approached potential disorder and resistance, and the challenge of civil reconstruction, in essentially the same way. They notionally had support available from tactical units and investigative assistance from CIC, but most detachments addressed law and order independently, imposing civil restrictions, making mass detentions, and using MG courts to try criminal offenders. These pro forma tactics were applied uniformly across vastly different urban and rural conditions, with social disorder ranging from persistent rioting and looting to administrative chaos and debilitating social unease. Differences in social circumstances roughly spanned the urban-rural divide. Cities tended to experience more pronounced disorder, while fear was the most immediate problem in the geographically larger, less populated, rural districts.
MG methods were suited to imposing order in defined urban spaces. Cities with clear boundaries were readily demarcated into prescribed zones. Streets were cleared with curfew orders while armed patrols could ensure the population’s confinement, dampening rioting and looting. These processes took anywhere from a few days in cities like Nuremberg to weeks in Bremen and Cologne; but once order was restored, societal infrastructure could be returned rather quickly. MGOs could then begin rebuilding a sense of peacetime normality. People were gathered, organized, and from there instructed in the operation of the new regime. German police and administrators returned to their positions, creating a visible, societal continuity. Moreover, once order was restored, survivors were able to find family and friends, and social bonds could be reformed. In Augsburg, which surrendered, all of these steps occurred rapidly during the first days of the occupation.14
Although rural detachments took similar approaches, the environment meant that the outcomes looked very different. For the most part, the countryside remained relatively unscathed. A British report on conditions in Schleswig-Holstein at the end of the war noted there was “very little war damage” outside the cities.15 And the first MGOs found the apparent normality eerie; to many, the countryside seemed an almost natural space for crime. It was a feeling exacerbated by the size of rural districts, which were littered with the remnants of Nazi brutality, and their comparatively sparse populations. When Captain Ben H. Logan’s detachment arrived in rural district Obernburg, southeast of Frankfurt, on 26 June 1945, he was surprised to find that he, nine other officers, and an equal number of enlisted personnel were to govern an area of approximately 2,500 square kilometers containing thirty-five separate communities.16 His first action was to make contact with the local American combat unit in case of resistance or uncontrolled criminal disorder, though there was virtually no sign of either.17 His officers nonetheless remained vigilant, though as in Kulmbach the detachment mostly faced administrative challenges stemming from the geography. Restoring telephone services and providing transport connections to doctors was a problem throughout July. There were only about three hundred DPs, but district officers were forced to monitor and care for nearly ten thousand refugees. Denazification complicated the search for German staff for key administrative positions. Over the course of July, the detachment conducted background evaluations of existing politicians and government officials. They discovered avowed Nazi mayors, administrators, and police who either had initially been overlooked by prior MG detachments or had simply escaped detection because they governed tiny villages beyond officers’ attentions.18
Not only was there no partisan activity in the district; there was also very little crime of any sort. When two unidentified bodies were found in a local river on 8 July, officers were unable to determine whether they had died from murder or by accident. At the end of the month, a detachment tally showed only thirty-one reported cases of looting across the district from mid-June. No cases appear in the trial records, however, so it is impossible to determine how serious they were, whether the reports were multiplying a smaller number of actual incidents, or whether they were merely rumors. The first three criminal trials in the summary court established on 10 July were for minor breaches of civil restrictions. The court did not sit again until the 22nd when fifteen people were tried for minor (though unrecorded) offenses. Of these, twelve were convicted and sentenced to “between one and 14 days.” One man was sentenced to six months for violating curfew and being drunk and disorderly; his harsh punishment may suggest that he committed a more serious unrecorded offense such as looting, that the American governors held some deeper animosity toward him, or that being drunk and disorderly was the worst offense brought before the court that day.19
The low level of crime neither alleviated Logan’s or his officers’ concerns about what the ostensibly peaceful countryside concealed, nor calmed persistent fears about disorder among the local population. The reports of looting were especially disturbing, and despite a lack of arrests through July and August, Logan routinely recorded it as a major problem, noting reports from German police and citizens. On 2 August, he even informed the commanding officer of the nearby Combat Command Reserve of the Sixth Armored Division of “looting problems in the Landkreis” and requested the unit prepare for deployment to prevent spreading disorder. The tactical forces were never required, however, and it is unclear where the line between fear and actual criminal incidents lay. But whatever the motivation, the fear was itself pervasive and destabilizing, and rural MGOs across the zone struggled, as Logan did, to contain it.20
The Loneliness of MG in the Districts
Fear was contagious among officers in the districts during the summer of 1945, in part because they rarely had a broader context within which to place their immediate experiences or the reports they received from Germans. For many, their first experience of Germany was during the months following the war. Most had not seen combat. And in the weeks after the German surrender, many of those who had fought achieved sufficient points on the military’s Adjusted Service Rating system to return home, leading to an overhaul of men during June and July. This transition marked a new phase of postwar MG. The first occupiers often knew they were leaving soon and limited their efforts to keeping the peace until relieved.21 The officers that replaced them had a different view. They were just beginning their deployment and proactively addressed restoring a normal society including physical infrastructure and civil concerns such as public health, the economy, postal services, and telecommunications.22
One such detachment was GI G3, which arrived on 1 July 1945 in rural district Dillingen—in central Bavaria between Ulm and Augsburg. Security was their first priority, but the district was peaceful and the commander, Major Claude F. Baker, noted little crime.23 Most offenses were curfew violations and other minor infractions.24 Criminality was so infrequent in fact that the trial of a young man for stealing food from military stores became a local event, drawing public interest from across the district. So instead of crime, the detachment focused on local administration and finance for most of July and August. Where possible, they also prepared new building projects to create employment, though the district was mostly unscathed and there was limited money for them.25
Most detachments similarly pursued a more holistic reconstruction of their districts. This was mostly slow-going, arduous work. The new MG commander in rural district Nuremberg (the area surrounding the city of Nuremberg), Charles H. Andrews, arrived at the end of June and doggedly worked to resurrect his district and also help reconstruction of Nuremberg city, going so far as to source glass for damaged government buildings from Czechoslovakia.26 It took until 3 July before streetlights were turned on in Augsburg, but an arts and crafts exhibition followed two days later in the central square. It showcased new business opportunities and helped engender some much-needed conviviality between local Germans and American soldiers.27
Although disorderly American soldiers remained one major social problem through the summer, the new MG detachments tended to proactively curtail their worst behaviors. Controlling them complemented other restoration efforts. In Munich, for instance, MGOs found American soldiers living in the Prince Regent Theatre, which lies across from the English Garden near the city center. Their presence prevented its reopening to the public, and they had to be forcibly removed.28 Once the theater was reopened, however, the first performance was a success, boosting German morale. In a report to MG for Bavaria, local MGOs described the prevailing sentiment
