songs used or associated with the Wehrmacht were proscribed. Other musical forms proved to be more difficult to deal with.
286 For example, Siegfried’s “Funeral March” from Twilight of the Gods was not banned. They reasoned, if it were to be banned because of its association with
286 History I, 110-111.
107

the National Socialists, then similar arguments could be made for the “slow movements of Beethoven's Third and Seventh Symphonies.”
287
While the ICD considered Richard
Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben , a response to Nietzschean philosophy, to have dangerous tendencies, it was felt that Schubert's An Schwager Kronos , with original lyrics by
Goethe, was even more dangerous. Since it was felt that these pieces could not be banned outright, they needed to at the very least controlled in certain instances. In the case of Hitler's birthday, pieces such as Beethoven's Eroica and Ein Heldenleben were not to be played. Though they found most of this to be fairly innocuous, they wished to err on the side of safety and keep a relatively tight rein on any musical associations that might exist with the Nazi party.
Not only German music was watched carefully, but even music composed by individuals of other nationalities were restricted, because of the possibility of what they called musical sabotage. Two such pieces were Chopin's Revolutionary Étude and
Finlandia by Sibelius.
288
The fear was that either of these pieces might stir revolutionary tendencies in the German audiences and potentially cause an anti-communist backlash.
Another approach less to prohibit the dedication of an entire evening of music to a single composer such Strauss or Wagner. Rather than take a direct approach and restrict the music that was allowed, the ICD intended to simply crowd out the unacceptable music. However, even here there was an opportunity to “spin” the music’s message. For example, they simply could say that they were now allowing music to be presented that had been banned during the Nazi era like that of Mendelssohn,
Hindemith, Meyerbeer and Offenbach. This way they could present lesser-known
German music and bring in music that had been composed in America during the Nazi period.
The instructions that music licensees received was the same as in other areas under the control of the ICD. There were, however, two additions made in regard to music. They mentioned specifically that music was not to incite racism or race hatred.
289
This point was absent from the instructions given in other areas of the new German media. Moreover, music was not to incite disorder. In some ways this was a recognition that music in some ways was different from all of the other forms of media, which was that in some way there was an emotional element attached to listening to music that was absent elsewhere. Moreover, it is an acknowledgment that music was in some ways not fully understood in how it affected individuals. It was an area of communications that seemed to go beyond normal cognitive processing and what one might understand as rational thought.
The ICD annual report for June 1946 indicates that before a concert could go forward a list all compositions; alternative compositions which might be played, and the names of the composer and author of each composition needed to be provided to the
ICD’s district office “not less than 72 hours before the day of the performance, licensees should deliver to the DISCC from which their license was obtained a true copy of every
287 History I, 110.
288 History I, 111.
289 History I, 112.
108

program they intended to present.” The program had to give the date or dates of all performances, and indicate “whether it was in conjunction with a celebration of any particular occasion, historical or otherwise.” Licensees needed to enumerate all of the major participants in the program. The licensee also needed to provide a signed sworn statement and a statement “that no one participating in the performance had been an active Nazi or an ardent Nazi sympathizer.” 290
Music, like the theater, had two categories of individuals that the ICD dealt with.
291
The smaller group (69 in total as of June 1946) were the music publishers, orchestras, Opera companies, producers of musical performances, and phonograph recording manufacturers. These needed to be licensed and were subject to a far stricter vetting process. Musicians, vocalists, and instrumentalists (7,933 in total as of June
1946)
292
only needed to be registered and underwent a far less stringent vetting. The reasoning was that the first group controlled what was presented and thus controlled the political and ideological content of the performances. The second group was simply seen as tradespeople who lent their services to the first group.
Music Licenses Music Registrations
Area
Bavaria
Berlin (U.S. Sector)
Bremen Enclave
43
5
1
3,404
903
361
Greater Hesse
Wuerttemberg-Baden
Totals --
8
12
69
1,918
1,347
7,933
Musical entertainment was restored in Germany fairly quickly. For example the
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra gave its first concert on July 8, 1945. Albert Kehm, the licensee in charge of the Staatstheater in Stuttgart, opened on this date as well with a chamber music recital, with over 1500 audience members in attendance in a hall that was too small to accommodate all who wanted to attend.
293
On July 29 Frankfurt heard its first concert at the performance hall of the radio station in memory of the victims of the concentration camps, with Wiesbaden’s first concert taking place on the same day.
290 History I, 113.
291 History I, 113 to 116.
292 Weekly Report of the Theater and Film Section, ODIC, for period 27 June - 3 July 1946.
293 OMGUS, Information Control (Cumulative Review), functional annex to the Monthly Report of the
Military Governor , No. 13 (20 Aug 46), p. 11.
109

Mannheim opened with a light operatic concert and Haydn's The Creation and
Heidelberg followed in August.
294
Bavaria’s cultural activities recovered quickly and by mid-September traditional musical groups were reappearing. Munich was able to maintained two orchestras: the
Munich Philharmonic and the Bavarian State Opera Orchestra. The Brunnenhof concerts were again being given, but due to bomb damage had been moved to the Grottenhof. In addition orchestras had already begun giving concerts in Ingolstadt, Wurzburg,
Nuremberg, and Augsburg, with another being formed in Bayreuth.
None of these orchestras ventured into the realm of modern music and remained with their repertoire of classical pieces. It is not that they might not have liked to have attempted some of the newer symphonic music. The problem was that a program of newer pieces had been attempted in Munich and it had been a failure with only three hundred people attending. One could compare this with a series of concerts given in Bad
Nauheim by the Oberhessische Symphony Orchestra to a capacity audience, which started on the 16 th
of September where compositions by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were featured.
Opera had always taken a significant position in Germany’s cultural life and opera companies were quickly revived after the end of the war with licenses being granted to Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Fuerth, Coburg, Wiesbaden, Kassel,
Stuttgart, Mannheim and Heidelberg in the U.S. zone. A further six licenses were granted between January 1 and the end of June 1946 to: Regensburg, Darmstadt,
Karlsruhe, Ulm, Gmuend and Schwetzingen.
Often a great deal of ingenuity was required to provide the needed space for concerts. For example, the exchange floor of the Frankfurt
Börsensaal
was converted into an opera house and five operatic works were presented with little in the way of technical equipment and in early in December, Fidelio opened a Beethoven festival at that location. Tosca , was performed for the first time on the 29 th
of September and
Mozart's Marriage of Figaro was premiered in Mannheim on the 21 st
of October. The same could be said of the orchestra in Heidelberg, where a large hall in the University was made available on a full-time basis for performances for German audiences, which made up for the requisitioning of the Stadthalle by the 7 th
Army, with
Hänsel und Gretel by Humperdinck being the first opera performed there. Sometimes there was also some luck involved, as when a large cache of costumes belonging to the Berlin State Opera
Company were found in a salt mine south of Kassel near Heimboldshausen. Needless to say, the costumes were confiscated and distributed to opera companies in the four zones of occupation.
Concerts and operas, however, were not just operating in the larger cities, but the smaller cities also participated in the revival of Germany’s cultural life. In Wiesbaden,
Madame Butterfly premiered on the 9 th
of November in a hall made available to the company and in Bad Homburg, Paul Brehm, operating under a provisional license, personally financed a concert series with a symphony orchestra. The premiere of
294 For a listing of initial performances, see History I, pp 113 to 116.
110

operetta Wiener Blut , by Johann Strauss Jr., was given 11 November and met with the largest audience response to that time. This should not have been surprizing, since the operetta had already been popular in the Nazi era and a film adaptation had been produced by Deutsche Forst-Filmproduktion in Vienna in 1942.
By the end of June 1946, 17 cities in the U.S. zone had opera companies. During this time 445 performances of 30 different operas were performed in Bavaria, 300 performances of 27 operas in Greater Hesse, 190 performances of 12 operas in the
Bremen Enclave, and 449 performances of 23 operas in Wuerttemberg-Baden. Since there was no opera in the U.S. sector of Berlin, the Staatsoper , located in the Soviet sector, and the Stadische Oper in the British sector, were used to satisfy the needs of
Berliners.
While the Music Control Section of the ICD could not control the activities of
Liedergesangsvereine and Liedertafeln (choral societies), because they sang presumably for their own enjoyment, they did encourage them. They had a long history in German musical life and became a part of the ICD’s efforts to reorient Germany’s youth.
Though most of the performances were of German or European pieces, the ICD began to introduce American classical music in early 1946. Some of the first performances were of Hanson’s
Third Symphony and Piston’s Suite from The Incredible
Flutist . Samuel Barber's Adagio was played in Germany for the first time in Berlin.
Some of the pieces became quite popular, for example, Barber's Adagio went on to become the most performed piece in the US zone.
As was the case in the theater, the ICD had difficulty procuring the basics necessary in order to introduce American symphonic music to Germany. Even the sheet music needed for orchestras interested in newer music was in short supply due to the bombing of German cities and the Nazi banning of the works of many composers. As was the case with the theater the ICD asked the OWI to assist with the importing of music into the U.S. Zone. The most difficult issue was the protection of copyrights of
American compositions. For this reason the ICD worked quickly to revive the German
Performance Rights Society (STAGMA).
Contemporary American music, which had not been available to the Germans since 1933, was introduced to German audiences in late 1945. The first American compositions to be made available were Quincy Porter's Music for Strings , Virgil
Thomson's suite, The Plow that Broke the Plains and Douglas Moore's Village Music .
Howard Hanson's Third Symphony , presented in Wiesbaden, Walter Piston's suite from The Incredible Flutist in Heidelberg and Mannheim, and Samuel Barber's
Adagio and Charles Ives' chamber music played in Berlin were some of the first
American compositions to be heard in Germany after the war. By the end of June 1946, there had been 71 performances of 33 musical works of U.S. composers.
These consisted of:
Adagio
Capricorn Concerto
Essay
Essay No. 2
Samuel Barber
111

School for Scandal Overture
Symphony No. 2
Violin Concerto
Clarinet Sonata
Schelomo Rhapsody
Holiday Overture
Appalachian Spring
Outdoor Overture
Symphony
Violin Sonata
Quintet
Symphony No. 3
Trio
Adagio
Violin Sonata
Concertino
String Quartet No. 1
The Incredible Flutist Suite
Symphony No. 2
Trio No. 1
Violin Sonata
String Quartet No. 4
Ukrainian Suite
American Festival Overture
String quartet No. 2
Symphony for Strings
Symphony No. 3
String Quartet
Leonard Bernstein
Ernest Bloch
Elliot Carter
Aaron Copland
David Diamond
Howard Hanson
R. Harris
Charles Ives
Walter Piston
Quincy Porter
William Schuman
Roger Sessions
Symphony No. 2 Randall Thompson
Additionally, more than 100 other American works had been made available for performance in Germany. In April 1946, the ICD office in Munich also arrange for the transport of the Berlin Philharmonic's music library, from its wartime storage facility in
Bayreuth back to Berlin.
Shortly after the war ended in Europe, the British Military Government received an application from several individuals involved in the German Performance Rights
Society (STAGMA).
295
This was not unusual, since the offices of STAGMA had been
295 In 1947 STAGMA (Staatlich genehmigten Gesellschaft zur Verwertung musikalischer
Aufführungsrechte) underwent a name change to GEMA ( Gesellschaft für musikalische Aufführungs- und mechanische Vervielfältigungsrechte ). Erich Schulze, who was the already active with STAGMA in the
1930s, assisted in restarting STAGMA’s work and was later charge with the responsibility of creating the
GEMA, which he led until 1989.
112

located in what became the British zone. They were quickly given permission to start operating once more. However, STAGMA’s files were only partially available, since the bulk of them had been evacuated from Berlin to what was the Polish occupied territory.
In December 1945, a custodian was appointed for STAGMA in the U.S. Zone and the task of performance fees began. This also ensured the protection of additional
U.S. and Allied music not brought directly to Germany through the ICD. A further step needed to be taken to ensure the payment of royalties to artists from the Allied nations.
The ICD recommended Hans Aldenhoff, a German lawyer, as custodian for U.S. interests in STAGMA. The French followed by appointing him to oversee their interests in March 1946 and shortly after by the British.
STAGMA’s influence and work, however, was not limited to the western sector, at least no initially. By April 1946, STAGMA had permission of the Deutsche
Zentralverwaltung (German Central Government) in the Soviet Zone to collect performance fees in Sachsen ,
Thüringen
, Mecklenburg , Vorpommern and Brandenburg .
Thus by June 30, 1946 STAGMA was collecting performances fees in all four zones.
There was, however, a problem in that there was no quadripartite agreement on how the artists were to be paid. So, the money simply accumulated in the STAGMA accounts.
Another important organization that was still in the organizational stages by the end of
June 1946 was the Inter-Allied Music Lending Library in Berlin. German personnel had been chosen as librarians and the arrangement for their salaries had been made through the Magistrat of Berlin. The primary purpose of the Library was to introduce Germany to the most representative works of Allied composers. Moreover, they wanted to encourage German composers with what they considered to be the best traditions of
Germany's musical culture.
In terms of new material being produced, the ICD did not necessarily encourage this nor concern itself very much with it. It had a clear notion of what it wanted to have performed and preferred to concentrate on the technical aspects of providing facilities for performances.
296
By 30 June 1946, approximately 600 British, 200 Soviet, 100 French and 100
American music works had arrived in Berlin for the library. In addition, the ICD prepared a mimeographed catalogue of all American works. While the library was to be open to all Allied personnel, only Germans could borrow music.
Under the library plan, rental fees for American musical works performed in
Germany were to be collected by the Inter-Allied Music Lending Library. The fees were then to be turned over to the Information Control fiscal officer, who credited them to blocked-mark accounts for the copyright owners.
Radio.
The National Socialists used radio extensively in Germany to control public opinion. The allies had recognized early on that it would be imperative to control the radio airwave in Germany in order to control the population.
297
This effort began as
296 History I, 119.
297 History I, 121.
113

early as September 1944, when he psychological warfare division took over radio
Luxembourg, which then became a center for Anglo-American broadcasts into
Germany.
298 This ended in November 1945 when sufficient radio resources are restored within the US zone of control.
The mission for the radio section of the ICD was similar to that of the others.
However, rather than having to deal with a lot of personnel problems, as the other sections had to, the initial problem for the ICD in the area of radio broadcasting was really technical in nature.
299
Most of the radio stations in Germany had been bombed and it was now the task of the ICD to get the stations back up and running.
300
Some locations where brought online relatively quickly.
301 For example, the
American forces began entering Munich on April 29, 1945 and had for all intents and purposes secured the city by May 1. The American began their first test broadcasts on
May 10, with regular broadcasts beginning on May 12. By June 12 there were 10 ½ hours of broadcast daily and by August 1945 Radio Munich was broadcasting about 40 hours a week of its own shows.
Though competent and politically clean personnel were very hard to come by, the US military could move very quickly if it felt a need to.
302
This is the case with two individuals, Joseph Eberle and Alfred Braun, mentioned in conjunction with Radio
Stuttgart. Emberle had worked with Radio Stuttgart until March 1933 and was removed from his position due to his marriage to a Jewess, Else Lemberger, and his liberal political views, and spent a month and a half in the Heuberg concentration camp. He continued to publish under the pseudonym Sebastian Blau, but eventually this was denied him as well. Emberle was also granted the license for the Stuttgarter Zeitung together with Karl Ackermann and Henry Bernhard on the 17 th
of September 1945.
Alfred Braun had also been a significant personality in Radio prior to 1933 and had initially suffered persecution under the Nazis, but eventually became an opportunist, who collaborated with Veit Harlan on films such as Jud Süß , Opfergang , Die goldene
Stadt , and Kolberg . Until the July 8, 1945 the French had controlled Stuttgart, but it fell under the control of US military government thereafter. Almost immediately these two individuals were employed to work under information control supervision.
Eberle was very much a reliable and known quantity to the Americans. From
May 1, 1936 until its closing in July of 1942, Eberle worked in the American consulate in Stuttgart. In other words, Eberle was very much a reliable and known quantity. Alfred
Braun’s selection as one of the announcers of Radio Stuttgart is interesting and might even have raised a few eyebrows. In some respects he had exactly the pedigree the
Americans were looking for. He had been one of the pioneers of radio in Germany during the Weimar era and thus was well known outside of Germany as well. While he is regarded for the most part today as a confirmed antifascist and anti-Nazi, there are
298 History I, 126.
299 History I, 123.
300 History I, 121.
301 History I, 126-127.
302 History I, 128.
114

some curious dark spots in his record that the ICD would most likely have been aware of, since he had been designated as “grey acceptable” in the March 1947 ICD Black,
White, Grey List.
The mission of the radio unit of the ICD was the same as with other forms of media. Local programs and schedules were subject to review, scrutiny, and concurrence by the ICD.
303 As with the other media, finding appropriate personnel was a huge problem, because once again anyone with any Nazi affiliations was supposed to be banned from working in radio. However, as may be seen in the case Alfred Braun, this may not always have been in force. A bright spot for the ICD was the relative docility of the personnel available, because of the high degree of control the Nazis had exercised in the area of radio broadcasting; thus, radio personnel would have been accustomed to the high degree of scrutiny and supervision undertaken by control officers.
304
The ICD, as the Nazi Propaganda Ministry did, had specific requirements for radio broadcasts. In particular when it came to reporting on the Nuremburg trials. The
ICD wanted to ensure that material emanating from these proceedings was presented as commentary that advanced military government policies in a positive way.
305
However, as one moved away from the topics relating to the war-crimes trial, the charters for the radio stations were drawn up in a way that allowed for a wide spectrum of political opinion. To this end, many of the broadcasts took the form of roundtable discussions, which were also encouraged by the ICD. It was as if the ICD wanted to take the German listener through the process of weighing the pros and cons of the various political positions presented. They did not want radio to focus on promoting a specific political point of view, but to reflect the various views that were struggling for the attention of the German public. Radio was not to be as it was during the Nazi period, where only one opinion was available to the listener.
Despite chronic human resource shortages experienced by the ICD initiatives, the radio division managed to have 600 German personnel working for them by mid-
December 1945.
306
Compliance of this rather large German staff was accomplished through what one might term food politics. The ICD managed to have the radio division workers classified as essential. This meant that they received double rations. In other words, if they were to lose their job with the ICD licensed broadcaster, their daily calorie intake would be cut in half. This was an indirect means of ensuring loyalty and reliability among the staff at work for the radio division.
Radio controlled by the ICD ensured that the military government’s message was brought home to the German people.
307
One of the ways that they ensured that there would indeed be listeners for their messages, was by dedicating a little more than half of the programming to music. By the end of the first year of occupation, 52% of the broadcast time was devoted to music with 21% being set aside for news and public
303 History I, 123.
304 History I, 131.
305 History I, 132.
306 History I, 133.
307 History I, 134.
115

affairs programming. The remaining 27% was set aside for programming dedicated to women, youth, and children, as well as literary, dramatic and educational programs.
There were also utilitarian programs, such as “Englisch macht Spass,” which was designed to facilitate easier communication between the occupiers and the occupied. On special occasions they would have features such as the one celebrating the Jewish New
Year, though programming of this type was done carefully in order not to create too much unrest in the German audience. There is evidence that the US military government also turned down requests by Jewish groups for special programming or publications during certain religious holidays.
308
The music that was broadcast also had subtle political overtones. The initial ICD report made special note of broadcasting Beethoven’s opera Fidelio .
309
It was considered as being as important as announcements regarding the licensing of Die
Süddeutsche Zeitung . Fidelio was seen as a political statement regarding the individual’s struggle against tyrants. It also fit well into what the Americans saw as their role in
Germany in that they were called from their distant land to free the prisoner from his dungeon and be brought into the light once more.
On the other end of the musical spectrum was the top 10 program of American music “The Ten of the Week.” It was a half-hour broadcast of popular music similar to the “Hit Parade” in which German listeners cast ballots for their favourites. Those who had participated in the voting in turn received a copy of the words to the ten songs chosen for that week. The balloting was conducted by mail and listenership increased steadily, with many Germans considering it a good means of developing a taste for
American popular music. From the American perspective it was seen as a means of offsetting the anti-jazz propaganda campaign in Nazi Germany.
However, at best, listener reaction to this type of music was mixed. The ICD compiled a list of things that the German audiences objected to. At the top of the list were swing music, the large number of foreign language broadcasts, the fact that news programs concerning Germany were too short, and the fact that there was too much international news.
310
The ICD used this feedback to adjust their programming and it was reported that Radio Munich showed an increase in listenership as a result of an increase and German music replacing American music. The listeners also requested that more “light music” be included in the programming. However, this aspect of programming was not changed, and the ICD retained its emphasis on classical music.
Initially, the Voice of America, the overt radio broadcaster in US occupied
Germany, was poorly received. While sports commentaries were enjoyed and the young people liked the Jazz music, there were complaints about the Polish language broadcasts. Overall, the Germans preferred folk music, light music such as waltzes operettas and dance music, with only 2% of the audience preferring jazz.
311
Another aspect of the radio broadcasts that the German listeners did not care for were those
308 Insert Footnote Reference here
309 History I, 135.
310 History I, 138.
311 See Merritt Study and appendices for greater details.
116

originating from the Nuremberg trials. This may simply have been a matter of the
German audiences not wanting to come to grips with what had happened in Germany during the Nazi regime, because it is noted that, while the popularity of these programs went down, German scepticism and suspicion in regard to these proceedings also went down.
Program Format 312 TOTAL MEN WOMEN
Musical programs (all types) 65% 61% 69%
News programs
In general
Speeches, discussion
Political commentary
48
(25)
(8)
(7)
Official information (3)
News re Prisoners of War (1)
Dramatic programs or plays 7
Variety Shows
Religious Programs
3
3
Other
“Don't know”
7
5
54
(30)
(11)
(9)
(3)
(0)
9
3
2
6
3
35
(21)
(6)
(5)
(1)
(2)
9
2
3
7
6
Intelligence
As noted earlier, the ICD also served significant intelligence function within the greater structure of OMGUS. Primarily, the ICD reported on the psychological state of the civilians within the US zone of control. When they were still the psychological warfare division, they fulfill this task in relation to German prisoners of war.
313
In
February of 1946 the ICD was given the further task of collecting political intelligence.
This new mission encompassed the investigation of German applications for licensing or registration for employment in the media. Considering that they would thus be privy to a great deal of personal information, the intelligence branch passed this information on to not only the various branches of the ICD, but OMGUS intelligence division as well. Though the ICD’s intelligence branch may have concentrated on gathering information on Germans wanting to work within the various branches of the media, it was also responsible for monitoring the German reception of all aspects of military government and policy. Finally, it was to also gather political intelligence, which “was defined as obtaining and reporting information on German reactions and attitudes towards US military government and German civil government; German
312 Please note that the totals will add up to more than 100%, because often more than one preference was indicated by those surveyed.
313 History I, 142.
117

political activity in the US zone and throughout Germany, including purposes, programs, and leaders; evidences of trends towards nationalism, militarism, pan-
Germanism, or fascism; separatist movements; and political effects on refugee movements.”
314
The ICD intelligence unit also determined what we to be priority intelligence targets.
315 It also advised the ICD leadership as to which targets to exploit and how to do so. Out of necessity, it served as a consolidation point for information gathered by various other intelligence units. In addition to all of this, it scrutinized what was being produced by the media in Germany with a special emphasis on the German press.
The ICD intelligence branch was not only concerned with compliance, but also tried to provide insights into the German attitudes.
316
In doing so, it tried to measure the responses of German politicians to the military government actions. It also conducted the vetting of licensees.
In the initial haste to get the German media working again, the ICD correctly assumed that some undesirables had slipped through. This is evinced in a memorandum of May 4, 1946 from Alfred Toombs (ICD Intelligence Chief) to General McClure.
There Toombs indicates that the intelligence branch has noticed that a number of the licensed publishing houses are being operated by people that the Intelligence Branch had no information on. He further notes that they might be either stockholders or even former owners of these concerns. In the memo he is very careful not to mention the name of one of the companies that he is referring to, but he does say that it was moved from Leipzig.
317
It was through a censorship intercept that he had learned that the principal stockholder had been requested to return to the Soviet zone on business. This caused concern for Toombs, because he was already worried that many of the licensees were “merely decorative fronts for other people.”
Toombs did, however, mention a second case and this time he mentioned
Brockhaus Verlag specifically. The two older brothers, who had run the publishing house prior to the end of the war, had been blacklisted by the ICD, but the 26-year-old son of one of the brothers had been licensed to run the firm. He pointed out that the son had very limited experience as a publisher and that it should be obvious that he was merely a front for the original owners. He also indicates that the intelligence branch was looking into this further.
At this point Toombs broadened the net we was attempting to cast over the already existing German publishers in that he demanded that the publications branch furnish the names, Fragebogen , and a brief CV of all of the major stockholders in licensed firms. He also wanted information on all of the former owners or controllers of these firms, who would be in a position to influence those running the publishing house
314 History I, 142.
315 History I, 143.
316 History I, 144.
317 Initially, the US forces had occupied a considerable part of what was to become the Soviet sector.
Included in this was the city of Leipzig. In the brief time that they occupied the city, they identified important publishers and move them back to the western sector.
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at that moment. Toombs, if nothing else was thorough, he then argued that all licensed publishers be required to submit names of everyone working in an editorial capacity in addition to all of those into policymaking, supervisory, or executive position.
The intelligence branch now combed through the applications from licensees a second time. Through this process it was discovered that numerous applicants had lied on their Fragebogen . These infractions were then brought to the attention of the ICD district units, which then undertook to rectify the situation. Usually this meant a withdrawal of the license, but could also include fines and even prison sentences. By going through the second more careful process, ICD intelligence ensured that no
German was employed against the recommendation of the Public Safety Branch of
OMGUS or the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps).
By June 1946 mission of eliminating Nazis from the areas of ICD responsibility was considered complete, 318 or as complete as thought they might be able to manage.
Considering that its title “Intelligence Branch” my be seen as threating, the ICD changed the name to the more innocuous “Personnel Control Section.” From this point on the
ICD concentrated on selecting suitable candidates for licensing and the Personal History
Questionnaire ( Fragebogen ) was carefully scrutinized at the initial vetting. In addition to this, the Bad Orb screening center was established in October of 1945. As a result of all of this work, applicants names were placed on one of five lists. a. If his political record was clean, his name was placed on “White” list (A), and he was considered eligible for a leading position in any of the information fields for which he was professionally qualified. b. If investigation disclosed that he was a member of minor affiliated Nazi
Party organizations, but had not collaborated actively with the Nazis, his name was placed on “White” list (B), which qualified him for certain types of leading positions, but in a probationary status. c. If he was considered a less desirable person, his name was placed on
“Grey” list (C, acceptable), which qualified him for employment with
German information services, but not in policy-making, executive, or creative positions. d. If he was a Nazi Party member who held only nominal membership, his name was placed on “Grey” list (C, unacceptable), which restricted him to employment at ordinary labor. e. If he had held high office in the Party, or in any of its affiliated organizations, or had shown himself an active Nazi, his name was placed on the “Black” list (D), which prevented him from being employed in any capacity.
It was also the task of the intelligence people to ensure that other branches within the ICD did not grant licenses too expeditiously. They were well aware of the
318 History I, 145.
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constant tug-of-war that took place when one had an applicant with strong experience a questionable political record. This vigilance sometimes led to the ICD coming under sharp criticism for not using the best people available. It seems that the ICD preferred to use those with limited experience provided their political records were clean. This had the further benefit of employing malleable individuals, who would be more open to bending to the will of the ICD staff.
One of the constant problems faced by the ICD was the rotation of staff out of the division, who had accumulated enough points to be discharged. In the closing weeks of 1945, this became so acute that the screening center was closed. It was replaced for a time by traveling teams, which would try to undertake the same work done at the previously fixed facility. It was, however, realized that a fixed establishment was preferable to the traveling units. For this reason in the spring of 1946 a screening center was re-established at Bad Homburg and continued to operate past the end of June 1946.
As part of this reopening of the screening center, the David Levy visited the British equivalent at Bad Oeynhausen.
319
The British organization was known as the “German
Personnel Research Branch” and was under the control of the Intelligence Group of the
Control Commission for Germany British Element under the command of Wing
Commander O.A. Oeser. The report indicates that the organization consisted of a president of the board, a psychiatrist, an administrative officer, two testing officers, four psychological assistance, eight secretaries, and 15 enlisted man in all, 32 personnel. This was far more than the Americans had allocated to their endeavour.
The director of the screening center was Dr. David M. Levy of Columbia
University. In addition, he had also been a member of the staff of New York’s
Psychiatric Institute. Levy was of the opinions that “the primary requirement for winning the peace [was] is an understanding of the psychology of the German people.
The modification of the psychology is the main task of military government.” 320
It seems, however, that Levy’s methodology and approach was considered questionable even at that time. Martin Grotjahn, writing a review for the Psychoanalytic Quarterly in
1949, was appalled at the application and misuse of the techniques initiated by Freud.
As already mentioned, the ICD’s Intelligence Branch was also responsible for
321 keeping a finger on the pulse of what the average German was thinking. Like its predecessor, PWD/SHAEF, it was directed to investigate and report the state of mind and opinions of the German population on all questions of interest to Military
Government. Its early approaches relied on what were called impressionistic methods, which could not be considered scientific, but relied on the ability of those involved to interpret deeper meaning from what an interview might have meant when engaged in a
319 Maj. Bertram Schaffner and Thomas Frank visited the British equivalent to the ICD screening center between the 12th and 15th of May 1946 and submitted a report on 16 May 1946 to the Chief of the ICD
Intelligence Section Alfred Toombs.
320 From an introduction to Bertram Schaffner, Father Land. A Study of Authoritarianism in the German
Family . New York: Columbia University Press, 1948
321 Martin Grotjahn, Review of “ Father Land. A Study of Authoritarianism in the German Family .” In
Psychoanalytic Quarterly 18 (1949) page 253.
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casual conversation related to another matter. Another as well as small scale sampling, were employed during the summer months following V-E Day. Principal grievances and attitudes were collected and studied by a small force of interrogators; surveys were made to determine what percentage of the population was being reached by MG newspapers and radio broadcasts, and to see whether the desired results were being obtained by these media.
As German-operated information services resumed operation, the reaction of the population to these was also tested, as well as the reactions to and knowledge of principle MG pronouncements and actions. Inquiries along the latter lines frequently uncovered areas of ignorance, which were then corrected by suitable broadcasts and news releases directed to these areas. The first signs of political activity were also followed closely, and the response of the population to new political programs and leaders was constantly checked.
In October 1945, scientific sampling surveys of the entire U.S. Zone were inaugurated. Conducted by the Surveys Unit, these surveys were made weekly on the same basis as scientific polls made in the United States. Originally a sample of 400 interviews was used, but this was expanded steadily to permit more detailed and more reliable probing of public opinion. The compilation of results was handled by U.S. personnel while interrogations in the field were done by German civilians carefully supervised by Americans.
By the end of January 1946, a balanced picture of public opinion and political trends in all areas under U.S. Control was being obtained on the basis of approximately
1,000 interviews a week, in 70 representative urban and rural localities.
123
Persons to be interrogated were selected on a scientific sample basis, in order to give a true picture of
123 OMGUS, Monthly Report of the Military Governor, U.S. Zone (Information Control) No. 7
(20 Feb 46) p. 12
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the opinions of all socio-economic, political, religious, sex, and age groups in the population. Tests indicated that answers to any given question obtained by U.S. interrogators in uniform did not vary significantly from the answers obtained by German interrogators.
Interviews usually took place in the home of the person being questioned, and normally lasted from 30 minutes to one hour. All results were channelled to the Surveys
Unit Headquarters at Bad Homburg where they were tabulated, evaluated by a staff of public opinion specialists, and made available to interested agencies in consolidated form.
Other intelligence investigators, organized separately into a Special Intelligence
Unit, supplemented these public opinion studies by frequent interrogations of political leaders, professional men, church dignitaries. and other opinion leaders. These investigators, whose reports also were centrally evaluated and disseminated, attended public meetings, read the local press, collected rumors, and in general, maintained familiarity with the localities in which they worked. All studies of public opinion and attitudes of community leaders were carefully coordinated.
Weekly opinion surveys made it possible for Military Government to follow trends and attitudes on important problems. To show changes in attitudes, the same question was often used by the interviewers in successive surveys. The value of this type of questioning was shown when a strong majority of the German public continued over a period of many months to feel that the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes were receiving a fair trial and that news accounts of the proceedings were complete and
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trustworthy. Other so-called “trend” questions were periodically asked to note any changes in the public's attitude toward the occupation, National Socialism, democracy, politics, relations among the Allies, and Germany's economic future.
By 30 June 1946, the number of persons interviewed in each survey had been increased to 3,000.
124
However, surveys could no longer be made on a weekly basis because of the larger sample, coupled with a serious reduction in the amount of transportation available to interrogators. Topics covered by ICD included nearly every question of major interest to Military Government, and during the period had sounded out the Germans on their major concerns, their political party preferences, attitudes toward reconstruction, opinions on the denazification programs, reactions to the
Nuremberg trials, reactions to the film Mills of Death , opinions about price trends, radio listening habits, the “black market” and its effects, and the destruction of war industries.
125
Some of the major findings of these investigations showed: a. Major Concerns : Missing relatives and the scarcity of food were of equal concern to the Germans until the food cut of 1 April 1946 when the proportion of people worrying about food approximately doubled. In general, material well-being was consistently of more immediate concern to the populace than anything else. b. Denazification : This was approved by about half the adults polled; the
German public wanted the occupying Power to retain ultimate responsibility for impartial handling of the program, leaving operation and individual decisions to Germans. c. The Nuremberg Trials : These were thought to be conducted in an orderly manner. Most Germans felt that all the accused would be found guilty, and generally agreed that they were guilty and deserved punishment.
124 OMGUS, Monthly Report of the Military Governor , Information Control (Cumulative
Report), No. 13 (20 Aug 46), Public Opinion Surveys, p. 12.
125 Ibid.
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d. Concentration Camps : Most Germans in the U.S. Zone who had seen the atrocity film Mills of Death were convinced of its veracity; a small minority considered it propaganda. e. Fear of Rising Prices : Most Germans thought that with proper measures price rises could be controlled f. Radio Listening Habits : Germans on the whole were found to approve the US controlled radio, and were particularly interested in programs which explained the American democratic system. g. The Black Market : Most Germans felt that the occupation authorities were doing all in their power to curb the Black Market. h. Destruction of War Industries : Most Germans disapproved of the Level of Industry Law and failed to understand that one of its chief intents was to destroy Germany's war potential. i. War Guilt : In general, most Germans did not accept the proposition that the German nation at large was guilty of the war and the crimes committed under Nazi leadership, and felt that neither they nor their friends were personally responsible for such matters. They were inclined to blame their former leaders, particularly those now dead. j. Nazism : The majority of Germans believed that the underlying idea of
Nazism was good, but was badly carried out in practice. While some of the populace held opinions generally similar to those prevalent in democratic nations, the majority was still infected with ideas resulting from 12 years of Nazi indoctrination and German militaristic tradition.
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History II (July 1946-June 1947)
Page 20
By the middle of 1946 the information control division had taken on a significant intelligence function in Germany. They were to report on: the general reactions and attitudes of the German people, German political committee, and whether there was any evidence of trends towards nationalism, militarism, pan-Germanism, fascism, separatist movements, and the political effect of refugee movements. While the early intelligence gathering of the ICD was more educational in nature, that is, they were trying to understand your culture as it existed in 1945, after June 1946 one has the distinct impression that there is a developing ideological battlefield that has little to do with
Nazism in Germany and is directed toward the communist threat in the East.
Page 15
While the Western Allies all started with the same basic policy, that is the effort to defeat a common enemy as developed by the psychological warfare division, it begins to be shaped in different ways as the cultural sensitivities of the occupying forces begin to take effect.
Page 16
Though presentation of German guilt remained a long-term political goal, the ICD began to drop the fine distinctions they made in terms of local guilt.
Page 20
It should also be noted that they begin to use the term “control and guide” to describe their activities in relation to media control in Germany.
Pages 24 to 25
Up until December 11, 1945 the ICD operated independently. On this date it is transferred officially to the control of the military government in the US zone of control.
This also marked the end of military security operations and marked the beginning of a long-term plan journeys for building media.
Page 27
During the 2nd year of operation, it was reported that there was a lowering of standards for the licensing of applicants.
Page 27
The ICD also reported during the 2nd year of occupation that it did not receive any socalled blacklists from the other powers. However, this is not necessarily true, since there are lists in the archives from the British occupation forces covering this time. The list created by anyone of the problems supposed to be binding on the other powers as
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well, but the ICD found that this was difficult to enforce and oversee. A prime example of this can be found in lax enforcement lifeless in the prednisone of control. The
Brauner material is a prime example of the difficulty that the ICD had with the French.
Page 31
One of the disturbing findings made by the ICD operating in its intelligence function was the discovery that Germans to a large degree still considered Nazi-ism to be generally good, but that it was badly put into practice.
Page 32
The ICD saw their task more and more in a positive light. That is, that they were not so much trying to eliminate the wrong people in the German media but that they were trying to select the right people.
Page 35
The ICD did have a number of sociologists working on the problem of reeducating the
German people. They felt that, though Nazism had been eliminated from “public” education, that Nazi ideas were still being taught in the homes.
Page 40
One of the important contributions made by the ICD was their emphasis on world coverage. Moreover, the exercise that there needed to be a distinction made between news and opinion. Not only in the minds of those producing his own opinion articles, but to the point of ensuring that physically these pieces were also separated, so that the reading public will be able to make a clear distinction between what was news and what was opinion.
Page 41
It was during this period that DANA was started by the Americans, but licensed as a
“German operation.”
Page 44
13 July 1945 on the issuing of the personal publishing license.
Page 45
Die Wandlung was the 1st magazine produced ( see the manuscript for the types of articles to appear).
Page 46
The ICD didn't have a problem with what to do with books that have been banned in the
US zone of control. Clearly, they could not burn them, because of the political ramifications such an act without. In essence, they could not simply do what the Nazis and done with literature they would not tolerate. So, they found a practical solution in
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that they simply have these materials repulped.
Page 47
On 8 October 1945 there was the 1st meeting of the B_
Page 47-48
In an effort to better understand literary needs of the German people, the ICD begins to interview licensed publishers in regard to what they think most work works for the
Germans would be.
Page 48
The response to these interviews was that the book should espouse humanitarian ideals selected from classical works, this means Goethe and Schiller. In addition, it was noted that the needed books that dealt with current problems in Germany.
Page 51
At this point the military government was still operating radio broadcasting in Germany.
The handover date was June 30, 1946. However, the Germans were not to be left to their own devices and carefully prepared charters were put in place for each of the radio stations that were to protect them against undue political control.
Page 53
The cinemas enclosed until July 30, 1945. The original film selections have been sparse.
The focus has been on documentaries and industrial films selected by the office of war information (owi) (pages 53 to 54). Even so, the production had not yet begun by June
30, 1946 (other than Welt im Film). The ICD was still trying to determine what kind of films the Germans reacted to (page 56).
Page 59
The ICD had made music and theater their priority and made every effort to quickly store them.
Page 60
One of the difficulties they encountered was that troop entertainment priority over several entertainment. However, the special services unit reached an agreement with the
ICD on the use of theaters in August 1945.
Page 60 to 61
The ICD also found that it needed to overcome the urge to “forgive” artists for their past and thus settle for a lower standard in terms of their political affiliations during the Nazi era. This realization caused them to revoke licenses of musicians, of whom Fürtwängler is perhaps the most famous example.
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Page 62
The 1st Prüfungsausschuss was founded in Stuttgart in March of 1946 in order to examine performers. Though these boards appear to have autonomy, they worked within military government guidelines and were watched over by the ICD.
Page 65 to 66
These boards were to consider individual artists on the basis of whether they had lent themselves to propaganda purposes during the Nazi era. And one of the fundamental questions that were to ask was "did they glorify Nazi Kultur". The ban, however, was often tempered by practical considerations, at least initially.
Pages 66 to 67
The blacklists were initially intended to keep suspect individuals out of the information services, but particularly the entertainment media. In the minds of the ICD this have a very specific purpose. They considered entertainment to have a far more subtle and thus more powerful message conveyed, which could not easily be countered. They considered entertainment to have a much deeper value in terms of creating democratic individuals.
Page 67
The ICD also realized that blacklisted individuals moved to other zones, which were considered not as rigorous in its licensing practices and this is why they hoped for a consolidated list. The ICD also considered the French zone to be a haven for individuals who could not be licensed in any of the other zones.
History 1947 to 1948
Page 1
By this point in time the ICD had, for the most part, abandoned most of its goals of fighting Nazi-ism in the West German media. It has now taken on the role of defending
Western Europe from communism. It is during this time that the ICD began to ban communist material from the German media and encouraging German media outlets to focus on the ideas of democracy. Of perhaps greater interest once the notion that the
ICD wanted to equate Communism with Nazism. There is really no notion there being a salvageable relationship with the erstwhile allies.
Page 3
While freedom of the press does appear to be operative, the German media is still watched very carefully by the ICD and are still subject to persecution if they fall out of line, though the hour encouraged to pursue “the truth.” The function of the ICD was now to engage in the battle for the German mind against the Soviets. Nazism really appears as a secondary issue. Habeas corpus is also emphasized in order to make the
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Soviets look bad.
Page 4
Moreover, the initial emphasis on German war guilt as entirely disappeared from the
ICD radar. In November 1947 there is a partial turnover of hiring responsibilities for minor positions in the entertainment and information fields to the outlets. The ICD still maintains control over who holds decision-making and policymaking positions within the German media.
Page 5
In August 1947 there appears to have been asleep of the newspapers in regard to them complying with military government regulations. The primary targets of the sweeps were the Frankfurter neue Presse, Frankfurter Rundschau (each of which have lost a licensee), and Bremen's Nordsee Zeitung, which had lost 2 licensees. The sweep have not stopped. In January of 1948 Karl Vetter of the Mannheimer Morgen was asked to resign due to connections with the Nazi propaganda ministry.
It is interesting to note that the Nordsee Zeitung engaged in a form of passive resistance.
The newspaper fought censorship by carrying recipes instead of the city news.
Page 5
The military government was also in a position to force owners the printing facilities into issuing five-year leases 2 approved licensees. The printing plant owners were often not eligible for license due to their Nazi past. They seem to want to wait out the occupation and resume their business once all was clear. The ICD had also established a reserve fund by this time of some 48 million Reichsmark. In the money had been accumulated by collecting a 20% tax on the gross receipts of US licensed papers. 25 million was used to set up the WIGO. This organization could then make loans to licensed newspapers and was overseen by a German board, which in turn was supervised but military government authorities.
Page 6
By the end of June 1947 DANA and only one supervisory officer watching over its operation. It had been founded in July 1945, with the Germans taking control in October
1946.
Page 6
In June of 1947 there was a reduction in the paper supply of about 50% due to shortages.
By July 1947 the cut was lifted to 25% until April 1, 1948 when the cuts in paper supply to the publishers was restored.
Page 6 to 7
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There was a great deal made of the thoroughly “objective” reporting on operation vittles.
Page 7
During this time the ICD continued to operate Die neue Zeitung, which was used to target specific parts of Germany. The ICD was particularly concerned with Soviet occupied Berlin and the Ruhr. There appears to been concerns about the trade unions in the Ruhr, which were thought to have communist sympathies. The allies needed to keep coal production up and the Ruhr was suspect.
Page 10
Care packages were sent to DENA staff, which was organized by the American newspaper Guild.
Page 12
The ICD was also concerned with the currency reform that was being planned in
Germany. They were worried that this would cause a drop in newspaper sales, due to greater value and shorter supply of the money. They considered that this would most likely lead to a greater demand for low-priced books.
Page 15
The ICD also states efforts to ensure that the various media supported one another, in particular in the educational field. They also ensure that as much is possible was made of the Victor Kravchenko defection and insured the publication of “I Chose Freedom” in a serialized format in “Echo der Woche.” 322
This really marked the shift in priorities for the ICD from fighting Nazi tendencies in Germany to defending itself against a Soviet ideological threat.
Page 15
Ulenspiegel for stuff to worry important postwar Journal that had initially been supported by the ICD. (Though it is true that the paper supplied to the Journal was cut to some extent due to ideological reasons, it is also the case that there was a general cutback in paper all around). However, there was also an internal rift developing between Günther Weisenborn and Herbert Sandberg, who are the official licensees.
Sandberg, who owns the rights to the name, eventually received permission in the Soviet zone to continue publication of the journal. ICD reports talk about the license having been “relinquished.” (How can this be interpreted? Was there pressure from the ICD?
See reference to this in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945-60 By G.
Scott-Smith and Krabbendam page 295 him move).
Page 15
322 See article on Echo der Woche
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The American ICD established a magazine servicing branch, which supplied articles for reprint 2 German publishers. The articles that were supplied were chosen by the department of the army's Reorientation branch. (The question is what would a publisher choose? Something that he or she had to produce and place himself could risk, or something that is risk-free and at no cost? It's simply an economic matter for the publishers and the ICD knows it.)
Page 17
Again, the reorientation value of articles published in overt magazines is stressed. It's clear that they could be more direct in their approach with over material, because there was no effort to hide the fact that there was some sort of propaganda value associated with the particular piece. So, one might argue, that one could go all out.
Page 18
It is interesting to note that the ICD had them writing about the battle of the Ardennes.
There would have been value in the stew to the war crimes committed there. It also demonstrated American might and the fact that they simply don't give up. It was also an
“All-American” battle without the British or the Russians taking part. Though one can argue that there were isolated British units involved in the battle, their contribution was negligible and it is for the most part ignored.
Page 18
News stories were internally supported. That is, the news was not only reported but the stories were then interpreted in a number of editorial formats. Both American and
German authority figures were heard commenting on topics. This serve the purpose of giving legitimacy to both the American and German authorities.
Page 18
The ICD controlled radio very much became a weapon in the hands of the military government. The currency reform in Germany was one such battle.
Page 22
The Swiss are also allowed to help train German personnel and the Germans are allowed to go there and cover news events. One could almost interpret this has a “dress rehearsal” before allowing them to cover news in the wider world.
Page 24
The ICD by this time had moved over to a positive way of wooing the Germans. “This is how we do it in America.” The negative approach has been abandoned for the most part and then only used in the most subtle ways if need be. (There is the fear that the
Germans will support the Soviets, so the Americans don't want to risk it. It seems to of work because the German people were presented with a clear choice to make and they made it.
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Page 24
There are a number of interesting points made in the lectures given by visiting American scholars. These were brought in in order to support the America house efforts in convincing the Germans of the American route to democracy. It's clear from the list of titles that the ICD did need to tackle the problem of racism in America at some point.
And this they did in the lectures. However, there were also some other tantalizing lecture titles. From these titles it becomes clear that the ICD was also espousing the idea of a democratic world government. While today we can clearly see that they were referring to the United Nations, in these early lectures in Germany, this world organization would have considerably more teeth then the current organization has. It's also clear that they were advocating for a United States of Europe and were stressing the
United States's contribution to the idea of Continental world unity.
Page 25
The ICD determine how the business of film was going to be done. The essentially divided it up into production, distribution, and exhibition. It was done in this way in order to discourage the development of monopolies.
Page 27
The ICD once again speaks of reeducation, but they tie it to the notion of the “economic rehabilitation of the German people.” (What can this mean? Economic rehabilitation it did not seem to be an important mandate previously. However, they were trying to develop a similar model that they had already established with the newspapers. That is, sale of the films was to help pay for economic recovery. That is the sale of the films made after May 8, 1945 2 countries outside of Germany.
Here they once again stress the discouragement of monopolies.
Page 27
It is notable that during this period that the 1st feature-length film about the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective was made, "Lang ist der Weg," which was issued license number 13. (These types of film were significant in that they spoke to the guilt question in Germany).
A further interesting title that was released at this time was a film called Film ohne Titel, which was a satirical look at how films were made. It makes fun of all of the typical clichés that were to appear in German film shortly thereafter. Released January 1948 by the US and released by the Soviets on 19 November 1948. But, most of the films being made at the time for harmless comedies like Der Apfel ist ab , which is a retelling of the story of Adam and Eve.
Page 28
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Another notable film of this period was
Hallo Fräulein!
, Which addresses the issue of fraternization in the US zone of control. It also incorporates the storyline of the German and American who both attended Harvard, with this relationship is somehow resulting in the release of the German.
The ICD did indeed see film as a powerful way of reaching the German youth. This was demonstrated in the statistics of attendees of special showings for use in Germany in the
US zone of occupation.
Page 29
The ICD had a number of target audiences they wanted to work with. One of these was the displaced persons that found themselves as refugees in the US zone of occupation.
Many of these films dealt with countries accepting immigrants, such as the film People in Canada.
Page 30
Since May 1947, theater performers were no longer required to register. However, theater owners remained under IC the control. This represented the shifting of the responsibility for who appears on stage to the theater owners, they were after all the ones that have the most to lose if something went awry.
In this was the result of a military directive issued on 22 March 1947, which outlined the standards to be applied to personnel in German information services
In military government regulation 21–281 and 2–160.1. The standards were to be applied equally across the US zone of control with the exception of Berlin, where it was noted that any action was “subject to existing agreements with other occupying powers.” There is clearly states that applicants for minor positions would no longer require information control clearance if they possessed a
Spruchkammer classification of group 4 or 5. There were, however, positions that the ICD retain the right for political clearance before a license or registration was issued. These were for positions in the press such as: publishers, chief editors, editorial staff, business managers. In publications: publishers, business managers, chief editors, editorial staffs of magazines. In film: producers, directors, scriptwriters, dramaturges (literary advisors), and business managers. In theater: intendants, producers, directors, dramaturge. In music, record manufacturers. In radio: Indendants, business managers, production managers, chief engineers (and in a handwritten addition clarification was given in terms of what they meant as
Abteilungsleiter and Spielleiter ). An additional codicil was added for radio staff. It made clear that the standards also applied to radio performers, whose responsibilities were considered equal to those of other key positions in other media.
It was also clear that at this time there was no Spruchkammer operating in either
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Berlin or Bremen. Until such time that such an organization was established current procedures were going to continue.
The military governor also made clear that those in leadership positions needed to clear both German and ultimately military government muster, but that the ICD would have final say on who would lead Germany’s new media. The qualities that they were looking for were “positive” political, liberal, and moral qualities which
[would] assist in the development of democracy in Germany.” Responsibility was thus also devolved to the German licensees for and selecting appropriate minor information media employee.
The above memo seems to cause some difficulty, as it becomes apparent from a memo from Col. Alfred Toombs, chief of the intelligence branch, to general
McClure, who was the head of the ICD, dated 29 May 1946. The problem was with an omission from the list of those who were to remain under ICD control addition to those listed in the directive, apparently there was also to be oversight of German authors. Here, the ICD was trying to walk a very fine line. On the one hand, they did not want to appear to be censoring German publications, but at the same time they wanted to “make sure that our publishers are not using undesirable people.”
Page 31
The military government took a rather contradictory approach to the government of
Hesse on limiting the political background and the artistic qualifications of performers.
This seems to hamper the free development of theater, but on the other hand, it also interfered with the ICD's control.
Page 31
The report logs the German audiences for their growing capacity for judgment. One presumes that this is the case, because it seems that the Germans have expressed a liking for American theater. Plays such as Mourning becomes Electra are performed in
Leipsig, where the SED labels to play as reactionary, but the audiences seem to like it.
Thus, the ICD reaches the conclusion that they have a “growing capacity for judgment.”
The ICD is involved into competition with the Soviets. In the end, one gets the distinct impression that they were simply trying to get under the Soviet skin.
Page 32
While this play was successful, others were not as widely received. For example, theater managers in the East found in Thornton Wilder's Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth undesirable. This last play shows humanity as never learning from history and has the characters emerging from a nuclear bomb shelter.
Page 35
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At this point, in the music scene, they are concentrating on introducing American classical music to Germany. Interestingly enough they are not putting much effort into introducing popular music, but rather the highbrow stuff.
Page 35
They did take the opportunity to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the 1948 revolution with music. For this they chose Beethoven's Fidelio choose one. It also appears that they did not have an aversion to Wagner, because Heidelberg–Karlsruhe saw the performance of Tristan and Isolde for the same anniversary.
Pages 39 to 41
Through the music they hope to emphasize German unity and indeed it European unity.
The idea of European unity is most likely one that would allow the Europeans to ward off the Soviet threat and so that they do not become too great a drain on American resources. This, of course, cannot be accomplished without the aid of radio, which then broadcast the live performances.
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In a lengthy directive dated 7 May 1946 to all ICD intelligence personnel, Gen. Robert
McClure tried to provide some guidance on the “evaluation of NSDAP and affiliated
Nazi organizations" in order to facilitate the work of field interrogators and give a
“uniform basis for their classification recommendations.”
If an individual had been a nominal member of the NSDAP, they could still be classified as great a unacceptable. However, if they were an active Parteigenosse , or had been members of 4 other organizer nations associated with the NSDAP, they were immediately to be classified as black. Even if they had only attained Anwaerter
(candidate) status, they were to be treated as if they had been full members. For the
Allgemeine SS rank-and-file there was an immediate black designation. For those who were designated as fördernde Mitglieder der SS
(sustaining members of the SS), and it was decided that they should be designated as gray acceptable. They, however, did allow for rare exceptions in the case of those who made large contributions (1000 RM or more), because these may have been the result of blackmail. It was advised that these cases should be carefully investigated and, if blackmail was indicated, it should be considered to have been a donation under duress. In situations such as this it was possible to even issue a white designation, if the candidates political record was otherwise clean. In the case of the Waffen SS , those with memberships before 1943 were to be designated black, while those with memberships after 1943 were to be considered great acceptable or gray unacceptable depending on their political record. If they had been members of SS Standarte Kurt Eggers, these were SS war correspondents, they were immediately designated as black. All members of the SA were designated black with the exception of those who have been thrown out or resigned before June 30, 1934.
These could be designated gray acceptable, or, if they had an otherwise good record, could be considered white. Further to this, the SA-Wehr- or Sportabzeichnung were considered meaningless if not connected to the NSKK NS-Kraftfahrer-Korps (National
Socialist Motoring Corps), NSFK NS-Fliegerkorps (National Socialist [Nazi] Flying
Corps), NSDStB Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (National Socialist
German Students' Association), or NSDDoB NS-deutscher Dozentenbund (National
Socialist Association of German Docents) and did not disqualify an individual from receiving a white designation. It was also noted that any rank in one of the major
NSDAP organizations immediately meant an individual was designated in the black category. In the lesser organizations, the lower ranks could sometimes be qualified as great acceptable or great unacceptable on a case-by-case basis. However, an officer's rank was always to be considered black.
Reiterkorps
Membership in this group was to be considered unimportant unless it was combined with membership in another “important” affiliated organization such as the SA-
Reiterkorps or the SS-Reiterkorps. Both of these required membership in either the SA or the SS.
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HJ (incl. BdM)
Each applicant was to be studied carefully by the ICD. However, it was indicated that a rank above Kameradschaftsführer meant that the applicant was unsuitable for positions in the press, film production, and radio.
NSDStB and ANST
As with some of the other groups that involved young people in national Socialist
Germany, applicants with this sort of background needed to be studied individually. So, there was no blanket categorize a nation. There is however an indication that they were to be categorized as gray acceptable. What they consider to be decisive factors were the
University attended by the individual and whether or not that particular university enforced membership in this group. They noted that some universities had enforced membership for a short period of time and some have not at all.
NSDDoB
These were generally considered to be gray unacceptable other than if they had a combined affiliation with another major national Socialist organization. Then they were considered to be black.
NS Altherrenbund the ICD considered membership in this group to be meaningless.
NSF (NS Frauenschaft) if an individual had been a member prior to 1936, it was considered meaningless. However, if they had obtained their membership after 1936 they were to be considered great unacceptable. If they held any sort of rank, regardless of when they joined, they were to be categorized as black.
DF (Deutsche Frauenwerk) there worship in this group was considered meaningless unless the individual had obtained a rank within the organization, then they were considered to be gray on acceptable.
NSKK if the individual had been a member of this group from 1931 to 1934 they were to be considered great unacceptable. However, after 1934, they were considered to be great acceptable, unless they had formerly belonged to the Motor SA.
NSFK (NS Fliegerkorps) members of this group were to be considered great acceptable, except for those who joined in 1937 because they were members of an SA or SS flying unit.
NS Reichsb. Deutscher Schwestern (Incl. NS-Schwesternschaft) members of this organization were for the most part great acceptable with those holding rank being
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designated as great unacceptable.
NS Ärtztebund if an individual held a full membership they were considered great unacceptable, as opposed to those who were simply candidates, who were categorized as gray acceptable.
RDB (Reichsb. deutschen Beamten)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
DAF (incl. KdF)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
NSV
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
NSKOV (NS Kriegs Opfer Versorgung)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
NSBDT (NS Bund Deutscher Technik)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
NSLB (NS Lehrer Bund)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
NSRB (NS Rechtswahrer Bund)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
RDB (Reichsbund Deutsche Familie)
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This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable. Him and him
NSRL (NS Reichsbund für Leibesübung)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
DSt (Deutsche Studentenschaft)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
NSRK (NS Reichskriegerbund)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
DG (Deutscher Gemeindetag)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
Reichsdozentenschaft
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable. Him and him
Reichskulturkammer (RSK, RPK, RTK, R_K, RK der Bild. Künste, RFK)
This organization was considered meaningless in terms of categorizing an individual for
ICD purposes unless they held rank, which meant they would be categorized as gray on acceptable.
Amerika Institut membership in this organizer nation was considered meaningless if it was taken up before 1934, after that applicants were considered great acceptable.
Deutsche Akademie München membership in this organizer nation was considered meaningless if it was taken up before 1934, after that applicants were considered great acceptable.
DAI (Deutsches Auslandsinstitut)
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membership in this organizer nation was considered meaningless if it was taken up before 1934, after that applicants were considered great acceptable.
Deutsche Christenbewegung and Deutsche Glaubensbewegung with this sort of organization the ICD officers have to be a little bit more careful. If the applicant had been a member of any pagan organization then they would be considered great on acceptable. If the Fragebogen indicated that the applicant was "Gottesgläubig" then a careful investigation had to be undertaken 2 determine whether this meant the applicant was without religion (gottlos) , in which case it was meaningless, or whether it meant that he adhered to any pagan organizations.
Deutsche Fichte Bund membership before 1934 was meaningless, after which the applicant was considered to be gray acceptable.
Deutsche Jägerschaft meaningless, unless the applicant held rank, then they were considered great acceptable
DRK (Deutsches rote Kreuz) membership year was meaningless in terms of ICD consideration for licensing, unless the applicant held “higher rank”.
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut membership before 1934 was meaningless, after which the applicant was considered to be gray acceptable.
Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage members of this organization were always considered to be classified as black.
Kameradschaft USA members of this organization were always considered to be classified as black.
Osteuropa Institut before 1934 membership in this organization was meaningless in regard to ICD classification. After that they were considered gray acceptable.
Institut für Deutsche Ostarbeit Were considered tray unacceptable regardless of when they took their membership.
RAD (Reichsarbeitdienst)
Was considered meaningless unless rank was held or it was their vocation. They were then classified as tray acceptable.
RKB (Reichskolonialbund)
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They were considered meaningless unless they held rank, which gained them the classification of gray acceptable.
RLB (Reichsluftschutzbund)
Only nominal membership of this group was designated as meaningless. If they held any rank before 1939 they were classified as tray unacceptable, if they obtained rank after that they were classified as tray acceptable.
Staatsakademie für Rassen und Gesundheitspflege
These were all classified as black.
VDA (Volksbund für dad Deutschtum im Ausland)
If they had lived abroad prior to 1939, they were considered gray unacceptable. I any rank was held they were classified as black.
Werberat der Deutschen Wirtschaft
Classified as gray unacceptable.
Weltdienst
Black classification.
Memorandum from Alfred Toombs (Intelligence Chief) to McClure
May 4, 1946
Alfred Toombs indicates that the the intelligence branch has noticed that a number of the licensed publishers are being operated why people they have no information on. He further indicates that they might be either stockholders or even former owners. In the memo he's very careful not to mention the name of one of the companies that he is referring to, but he does say then it was moved from Leipzig. (Initially, the US forces had occupied a considerable part of what was to become the Soviet sector. Included in this was the city of Leipzig. In the brief time that they occupied the city, they identified important publishers and move them back to the western sector.) It was through a censorship intercept that he had learned that the principal stockholder have been requested to return to the Russian zone on business. This caused concern for Toombs, because he was already concerned that many of the licensees were “merely decorative fronts for other people.”
He did also mention the specific case the constant concern and this was in reference to
Brockhaus Verlag, the 2 older brothers had been blacklisted by the ICD, but the 26-yearold son of one of the brothers had been licensed to run the firm. He pointed out that the sun had very limited experience as a publisher and that it should be obvious that he was merely a front pour the original owners. He also indicates that the intelligence branch
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was looking into this further.
He felt that it was important that the publications branch furnish the names, Fragebogen, and a brief CV of all of the major stockholders in licensed firms. He also wanted information on all of the former owners or controllers of these firms, who would be in a position to influence those running the publishing house is now. He, however, went even further than this and required that all licensed publishers be required to submit names of everyone working in an editorial capacity in addition to all of those into policymaking, supervisory, or executive position.
Memo/report
Maj. Bertram Schaffner and Thomas Frank visited the British equivalent to the ICD screening center between the 12th and 15th of May 1946 and submitted a report on 16
May 1946 to the chief of the intelligence section Alfred Toombs.
The British organization was known as the “German personnel research branch” and was under the control of the intelligence group of the control commission for Germany
British element. It was located at Bad Oeynhausen and under the command of Wing
Commander O.A. Oeser. The report indicates that the organization consisted of a president of the board, a psychiatrist, an administrative officer, to testing officers, for psychological assistance, 8 secretaries, and 15 enlisted man in all, 32 personnel.
The indicated that the assessment center investigated 12 candidates per week, who all arrived on Monday afternoon and would that leave on Friday morning. The Friday afternoon was reserved for staff meetings in order to discuss results of individual tests and to make decisions on each individual they had interviewed, with reports being written by the president and the psychiatrist on Saturday.
Testing procedures:
All the candidates were welcomed with his speech on Monday afternoon. This was delivered by the president, who explained the aims of the center and it introduced the staff to the candidates. Following this the candidates were then asked to fill out a 19 page very detailed questionnaire, which dealt with their political background and the political activities of their parents and their nearest relatives. On Tuesday morning each candidate was asked to provide a five-minute oral resume of their background and professional life. This was done with everyone including all of the staff present.
Following these initial introductions parts 1, 2, and 3 of the written intelligence test were administered. The 1st part was called “matrix” which was a nonverbal test which used a visual pattern completion problems. The 2nd part dealt with reasoning. It was used to
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test the higher intelligence ranges in deduction, synthesis, and analysis. The 3rd part was a written Word Association test. Following this a 4th test was administered which was an Oral Word Association test. This was often replaced with the thematic apperception test in the case of younger candidates. The 5th and final test of the morning was a selfdescription by the candidate, 1st as his best friend would see them, and then as a strong critic would see them.
After Tuesday's lunch the candidates were divided into 2 groups. The 1st group began with individual studies, these included: a political interview of about 1 1/2 hours, a psychiatric interview of about one and half hours. It is also noted that the president and the psychiatrist interview at approximately 4 candidates each on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The 2nd group had this individual studies in the latter half of the period.
While the 1st group was being individually studied, the 2nd group went ahead with further group tests. the 1st of these was a group discussion over a 90 minute time period.
The groups were asked to spend approximately 30 min. discussing each of 3 topics: personal happiness, relationship of family and state, and Germany's contribution to
European reconstruction. After this each of the candidates was asked to give an impromptu talk or “lecturette" without any preparation. These talks would last 5 min. and were on special assignments, for example “a school superintendent addresses his teachers on corporal punishment, a chief of police addresses policemen on black market activities.”
This was followed by a sociological questionnaire. This questionnaire attempted to elicit as much information as possible about candidates fundamental political trends and social outlook. They also then conducted “miniature interrogation”. In these one of the candidates would interview another for approximately 20 min. in the presence of the staff in order to obtain information about the candidates personal interests, special hobbies, and recreational activities. The purpose of this interview was to evaluate a candidate's ability to conduct an interview. However, it also provided valuable information about the one being interviewed. All of this was then followed by the socalled “protest test”. Here, the individuals were asked to imagine themselves in a difficult situation and to defend their position in the face of Stern, unsympathetic criticism and frustrating behavior on the part of the examiners. This was followed by a
“group planning test.” One of the groups is asked to formulate a solution to a problem in
County administration and, based on the letter statistics and a map of the county concerned and then by a team negotiation test, in which one of the groups was asked to represent a local German government committee and the other to represent the British military government detachment. They were to work out a solution to a problem, which was presented in the form of legal briefs.
Following all of this the entire group undertook a mutual evaluation. The candidates were asked to rate one another in terms of: leadership qualities, reliability, and friendship worthiness. At the end of all of these tests a board meeting was held after the
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candidates received a concluding talk and to ask questions or make suggestions. The candidates left the center at 10 o'clock on Friday morning. During the board meeting each of the candidates was discussed and final recommendations were decided upon.
The report notes that there were some similarities between the ICD screening center and the procedures use At Assessment Ctr., #1. The aims of the 2 groups and the standards employed were identical. It also indicates that the political and sociological, and psychological and psychiatric division of how the candidates were studied were also the same. Moreover, there was a general correspondence in how intelligence tests were administered. In addition, the sociological questionnaire resembled the “in complete sentences” test of the ICD screening center and that the “mutual evaluation” was essentially the same as the ICD's “sociometric” test.
There were, however, differences between how the British and the Americans operated their screening centers. In the case of the British assessment center, it offered its services to all of the divisions of the military government and the control commission. It was noted that many of the assessment centers candidates came from government agencies, such as the Reichspost and the Reichsbahn. From this one can conclude that is less emphasis was placed on selecting publishers. It was also noted that the assessment center seem to be adequately staffed. This indicated a dissatisfaction on the part of Maj.
Bertram Schaffner with the staffing of the ICD screening center. He also notes that the assessment center placed relatively less emphasis on the political study of the candidate and more on the psychological study of the candidate. It was also noteworthy that the assessment center relied on a larger number of procedures, administered by a larger staff. It also took into consideration the conclusions and appraisals of at least 6 different observers in coming to its final assessment. This, in their view, led to a greater objectivity in reaching its conclusions. They also noted a high degree of organization and specialization of functions that the assessment center. They saw this as lending greater formality 2 the process of vetting candidates, as opposed to the greater flexibility of the screening center. They saw this as creating a process to which a greater number of assistance could be trained and an adequate number of replacements could be insured for departing staff members. They also noticed that due to its larger staff, the assessment center could also engage in research in follow-up projects. Notably, the assessment center also employed what were called “lay analysts” rather than psychiatrists with medical training. The use of “lay” staff ensure that a larger group of staff were available to work at the center.
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From the records that behind by the ICD, it becomes clear that their intelligence branch continued to investigate individuals, even after they had been approved as licensees. For example, the case of Dr. Erich Richter. In a letter by Edward Peeples addressed to major Sely of the intelligence section, dated 28
January 1947 it becomes clear that Richter has been allowed to work as a newspaper editor with the
of Munich.
However, later it was discovered that he was also the author of such books as
,
,
, and
. Each of these books was considered to be of an objectionable nature. The language of the memo, however, is rather controlled when it states that they “seem[ed] to disqualify subject as a newspaper editor.”
Organization and operation of the ICD intelligence branch
September 10, 1946
Memorandum
To Gen. Robert A McClure
From: Robert Schmid acting chief, intelligence branch
Record group 260 box 70
Intelligence branch was set up during the summer of 1945. It used the psychological warfare division of SHAEF as its model and was described as an adaptation of the PWD. An additional
2 this model was the addition of surveys unit, which was supposed to gather political intelligence.
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The mission of the intelligence branch of the ICD was the following: to determine German attitudes towards the military government and towards life under the occupation.
It was also to scrutinize everything produced by licensees of the
ICD and to analyze the information media coming out of the other 3 occupation zones.
It also was to analyze and report on all political parties, personalities, activities, and developments in the American zone of control. They also used a very broad definition of the word
“political.” With this they meant everything relating to the social, cultural, educational, and other related areas.
They also have the job of screening and vetting all applicants for licensing with the ICD and then classifying them either white, gray, or black. They also pass final judgment on the licensees.
It had a total of 4 sections: one produced reports and another analysis. Further unit dealt with personnel control and the 4th unit with surveys.
The reports and analysis section determined the relative importance of intelligence targets. They also advised intelligence units on the Land level about which targets they wanted to exploit to it and how they were going to go about doing it. The reports and analysis section also served as a convenient collecting point of intelligence being reported from the land level and further disseminates this information throughout the ICD structure. Accordingly, the reports produced by the intelligence branch became important reading for a number of highly placed American military government officers.
The reports and analysis section at a scope beyond just
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establishing the “attitude, journalistic ability, and political pattern of what the AMZON population was presented with, but also provided scrutiny of what was being produced in the other zones of control. They note that this was specifically important in regard to the Soviet zone.
The personnel control section was initially called the denazification section. Its primary objective had been to eliminate all those involved with the national Socialist party in
Germany from Germany's media. They did however see themselves is also serving a positive function in that they assisted in the identification of those who might have a positive impact in the American zone. By June of 1946, their primary mission had been carried out. This is when they changed their name, because in their view “there [were] no more Nazis in them. This is when they began the function of selecting suitable applicants in earnest. They were specifically looking for individuals with an active opponents of the national socialists in
Germany. They were not simply looking for those who had been
“passive non-Nazis”, but what they described as “positive
Democra tic persons.” They also ensure that no one who had espoused nationalist or militaristic ideas was put in the position where they could influence public opinion.
For the ICD a particularly tricky issue was that of music and theater. Here they had to deal with individuals who are very often internationally famous. Examples of this would be people such as Wilhelm Furtwaengler and Gustaf Gruendgens, both of whom underwent thorough scrutiny. These, of course, were also individuals who have been very popular in Germany and made the argument that they had never become members of the Nazi party. They argued that they had remained apolitical and did not engage in any of the carrying out or making a policy in
Germany. They were simply artists. To this was added film as
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well. This particular branch also undertook a number of negotiations with other allies and neutral countries in order to enlist “the most competent and most politically reliable personalities in this field.” So, in other words, they were prepared to bring non-Germans into the German media, if they served their political purposes.
They also have the responsibility of screening publishers. While the new services were important, a great deal of emphasis was also placed on determining the best publishers of books and journals. What they were working with here with those who would reestablish Germany's book and journal industries. They consider this to be a very important aspect of their work, because they felt that the publishing industry, as set aside from the news print media, would have the longest lasting effect on whether Western-style democracy would take hold in postwar
Germany.
RG 260 5/265-1/6
Edward T Peeples, and who was the executive officer of the intelligence branch of the ICD, wrote a memo to the French occupation chief of information section political division, Mr.
Alfred Silbert, for the director of the ICD intelligence branch regarding the employment of blacklisted German personalities in the French zone of control. This memo was written on 12
September 1946. Apparently, a conversation had taken place between sobered and Mr. Kavon of the intelligence branch, in which it was verbally indicated to the French that blacklisted
Germans were working in various media in the friend zone.
Apparently, the French representative had asked for specifics and the American intelligence branch was now prepared to furnish some evidence of blacklisted Germans being employed in the friend zone, specifically in the area around Constance.
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The list given did not claim to be exhaustive, but is instructive in terms of how much information the Americans had been able to gather.
Hans Hömberg: and they indicated to the printer that he had been an early member of the "Kampfbund fuer duetsche Kultur" and former editor of the "Voelkische Beobachter" where he was in charge of the film supplement and the author of “crude anti-
Semitic articles which appeared regularly.” It was further noted that he was the editor of the “Brennessel" which was owned by the NSDAP-Verlag. He was reported to have started a publishing firm named "Bubikverlag" in Constance. They it also restrict received reports that he was the author of an adaptation of French play which was at that time waiting for his premier in the Tuebingen theater.
Gerhard Scherler: and he was a dramaturge a theater director.
He was also former a former advisor to Goebbels' propaganda ministry and had even been sent toTeplitz-Schoenau in check was a vacuum in order to introduce Nazi culture in the
Sudetenland. The intelligence branch claimed that it had information that he had been appointed a delegate for the general meeting of the Shakespeare Society in Bochum.
Johannes Riemann: the intelligence branch reported that he was an actor at the Stadttheater in Constance and had been a
Parteigenosse him and since 1933 and a so-called Amtswalter, political leader, in the Nazi party. He had in general been considered a fanatical Nazi who was known to appear in public in an SA uniform.
Eugen Kloepfer and Lothar Muethel: these 2 were listed together in the memo and were reported to have settled in
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Constance. At this point in time they had simply been negotiating for an engagement. K. was an old PG. And 1st vice president of the Reichstheaterkammer and a Kultursenator. In
CD considered him could then among the most prominent of not see actors in the Third Reich. They also considered him culpable in the self-inflicted death of Joachim Gottschalk, actor, and Herbert Selpin, film director, who had been denounced to the Gestapo. It was also noted that he had been arrested and subsequently deported from Austria earlier in 1946. The
Americans also note that when he arrived in common stunts on
April 5, 1946 a glowing article in celebration of the 60th birthday was published in the Sued-Kourier. Muethel had also been a
PG since 1933, KS and a leading member of many Nazi theatrical commissions. It was noticed that he had also been recently removed from the Wiener Staatstheater, where he had been the general intendant.
The intelligence branch also noted to individuals that resided in
Tübingen. The 1st was Elizabeth Flickenschildt and actress and
PG since 1932 and an avowed Nazi. She had several months previous applied for a position in Munich, during which she failed to disclose her party membership in the Fragebogen. She had learned that legal proceedings had been initiated against her for falsification of her questionnaire. Upon learning this she left for Tübingen, where she apparently immediately took up her acting career once more. It was also noted that she took part in the Tübingen Theatre Festival.
Theodor Loos: Was and actor and a PG since 1936 and a
Kultursenator. Moreover, he was considered an avowed Nazi according to the report. He had played leading roles in many
Nazi propaganda films, with Jud Suess and Entlassung being mentioned specifically. It was indicated that he was blacklistted by the ICD in Stuttgart after which he moved to Tuebingen
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where he was allowed to be active in the theatre.
Baden-Baden
Artur Maria Rabenalt:At the time of the writing of this memo,
Rabenalt had just been appointed director of the Baden-Baden theater. Though he was never a party member, the ICD considered him to be an arch opportunist, who would serve the
Nazi cause in the Third Reich. They judged his military deferment to be an example of such opportunism, because he accepted an offer to direct the propaganda film “achtung! Feind hoert mit” where you work together with the German Secret
Service. For these reasons he had been black listed by the
Munich detachment of the ICD. In addition, he was given a 2nd vetting at the ICD screening center, where he was described to be: a liar, unreliable, and full of contradictory statements relating to his activities in the Third Reich. The screening center confirmed his black classification.
Claus Clausen: he was an actor and director and was at the time of the writing of this memo active in Freiburg in Baden
Baden. The ICD considered him to be known for his extreme
Nazi ideas. He had also been a PG since 1933.
Franz Grothe (composer) and Ilse Werner (movie actress): these 2 are listed together and were known to have performed recently in Baden Baden in an ensemble organized by the
“Theater der Prominenten von Film und Kabaret." He had been a PGA since 1933 and apparently had close ties to the propaganda ministry. At the time of the writing of this memo he was wanted in Bavaria for falsification of his Fragebogen. Miss
Werner had been refused employment in the American and
British zones of control.
Currently after sending the 1st memo, a 2nd memo was sent on
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September 16, 1946 by Edward Peeples. This memo was addressed to Mr. Pierre Ponnell of the French radio section.
Here a further 2 individuals were brought to the attention of
French authorities.
Lothar Hartmann had been listed by the Americans is gray unacceptable. Their reason for doing so was that he had worked as a radio reporter in a propaganda company since the start of the war. Later in 1942 he became the editor of the frontline correspondents reports and work directly in the OKW.
He left the military 1943 and was immediately hired as a radio reporter by radio Berlin. Following this, they simply note that he had been active in the field of Nazi propaganda. However, one ought to note that he was considered great unacceptable and not black.
Hildegard Leppert had also been blacklisted by the ICD, because she was the girlfriend of what was described as one of the most dangerous Nazis and radio Frankfurt. She had fled
Frankford when the Allies arrived to Bavaria but returned. In addition, she was a Scharfuehrerin of the JM (
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Blacklists
Edward Breitenkamp, in his early study of the effect of information control on
German authors and publishers, notes that the ICD used various lists to determine the suitability of an individual to fill a role in the cultural machinery of post-war Germany.
However, the existence of these lists seemed to be controversial. Breitenkamp notes that these lists were not for general distribution, though the four occupying powers did exchange lists on a somewhat regular basis. The closest relationship in this regard was that between the Americans and the British, who assiduously honoured one another’s lists of banned individuals. This point, however, appears to be contradicted in History II, where it states that “[t]he Information Control Division furnished black lists to the other three powers, but received no information in return.”
323
In this particular case it is most likely an error on the part of the compiler of History II, since there is mention of these lists in the minutes of the meeting of the quadpartite Information Services, and British lists do appear in the American archival records. Moeover, there are instances of at least the British blacklist having been received by the Americans. Evidence of tis being the case is readily available in the ICD files.
324
However, this may indeed have been the case of with the Russian and the French.
The ICD approached the task of cataloguing and classifying performers, publisher and film makers, to mention but a few of the catagories, with thoroughness.
Evidence of their meticulousness may be found in the “White, Grey, and Black List for
Information Control Purposes” dated November 1, 1946, which was a supplement to the initial list created on August 1, 1946.
325
The classification criteria were initially set out
December 21, 1945 by Robert C. Martindale, who was acting Chief of the Intelligence
323 History II, 27.
324 RG 260 5/268-2/17 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
325 NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 69
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section of the ICD and a civilian serving with the Military Government. The new criteria superceded those put in place December 1, 1945, which in turn had replaced a policy that was announced on October 1, 1945. It appears that there was an extremely fluid situation in regard to who might be licensed. However, it seems that this set of guidelines was the final authoritative iteration.
This does not mean that there may not have been a certain amount of “fudging” going on in the creation of these lists. History II indicates that “[t]the task of denazification was complicated by the pressure on the Intelligence Branch to lower standards so that German Information services could be turned over to the Germans.”
326
Further evidence of this may be found in the hiring of Germans to run the radio services in the American Zone of Control. Allegations were made that the Americans favoured those who had a right-wing slant, with the implication that they were Nazi sympathizers, in the appointment to the leading positions within the German Radio media.
327
In some respects this was a red herring used by supporters of the SPD to try to establish themselves in crucial media roles that were to help form Germany’s future political direction.
By November 1946 there were still some ICD district offices using the older standards. This is apparent from the explicit manner in which the change from the older six category system needed to be noted. The ICD had pared the number of possible classification from six to five. Instead of being classified A, B, C, D, E, or F applicants were catagorized as either White, Grey, or Black, with White and Grey being further subdivided.
326 History II, 27.
327 The Americans were not the only ones to suffer through such allegations. The British experienced similar difficulties with NDR in Hamburg.
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Those classified as being “White” were sorted into A’s and B’s. A’s needed to have an impeccable record, which warranted licensing in the fields of press, publishing, major theatrical or musical enterprises. They were considered suitable for leading positions. The individual had to be determined as not having been a collaborator with the Nazis nor a beneficiary of Nazism. In addition, having been a member of one of the following organzations did not preclude a White-A designation:
Reichsbund der deutschen Beamten
NSV
Reichsrundfunkkammer
Reichspresskammer
DAF
Reichskammer der bildenden Künste
Deutsche Jaegerschaft
Reichsluftschutzbund
Reichsbund deutscher Familie
NS Reichsbund für Leibesübungen
NS Rechtswahrerbund
KDF
NSKOV
Deutsche Studentenschaft
Reichsschriftumskammer
Reichstheaterkammer
Reichsfilmkammer
Reichsmusikkammer
Deutsches Rotes Kreuz
Reichsarbeitsdienst (if compulsory; if vocational, then Grey C not acceptable)
Deutsches Frauenwerk
Reichsdozentenschaft
NS Bund deutscher Technik
NS Lehrerbund
Potential “White A” Organizations 2
However, rank in these organizations indicated Party membership and only allowed a ranking of Grey acceptable or lower.
White-B’s were suitable for licensing or employment in leading positions of all media except in the fields of press, publications, or film production. This initial differentiation shows which of the areas the ICD were to consider the most sensitive areas of cultural activity in terms of forming future public opinion. This classification indicated that the applicant had not been a member of the NSDAP or affiliates, except for the above listed organizations and the following additional organizations:
HJ and BdM
Rank in KDF
Deutsche Akademie Muenchen (before 1934; after
1934; Grey C acceptable)
Deutsches Auslandsinstitute (before 1934; after
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Deutsche Glaubensbewegung (Note: Membership in any principle suborganization: Grey C acceptable of better)
NS Altherrnbund
1934; Grey C acceptable)
Deutscher Fichte-Bund (before 1934; after 1934;
Grey C acceptable)
Deutsche Christen-Bewegung
Reichskolonialbund
VDA (if abroad before 1939, Grey C not acceptable. If any rank was held, then the classification was Grey acceptable or lower)
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute (before 1934; after
1934; Grey C acceptable)
NS Frauenschaft (before 1936; after 1936; Grey C acceptable)
Amerika-Institut (before 1934; after 1934; Grey C acceptable)
Ost-Europa Institut (before 1934; after 1934; Grey
C acceptable)
The candidate could also have shown no evidense of collaboration with the Nazis or benefits under Nazism. Additionally, they were also considered suitable for a probational White-A classification.
The second classification was “Grey”, which was also divided into two subgroups. Those deemed “Grey Acceptable” were suitable for employment but not in a policy making position or in an executive, creative or personnel capacity. They were really not suitable for licensing and were to be replaced by “Whites” at the first opportunity. They were NSDAP party members or members of one of the following organizations:
Party member or member of one of the above two lists or the following:
Deutsche Akademie Muenchen (after 1934)
Deutsches Auslandsinstitute (after 1934)
Deutscher Fichte-Bund (after 1934)
NS Reichskriegerbund
Kyffhaeuserbund
Deutsche Frauenschaft (after 1936)
Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute (after 1934)
Amerika-Institut (after 1934)
Ost-Europa Institut (after 1934)
If they held a rank in one of these organzations they received a designation of Grey
Unacceptable. If they had been a member of one of the following organizations, they applicant would need to explain the circumstances of their having become members:
NSDAP
Opferring
NSDStB
NSKK
NSDFB
NSFK
Deutscher Gemeindetag (Membership implies
NSDAP membership)
Institut fuer deutsche Ostarbeit
Alldeutscher Verband
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A rank in one of the above organizations warranted a Black classification. There could also be no evidense of Nazi or nationalistic convictions. This is where the small, nonparty, opportunists were placed.
Those considered Grey Unacceptable were not suitable for employment other than in ordinary labor as defined under Military Government Law No. 8. Those having belonged to the following organizations automatically found themselves in this category:
Reichsarbeitsdienst (vocational)
VDA (if abroad before 1939)
NS Reichsbund deutscher Schwestern
NS Aerztebund
A final classification was “Black.” These individuals were simply judged to be unsuitable for any employment in any information control media. Members of the following organizations were automatically classified as Black:
Waffen-SS (unless drafted after 1943)
NSDoB
SA
Kameradschaft USA
Staatsakademiefuer Rassen- und Gesundheitspflege Werberat der deutschen Wirtschaft
Weltdienst Reichsring fuer Propaganda
Verband Zwischenstaatlicherverbaende
Sicherheitsdienst der SS
Allgemeine SS
Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage
The individual could also not have held an office or rank in the Nazi Party, its subordinate organizations, organizations furthering militarism. In addition, the following conditions also disqualified an individual from activities regulated by the ICD:
An Officer of the Wehrmacht, unless a specific exception is made by Information Control
A marked beneficiary under the Nazis
One whom evidense shows to have been a believer in Nazi, racial, or militaristic creeds
An Officer or Non-Comissioned Officer of the
Waffen-SS
A participant in Nazi crimes, persecutions or racial discriminations
One who voluntarily gave substantial moral or material support to the NSDAP, its officials or leaders
While there may have been some confusion of policy at times, the discussion of where an individual might be categorized had already begun well before the end of the war in Europe. On February 11, 1945 Alfred Toombs, Head of Intelligence for the ICD, released a document relating to the treatment of NSDAP members and their suitability
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for involvement in the cultural industries of post-war Germany.
328
There was a suggestion that May 1, 1937 be considered a cut off. That is, those who had joined the party after that date be disqualified from holding a publications license. However, he saw no room for members of the NSDAP in the new German media. In fact, as Eva-
Juliane Welsch notes, he managed to ensure that only those who actively opposed the
National Socialists in German were granted the priviledge of a holding a license as a publisher.
329 Toombs was ever vigilant in ensuring that tight control was exercised over publishers and was always concerned that they were getting out of control as in directive he issued in May of 1946.
330
The “White, Grey, and Black List for Information Control Purposes” supplemental inventory dated November 1, 1946 had a total of 2529 entries of all classifications. Neither the very old nor the very young could escape classification by the ICD. The oldest to appear on the list is an 86 year old bookdealer from Immenstadt by the name of Max Wengenmayr, who was “Grey Unacceptable.” The youngest to appear on the list is Xaver Gruber, a circus business agent, from Langenerling, who at the age of 10 years was classified as “Grey Acceptable.” Gruber was by no means an anomally.
The statistics of the ICD’s “White, Grey, Black List” show some interesting trends. 1919 had been declared as a benchmark year for Allied occupation policy. It provided the cut off in terms of those they would consider to potentially culpable for
Germany’s crimes. Age, however, did not exclude individuals from the ICD vetting process. In addition to the cases already mentioned above, 186 of the individuals appearing on the list are under the age of 21. No one 18 years of age or younger was classified Black. Four people between the ages of 18 and 21 were designated Black.
328 RG 260 OMGUS 5/268-2/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
329
Eva-Juliane Welsch, „Die hessischen Lizenzträger und ihre Zeitungen,” Dissertation
Universität Dortmund, 2002, page 35.
330 RG 260 5/269-2/8 Bundesarchiv Koblenz
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Most of those under 21 received a White-B or Grey-A classification. At the age of 18, banning of individuals from Germany’s cultural machinery began. For example, at 18,
Valentin Salzberger of Pfaffenberg, a musician (it does not indicate whether it is the
Pfaffenberg in Baden-Wuerrtemberg or Bavaria), was considered enough of a threat to have been categorized as black. There is no indication of what he might have done to warrant the classification. It might have been nothing more than having lied on his or her Fragebogen ,
331
which was considered a serious transgression.
The largest number of applicants fell into the White-B classification (37%), which allowed them to do most things in their profession; however, they were not allowed to make policy decisions. The smallest number is to be found in the category that allowed the greatest freedom and required the greatest trust on the part of the ICD.
Only 3.8% of the applicants were given a classification of White-A. About equal were those who were classified as Grey-A (23.8%) and those classified as Black (23.7%) and
Grey-U made up about 10% of those listed.
The largest single group on the list is that of musicians. To a large degree they skew the statistics. Of the 1103 musicians (43% of the total list) only 0.2% are granted a
White A designation. The overall average is 3.8% with the large group of musicians keeping the number artificially low. By the same token, very few musicians find themselves at the other end of the spectrum with only 1.6% being classified as Black.
Here the overall number is 23.6%. What this indicates is that musicians had a relatively easy time passing muster in order to be musicians, but where not necessarily a priority when it to assigning them leadership position. This could be a result of the profession itself. Publishers of books and newspapers were by the very nature of their profession cultural decision makers.
331 For more information see section entitled Fragebogen page Error! Bookmark not defined.
.
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Of greater interest are these culturally sensitive professions. In the case of writers (10.4% of 67), editors (14.3% of 70), and journalists (12.0% of 83) their rate of
White-A designation falls within the norm when one factors out the musicians. They also have normal designation rates in the other classifications. On the hand, there is a group that stands out. Publishers (30.7% of 75) have a rate of White-A designations that outstrips all the others. This indicates that the ICD may either have become more lenient with this group in an effort to launch a publishing industry that was now being set up to compete with that of the Soviet sector, or there was something in the process itself that led to a high number of applicant being accepted. Though the former may be part of the truth, it is most likely the latter that led to these results. The vetting process for publishers, as will be described in some detail later, was quite different and more strenuous than for any other group. This in itself would have resulted in some selfremoval or selection.
Blacklists, or lists of proscribed individuals, were a common occurrence in all of the zones of control and did not follow a set pattern in terms of how the information was presented. The “White, Grey, and Black List for Information Control Purposes” dated
November 1, 1946, is the most comprehensive in terms of the information it provides. It gives the year, and place of birth, as well as the current address and profession of the applicants. Other lists, while not as thorough in terms of locating and identifying the applicant, did sometimes provide the reason for a license having been rejected and the organizations, or people, the applicant was in some way related to. Despite indications from some ICD officers, the lists current in the various sectors were exchanged on a regular basis with the understanding that lists established in one sector would be honoured in all sectors. This, however, may have been more theoretical in nature than actual practice. That is to say, the lists may have officially been exchanged, but may not
160

have been passed on to the DISCC level or enforced once it did arrive there. In any case, there still seems to have been instances of individuals having been blacklisted in one sector moving to another sector and being able to work there with no difficulty.
332
While the lists emminating from the Soviets seemed to have had little effect on the blacklists in the western sectors and the French showed little interest in the cultural issues, there was considerable cooperation between the British and the Americans. This may be seen in the number of British lists appearing the American archived files and vice versa.
333
The blacklisting of publishers went further afield than only those located only in
Germany. The “vetting” included Swedish and Swiss publishers as well, though the authorities were not able to enforce their procedures on these individuals and entities. A
February 1945 PWD (Psychological Warfare Division) document intended as preparation for post-war control procedures in occupied Germany provides insight into how far the Americans were willing to go.
334
They used the 1941 members list of the
Börsenverein der deutschen Buchhändler zu Leipzig
as the basis for their list of publishers to be investigated. Publishers such as Braus-Riggenbach (formerly Henning
Oppermann) were blacklisted though they were located in Switzerland. Braus-
Riggenbach was accused of being “strictly pro-Nazi” with the owner having close ties the former editor of the Swiss Nazi paper Neue Basler Zeitung . A further publisher,
Francke A.G. of Berne, was found to have “dispatched German propaganda periodicals to the United States” and was thus also blacklisted. Some of the firms had reached arrangements with the PWD, like Hug & Co. of Winterthur and Zurich. The owners,
332 History II 66-67.
333 An example from October 15, 1947 may be found in RG 260 OMGUS 5/268-2/17
Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
334 RG 260 5/265-3/12 Bundesachiv Koblenz
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Adolf Hug Senior and Junior, signed an undertaking with the Allies “submitting to
Allied control of their exports and neutral imports.”
While the ICD could censor the production of books produced in post-war
Germany, it had to also keep a close watch over material that survived the war. In an effort to control the trade of the surviving stocks of books the ICD regularly read and vetted communications between publishers and their dealers. An example of this is an intercepted invoice from the C.H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung sent to Das
Bücherkabinett
located at 14/16 Königstrasse in Hamburg. The censorship form indicates that the invoice was sent on the 7th of November 1945 and postmarked on the
8th of November. The intercepted document was examined on the 17th of November and was found to contain billings for four works by Walter Flex:
335
Demetrius
336
,
Frauenrevoire
337
, Wallenstein
338
, and a final item simply named Novels. The censor further notes that “according to the second edition of the Neue Zeitung books by Walter
Flex have been banned.”
339
Unfortunately the records do not indicate what the result of the investigations. Most likely it ended up the same as that of the Klostermann publishing house, which was found guilty of having produced works by Ernst Jünger, an author who was banned, and was subsequently stripped of its license to publish.
340
In addition, a warning was sent out to publishers of the dangers of releasing material that the ICD did not approve of.
335 Born 1887, died 1917. His works were used by the National Socialsists to indoctrinate the youth with nationalist ideals.
336 Initially published in 1910.
337 This title must have been copied in error, since it does not appear that Flex published a book with this title.
338 Initially published under the name Wallensteins Antlitz. Gesichte und Geschichten aus dem
Dreißigjährigen Krieg in 1916.
339 Bundesarchiv Koblenz OMGUS RG 260 5/265-3/12.
340 RG 260 5/269-1/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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There are a few things that call attention to themselves here. The first is the meticulous nature of the ICD overwatch of the publishing industry. A second point is that the ICD covered every avenue in trying to ensure that the German publishing industry complied with their list of proscribed authors. A final point is that the overt newspaper Neue Zeitung was used to indicate to disseminate to the German publishing industry as well as ordinary people which specific authors were banned in post-war
Germany. It was, afterall, the mandate of the Neue Zeitung to communicate the wishes of the Military Governments to the German people.
The Vetting Process
Many scholars have correctly concluded that the Americans were slow to react to the ideological void in post-war Germany. They note that the Soviets were much quicker off the mark, because they knew what they wanted to accomplish: the integration of
Germany into their sphere of influence and the establishment of a soviet-style government. Moreover, they had a large cadre of trusted Germans who had escaped to the Soviet Union for political reason, who now became their willing collaborators. The
British on the other hand were far more pragmatic in their approach and were willing to make deals, if not with the Devil then certainly with some of his henchmen, just to keep
Germany functioning so as not to drawn too much energy away from the rebuilding of their own devastated country. As noted earlier, the French according to American sources were too busy trying to exact reparations from their Zone of Control to pay too much attention to this aspect of their occupation of Germany. The Americans, however, could be considered the idealists of the group. One really has the impression that they wanted to get it right. The Office of the Military Governor, United States (OMGUS) was meticulous in screening out undesirables from the publishing industry and tried to apply
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“scientific” principles to their practices, as will be demonstrated in the following pages.
It was a practice which continued until May of 1949.
341
While practices may have varied somewhat, Felix Reichmann outlined the basics of the procedure in The Publisher’s Weekly in November of 1946:
The applicant had to file three Military Government questionnaires and three detailed business and personal questionnaires with Publications Control. After a thorough and comprehensive interview by an official of Publications Control the applicant had to submit a publishing program for one year worked out in specific titles. Then the whole file was transmitted to Intelligence Branch which again interviewed the applicant and his references. If both branches agreed that the applicant was eligible for a publisher's license a recommendation to this effect was submitted to the Commanding Officer of the Information Control Division.
If Berlin Headquarters concurred with the opinion of the Land, a license was issued.
342
History II adds some detail to the how the applicants were handled and the results of the
ICD’s investigations. The reason the final decision was made in Berlin was due to the
Americans consulting what has become known as the Berlin Document Center to verify the information they had garnered from the process. This was the central repository of documents relating to all facets of National Socialist Germany that had been captured at the end of the war.
343
For the purposes of the ICD, the files of the Reichskulturkammer were the most significant source to verify the statements made by an applicant. Since everyone who had worked in the information services of the Third Reich had to be a member of the Reichskulturkammer , it would verify what the Nazis thought of a particular applicant or whether the applicant had lied about affiliation with the Nazi
Party. It should be noted that membership in one of the branches of the
341 Wehdeking and Blamberger 28.
342 Reichmann 2811.
343 While the target was to gather evidence against the Nazi regime, th reality of the matter is that the Allies confiscated every document they found, many of them dated into the 19 th century.
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Reichskulturkammer did not mean that an individual could not be given a “White A” designation.
344 What they were looking for was the basic honesty of the individual they were considering.
Passing the stringent test of character and receiving a license from the proper authorities did not mean that careful scrutiny did not continue. Each individual publisher was required to police himself in regard to what what published under the following guidelines set by the Military Government, which forbade the following topics:
6.
Criticism of the Allied Government and interference with the Military
Government.
7.
Racial or Religious discriminations.
8.
Propagation of militaristic ideas including Pan-Germanism and German
Imperialism.
9.
National-socialistic or related “völkisch” [sic] ideas.
10.
Fascist or anti-democratic ideas.
345
In Reichmann’s description one finds the innocuous line “the whole file was transmitted to Intelligence Branch which again interviewed the applicant and his references.” However, the intelligence interviews were more than simple interviews. In fact, the intelligence interviews spoken of could take three days, or even a week, to complete and involved the potential licensees being isolated at one of the camps set aside for the vetting Germans for ICD purposes. The American installation was located at Bad Orb and the British conducted their interviews at Bad Oeynhausen.
The first potential licensees went through the Bad Orb facility on November 6,
1945. Archival documents indicate that the ICD continually tried to improve their ability to identify those who were and were not suitable for licensed functions under the
344 See page 52 for a table indicating organizations that did not disqualify an individual from being designated “White A”. This designation allowed licensees to occupy the highest positions within an information services outlet.
345 Ibid.
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Military Government. In an evaluation of the ICD screening centre written some time after February 17, 1946, recommendations are taken from both officers running the program and potential licensees.
346
Some of the responses received from the candidate might be considered to be overly obsequious. One of those interviewed simply identified as Dr. S., stated that he had a high regard for the knowledgable staff and “could have stayed there 3 weeks, rather than just 3 days.” 347 Dr. S. also made further comment in regard to the IQ tests administered during the interview process, suggesting that vocational item be included to ensure that those licensed were technically able to produce that which the ICD expected of them. Suspicion is cast on the his motives for wanting to stay longer by a later interviewee, an entertainer identified as G., who pointed out that he appreciated the food and accommodations, which were better than the average German experienced in everyday life.
348
Initially, the interview caused tremendous anxiety among many of the candidates. A Mr. P. was an early candidate that went through the facility, when the candidates were not told the purpose of the excursion they were asked to take. They
“were merely asked to take a trip of three days duration.” 349
He also commented on the clever way in which he was being questioned. The interrogators would, for example, engage him in a discussion about philosophy. He noted that he was impressed with the way in which the conversation was led in such a way that the interrogators could feel out his attitudes about society and human relations. The approach was generally friendly,
Mr. G, who had been questioned by a Dr. Levy and Mr. Bernard did not at all feel that he was before an examining committee, but that the approach likened that of a conversation between friends. While this was the general trend, Mr. P. reports that as he was preparing to leave, he was questioned a final time along the “old police lines.” The report indicates that this was indeed the case and was used as a demonstration using two
346 “Evaluation of the ICD Screening Centre.” NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 70
347 Ibid 1.
348 Ibid 2.
349 Ibid 2.
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of the applicants in order to determine how reliable the results of the previous three days of interrogation had been.
The reports generated by the vetting process also reveal how some of the officers in the ICD felt about how the whole denazification processes was functioning. A 1 st
Leutenant Paul E. Moeller, who was an intelligence officer attached to the Military
Government in Bavaria, felt that “mental nazidom must rate on par – at least – with proved Party membership.” 350 He went on to say that the ICD’s process was able to add this layer to the official denazification process, should the Military Government issue that directive. This comment seems to indicate that the ICD process went beyond that of the official denazification process. Individuals going through the ICD process being held to a higher standard.
While at Bad Orb, candidates were subjected to an impressive array of psychological tests. These tests often determined whether an individual received a license. At some time around February 1946 a report entitled “Contribution of
Psychiatric and Psychological Study to the ICD Screening Centre” was written.
351
At this point fewer than 50 candidates had been processed. The case studies presented, 25 in total, amounted to a little more than 50% of the total number of applicants. The goals of the psychiatric and psychological tests were specific:
6.
Determination of mental status . This was considered a deciding factor in six of the 25 case studies. It was considered more important than the political reliability of a candidate.
7.
Determination of personality structure . This was intended to keep those characters out of office who were authoritarian, militaristic, domineering, brutal, or intriguers etc. The concern was that such characters would perpetuate a psychology that was sympathetic to power politics and aggressive wars. It was intended to favour those who had broad sympathies, tolerated criticism and were generally “democratic” in the sense of respecting their fellow men. It was noted
350 Ibid 3.
351 NARA RG 260 390/42/16/5-6 Box 70.
167

that the reason some of the candidates had been classified as “White” was due to questions related to the fitness of their personality. This was the case in 8 of the
25 case studies.
8.
Determination of Nazi and anti-Nazi status . The ICD was aware that some of the candidates would attempt to simulate anti-Nazi attitudes. The problem was that they often had no concrete evidence. They determined that they could learn a great deal from individuals in relation to this from a study of their childhood history and personality through the use of spectial attitude tests. These tests often decided the issue or confirmed or challenged assumptions made as a result of political analysis of the applicants. All of the individuals in the case studies were seen as examples of this.
9.
Determination of special capacities or incapacities . In certain candidates special qualifications of leadership, originality, or what was simply called
“superior endowment” were brought to the attention of the referring agents.
Such candidates were marked as especially useful. Of course, the lack of these capacities or inadequate intelligence was likewise determined. Of the 25 case studies 7 were seen as example of this being significant.
10.
Evidense . The psychiatric studies were also to assist in determining the reliability of statements made by the candidates. Seven of the 25 individuals represented in the study were there to determine the voracity of the applicant’s previous statements.
352
Of the 25 case studies, the professions break down as follows: 8 Publishers, 5 Theatre
Directors, 5 Radio Engineers, 5 Film Directors or Producers, 2 Actors or Entertainers.
The abstracts of the case studies reveal some interesting findings on the part of the psychiatrists and psychologists of Bad Orb. For example, one of the publishers had a number of doubtful points on his political record and appeared to collaborate with the
352 Ibid. Adapted from “Contribution of Psychiatric and Psychological Study to the I.C.D.
Screening Centre.”
168

Nazis in order to maintain ownership of his publishing company. He, however, gave a favourable impression overall. The psychological assessment was said to have revealed a very passive personality that was never able to withstand any requirement of a despotic father. Though he was inwardly antagonistic toward authority, he could not be relied upon to withstand any pressure. This served to confirm that he had made concessions to the Party and had collaborated. His application was rejected on both political and personal grounds. Another publisher was recommended for a license even though it appeared that he had exploited “the Jewish situation through ownership of a
Jewish movie studio.” The political portion of the interrogation revealed that no exploitation had occurred, which was confirmed by the psychiatric study. In fact, it was discovered that he would make an ideal candidate for the ICD. The questionable ethics were simply overlooked in this case. A questionable past was not always held against an individual as will be seen later.
A third publisher was in a somewhat unique situation. He was found to be an ardent anti-Nazi. He had been severely beaten by the SA in 1933 and it was found that he still suffered from disturbances of his equilibrium and confusion in thinking as a result. The recommendation was that the license be granted but that he be given special guidance in his work.
The inability to work with others was deemed a liability for a fourth publisher.
While he had engaged in some questionable activities in the past, this alone was not sufficient to deny him a license. However, the ICD did not wish to encourage “one-man shows” too often.
The psychiatric diagnosis of individual applicants was also often decisive in that it was used to explain the actions of some who appeared to have an otherwise clear record. This was the case with an applicant who had initially served as the Chief
Engineer of a radio station. The problem was that he had taken out a membership in the
SA, though he had apparently taken no active role in the organization and had received no special advantage from the Nazi Party. He was, however, able to prove that he had rendered assistance to a resistance group. The psychiatric report found strong anxiety
169

states in the individual. It concluded that he took out membership in the SA due to having been in a panicy phase and then later tried to undo the damage. Politically, he was a recognized as “Black”, but with the caveat that it was only in a “technical” sense.
He was refused the license as Chief Engineer, but was recommended for an assistant technical job. This was a task that could be performed by someone classified as “Grey
Acceptable” and not “Black”. It is apparent that the ICD was somewhat pragmatic in its approach to licensing and it may be the case that the tightness of the process is questionable, despite the officially strong stance taken by the Head of Intelligence,
Toombs.
Once the candidates passed through Bad Orb and were granted licenses, it was not the end of the examination. Scrutiny of the licensees continued for some time after.
In some of the case it was noted that they should be watched or “helped” once licensed.
“Helped” was often used in a euphemistic manner to indicate that a candidate could not be fully trusted, but might prove helpful to the cause. A statement such as this does not necessarily mean that it was actively watched on a continual basis, but, in at least one of the cases, it more than an idle threat.
There was significant doubt about the reliability of an applicant, who wanted to produce films in Germany. He had lived and prospered in Italy and France for seven years and then returned to Germany. He had worked as a “cutter”
353
and was not considered to have had any influence on the final product coming out of the UFA studios. He had passed the political portion of the examination. However, the psychiatric portion of the exam revealed that he was “rather unstable, immature, and not to be trusted in a leading position.” He was thus recommended for an assistant’s job. At the end of the abstract a parenthetical note is included which states, “Conclusion verified by later observation” and indication that he had been kept under close observation upon taking up his position.
354
353 Film editor.
354 “Contribution of Psychiatric and Psychological Study to the I.C.D. Screening Centre.”
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Documents reveal that actual practice may in some instances have been more rigorous than described in the histories. ICD documentation clearly states that although an individual may have been cleared and officially denazified by the Spruchkammer , the
ICD could still deny the individual clearance to work in any of the areas under its control.
355 On the other hand, in some instances the ICD seemed to go to considerable lengths in justifying the inclusion of a candidate they might consider particularly useful.
There were other motivations for including or excluding candidates from the ranks of licensed publishers. Some of this had to do with the positive rather than negative goals of the ICD. Negative goals would be those that involved keeping publishers out who might attack Military Government policies or publish militaristic materials. Positive goals would involve the publication of works that would support the
“democratic” and anti-nazi education of the German people. There was thus a large grey area of material that might be considered harmless enough, but of no particular help in moving the political goals of the ICD forward. The tolerance given these potential publishers would have been the shortage of paper. A November 16, 1945 report written by Heinz Berggruen and R.B. Redlich on nine potential licensees who had submitted insufficient publishing plans explains that of these 9, three did not submit a list of titles and were rejected immediately.
356
A further five were found to have programs that had little more than titles of very limited value. Of the nine only one was found to have a particularly ambitious publishing plan. Heinrich Ledig of Stuttgart proposed to revive the well-known Rowohlt Verlag. However, even with this application it was thought that
“no particular effort has been made to search for books and other materials that will fit
355 RG 260 5/268-2/17 Bundesarchiv Koblenz
356 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, OMGUS RG 260 5/265-3/12. Heinz Berggruen had emigrated to the
United States from Wilmersdorf in 1936. He was a friend of Picasso and a renown art collector. In 1944 he returned to Europe as an American Soldier. He was initially stationed in Berlin and then was transferred to Munich. Shortly there after he was one of the founding employees of UNESCO.
171

the present needs.” In the end, Ledig managed to get the enterprise off the ground. In total the Ledig application included 29 titles. Some of the samples provided in the report include:
 “Poems” by Erich Kaestner

Translations of Thomas Wolfe's novels

Friederic Prokosch's 357 novels

A new political novel by Oskar Marie Fontana,
358

A history of Astronomy

A History of Plagues and Epidemics

A Biography of Heinrich Mann.
In addition, he wished to publish a literary monthly entitled “Die Arena” and a children's magazine edited by Erich Kaestner entitled Der Pinguin .
This report indicates that in the end perhaps the final deciding factor was the usefulness of the works an individual wanted to publish. That is, if they did not demonstrate that they would help inculcate the ideas of collective guilt, denazification, or demilitarization they were not high priorities.
357 An American author who had spent considerable time in Germany and Austria in his youth.
Many of his novels were indeed translated into German between 1946 and 1954.
358 He went on to become a theatre critic, but did not enjoy much success as a writer. He also edited a work entitled Heldenkampfe der Kaiserschützen1914-1918 : nach berichten von Mitkämpfern bearbeitet im Ministerium für Landesverteidigung .
172

Censorship and Control
Censorship is a strange thing that takes place in almost all nations regardless of whether constitutions or parliamentary bodies are in place to protect against it. One can only speak of degrees of freedom and not the black and white world most would like to impose on the discourse surrounding censorship. Ironically, even the ICD in Germany recognized this when they categorized individuals as black, grey, or white and then further subdivided the grey and white rubrics into degrees of “whiteness” or “greyness.”
There is even evidence that some of the more idealistic ICD officers wondered whether what they were doing was in accord with the ideals they brought them to Germany.
359
The ICD went through distinct phases in how it approached censorship in
Germany. Initially, there was a period during which nothing other than OMGUS sanctioned documents could be produced. This was supported by Law 191, which had been agreed to by the four Allied Powers. It effectively took control of Germany’s entire cultural industry:
The printing, production, publication, distribution, sale and commercial lending of all newspapers, magazines, periodicals, books, pamphlets, posters, printed music and other printed or otherwise mechanically preproduced publications, of sound recordings and motion picture films; and the activities or operation of all news and photographic services and agencies, of radio broadcastiong and television stations and systems, of wired radio systems; and the activities or operation of all theatres, cinemas, opera houses, film studios, film laboraties, film exchanges, fairs, circuses, carnival houses and other places of theatrical or musical entertainment and the production or presentation of motion pictures, plays, concerts, operas, and performances using actors or musicians are prohibited.
360
359 Questioning the policy when they were in service could have have been equated with insubordination. It might well explain why a blind eye was turned to certain transgressions on the part of the German licensees. It is after the war, when these individuals began to write on their experiences that one gets the impression that some are still trying to justify what they were a part of. See Breitenkamp.
360
Control of Publications, Radio Broadcasting, News Services, Films, Theaters, and Music:
SHAEF Military Government Law NO. 191, Amended (1).” In: Germany 1947-1949: The Story in
173

While Robert Shandley limits his commentary to the German film industry, his sentiment can be applied more broadly when he suggests that almost six months before the end of the war the Allies had already blacked out the means by which the Nazis had created a German community.
361
The fact that the initial version of the Law 191 allowed the Allies to impose capital punishment on those who did not act in accordance with the law would have made certain of maximum, though not necessarily total, compliance. On
May 12, 1945 an amendment was passed that allowed for the licensing of the media and in November 1945 capital punishment was replaced with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
There is further evidence that the Allies carefully studied the Nazi approach to
“censorship” in the Reich. They then used what they had learned in the post-war as an effective means of controlling the German publishing industry. A secret document produced by the British CSDIC, based on interviews with the POWs 1st Lt. Wolfgang
Brandstetter, former manager of the Tauschntz publishing firm in Leipzig, and Lt. Heinz
Schroeder, son of the owner of a Berlin printing firm, provided vital insights into how censorship in Germany functioned. While the report is filled with many fascinating details, its most interesting feature is the description of censorship in Germany 1933-
1939 as having a “Sword of Damacles” quality, in that there was no censorship of works of fiction, and that publishers were allowed to publish what they wished.
362
It is only afterward, that a publisher might be declared politically unreliable. This would have led to financial ruin. This is effectively the same strategy employed by the ICD in the final phase of its licensing of German publishers. The effect was that publishers were very mindful of what they published, never going near the works that they were sure could pass muster with the ICD. Post-censorship was perhaps more desirable than precensorship for the Military government in that it always allowed the ICD deniability
Documents.
United States Department of State, Office of Public Affairs, Publication #3556, European and British Commonwealth Series 9, March 1950.
361 Shandley 10.
362 RG 260 5/265-3/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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should difficulties arise. Moreover, it was perhaps the most effective approach to conditioning the German publishers into acting in ways that would assure long term compliance with the policies of the ICD, even after the ICD had been disbanded.
Practices and approches to issues would become policy in German publishing houses and then simply the usual way of doing business. These practices would take on an inertia all their own, making them almost immovable in the foreseeable future.
The goal from the very beginning was for censorship to remain as covert as possible. For this reason the ICD relied far more on coercion that the outright exercise of power. However, there is evidence that the ICD took overt action from 1945 to 1947.
However, after 1946 the incidents of overt censorship and sanction become rarer and the control exercised is more refined, though not necessarily less effective.
Publishers, booksellers, libraries, radio services and film studio were subject
ICD investigation and their licenses or registrations were very much held at the pleasure of the individuals who controlled the local ICD outposts. There is a subtle difference in the way that booksellers and libraries were controlled. The distribution points were registered rather than licensed. This meant that they did not need to initially meet the strict criteria set for those who actually produced the material. They operated under the assumption that they could prove that they were willing to comply with what was considered accaeptable for the German people. The producers, on the other hand, had to prove before the fact that they were going to remain within the stated regulations and needed to prove that they had not been tainted through involvement with the NSDAP. A further consideration was that there were so many more distributors than producers. This made the decision to concentrate on the producers a matter of practicality. This led to what appears to be a rather uneven application of the regulations that blanketed the U.S.
Zone.
ICD reports and memoranda provide examples of how thorough the ICD was in its overwatch of the German cultural industry. A November 25, 1946 report on
175

violations and penalties for Bavaria, Greater Hesse, and Württemberg—Baden 363 provides the following statistics: 364
Kind of Violation
Falsefication of Fragebogen
Printing without permission
Illegal publications
Poor quality
Lending objectionable books
Selling of objectionable books
Distribution or sale without registration
Lending library without registration
Violation of MG regulations
Offence to U.S.A.
Political reasons
Using “Verlag” without permission
STATEMENT OF VIOLATIONS
Bavaria
1
9
4
7
1
23
Antisemitic activity
Moral crime and fraud
Printing unacceptable authors 365
Publishing without license
Revocation of license
Suspension (timely)
Closing of business (timely)
Under property control
Fine in marks
Jail
Hard labor
Restriction of publications
Warning
Official reprimand
Circulation stopped
Statement of Penalties
3
25
3
3
14
7
2
2
1
3
5
1
Gr. Hesse
7
8
8
1
1
2
7
20
12
1
5
5
1
2
2
4
3
Wttbg.-Baden
2
2
2
1
4
3
6
5
3
2
2
363 This is the designation used during the initial occupation as opposed to the current Baden—
Württemberg.
364 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
365 This and the following categories were added added later by hand. Though there are no numbers listed, individual reports from the “outposts” indicate that these were used operationally.
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Unfortunately, the document does not provide a chronological context with which to work other than the date on which it was created. Some of the associated documents from the various outposts note the the start date for their reporting was July 1945. The statistics contained in the associated documents, however, do not support this time frame because of the sheer number of violations listed in the individual reports.
Although one may not be able to provide a specific time frame for the report, other than the end date, of greater interest perhaps are the types of violations that were actionable with penalties and how they are spread through the three
Länder
being reported. This last point may point to specific emphases of the officers in control in a given area. For example, in Bavaria there are 23 cases of objectionable books having been lent out by libraries, with no such violations reported in either Greater Hesse nor
Württemberg—Baden. On the other hand, Greater Hesse reported far more violations that could be categorized as political in nature. This would include everything from applicant falsifying their past political affiliations on the Fragebogen to a category simply and aptly entitled “political reason.”
For a more detailed picture of the how German cultural industry weas monitored and sanctioned the “outpost” reports and correspondence between the various levels of the ICD provide the necessary details. A complete catalogue of what may be found in these files is far too large a task for the present work, so a few representative examples will have to suffice.
On the May 6, 1947 the ICD Publications Branch reported penalties meted out to various publishers in the US Zone. What is significant about this report is that it lists not only who was penalized, but why they were sanctioned. The Amatheo Verlag of
Schliersee, approximately 50 kms south of Munich, had its license revoked on April 18,
1946 for the following reasons: “Disagreement between the members of the firm,”
“Unauthorized publication: ‘Hints to the Tobacco farmers,’” and “The publishing program was very poor and not one book of the program has been produced.”
366
Even the famous Cotta-Verlag was not immune from the ICD. The licensed post-war
366 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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custodian of the publishing house, Dr. Kurt Port, had his license revoked by the ICD on
July 2, 1946 for “try[ing] to evade MG regulations” by “publish[ing] poems having militaristic character.”
367
The Leo Lehnen Verlag, which later published some rather significant titles in the 1950s had its license revoked revoked on November 7, 1946 for
Lehnen’s activities with the NSDAP in 1938 and 1939. It found that he “did not fill out his Fragebogen entirely honestly.”
368
While Lehnen had been dishonest in completing his Fragebogen , Gustav Askani of Quell-Verlag, which later went on to be an important publisher of materials for the Evangelical church in Germany, was found guilty of perhaps a more serious infraction. Askani was found to have tried “to evade MG regulations by writing a letter to a Mr. Ilgenstein advising him to falsify his Fragebogen in order to get the permission to publish his book ‘Freudige Menschen.’” A Wilhelm
Ilgenstein did eventually publish Du bist meines Gottes Gab with Quell-Verlag in 1951, amoung other titles with other publishers, but for the time being Askani’s license to publish was revoked in September of 1946. The final example taken from this document is that of Hans Klassen of Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe, who operated the Neu-Sommerfelder
Jugend Verlag. This appears to have been a publishing house specializing in the works for the youth of the Sommerfelder Mennonite church in Germany. The transgression in this case was “making incorrect statements about the backgrounds of his authors,” so on
June 5, 1947 his license was revoked.
369
The list of penalties reveals something else as well. At about this time Alfred
Toombs, Head of Intelligence for the ICD, indicated that it appeared that it was the religious publishers who usually did not abide by ICD regulations. The above list does suggest that Toombs may have been right in his assessment.
For the most part offenses against the ICD regulations, specifically Laws 8 and
191, were dealt with through the revocations of licenses and the closure of business premises. Some simply received reprimands. There was, however, a more severe aspect to the penalties handed down to Germans who did not abide by the rules. A document
367 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
368 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
369 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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produced by the Office of the Military Government U.S. Berlin District on November
22, 1946 demonstrates how severe some of these punishments could be. For example,
Horst Grunsch, who operated a department store at Hasenheide 16 in the Neuköln district, had his license suspended for 4 weeks on August 28, 1946 as a result of what was called “illicit trade in sheet music.” Most likely the music was of a militaristic nature. On the other hand, on May 21, 1946 Dr. Herbert Schmidt-Lamberg of
Schöneberg received one-year imprisonment for publishing without a license.
The ICD branch overseeing activities in Greater Hesse, administered by Lt. Col.
Anthony Kleitz, seems to have have been concerned with the number of licenses that may have been revoked in its district. In a report written on November 5, 1946 a handwritten note appears on the bottom of the cover page indicating that no licenses had been revoked. In fact, when one looks at the cover page for the Berlin area report, it also contains a refence to no revocation having taken place. It seems that there was considerable concern in regard to this type of action being undertaken. Though no explanation exists for these notes, it seems that the ICD felt it important to be able to say that they were not in the business of closing down publishers. Inspite of being able to say that they did not revoke licenses, some of their other actions would most certainly have ensured compliance on the part of publishers. In Darmstadt outpost a Walter
Messner of Bensheim was found guilty by the ICD of having “offended [the] USA” and was sentenced to 6 months in jail.
370
Though their penalties were less severe, both Kurt
Schauer of the Börsenblatt des deutschen Buchhandels and Vittorio Klostermann, both early and trusted licensees of the ICD, received official reprimands. In the case of
Schauer the publication of the Börsenblatt was temporarily halted for having been in violation of ICD instructions. Klostermann, who had published a work by an unacceptable author, Georg Friedrich Jünger’s Die Perfektion der Technik , escape with only a reprimand.
In Bavaria the penalties seemed to be more severe than elsewhere in the
American Zone. The October 23, 1946 report from the Military Government ICD
370 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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Branch Chief in Bavaria,
371
Laurence Dalcher, reports that August Küper of Rothenburg o. d. Tauber was found guilty on December 11, 1945 of having printed an unauthorized calendar with advertising, for which he received a 10,000 mark fine in addition to 6 months at hard labour. Even the unauthorized mimeographing of reading material could lead to difficulties. Conrad Willecke of Munich was sentenced on December 19, 1945 to
1-year of prison at Stadelheim for the copying and sale of concentration camp literature.
Though it may not properly fit under the rubric of censorship, food was used as a means of keeping those in publishing, the news media, radio, and film in line with official ICD policy. People working in those industries were declared essential workers by the ICD. This meant that they received double rations and were allowed to eat in the military commissaries.
372
The ICD even took steps to have German media personnel declared Military Government employees during the noon meal period so that they could partake in the noon day meal at the Military Government’s expense. This was not just for those who worked on the periphery of the ICD itself, but those who worked for private concerns and were simply licencees of the ICD. This ensured their compliance when it came to matters concerning what the ICD would like to see brought before the people. It encouraged a self-censorship that was born out of self-interest, because no one receiving double rations in addition to free meals was going act in a way that would jeopardize this arrangement. It achieved a further goal. Since it was self-censorship it was not necessary to engage in overt censorship that would tend to undermine the message they were trying to convey.
371 RG 260 15/154-2/12 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
372 RG 260 5/269-1/7 Bundesarchiv Koblenz.
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Returning POW’s: A Case Study
In November of 1944, Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War, received a proposal from a group headed by Professor Warren A. Seavey of the Harvard Law
School. In the proposal Seavey suggested “that German prisoners of war in the United
States receive a fuller education on the ideals of democracy through a definite program.” 373 Stimson, subsequent to receiving the proposal, sent two letters to the
Harvard branch of the American Defense Organization of which Seavey was vice chairman. In these letters Stimson outlines his reasons for rejecting the proposal. The main reason he gives for his considering the Seavey proposal to be unworkable is that he, along with the War Department, felt that such a procedure “would be met with suspicion, hostility and resistance.”
374
While Stimson concentrated on how such a program would garner results opposite of what the United States wanted to achieve, it appears more likely that he was reacting to the suggestion that the Seavey group wanted to have civilians conduct a survey in the prisoner of war camps in an effort to determine which of the prisoners “might be amenable to reeducation.”
375
Finally, Stimson points out that the War Department had “for a long time been separating cooperative and noncooperative prisoners,”
376
indicating that the War Department was quite satisfied with what was already being done.
Regardless of Stimson’s public rejection of the Seavey proposal, a plan that was in most respects identical to that suggested by Seavey was already underway. Evidence of this may be found in an article written for the New York Times by Dana Adams
373 Special to The New York Times . “Stimson Rejects Plan to Teach Nazi War Prisoners
Democracy.” New York Times 30 November 1944: 5.
374 Ibid.
375 Ibid.
376 Ibid.
181

Schmidt in 1946.
377 She interviewed former prisoners of war holding what were described as key posts in post-war Germany. Most reported that they had begun their reeducation program in August of 1944, a full three months before Stimson rejected such a plan as unworkable. Of course, this should not be surprising, because for a program like this to be effective it is best to have it operate covertly.
While most of those involved became minor functionaries and and served in the
German police service. Some were in a position to have a much greater impact. Indeed, one might conclude that the “Special Prisoners” project had a significant impact on the overall development of Western Europe. For example, in the “Photographic Record.
Former Special Prisoners Engaged in their Present Jobs as Civilians” one finds a picture of Dr. Walter Hallstein of the Universität Frankfurt am Main, who later became the first
President of the European Commission, in his office.
378
Though the records give only sparse information, and could not anticipate his future importance in the development of
Europe, it is clear that Hallstein was considered one of their successes even at this early juncture.
While quite a few of the special prisoners took on leading editorial roles in
Germany’s cultural industry, Alfred Andersch and Hans Richter take a special place within this group of special prisoners for two reasons. Andersch and Richter were the motivating force behind the Gruppe 47 , which was the most important literary organization in post-war Germany dedicated, at least initially, to encouraging young
German authors. The second is their apparent falling out with the Military Government authorities. Both had been part not only of the prisoner of war newspaper Der Ruf , but were also later part of the so-called “Rhode Island Project.”
377 Adams Schmidt, Dana. “German Captives Push Democracy.” New York Times 9 June 1944:
33.
378 National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, RG 389 290/34/29/4 Box 1604.
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Once a part of the “Rhode Island Project,” or, as it was referred to by some, “ die
Gehirn-Fabrik ,” 379 prisoners attended lectures given by a number of educators from leading American Universities. In fact, Peter Demetz notes that Andersch attended the lectures enthusiastically.
380 The hope was to establish a new intellectual elite in
Germany. Some of the topics covered were: American Studies, 381 American History and
Political Science, 382 German History.
383 This new elite, it was hoped, would owe their allegiance to the American democratic system. It was further anticipated that they would in turn be able to impose these values on German cultural and political life after the war.
The re-education process for a German POW began shortly after the soldier was captured. Following an initial questioning, it was determined to what degree the individual adhered to National Socialist doctrine. At this point the prisoners were separated into two distinct groups. One group consisted of those who were deemed antifascist. These were designated “White.” The other, much larger, group was comprised of general prisoners who did not display the requisite political attitudes. They were designated “Black.” In total there were an estimated 375,000 German prisoners held in the United States.
384
Of this, according to Wehdeking, approximately 15,000 were segregated as anti-Nazis and were housed in separate camps.
385
The number suggested
379 Wehdeking 23. “Die Gehirn-Fabrik” was used in referring to Fort Getty.
380 Peter Demetz, After the Fires: Recent Writing in the Germanies, Austria and Switzerland (San
Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986) 8.
381 Taught by Howard M. Jones, Harvard University and President of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences.
382 Taught by Thomas V. Smith, University of Chicago, he was also director of the program.
383 Taught by Arnold Wolfers and Fritz Mommsen both of Yale University and Henry Ehrmann of the Institute of World Affairs, New York.
384 Volker Christian Wehdeking, Der Nullpunkt. Über die Konstituierung der deutschen
Nachkriegsliteratur (1945-1948) in den amerikanischen Kriegsgefangenenlagern . (Stuttgart: J.B.
Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1971), 3.
385 Wehdeking 6.
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by Wehdeking is debatable, since it is reported that approximately 26,000 German prisoners went through the reeducation program according to news reports of the time.
386
There was also a practical aspect to their education. Numerous specialists were brought to the camp from Washinton D.C. to instruct the “students” in English.
Moreover, American military personnel also gave lectures on administration and military government in preparation for the roles they might take in Germany upon their return.
387
The prisoners who successfully completed the course of study began returning to Germany in October of 1945 and were expected to aid in the governance of occupied
Germany.
388
As mentioned above, two of the more notable figures to emerge from the Rhode
Island Project were Alfred Andersch and Hans Werner Richter. Together they were the ostensible editors, under the watchful eyes of Allied Information Control Officers, of the initial version of Der Ruf , the most extensively circulated of the POW newspapers. This journal, however, was to take on a second incarnation after the end of hostilities. Upon their return to Germany, Andersch and Richter obtained one of the first licenses to published and continued Der Ruf as a literary journal. In it, they hoped to create a forum in which not only literary issues were discussed but the deeper philosophical problems facing post-war Germany. Publication continued until April of 1947, when the Military Government cancelled its license.
389
386 Adams Schmidt, Dana. “German Captives Push Democreacy.” New York Times 9 June 1944:
33.
387 Wehdeking 23.
388 “German Captives Trained Here.” New York Times 21 October 1945: 5.
389 The reasons given for Der Ruf 's license being lifted are unclear. Wehdeking (139) reports that it was due to the nihilistic tone of the articles appearing in its pages. However, Ralf Schnell, in Die
Literatur der Bundesrepublik Autoren, Geschichte, Literaturbetrieb , reports that Der Ruf was suspended due to its critical position towards Allied politics and the concept of collective guilt as sponsored by the western Allies. (Schnell 82).
184

The reasons for this are debatable and unclear. Wehdeking (139) reports that it was due to the nihilistic tone of the articles appearing in its pages. However, Ralf
Schnell, in Die Literatur der Bundesrepublik Autoren, Geschichte, Literaturbetrieb , reports that Der Ruf was suspended due to its critical position towards Allied politics and the concept of collective guilt as sponsored by the western Allies (Schnell 82). One of the more recent monographs on the situation of non-ICD journals in Germany sheds little additional light on the situation. Clare Flanagan simply reiterates the already existing theories, but does note that the cut in the number of copies allowed to be published by the authorities may well have been a warning to the editors of Der Ruf
(Flanagan 152).
There may be some merit in Wehdeking’s assertion. The ICD did want uplifting stories to appear, especially as the world teetered on the brink of the Cold War.
Schnell’s position is a little more difficult to defend, because Military Government documents reveal that its policy was deeply divided on this point. The clarification that eventually came from the ICD on the 16 th
of January 1946, fully one year before the ban on Der Ruf , unequivocally states as policy that “one cannot condemn all Germans – invoking a racial theory in reverse.”
390
The reasons for the ban as stated by Schnell would thus be inconsistent with ICD policy. The fact that the ban on Der Ruf is cloaked in some mystery leads one to speculate on how someone who had been held in such high regard by the American could have found himself in the situation of having been banned a short time later.
There is some evidence of the regard the Americans involved in the Gehirnfabrik had for Andersch. He was considered a special prisoner, who was to be used in
390 “The American Soldier in Germany” a policy document published by the ICD on January 16,
1946. NARA, RG 260.
185

Germany for military purposes. He had to go though a special battery of examination that tested and graded 391 his knowledge of:
5.
English…………………………………….B+
6.
American History………………………….1
7.
German History……………………………2
8.
Military Government………………………1.5
It was further noted that Andersch had excellent knowledge of Munich (he had lived there for 23 years), Frankfurt am Main (2 year residence), and Hamburg (he had resided there for 5 years). Interestingly, it does not mention the fact that he had been interned in
Dachau in 1933 for 6 moths due to his activity with the Communists in southern
Germany. In addition, it notes that he had a wife who was part-Jewish with the statement that this precluded his membership in any Nazi organization. In this case it was used to his benefit. It is certainly a far cry from the “mongrel of Jewish descent” he refers to in other documentation of his time as a prisoner of war.
392
Moreover, he does not mention that he had divorced her in 1943. However, in this case he is bound to receive more sympathy from the Americans if they believe his story. He does note his membership in the DAF, which did not preclude him from receiving a “White” designation. It is also interesting to note that Andersch at this time already lists as
“avocational experience of military significance” writer, novelist, and radio script writer.
391 The Languages were always assigned a standard letter grade. The other subject were rated according to a 5 point scale: 1=Superior, 2=Excellent, 3=Very Satisfactory, 4=Satisfactory,
5=Unsatisfactory. The complete dossiers are available at NARA, RG 389 290/34/29/4 Boxes 1449-
1466.
392 Willi Seebald, On the Natural History of Destruction , 120. It is noteworthy that the handwriting found in the documents uncovered by Sebald match that of the examinations Andersch wrote as a special prisoner of war in 1945.
186

The Andersch case noted above demonstrates that the American system of vetting candidates may not have been as tight as they would have liked to have believed.
The comments made by the investigators responsible for deciding who would become part of the reeducation of Germany were glowing. On the cover of the Andersch file the remark “good man” is found. It seems the Americans may have made a monumental error in sizing up Andersch, or there is more to the story than has been revealed so far by archival documents. There is the possibility that the Americans were “cooking” the official records in a way that allowed them to use Andersch. The problem was that, though Andersch did not reveal his activities in the Communist Party to the Americans, it most likely came to light after the occupation. To avoid a possible embarrassment as the Cold War started, ties with Andersch were cut.
There are many of these “Special Prisoners” documented in the American files.
In fact there is even a file entitled “Photographic Record. Former Special Prisoners
Engaged in their Present Jobs as Civilians”, which depicts many of these products of the
Gehirnfabrik at work in Germany after the end of the war. They range from anonymous
POWs charged with the responsibility of building an ordinance depot in Griesheim near
Frankfurt am Main to Dr. Walter Hallstein, who was appointed President of the
Frankfurt University and was recognized as one of the leading “Europeans” in
Germany’s political reconstruction and Hans Bott who shortly after his return to
Germany worked closelt with the Minister of Culture and Education in Baden
Wuerttemberg and later made it into the political inner-circle of the Adenauer government. But of greater direct relevance to the current topic, were individuals like
Ernst von Bressendorf, who was a Publication Advisor in the Publication Section of the
ICD in Stuttgart. It is clear that the Americans had an extensive plan for how they were
187

going to go about transforming Germany into a model democracy, eventhough it may have look disorganized at times.
Publishers
If it one were to conclude that the Allies were slow to react to the ideological void in post-war Germany, it is only because the Military Government tried to be as meticulous as possible in screening out undesirables from the publishing industry. Felix
Reichmann outlines the procedure;
The applicant had to file three Military Government questionnaires and three detailed business and personal questionnaires with Publications Control. After a thorough and comprehensive interview by an official of Publications Control the applicant had to submit a publishing program for one year worked out in specific titles. Then the whole file was transmitted to Intelligence Branch which again interviewed the applicant and his references. If both branches agreed that the applicant was eligible for a publisher's license a recommendation to this effect was submitted to the Commanding Officer of the Information Control Division.
If Berlin Headquarters concurred with the opinion of the Land, a license was issued.
393
Having past the stringent test of character and received a license from the proper authorities, however, did not mean that it was business as usual. Each individual publisher was required to police himself in regard to what he published under the following guidelines set by the Military Government, which forbade the following topics:
1. Criticism of the Allied Government and interference with the Military
Government.
2. Racial or Religious discriminations.
393 Felix Reichmann, “The First Year of American Publications Control in Germany,” In:
Publisher's Weekly [Nov. 16, 1946]; 2811.
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3. Propagation of militaristic ideas including Pan-Germanism and German
Imperialism.
4. National-socialistic or related “völkisch” ideas.
5. Fascist or anti-democratic ideas.
394
To assure that the guidelines were adhered to, Publication Control Officers scrutinized the content of the books before they were released. If it was found that they were unacceptable, depending on the severity of the offence, the publisher ran the risk of receiving anything from a severe reprimand to having his license revoked.
395
However, one should bear in mind that technically the Military Government could have imposed the death penalty if it thought it warranted.
396 Although this extreme penalty was never used, the simple fact that it could be invoked was a severe deterrent, which insured that the publishers erred on the side of safety.
Considering the penalties for transgressing the Military Government guidelines it is little wonder that the literature of the immediate post-war was not up to standard, as indicated in an interview given by Sidney Sulkin, who studied the German publishing industry under the auspices of the American Information Control Division.
397 In an effort to remedy the malaise of the post-war literary scene in Germany, Dr. Georg Kurt
Schauer, the licensed publisher and editor of the Börsenblatt für den deutschen
Buchhandel , the German book trade paper, published an article on the problems facing
394 Reichmann 2811.
395 Reichmann 2811.
396 “Control of Publications, Radio Broadcasting, News Services, Films, Theaters, and Music:
SHAEF Military Government Law NO. 191, Amended (1),” Germany 1947-1949: The Story in
Documents (United States Department of State, Office of Public Affairs, Publication #3556, European and
British Commonwealth Series 9, March 1950) 594-5. In this law, which controlled the dissemination of information in the Allied Zone of Occupation, the power to assess penalities for the transgressing publication control was granted to the Military Government. It gave the Military Government the authority to impose punishments, which included the death penalty, as it deemed fit.
397 Helmut Lehmann-Haupt, “Problems Confronting Publication Control in Germany,” In:
Publisher's Weekly [March 29, 1947]; 1789.
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the German publishers in the January 1st, 1947 edition of the Börsenblatt .
398 In his commentary, Schauer sketches out what he calls the four most necessary themes to be dealt with in Germany immediately after the war: “relationship of the individual to his
God; his relationship to immediate family and close friends; his status in community, state and workshop; his relationship to nature and the material world.” 399 The topics listed by Schauer indicate the areas which publishers could consider safe.
The “unofficial” guidelines set down by Schauer are reflected in much of what was subsequently published in Germany. The works of both Borchert and Böll demonstrate how some of the points of Schauer's policy were put into practice. In
Borchert's short story, “Das Brot,” one sees an example of how the familial theme is worked out. In addition, Borchert's play,
Draußen vor der Tür
, demonstrates an individual's coming to terms with God. Böll's “An der Brücke,” although it stretches the above guidelines, in that shows an individual trying to make contact with a stranger, falls under the rubric of literature which explores the difficulty of how the individual relates to others in society. One can see that Schauer's article was more than simply an academic exercise and had implications that are noticable in post-war literature.
In addition to the above restrictions on what might appear in post-war publications, other measures were employed to ensure that material suitable for reeducation received priority. The size of any edition distributed by a German publisher was limited to 5000 copies.
400
The reason given was that there was an accute paper shortage in Germany after the war.
401
However, special permission could be obtained to
398 Reference to this article and an outline of its content is found in Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt,
“German Publishing Begins to Revive,” In: Publisher's Weekly [March 16, 1946]; 1617. I have not as yet obtained the original, but will include a more in depth analysis when it arrives through inter-library loan.
399 Lehmann-Haupt (March 16, 1947) 1617.
400 Reichmann 2811.
401 Norman 47.
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publish oversize editions. Reichmann notes that exceptions were made in the case of several anti-Nazi pamphlets, which were permitted editions of 20000 copies.
402
Although larger runs were allowed in the case of decidedly pro-democratic publications, their numbers stand in stark contrast to editions of official OMGUS 403 publications.
One of these “official” publications, Neue Auslese , which was based on the Readers
Digest format, enjoyed a circulation of 280000 as early as February of 1946. There appears to have been enough paper to publish what Baukage, a pseudonym used by an
American broadcaster in Germany, termed “the right kind of food for the right kind of thought.”
404
Creating a Literary Tradition: Post-World War II German Literature
In most of the critical discussions, scholars approach the problems presented by post-war German literature with a view to distilling the “truth” contained in what appears on the published page. They are clearly concerned with the content or meaning of the literary text. Few, if any, pay much attention to the question of how the respective piece of literature got into print or what effect the mechanisms of the publishing industry have had on the final product. In most of the historical and critical accounts of that period the published work is simply accepted as a true expression on the part of the author. Such an assumption holds that the post-war German author was free to express and publish thoughts that were of his or her own choosing. It also presumes that authors control a nation's literary corpus and ignores the fact that the publisher as
402 Reichmann 2811.
403 OMGUS = Office of Military Government, United States.
404 Baukage, “What Germany is Reading,” In: The Saturday Review of Literature [Feb. 23, 1946];
43.
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well as the author is trying to earn a living through the production of materials they hope readers will pay for, in other words market mechanisms and cultural policies of the occupation forces have been ignored. It will be demonstrated in the following deliberation that elements of psychological warfare and continued propagandization were deciding factors in post-war literature. Moreover, it will be shown that the resulting post-war literature in Germany was a product of American re-education efforts.
When one consults the standard histories of post-war German literature one could safely conclude that German literature was once more allowed to flourish with little or no political impediments. That is to say, with the end of the Nazi regime,
German authors were once again allowed to produce literature which did not pander to a narrow political purpose. Simultaneous to the regeneration of literary production a theoretical debate ensued, which wrestled with how literature not only dealt with the events and guilt of the previous tyranny but also how the individual author could appropriately deal with the linguistic legacy left by the Nazi regime. Again, this debate is presented as internal by scholars, that is, German authors and critics debated problems unique to German language and literature. However, recently these assumptions have been questioned with more evidence coming to light that literary production, under the guise of free expression, was a vital part of Allied re-education efforts.
What has been largely neglected by scholars are the ideologies and mechanisms which lay behind the exterior of literary production. Many literary histories deal with the individual author or the literary collective and what is presented to the reader in its final form. What is not investigated is how one work rather than another is seen as worthy of publication and circulation. The lives of authors are often subject to the strictest scrutiny while the motives, ideologies, and necessities of those responsible for making the finished product available to the reading public goes unexamined. In the
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case of German post-war literature, an understanding of the publishing milieu is important, because the Military Government and publishers determined the direction literature was to take, while the authors wrote works which fell parameters by publisher who were carefully scrutinized by the Publications Control Division of the Military
Government.
One of the few scholarly works to examine Allied manipulation of post-war literature in Germany is Volker Wedeking's Der Nullpunkt. Über die Konstituierung der deutschen Nachkriegsliterature in den amerikanischen Kriegsgefangenenlagern . In this work, Wehdeking outlines how the American government, through its POW camps took an active role in shaping the literature which was to appear in Germany after the war.
He presents a great deal of historical data, which leads to the conclusion that American re-education was more than a secondary consideration, as is often insinuated, and that preparations for the management of German cultural life after the war was well coordinated. However, Wehdeking does little in the way of analyzing what affects the
American endeavour had on German literature. What he certainly accomplishes though is to uncover that the solution to the problem of post-war literature in Germany is not to be found in only the exegesis of the texts made available through publication.
When discussing Allied censorship in post-war Germany, critics most often take on an apologetic tone, recognizing the fundimental contradiction between the goal of democratization and the means used to reach that goal. Dieter Breuer points out that the situation of the author and his work changed little with the advent of the Befreiung . He concludes that, “Die Literatur sollte nach wie vor als ein behördlich zu kalkulierendes
Mittel zu, wenn auch ehrenhaften, Zweck dienen.”
405
In addition, he opines that with
405 Dieter Breuer, Geschichte der literarischen Zensur in Deutschland (Heidelberg: Quelle &
Meyer, 1982) 239.
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the beginning of the cold war in 1947, the Allied Miltary Governments were able to shift the thematic direction of post-war German literature away from the original purpose of re-education and focus it on either anti-communism in the west and anti-capitalism in the east.
Although Breuer's analysis of post-war censorship on a whole remains objective-
-he limits himself to a factual account of the policies and mechanisms used by the
Military Governments--he demonstrates an ideological bias when describing censorship in the Soviet zone of occupation as opposed to the western zone. Whereas the goals of the western allies are described as ehrenhaft , he uses the term “ Gleichschaltung
” 406
in conjunction with the activities of the Soviet occupation. In doing so, Breuer equates
Soviet censorship with the well documented activities of the Nazi regime while portraying the censorship of the western Allies as a regrettable error. Breuer's view is symptomatic of how the cultural policies of the western Allies are portryed by critics and discloses a certain reluctance to investigate the implication of those policies.
Breuer's findings, however, stand in constrast to those reached by Volker
Wehdeking and Günter Blamberger, who declare, “Erst mit dem 8. Mai 1945 besteht wieder die Möglichkeit, ohne Lebensgefahr offen und engagiert zu schreiben.” 407
This statement, however, does not entirely ring true. As will be looked more closely later, the military Governors in the western zones had the authority to execute those who published unlicensed material.(cf. ????) Additionally, the term “engagiert” is somewhat vague. According to Allied policies, publishers were forbidden from distributing works that were critical of any one of the occupying powers. Such a strategy would have limited the topics an author could discuss in a work to the political, social, and cultural
406 Breuer 241.
407 Volker Wehdeking and Günter Blamberger, Erzählliteratur der frühen Nachkriegszeit (1945-
1952) (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1990) 201.
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situation of the Nazi era, of which he or she would have to take a negative view, or extoll the virtues of the Allied political system and cultural values. In either case, the author served the purposes of Allied re-education.
Ralf Schnell, in his history of post-war West German literature, touches on the subject of Allied literary policies. Though he recognizes that the American military occupation Government made an attempt at managing German culture, he concludes that, “Doch nicht nur alte Nazis, Mitläufer or unbelehrbare Konservative, sondern auch
Intellektuelle der 'jungen Generation' wandten sich gegen die amerikanischen
Vorstellungen.”
408
Schnell, however, makes the assumption that re-education process was aimed directly at indivdual author and neglects to consider the influence exercised by the publisher on the author, with the publisher under the firm control of the Military
Government's Publications Control Division. He is thus overlooking an important aspect of the literary scene.
The second aspect of the reshaping of post-war German literature was the practical application of the policies developed before the end of the war. This period runs from mid-1945 to early 1947. It was in this two year time span that the Allied
Military Government most overtly managed and directed the German publishing industry. Additionally, the Military Government actively distributed materials, which it deemed suitable for the democratization and re-education of the German populous.
Mid-1947 marked the beginning of the final stage of the Allied involvement in the German literary scene. By this time the Allied cultural control structures were in place, which secured the continuation of the re-education process. The Information
Control Division of the Military Government had insured that only acceptable and
408 Ralf Schnell, Die Literatur der Bundesrepublik. Autoren, Geschichte, Literaturbetrieb
(Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1986) 82.
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reputable publishers were in operation. This, however, is not to say they did not continue to exercise a powerful influence on what appeared in print. They allowed the appearance of a seemingly independent publishing industry, which they could control through logistic means, that is by allocation of paper and printer's ink, rather than through direct control.
The Second World War may be described as the first modern war. Although some might argue that this is not the case, because the First World War, the Franco-
Prussian War, or even the American Civil War exhibited modern traits, because industrial production and technology was a major player, it is in the Second World War that was fought on the basis of discordant political ideologies. As Walther Dorn surmises,
It [the Second World War] no longer transpired exclusively under the balance-ofpower system as a war between sovereign states that could be resolved by the normal treaty-making devices that had become traditional in the nineteenth century.
409
He opines that the crucial question was, “how National Socialism was to be expunged as an active force from the political and economic life of post-war Germany?” 410 In coming to such a conclusion, Dorn highlights the high degree to which economics, politics, and re-education were related in the Allied approach to post-war Germany.
Accepting such a correlation, one must regard Allied policy holistically rather than as strictly economic or political. They were specifically designed to operate in concert towards the goal of German democratization and re-education. It is on this basis that one ought approach the following strategies, which were incorporated into official
409 Walter L. Dorn, “The Debate over American Occupation Policy in Germany in 1944-1945,”
In: Political Science Quarterly 72 [1957]; 482-3.
410 Dorn 483.
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American policy. Though the proposals appeared to address only economic, political, or legal issues, they formed the ideological background which dictated the themes dealt with by the post-war authors.
The first of the three suggested approaches has been dubbed “the out-law theory of National Socialism.” 411 This plan was limited in scope and based itself on individual responsibility. It advocated the bringing to justice of all Nazis, with the degree of complicity being a factor in how they were dealt with. This policy influenced the
London Charter, which resulted in the subsequent war crimes trials at Nuremburg.
The second view of how to deal with the Third Reich was based on the neo-
Marxist school of thought.
412
As can be expected, they understood the rise of Naziism as a product of social tensions created by the capitalist society in Germany.
413
They insisted that, by imposing an economic democracy (ie. a radical redistribution of wealth) on post-war Germany, a social revolution should take place. As is plainly evident, they most strongly advocated a socialist approach to governing Germany, which also required a reorientation of how the individual related to traditional economic power structures. That is to say, the German people were to be taught to question their traditions. Such an underlying ideology is evident in many of the literary works which appeared shortly after the war, where the policies and tradition of the previous generations were questioned. This questioning of the wisdom of past generations is most evident in two of Wolfgang Borchert's manifestos, “Generation ohne Abschied”
411 An expression of this position may be found in a memorandum of January 22, 1945, addressed to the President of the United States from the U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, Attorney General,
Francis Biddle, and Secretary of State, Edward Stetinius. (Report of Robert H. Jackson to the
International Conference on Military Trials [Washington, 1949]; 3ff.
412 Dorn indicates that the leading proponents of this approach were Franz Neumann, Gunther
Reimann, Harold Laski, and Max Lerner. (Dorn 484).
413 Dorn 484.
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and “Das ist unser Manifest,” where he indicts German cultural values for the suffering of the survivors of the war.
414
The third position taken in regard to how post-war Germany was to be treated, one which had the greatest influence on the policy makers in Washington and which may be seen as the precursor to the Morgentau plan, was that advocated by Lord Robert
Vansittart of Great Britain. The two foundational premises of his approach were that the
“deep-seated German disease that had been more than a century in the process of incubation”
415
needed to be cured and that all Germans had been so deeply infected with
National Socialism that one could only consider all of them as guilty of having waged war against democracy. He felt that the only cure could be a thorough “Umbildung” of the German psyche as the result of a lengthy occupation.
416
One can easily see how the doctrine of collective guilt sprang from this approach and thus how Vansittart's proposal served as the cornerstone of the Military Government's treatment of occupied Germany.
Although it cannot be argued that any of the above doctrines was fully realized in what was to become official occupation policy, all three played a part and thus affected the way in which the German people were expected to view themselves individually and collectively after the war. The interplay of these sometimes disparate ideological positions has in part led to the confusion expressed in post-war literature.
The publishers and writer, without question wanted to please their occupiers; however, they were unsure of exactly what it was that the Allies wanted. It also left authors not
414 “Generation ohne Abschied,” In: Das Gesamtwerk (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1949) 59-61.
“Das ist unser Manifest,” In: Das Gesamtwerk , 308-315.
415 Dorn. 485. The genesis of this position in regard to Germany may be found well before the
National Socialist regime took power. In the years leading up to the First World War politicians and scholars in Britain made reference to the so-called “German problem.” Even in that early period they allude to being ideologically based. Dr. Charles Sarolea in The Anglo-German Problem (London:
Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1913) opines that the cause of German militarism and “perverted nationalism” lay in their Nietzschian “will to power.” (351).
416 Dorn 485.
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knowing where to place the blame for the Nazi nightmare, which comes across clearly in a great deal of the literature immediately after the war. An example of this confusion of ideologies is found in Wolfgang Borchert's Draußen vor der Tür . In the play,
Beckmann, a soldier returning from Siberia, calls on various persons who are stereotypical caricatures of a German army officer, a Cabaret Director, and even of God.
In each case, Beckmann lays blame for some of the events of the Second World War at their feet. However, in each case they are unwilling to accept responsibility. In the end,
Beckmann recognizes his own guilt, but at the same time the reader is left with the uneasy feeling that there is a greater collective guilt, which does not reside within any one individual. Borchert does not provide a solution to the conflict of where blame is to be placed, not even God accepts it, and thus reflects Allied policy, which was unclear on who was to be held responsible for the activities of the Nazi regime.
Until May of 1945 most of how Germany was going to be treated can be considered abstract theory; however, after that date General Lucius Clay, the American
Military Governor of Germany, had to turn theory into practical application. He quickly found that he had to take the middle ground between high political/ideological platitudes and governing a defeated nation.
What is most often considered in studies on Allied re-education in Germany is the de-nazification of the German school system, which was carried out with varying degrees of vigour by local military commanders. These efforts, however, have a longer term effect and would have little impact on the immediate post-war period.
Additionally, a number of studies have been conducted on the impact of translations of
American literature in the post-war period. However, this variant of the
Americanization of German literature can only be considered a limited success, because few American authors; such as Carl Sandberg and Ernest Hemingway, were willing to
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give up the German translation rights.
417 As of February 1946, only 34 American titles were available to the German publishing industry for translation.
418 What is more significant, is the manner in which the Military Government approached the indigenous publishing industry, because this would most directly affect course post-war literature would take.
The first consideration for the occupying forces were those of providing at least minimal levels of food and clothing for those still alive in Germany's cities. The general consensus was that Germany's physical needs had to be met before attention could be turned to the job of re-education. This attitude is echoed in the reports sent back to the
United States via foreign correspondents. A report published in the February 16th, 1946 edition of The Saturday Review by James Marshall is indicative of how the Allied priorities in Germany were reported to the American people;
Of course I understand that we should not show kindness to our former foes, or even to the children of our former foes, but plagues show no such fine distinctions. Some of the higher officers of our Military Government in
Germany are worried about what might happen if a severe epidemic should break out in Germany. We can all recall what the influenza epidemic did even to well-fed Americans during the last war. Furthermore, there is no use talking of re-educating the Germans as long as they are cold and improperly nourished.
Their prevailing attention will be given to their discomforts and misery, not new ideas and attitudes.
419
Reports, such as the one cited above, give the impression that the American Military
Government was, eight months after the surrender of Germany, not actively involved in any re-education at all. Indeed Marshall, in concluding his article, bemoans the
417 Albert Norman, Our German Policy: Propaganda and Culture (New York: Vantage Press,
1951) 49.
418 Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt, “German Publishing Begins to Revive,” In: Publishers Weekly
[March 16, 1946]; 1618.
419 James Marshall, “The Europe We Are Fleeing From,” In: The Saturday Review [Feb. 16,
1946]; 24.
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ideological void in Germany which the Soviets were poised to fill.
420 Again indicating that the American Military Government was doing nothing in the area of German reeducation.
Such reports, however, serve to uncover the means by which the Military
Government was approaching the problem of re-education. The Allied efforts were intended to be covert, giving the impression that re-education was low on their list of priorities.
There can be no question that the material contained in Neue Auslese was an overt attempt at re-orienting Germans not only away from their own Nazi past but away from Soviet political influence. Two of the titles appearing in the first edition are:
“Germany and Western Ideas;” and “The Free State.” Moreover,
Neue Auslese was used by the British in their education of German POW's held on the British Isles.
421
Such actions demonstrate that, though trying to make their efforts as inconspicuous as possible, the Military Government by favouring certain types of material exercised considerable control over what was read by the German population. Furthermore, by
“demonstrating” to the indiginous publishing industry what the German population
“wanted,” the Allied Information Control Division created the appearance that what they wanted published was also going to be profitable for the German publishers as well.
420 Marshall 25.
421 Baukage 43.
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Conclusions:
As demonstrated in the discussion, it is simplistic to believe that post-war
German literature was an expression of purely German cultural values. Considering the
Allied efforts to re-educate Germany and Germany's total dependance on America for its physical necessities, one can only conclude that post-war German literature is a reflection of an American ideology. That is not to say that German post-war literature is in some way inferior, because of ideological interference. But it does explain the embracing of terms used to designate the post-war period; such as Stunde Null, tabula rasa and Kahlschlag, which were attempts to present German literature as having been de-nazified. One must thus come to the conclusion that the problems of post-war literature lies with those who, for reasons of the policies promoted by the Allies during the occupation, are reluctant to accept that German literature was an ideological battle ground, which only became active after May of 1945.
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203