fact that the CCS had yet to send any guidance relating to the supreme commander’s responsibilities. Many different bodies, he continued, primarily in the United Kingdom, were studying the problem but there was no real coordination between them or within SHAEF, despite the great deal of planning that had been carried out by the various divisions.
Attached to Bull’s memorandum was a second memorandum, designed to be sent to the CCS by Eisenhower, outlining actions that needed to be taken by SHAEF to provide Eisenhower with the necessary special staffs he would require to initiate plans for the immediate postsurrender period. Most importantly, it recommended that the SHAEF planning staff be placed at the disposal of the EAC for “consultation and exploratory work.”29 The attached memorandum recognized that it was not possible to predict when Germany would surrender but that, though the EAC was working on establishing the necessary postdefeat machinery to be set up in Germany (and Austria), it was likely the actual surrender could come about before the Allies had agreed on what to do. Therefore, the memorandum continued, it stood to reason that Eisenhower, as the supreme commander, needed to be prepared to initiate the occupation and control of Germany immediately following the cessation of hostilities, and that his responsibilities in that respect would continue for some indeterminate period.
The second memorandum also highlighted the fact that the British Chiefs of Staff had already established the Control Commission Military Staff (CCMS) and that extensive planning had been accomplished on behalf of the British Chiefs of Staff. It also recognized that the British Foreign Office and other ministries had established various working committees but that apart from the work done by military staffs of each nation in the EAC and that already done within SHAEF, General Eisenhower was unaware of any comparable posthostilities planning by either the Soviet Union or the United States.
The memorandum ended with a series of conclusions and recommendations regarding General Eisenhower’s need to cope with the fact that there might not be enough time before the war ended for the EAC to complete its work or to select and train the specialist staffs he needed for the occupation. These specialist staffs needed to be assembled to fit the final British and US organization for control in Germany.
The recommendations included steps to ensure that SHAEF would have the necessary US and British personnel to implement the planning and man the executive staff, as well as sufficient authority to approve directives to these staffs and subordinate field commanders to occupy and seize administrative and political control of West Germany and disarm the German forces in Western Europe.30 The memorandum was never sent because a cable arrived from the CCS that gave “the Supreme Commander the responsibility to act for a period after the signing of the Armistice.”31
At approximately the same time, and for the reason outlined in Bull’s memorandum, Eisenhower requested the establishment of the nucleus of an American control council to prepare for the postsurrender period. In a memo hand-carried to the JCS by General Wickersham, Eisenhower cited the existence of the British Control Council element while bemoaning the lack of any parallel US or Soviet group in the United Kingdom aside from those assigned to the EAC. He also indicated that he was not aware of any such planning staffs in either the United States or the Soviet Union.
Eisenhower related further that SHAEF had begun a great deal of posthostility planning and that American and British specialist personnel had been earmarked for training. A basic manual for military government had also been drafted based on previously received presurrender guidance. The problem, however, was the lack of top-down planning: nothing had been done to provide senior leadership for Allied control staffs, policy guidance, or key personnel. The stage had now been reached, Eisenhower continued, where the appointment of a nuclear group had become an urgent necessity. Eisenhower then recommended that immediate appointments be made for deputies to the yet-to-be-named chiefs of the control council, for a US equivalent of the British element in the Disarmament, Demobilization, and Demilitarization Group, and for key personnel in the Military Government Group.32
On 4 August, the JCS approved Eisenhower’s requests and agreed that US personnel should be so assigned. The JCS further concurred on the appointment of a general officer to be the acting deputy to the chief US representative to the control council and named Wickersham, still the US military representative to Ambassador Winant on the EAC, to fill the position. Ten days later, the JCS authorized the assignment of 289 officers, 32 warrant officers, and 356 enlisted personnel—some of whom were to come from the European theater as well as the war and navy departments—to the US element Eisenhower had requested.33
What is interesting and underscores the lack of coordination between the EAC, the JCS, and SHAEF is that eight months earlier, in mid-December 1943, Major General Ray W. Barker (US), deputy chief of COSSAC, had written to Major General Hilldring to ask about the status of the plan for German disarmament following the cessation of hostilities. He reminded Hilldring that the EAC had been tasked with creating the Terms of Surrender, of which disarmament was an important element. Given the broad guidance that was expected from the EAC, Barker wrote that a number of questions—some which would have political as well as military and technical ramifications—would arise and that answers would need to be found. Barker suggested coordinating the US-British position on these issues in order to have a common position upon which to base discussions in the EAC, formulate Allied policies, and prepare operational plans to implement EAC decisions. To this end, he suggested that the United States send a cadre of knowledgeable officers, headed by an officer of “suitable background and attainment,” to London to join with a similar group created by the British War Office. Barker closed by requesting that this cadre come with an agenda and firm guidance from both the War Department and the Department of State.34
While no record of General Hilldring’s response to Barker has been found, Hilldring obviously took the opportunity to fill what appeared to be an organizational vacuum and advance the interests of his Civil Affairs Division. He drafted and forwarded to the JCS a proposal that, in effect, duplicated General Barker’s suggestion to develop a cadre to deal with disarmament issues and even included several of Barker’s paragraphs verbatim as justification. Hilldring’s proposal stated at the outset that no agency had been designated to prepare policy recommendations for the JCS covering problems arising from this issue. Hilldring concluded that an agency was required to oversee the development of said policies for JCS approval and transmission to the US delegate on the EAC. However, instead of recommending that a cadre of qualified officers be sent to London, as Barker had suggested, Hilldring recommended that his Civil Affairs Division become that new agency, stating that the creation of a new entity, such as the proposed disarmament committee, was “unnecessary and undesirable.”35 Hilldring sent a copy of his proposal to General Wickersham in London, apparently in reply to a letter from Wickersham that addressed the same topic.36 Based upon Eisenhower’s memoranda to the CCS and the JCS, it appears that nothing became of Hilldring’s proposal.
The failure to provide guidance to Eisenhower, however, remained unresolved as late as fall 1944.37 In mid-October 1944, Grazebrook submitted a number of papers to SHAEF’s deputy chief of staff outlining the need for a senior officer to be in charge of posthostilities planning, as the EAC had still failed to devise any such policies and the three Allied powers had not come to an agreement on any final policy as of that date. This vacuum meant that the supreme commander would not be afforded the luxury of guidance regarding the occupation of Germany, unless a senior officer was appointed. Grazebrook felt that a senior officer could direct a survey of all the tasks and responsibilities that would face the supreme commander to ensure that the plans, now coming to fruition in SHAEF, represented a sound policy for him to follow under any of the conditions he might face.38
Once Grazebrook learned that his memo had been approved, he submitted a second paper with recommendations for executing his proposal, a list of agencies with whom coordination would be essential, and the suggestion that, due to its familiarity with the issues to be confronted, his posthostilities subsection become the staff of the new senior officer or co-coordinator for planning. Grazebrook then appended a list
