being prepared by SHAEF or outside agencies, as well as a list of matters that required further attention, many of which were incorporated into subsequent studies, occupation directives, and laws.39
This planning coordination was undertaken by the deputy chief of staff and the first meeting to coordinate plans and policies was called for 8 November 1944.40 This initial meeting had far-reaching results in that it highlighted a number of issues that needed review, revision, or initiation, and a progress report issued a few weeks later showed that various SHAEF staffs were rapidly working to resolve these issues.41
An April 1944 SHAEF staff study, Preparation for the Surrender and Post Hostilities Middle Period, laid out the conditions and defined the responsibilities that would confront General Eisenhower upon the cessation of hostilities in Europe.42 In terms of the need to disarm and demilitarize German forces on the continent, the study initially envisioned retaining the OKW intact in order to control the German armed forces. While SHAEF was to remain temporarily in Great Britain, it was considered important for propaganda and psychological reasons to locate US and British officers at the OKW headquarters to establish appropriate control and to transmit necessary directives from SHAEF to the German military.
Additionally, the OKW was to remain responsible for the provisioning, maintenance, and housing of the German forces under its command. The study further stated that the terms of surrender would prohibit all forms of military training and that demobilization might be delayed for a considerable time as there might be a need to use the German forces for labor, either in Germany or in the liberated countries.
In early July 1944, SHAEF notified the naval, air force, and major SHAEF staffs that a CCS message gave the supreme commander the responsibility to act for an indeterminate period of time after Germany surrendered. The addressees were told that, as a result, SHAEF now had to decide on the scope and limitations of that power. Two appendices were attached to the notice. The first was a draft that outlined the basis for planning Operation Talisman, which only covered the movement of Allied forces into the liberated countries and Germany and not what was required in order to enforce the terms of surrender. This latter issue was covered in the second appendix, Outline of Post-Hostilities Functions, which was meant to cover the period between the surrender of Germany and the assumption of responsibility for Germany by the Allied Control Commission (ACC).
The several objectives for the postsurrender occupation of Germany, as stated in this appendix, were derived from an EAC document of 31 May 1944 and were as follows: to complete the disarmament of Germany and destroy the German war machine, convince the German people they had suffered a total military defeat, destroy the National Socialist Party and system, and prevent German militarism and National Socialism from going underground. In addition, the objectives directed the Allies to lay the foundation for the rule of law in Germany, and to encourage individual and collective responsibility in the German population.43
According to this latter appendix, the documents and proclamations being drafted by the EAC lacked the detail necessary to issue the required orders to the Germans pertaining to the occupation and the German Armed Forces. It was determined that SHAEF would therefore have to prepare these orders. The appendix also addressed the fact that as the disarmament of German forces was an essential prerequisite of occupation, SHAEF would also have to provide special disarmament personnel with the technical knowledge to assist in the disarmament and control of German bases and supply depots. In this vein, the outline recommended that planning be restricted only to the “immediate disposal” of surrendered war matériel and that the control of Germany’s armaments industry was not considered a priority.
The appendix also addressed the issue of the control of German forces, which it considered essential. It suggested that control staffs placed at various German military headquarters would suffice and that the provision of previously trained personnel would also fall upon SHAEF but that they could be found in the several existing SHAEF headquarters and staffs.
The SHAEF staff erroneously assumed that the demobilization and disbandment of German forces would not take place during this period and thus should not be included in this postsurrender planning document without further instructions. As will be seen below, within six weeks of Germany’s surrender, members of the German armed forces, with the exception of those cited as “war criminals,” security suspects, or members of the Schutzstaffel (the infamous SS), were being disbanded and demobilized.
Lastly, to provide guidance to subordinate commanders, the appendix recommended that a postsurrender handbook be prepared to obviate the necessity of preparing and issuing innumerable additional directives.44
Operation Rankin/Talisman/Eclipse
The complaint that the military planners were left without policy by their governments was the most prominent complaint in papers relating to planning for the occupation. The fact that SHAEF had to undertake these coordination meetings underscores this lack of guidance, and the reports written as a result further illuminate the extremely broad and complex nature of the problems the SHAEF staff was forced to solve on their own. A clear example of this lack of guidance is voiced by Morgan in the transmittal letter to Operation Rankin, in which he addressed “the essential difficulty in planning operations before the clear establishment of the political policy whence those operations derive their necessity.”45
When COSSAC, under the direction of General Morgan, was established following the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, it was charged with three tasks by the British Chiefs of Staff. The first and third tasks were pure combat operations: plan deceptive operations to keep German divisions in Western Europe, thereby relieving the pressure on the Soviet Union, and plan for the invasion of the continent (i.e., what became Operation Overlord).46 Behind this directive was the idea, based on experience derived from the end of World War I, that Germany might suddenly collapse. It was also supported by naïve and wishful thinking that stemmed from recent German defeats in North Africa and Stalingrad and the planned Allied invasion of Sicily. The idea that Germany would simply “disintegrate” was voiced by Morgan. In the directive for the plan that began on 22 May 1943 and was given the code name Rankin, Morgan said that the expected German “disintegration” would not necessarily take the form of a complete collapse but could be a partial withdrawal from occupied territory or the result of an Allied breakthrough.47
This belief in a German disintegration was still held by Morgan in the summer of 1943 and by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) following its review of the German situation, as is reflected in the Rankin plan published in August of that year:
The general situation as it exists today must appear to the German military leaders as verging on the desperate. . . . They are now faced with a serious situation on the Russian front and with the urgent problem of stopping the breach developing in Italy and the Balkans. Their U-boat campaign has met with a serious set-back. Finally, the ever-increasing Allied air offensive, to which there is no serious likelihood of a reply being possible, must be making the planning of the production increasingly difficult and must be causing serious doubts as to how long the home front can stand up to the combined strain of Allied bombing, the blockade, and military reverses.48
Planning for the occupation and demilitarization of Germany was a complex matter. Planners were asked to envision the situation as it would be when the time came. Thus planners were given an “intellectual exercise of unusual difficulty,” one much broader than what military planners are normally given.49 In other words, since the plan they were asked to develop would cover the period following Germany’s surrender, Germany’s defeat was not the objective. Instead, the plan would have to cover a myriad of problems ranging from displaced persons and Allied POWs to the disposal of captured German war matériel, the disbandment of the German Armed Forces, and the destruction of Germany’s industrial warmaking potential.50
Planning
