Allied occupation zones in post-war Germany by WikiNight 2 in Wikipedia “Allied Occupied Germany” under license https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:GNU_Free_Documentation_License,_version_1.2

(8) ALLIED OCCUPATION

(1943-1990)

This was the pointy end of the war for the Axis powers – their occupation by the Allies upon their defeat and surrender. Indeed, the regimes in Germany and Japan used the looming specter of Allied occupation to prolong military resistance well beyond any point of logic or reason, which otherwise should have prompted their surrender from their defeats well before when they did.

In part, that was because those regimes conjured up the specter of occupation as even more dire from the Allied policy of unconditional surrender for their Axis opponents. Whether that policy – first proclaimed by President Roosevelt (unilaterally on his part echoing the American Civil War) at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 (after the successful Allied landings in north Africa) – was a strategic error has been debated by historians, but its impact can certainly be ranked up there with many battles.

For the record, I think that the declaration of a policy of unconditional surrender was correct, particularly when it came to Germany – as Germany could hardly have expected much less given how they had turned what was effectively their conditional surrender (and lack of Allied occupation) in the First World War to their advantage, with insult added to injury by their incessant complaints about it. As it was, the Allies were flexible in adapting that policy for Axis nations such as Italy, Finland, and arguably even Japan.

Of course, the occupation of the Axis powers by the Allies simply was the boot on the other foot, given that the Germany or Italy had occupied other nations in Europe by the threats or use of force from 1938 and military conquest from 1939, while Italy had occupied Abyssinia from 1935, and Japan had occupied the territory of other nations in Asia even earlier from 1931. The Axis occupation of other nations is essentially featured in other entries, most notably that for the underground war of partisans, resistance and governments-in-exile.

As H.P. Willmott caustically points out, for most of their ‘defensive’ war, Germany and Japan were not defending their home territory but the territory they had conquered or occupied from other nations. Indeed, their resistance became distinctly less sustained once the fighting moved to their own home territory, albeit still tinged with fanaticism. Even so, only Germany fought throughout its own home territory, while sustained resistance by Japan was limited to its more remote islands, as Japan surrendered before any Allied invasion of its four major home islands.

The first Axis nation to see the point of logic and reason in surrendering from their defeat was Italy, perhaps not surprisingly given its exhaustion from war and that it was the weakest of the three major Axis nations – hence the starting year of 1943 for this entry reflecting Italy’s surrender to the western Allies and its declaration of war against Germany. The actual occupation of Italy by the Allies was thus relatively benevolent on the Allied side, but unfortunately it was limited as Germany succeeded in reinforcing and retaining their occupation of most of Italy. Italy became yet another battlefield between Germany and the western Allies, indeed arguably the hardest fought one due to Italy’s geography as well as the particularly sustained and skillful German defense.

It also became a battlefield for the Italian Civil War, which might be described as yet another civil war within national resistance to German occupation – but primarily as a three-sided contest between communist partisans, the Italian Co-Belligerent Army constituted by the government and forces that had surrendered to the western Allies and now fighting alongside them against Germany, and the German puppet government under Mussolini and his remnant fascist regime of the Italian Social Republic.

Thereafter, Germany’s remaining allies in Europe sought to pull the Italian solution switching sides to declare war against Germany, but were unlucky to be facing Soviet occupation instead – and being unable to avoid it or the pro-Soviet communist regimes it imposed upon them, even Bulgaria which had been prudent enough not to declare war against or participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union. The only exception to the rule of Soviet occupation was Finland, which through a number of factors was able to substitute neutrality instead of occupation. Hungary was an exception in another direction – with Germany occupying it before it could switch sides from alliance with Germany – although it still ended up under Soviet occupation with a pro-Soviet communist regime after the Soviets defeated German forces in Hungary.

It remained only for Germany and Japan to be occupied after their respective surrenders.

Germany was famously unluckier to end up divided in occupation, ultimately between West Germany from the three western allied occupation zones (British, American and French) and East Germany with its pro-Soviet communist regime from the Soviet occupation zone, albeit with the weird island of West Berlin within it (from Berlin being divided into similar occupation zones as Germany). That division persisted as two armed camps in a potential (and terrifying) Cold War battlefield until the end of the Cold War – indeed, the reunification of Germany is usually taken as one of the markers of that end (and hence the end date of 1990 for this entry)

Interestingly, Austria and Vienna had been divided into similar occupation zones as Germany and Berlin, but Austria was fortunate enough to be reunited without occupying forces in 1955 on promise of neutrality in perpetuity.

The occupation of Japan was effectively an all-American affair, albeit with some participation by British or Commonwealth forces – and with the exception of the Soviet occupation of the remote northern Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island Japan had taken from Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.

Through a combination of factors, the western Allied occupation of Germany and Japan turned out to be largely benevolent, particularly as textbook examples of reconstruction or ‘nation-building’ on the lines of democratic models and economic miracles. Or rather, what might be characterized as textbook examples but for their lack of replication that borders on unique, if not actually unique.

In part that might be from the lack of any sustained insurgency after surrender, although not from lack of planning on part of their former regimes for insanely self-destructive levels of resistance to invasion or occupation. Notoriously, there was the Nero Decree by Hitler, ordering the destruction of German economic infrastructure on a scorched earth scale, but which was subverted by disobedience on the part of those ordered to carry it out, notably Albert Speer. Also notoriously, there were the Japanese plans to resist Allied invasion of the home islands, essentially as kamikaze attacks and banzai charges on a national scale, by both civilian and military forces, which were averted by the Japanese surrender. Once both nations had surrendered, they seemed to default to national stereotypes or traditions of political obedience.

The occupation of Japan is particularly noteworthy for the good judgement of General Douglas MacArthur as de facto shogun of the American occupation government – arguably ranking higher than any of his achievements on the battlefield, in either the Second World War or Korean War.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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