As good a place as any to start…
I have to say upfront, I have never blogged before, though I’m eager to start. A few of my colleagues have shown me the value in this breezier writing, both for sharing work and for developing ideas (see Brett Holman’s interesting site about aircraft here). But for all my excitement, since launching this website about a week ago I’ve been unsure of what to write first. So, in the spirit of sharing problems and half-formed ideas, this initial post in the “Adventures in Historical Criminology” series will describe some of my new research and a few of the fresh challenges it has created.
Crime, fear, and forgetting the difficult past
For most of this year I have been examining the first American occupation of Germany, which occurred in the Rhineland after World War I along with Britain, France, and Belgium (see map below). Although part of an Allied deployment to ensure the peace during the Versailles peace negotiations, it is not as famous as the occupation of Germany 20 years later after World War II. The American zones, which was a small wedge of Germany running from Luxembourg to 30 miles beyond the Rhine, is especially under researched. This is perhaps unsurprising. Although beginning with nearly 250,000 troops in December 1918, within seven months the American Forces in Germany (AFG) – as it became known – was reduced to approx. 7,000 and the entire operation centred on Koblenz, then a regional city of Prussia of about 70,000 people. The occupation continued until January 1923, when resurgent isolationism in the US and French belligerence against Germany forced the Americans to withdraw. However, for the four years of American rule, Koblenz stayed relatively peaceful, even as Germany underwent revolution, economic crisis, and political upheaval. By comparison to the rest of the country and the other Allies’ zones of control, the American zone was allegedly “benign,” according to some scholars.[i]
End of World War I and the Occupation of the Rhineland, 1918
So, why am I interested in this case? Well, firstly, if I put on my historian’s hat, I was skeptical of the overly positive assessments of American rule in the (limited) historical accounts. The last major book on the American occupation by Keith Nelson was published in 1975, and he limited the narrative to grand international politics: that is, inter-Allied relations, and related politics in the US and German governments. He did not explore the social dimensions of the occupation, which almost certainly ranged from the general – such as culture clashes and language problems – through to the context-specific, such as the struggle of daily life during Germany’s well-known political and economic woes.[ii] A more recent book on the American army in the Rhineland is very limited in scope and similarly self-aggrandising.[iii] Erika Kuhlman’s 2007 study of patriarchy in the Rhineland suggests more complicated social dynamics at work between soldiers and civilians, and that more nuanced study is required.[iv] Setting the record straight is crucial to the 20th Century histories of Germany and the American military.
All of these issues are equally important to me as a criminologist: determining the social realities of occupied space and how an occupier managed crime and social disorder (or failed to) may offer important insights into the systems of power and disempowerment that emerge during foreign military occupations, the social disorder and crime that results, and the approach to governance required. Because we cannot experiment with military occupation, historical case studies really provide the only basis for developing salient theories.
It didn’t take much digging to discover that the American-occupied Rhineland had a more complex social reality. This was quickly evident from the US military’s own assessments. Soldiers were more disorderly than expected and, according to one famous report, engaged in violent crime “frequently.”[v] Civilian disorder was also a problem. The extent and nature of crime by soldiers and civilians remains difficult to determine (see in my discussion of the available data on soldier crime in the 4 May 2018 presentation here). Archival research in June and July of 2018 in the beautiful Koblenz City Archives (see my photograph below) further revealed a darker social environment. Occupation soldiers were prone to violence against civilians. Economic distress drove rampant prostitution, which in turn propagated sexually transmitted diseases, and petty crime was reportedly common. German officials were frequently in conflict with the American military governors. Moreover, there was a nascent separatist movement, which emerged in force when the Americans left. For a brief while from 1923-4, a separate Rhineland state was declared.
The Koblenz City Archives
Unfortunately, the June-July archival trip didn’t really enhance the quantitative picture of crime. I couldn’t locate police and court statistics on investigations, arrests, or prosecutions. But, the extensive reporting by German and American government officials and police casts serious doubt on the idea that the American occupation was peaceful and orderly, except perhaps in comparison to the other Allied zones and the rest of Germany.
So where does that leave us? With a lot of unanswered questions! These include: what was life actually like under American rule? How did the Americans manage to keep the peace, even if there seemed to be a great deal of crime? Additionally, why have these complicated social dimensions been lost to history?
This question has really fascinated me. As I mentioned above, it may be due to the small size of the operation. It was really only centred on one regional city. But, more interestingly, there is evidence to suggest that German attitudes towards the Americans changed on later reflection. Their memories of the hostility they felt at the time and the apparent misery of daily life dissipated when they later compared American rule to the subsequent French occupation (who replaced the Americans in 1923) or to Nazi rule. This forgetting of past social strain and political division (including an independence movement!) runs counter to expectation. Criminologists and historians are well aware of crime panics in the present, but the masking of genuine strain in the past due (potentially) to later comparisons is really fascinating: it takes “rose-coloured glasses” to a whole new level to forget violence, sex, and disorder. New Yorkers, for instance, may worry about crime now, but are well aware that things were worse in the 1970s (see this cool website about NY in the 70s).
That many of the perpetrators and victims of crime were traditionally “unseen” by historians including women, the working class, and even regional populations may have facilitated washing this period from history. Nonetheless, it seems clear that a fuller sociological picture of Koblenz during the occupation is needed.
More to come in this series…
Notes
[i] See: Erika Kuhlman, “American Doughboys and German Fräuleins: Sexuality, Patriarchy, and Privilege in the American-Occupied Rhineland, 1918-1923,” The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71, No. 4 (2007), 1077-1106; Keith L. Nelson, Victors Divided: America and the Allies in Germany, 1918-1923 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1975), 256.
[ii] Nelson, Victors Divided.
[iii] Alexander Barnes, In a Strange Land: The American Occupation of Germany, 1918-1923 (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2011), 311.
[iv] Kuhlman, “American Doughboys and German Fräuleins.”
[v] Irvin L. Hunt, American Military Government of Occupied Germany 1918-1920. Report of the Officer in Charge of Civil Affairs, Third Army and American Forces in Germany (Washington DC, 1943), 333-334.
Thomas J. Kehoe 