Civilian crime during the British and American occupation of Western Germany, 1945–1946: Analyses of military government court records
| Author | E. James Kehoe,Thomas J. Kehoe |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819887516 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819887516
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370819887516
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Civilian crime during the
British and American
occupation of Western
Germany, 1945–1946:
Analyses of military
government court records
Thomas J. Kehoe
University of New England, Australia
E. James Kehoe
University of New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
The post-World War II occupation of western Germany remains salient to developing theories
of post-war crime, insurgency, and policing during post-conflict reconstruction. Yet there are no
quantitative assessments of civilian crime for its first year (1945–6). Different from the Soviet-
controlled East, where there is a relatively robust consensus that social and governmental
disorder led to prolonged violent criminality, the picture for the western US and British zones
is less clear and the literature is disjointed. We address this gap and in so doing help resolve the
account of post-war criminality in the west with new data derived from the records of the US and
British military government courts. Comparative analyses of crimes against the person, against
property, and against civil restrictions were conducted. We employed a historical criminological
approach to interpreting these data and to extrapolating their findings to current theories of
counterinsurgency, post-conflict policing, and reconstruction. They indicate high rates of petty
property crimes, minor civil violations, and limited violent disorder, commensurate with earlier
studies of 1947 onwards. We could also better assess contested accounts of social conditions,
revealing a more nuanced picture than prior historical analyses. Drawing on criminological,
psychological, and counterinsurgency theories, we suggest that economic and social strain forced
extensive minor law-breaking that, when combined with intense anxieties, manifested as fear
of violent crime. But, importantly, Germans remained confident in the US and British military
governments’ ability to ensure security, aiding the west’s recovery.
Corresponding author:
Thomas J. Kehoe, School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, University of New England, Armidale,
NSW 2351, Australia.
Email: tkehoe@une.edu.au
887516EUC0010.1177/1477370819887516European Journal of CriminologyKehoe and Kehoe
research-article2019
Article
2022, Vol. 19(1) 3–28
Keywords
Post-conflict policing, counterinsurgency, reconstruction, military government, occupation
Minimizing civil disorder, especially violent crime, is critical to an occupation’s success
and post-World War II Germany continues to inform the conduct of occupations, as
shown by the Bush administration modelling its strategies for Iraq on the US experience
in Germany. Crime management was not prioritized in Iraq, contributing to insurgency
and war (Bayley and Perito, 2010: 7; Celeski, 2009; Record, 2004: 24). Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld (2003) asserted that the transition to democracy caused crime
in Iraq, also tacitly maintaining a historiographical interpretation of social disintegration
and extensive crime in Germany in which there was a ‘massive wave of murder and
lawlessness’ and ‘law and order were virtually non-existent’ (Fairchild, 1988: 36; Lowe,
2012: xiii; see also Bessel, 2009: 321; MacDonogh, 2009: 378). But, unlike Iraq, western
Germany did not suffer insurgency (Erlichman and Knowles, 2018: 1–3). Historical
criminology can therefore develop an account of crime and civil control in Germany that
will help elaborate current theories of occupation policing, counterinsurgency, and
reconstruction.
Characterization of conditions in western Germany is disjointed, partly owing to a lack
of quantitative data, particularly in the occupation’s first 20 months. Based on qualitative
reports and economic indicators, narratives of mass crime and violence for one to three
years are common (Behr, 1961; Klessmann, 1982; Kosyra, 1980; Mörchen, 2011). The
few quantitative studies use data sets beginning in late 1946 or 1947, yet nonetheless infer
mass crime and violence (Bader, 1949; Kramer, 1988; Schönke, 1948). Other historians
limit excessive violence to early in the occupation, followed by years of heightened minor
crime (Keller, 2013; Kehoe, 2016; Mörchen, 2011; Rusinek, 1989, 2004; Vonyó, 2018).
These accounts partly derive from a strict Allied military government (MG) antithetical to
disorder (Boehling, 1996; Gimbel, 1961, 1968; Henke, 1995; Hudson, 2015).
The contested assessment of social conditions in the west is markedly different from
the consensus on extensive social disorder and prolonged criminality in the Soviet-
controlled East (Bessel, 2009: 263–4; Johnson, 2017: 30–41; Slaveski, 2013). The state
of the literature and the absence of quantitative characterizations on the west motivated
our study. To address them, we use data compiled from 25,612 case records from the US
and British MG courts for March 1945 to July 1946 to examine crime quantitatively.
These courts exercised criminal justice until direct military occupation ended in mid-
1946 and, beyond assessment of crime, permit analysis of how US and British MG con-
trolled disorder, prevented insurgency, and pursued reconstruction (Ziemke, 1975: vii);
conversely, anxieties about post-war conditions and memories of the war, which Olick
(2005: 329) has aptly labelled ‘traumatic memories’, helped motivate crime fears.
Criminal justice under the British and US military
governments, 1945–6
In the US and British zones, criminal justice was exercised differently over roughly four
phases of the military occupation, which existed from 1944 to 1949.
4European Journal of Criminology 19(1)
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