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Good Bets, Bad Bets and Dark Horses: Allied Intelligence Officers’ Encounters with German Civilians, 1944–1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2020

Stefanie Rauch Open the ORCID record for Stefanie Rauch [Opens in a new window]
Stefanie Rauch*
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University College London
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Abstract

This article explores Allied intelligence officers’ encounters with and interrogations of German civilians from autumn 1944 onwards, psychological warfare operations directed at civilians, and their wider ramifications. Focusing especially on the officers serving with the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD), I will demonstrate that field intelligence officers’ stance towards German civilians was fluid and often ambiguous, with the encounter causing considerable distress to some of them. Their reports and correspondence further suggest that in this period, Germans readily professed knowledge of atrocities. But contrary to intelligence officers’ expectations, they failed to accept any guilt or responsibility. Finally, I will argue that the very foundations and techniques of Western Allied psychological warfare may have reinforced and legitimised justification strategies that separated between “real” Nazis and everyone else. This was at odds with one of the central aims of Military Government, i.e. to inculcate a sense of culpability in Germans.

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Begegnungen mit deutschen Zivilist*innen und deren Befragungen durch alliierte Offiziere ab Herbst 1944 sowie auf Zivilist*innen abzielende Aktivitäten psychologischer Kriegsführung und deren Auswirkungen. Mit besonderem Augenmerk auf die Offiziere im Dienste der Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) wird demonstriert, dass die Haltung von Nachrichtenoffizieren im Außendienst gegenüber deutschen Zivilist*innen fließend und oft uneindeutig war und dass die Begegnungen einige Offiziere erheblich bedrückten. Ihre Berichte und Korrespondenz legen außerdem nahe, dass Deutsche während dieser Zeit bereitwillig Kenntnis von Gräueltaten eingestanden. Konträr zu den Erwartungen der befragenden Offiziere zeigten sie jedoch keine Schuldgefühle und übernahmen keine Verantwortung. Abschließend argumentiert der Beitrag, dass die Grundsätze und Techniken der psychologischen Kriegsführung der westlichen Alliierten möglicherweise die Rechtfertigungsstrategien, die „echte“ Nazis von anderen Personen unterschieden, bekräftigten und legitimierten. Dies widersprach einem der zentralen Ziele der Militärregierung, nämlich den Deutschen einen Sinn für Schuldhaftigkeit einzuimpfen.

Type
Article
Information
Central European History , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 120 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association, 2020

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Footnotes

For their invaluable comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article, I am grateful to Tobias Becker, Mary Fulbrook, Stephanie Bird, and the anonymous reviewers.

References

1 Overy, Richard, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 (London: Penguin, 2001)Google Scholar. Neitzel, Sönke and Welzer, Harald, Soldaten. Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 2011)Google Scholar; Römer, Felix, Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht von Innen (Munich: Piper, 2012)Google Scholar. A notable exception to the overall focus on soldiers and organizations is Perry Biddiscombe's study of intelligence reports on the “Edelweiβpiraten”: “‘The Enemy of Our Enemy’: A View of the Edelweiss Piraten from the British and American Archives,” Journal of Contemporary History 30, no. 1 (1995): 37–63. For an evaluation of surveys of Allied Wehrmacht morale undertaken by former PWD, SHAEF staff, see Gurfein, Muriel I. and Janowitz, Morris, “Trends in Wehrmacht Morale,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 10, no. 1 (1946): 78–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shils, Edward A. and Janowitz, Morris, “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wehrmacht in World War II,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1948): 280–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See, for example, Katrin Schreiter's gender analysis of the transcripts resulting from US Strategic Bombing Survey interviews with Germans in Darmstadt from April and May 1945: “Revisiting Morale under the Bombs: The Gender of Affect in Darmstadt, 1942–1945,” Central European History 50, no. 3 (2017): 347–74; Clodfelter, Mark, “Aiming to Break Will: America's World War II Bombing of German Morale and its Ramifications,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 3 (2010): 401–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Overy, Richard, “Making and Breaking Morale: British Political Warfare and Bomber Command in the Second World War,” Twentieth Century British History 26, no. 3 (2015): 370–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Childers, Thomas, “‘Facilis descensus averni est’: The Allied Bombing of Germany and the Issue of German Suffering,” Central European History 38, no. 1 (2005): 75–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See, for example, Longden, Sean, T-Force: The Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945 (London: Constable, 2009)Google Scholar; Fritz, Stephen G., Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004)Google Scholar; Breitman, Richard, Goda, Norman J. W., Naftali, Timothy, and Wolfe, Robert, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Biddiscombe, Perry, The Denazification of Germany: A History 1945–1990 (Stroud: Tempus, 2007)Google Scholar; Henke, Klaus-Dietmar, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, 3rd ed. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For example, Lieutenant Colonel Murray I. Gurfein, Chief of Intelligence, PWD, SHAEF, was among the interrogators of the Staff Section of the Interrogations Division at Nuremberg. Overy, Interrogations, 77. The Psychological Warfare Division (PWD) became the Information Control Division (ICD) after the end of the war. Erwin J. Warkentin, ed., History of the Information Control Division: OMGUS, 1944 to June 30, 1946, 3 (http://www.erwinslist.com/Files/History%20I.pdf; accessed December 13, 2018). For an overview of the development of psychological warfare since World War I, see Philip M. Taylor, “From Psychological Warfare to Information Operations and Back Again,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Modern Warfare, ed. George Kassimeris and John Buckley (London: Routledge, 2010), 419–32.

4 Ahmed, Sara, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London: Routledge, 2000), 6Google Scholar.

5 Matthews, Sara, “‘The Trophies of Their Wars’: Affect and Encounter at the Canadian War Museum,” Museum Management and Curatorship 28, no. 3 (2013): 273CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See, for example, Peter Longerich, “Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!” Die Deutschen und die Judenverfolgung 1933–1945 (Munich: Siedler, 2006); Bernward Dörner, Die Deutschen und der Holocaust. Was niemand wissen wollte, aber jeder wissen konnte (Berlin: Propyläen, 2007); David Bankier, Die öffentliche Meinung im Hitler-Staat. Die “Endlösung” und die Deutschen. Eine Berichtigung (Berlin: Arno Spitz, 1995); Otto D. Kulka and Eberhard Jäckel, eds., Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten 1933–1945 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2004); Eric A. Johnson and Karl-Heinz Reuband, What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Everyday Life in Nazi Germany: An Oral History (Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2005).

7 Thomas Boghardt, “America's Secret Vanguard: US Army Intelligence Operations in Germany, 1944–47,” Studies in Intelligence 57, no. 2 (2013): 1–3. In the American context, the OSS was chiefly responsible for intelligence gathering, CIC was entrusted with and countering enemy espionage and sabotage and intelligence gathering, and G-2s at division, army, and theater level engaged in interrogation, interpretation, photo interpretation, and order of battle.

8 Hemant Shaw, The Production of Modernization: Daniel Lerner, Mass Media, and the Passing of Traditional Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 32–33, 47; Warkentin, History of the Information Control Division, 156. Following SHAEF's dissolution on 13 July 13, 1945, the work of the Intelligence Section of PWD was assumed by the Intelligence Branch of the Information Control Division USFET. In addition, in October 1945, a Surveys Unit was created, and the branch was allocated to Information Control Division (ICD) in February 1946, responsible for political intelligence reporting for military government.

9 Shaw, The Production of Modernization, 38–39.

10 The OSS Research and Analysis's Central European Section played an important role in denazification planning, employed many German-Jewish scholars who had fled Germany, and included some of the scholars of the Frankfurt School. William Mikkel Dack, “Questioning the Past: The Fragebogen and Everyday Denazification in Occupied Germany” (unpublished thesis, University of Calgary, 2016), 86; see also Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer, Secret Reports on Nazi Germany: The Frankfurt School Contribution to the War Effort, ed. Raffaele Laudani (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Guy Stern, “In the Service of American Intelligence: German-Jewish Exiles in the War Against Hitler,” The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 37, no. 1 (1992): 470.

11 New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division (hereafter NYPL), Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Alfred Toombs, “Aachen Report. To: Messrs. Sweet, Padover, and Gittler, Ninth Army,” February 14, 1945. Prior to interrogating German civilians, they had interviewed civilians in France, Luxembourg, and Belgium.

12 These were “used and circulated by G-2 and G-5 Army and Army Group levels, by Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF and by civilian agencies concerned with German policy. Over a period of months, Dr. Padover's reports came to be regarded as the most accurate and interesting political intelligence material to come out of Germany. The reports have been sought after in the highest Hqs.” National Archives at College Park, MD (NACP), RG226, Entry 224, Box 580, OSS Personnel Files, Padover, Saul K., Alfred Toombs to Commanding Officer, P&PWDet., 12 AG, APO 655, Recommendation for Bronze Star, May 24, 1945. See also commendation of Dr. Paul Sweet for the award of a Bronze Star, praising his reports and analyses, and their use in policymaking. NACP, RG226, Entry 224, Box 761, OSS Personnel Files, Sweet, Dr. Paul R., Alfred Toombs to Commanding Officer, P&PWDet., 12 AG, APO 655, Recommendation for Bronze Star, May 24, 1945.

13 For more on Lasswell, see, for example, Lynette Finch, “Psychological Propaganda: The War of Ideas on Ideas During the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” Armed Forces & Society 26, no. 3 (2000): 367–86; Nick Dorzweiler, “Frankfurt Meets Chicago: Collaborations between the Institute for Social Research and Harold Lasswell, 1933–1941,” Polity 47, no. 3 (2015): 352–75.

14 See a round-table discussion including Gittler's daughter, Wendy Gittler, following the film's screening at New York University in 2012 (http://www.casaitaliananyu.org/node/6176; accessed January 1, 2019).

15 Paul R. Sweet, “Interview with Paul Sweet,” The Historian 59, no. 2 (1997): 284.

16 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Photos Articles Notes Clippings, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “Edelweiss Pirates: German Youth in Revolt?” n.d.; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “A Nazi Real Estate Broker,” November 19, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “A Middle-Aged Social Democrat, a Little Man Who Never Compromised,” December 12, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “Anti-Nazi Daughter of a Nazi,” December 9, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “‘Unpolitical’ German Girl,” October 26, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “Father and Wife of an SS-Man,” November 9, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “A Race-Conscious and Nazified Girl,” January 23, 1945.

17 For reports and profiles mentioning atrocities against Jews and Russians, see, for example, NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “The Burgermeister of a small German town,” October 18, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover, “Young German Stenographer,” October 18, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “ ‘Unpolitical’ German Girl,” October 26, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “An Engineer from Cologne,” October 29, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “An ‘Anti-Nazi’ School Teacher Digs Trenches & Likes It,” March 16, 1945; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “A Hitler Youth: 14,” March 25, 1945; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “German University Students—Preliminary Report,” March 30, 1945; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “An Impression of Germans in Germany,” December 3, 1944.

18 Daniel Lerner, Sykewar: Psychological Warfare Against Germany, D-Day to VE-Day (New York: George W. Stewart, 1949), 128. Lerner served with PWD in Paris from September 1944 until May 1945 and was Chief of Intelligence of the Information Control Division, OMGUS, from 1945 to 1946. After the war, Lerner's doctoral thesis focused on PWD, and he subsequently became a professor of sociology, concentrating specifically on mass media. See Shaw, The Production of Modernization, 31; Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944–1946 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History United States Army, 1990).

19 See in this context, for example, Bastiaan Willems, “Nachbeben des Totalen Kriegs: Der Rückzug der Wehrmacht durch Ostpreußen und seine Folgen,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 66, no. 3 (2018): 403–34.

20 See, for example, Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe, 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2013); Overy, “Making and Breaking Morale”; Clodfelter, “Aiming to Break Will”; Mark Connelly, “The British People, the Press and the Strategic Air Campaign against Germany, 1939–45,” Contemporary British History 16, no. 2 (2002): 39–48; Alex J. Bellamy, “The Ethics of Terror Bombing: Beyond Supreme Emergency,” Journal of Military Ethics 7, no. 1 (2008): 41–65; Alan J. Levine, The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940–1945 (New York: Praeger, 1992).

21 Emory University, Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, Washington, DC, Witness to the Holocaust, Morris P. Parloff Interview, interviewed by Lily Singer, May 10, 1980 (https://witness.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/items/show/76; accessed September 14, 2018). After the war, Parloff spent thirty years as administrator and researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health, taught at different universities, conducted research on personality characteristics, and maintained a psychotherapy practice. On the so-called “Ritchie Boys,” US Army intelligence personnel, many of whom were German Jews, see, for example, Stern, “In the Service of American Intelligence”; Bruce Henderson, Ritchie Boys: The Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned to Fight Hitler (New York: HarperCollins, 2017); Boghardt, “America's Secret Vanguard”; Kevin M. Aughinbaugh, “The Castle of Intelligence: Camp Ritchie Maryland and the Military Intelligence Training Center during the Second World War,” The Gettysburg Historical Journal 17 (2018) (https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/ghj/vol17/iss1/5); Christian Bauer and Rebekka Göpfert, Die Ritchie Boys: Deutsche Emigranten beim US-Geheimdienst (Makrobooks, 2016); Longden, T-Force: The Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945; Berrin A. Beasley, “Hier 1st 1212: Operation Annie, World War II Allied Psychological Warfare, and the Capture of the Rhineland,” Journal of Radio Studies 8, no. 1 (2001): 104–21.

22 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC (USHMM), Morris B. Parloff Papers, 2015.495.1, Folder 5: Correspondence: compilation, typescript, titled “World War Two Lite: Highlights of Letters. From Morris to Gloria Parloff, 1942–1945.” Typescript, 2001, Morris B. Parloff, Letter from Morris B. Parloff to Gloria Parloff, November 2, 1944.

23 USHMM, Morris B. Parloff Papers, 2015.495.1, Folder 5: Correspondence: compilation, typescript, titled “World War Two Lite: Highlights of Letters. From Morris to Gloria Parloff, 1942–1945.” Typescript, 2001, Morris B. Parloff, Letter from Morris B. Parloff to Gloria Parloff, January 23, 1945; Morris B. Parloff, Letter from Morris B. Parloff to Gloria Parloff, April 20, 1945.

24 NACP, RG338, Entry P50385, Box 1, 15th Army G-2 Periodic Rep Apr–Jul 1945, Annex No. 2 to Fifteenth U.S. Army. G-2 Periodic Report No. 14, April 14, 1945. See also Johannes Kleinschmidt, “Do not fraternize”: Die schwierigen Anfänge deutsch-amerikanischer Freundschaft 1944–1949 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1997).

25 In all intelligence reports, country names are usually spelled in capital letters.

26 NACP, RG338, Entry P50385, Box 1, 15th Army G-2 Periodic Rep Apr–Jul 1945, Annex No. 3 to Fifteenth U.S. Army. G-2 Periodic Report No. 18, April 19, 1945. All emphases are in the original.

27 On the Werewolves, see, for example, Perry Biddiscombe, Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944–1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Christina von Hodenberg, “Of German Fräuleins, Nazi Werewolves, and Iraqi Insurgents: The American Fascination with Hitler's Last Foray,” Central European History 41 (2008): 71–92.

28 NACP, RG338, Entry P50385, Box 1, 15th Army G-2 Periodic Rep Apr-Jul 1945, Annex No. 4 to Fifteenth U.S. Army. G-2 Periodic Report No. 26, April 27, 1945.

29 Lerner, Sykewar, 115–23. See also Shaw, The Production of Modernization, 35–38.

30 Martin Roiser and Carla Willig, “The Strange Death of the Authoritarian Personality: 50 Years of Psychological and Political Debate,” History of the Human Sciences 15, no. 4 (2002): 71–96.

31 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 22, Directives Allied. Annex E: Principles and Procedures in Selecting Direct Licensees and Employees, SHAEF, PWD, Directive No. 2 for Information and Control Services, May 28, 1945.

32 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 66.

33 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 167.

34 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 22, Directives Allied. Annex E: Principles and Procedures in Selecting Direct Licensees and Employees, SHAEF, PWD, Directive No. 2 for Information and Control Services, May 28, 1945.

35 Kleinschmidt, “Do not fraternize,” 29–30.

36 Saul K. Padover, Lügendetektor: Vernehmungen im besiegten Deutschland 1944/45 [1946] (Berlin: Die andere Bibliothek, 1999), 292–96.

37 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Saul Padover, “An Impression of Germans in Germany,” 12 AG, December 3, 1944; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Saul Padover, “Reflections on the ‘Hard Policy’ toward Germany,” December 26, 1944.

38 Padover, Lügendetektor, 334.

39 Saul Padover, Experiment in Germany: The Story of an American Intelligence Officer (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946). His book was translated into German as late as 1999 and published under the title Lügendetektor: Vernehmungen im besiegten Deutschland 1944/45 (“Lie detector: Interrogations in Vanquished Germany 1944/45”), and recently dramatized by German broadcaster ZDF (Die Suche nach Hitler's Volk, directed by Alexander Berkel and Peter Hartel, 2015).

40 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Notebooks 1944-1945, n.d. [May or June 1945]; emphasis in the original.

41 See, for example, NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul K. Padover and Lewis F. Gittler, “A Socialist Who Did Nazi Occupation Work in Russia,” February 21, 1945; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Saul K. Padover and Lewis F. Gittler, “A Middle-Aged Social Democrat, a Little Man Who Never Compromised,” December 12, 1944.

42 For the contemporary discourse on collective guilt, see Lord Robert Vansittart, Black Record: Germans Past and Present (London: Hamish Hamilton 1941); Lord Robert Vansittart, Roots of the Trouble (London and Melbourne: Hutchinson & Co., 1942); Lord Robert Vansittart, Germany from Defeat to Conquest 1913–1933 (Edinburgh: Hugh Paton and Sons, Ltd., 1945); Carl G. Jung, “After the Catastrophe,” in Essays on Contemporary Events: The Psychology of Nazism, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (New York: Capricorn Books, 1961) and Karl Jaspers, Die Schuldfrage (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1946); Hannah Arendt, “Collective Responsibility,” in Amor Mundi: Explorations in the Faith and Thought of Hannah Arendt, ed. James Bernauer (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987); Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibility under Dictatorship,” The Listener (6 August 1964): 185–87, 205; Hannah Arendt, “The Aftermath of Nazi Rule: Report from Germany,” Commentary (October 1950): 342–53. For an overview, see Jeffrey K. Olick, In the House of the Hangman: The Agonies of German Defeat, 1943–1949 (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2005); Jeffrey K. Olick, “The Guilt of Nations?” Ethics & International Affairs 17, no. 2 (2003): 109–17.

43 Ute Gerhard, Soziologie der Stunde Null (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 84; Directive to Commander-in-Chief of United States Forces of Occupation Regarding the Military Government of Germany; April 1945 (JCS 1067). Taken from Yale Law School, Lilian Goldman Law Library, The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/ger02.asp; accessed December 12, 2018).

44 Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit (Munich: Beck, 1996).

45 University of Warwick, Modern Records Centre (MRC), Richard Crossman Papers, Mss.154/3/PW/1/109-114, John P. Dickson, “Notes on a Trip to Western Rhineland Area,” March 21–28, 1945.

46 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 139, 143; Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany. See also section 6c on denazification in the Directive to Commander-in-Chief of United States Forces of Occupation Regarding the Military Government of Germany; April 1945 (JCS 1067).

47 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 152–53.

48 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, 9th US Army, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, “An Ex-SS Man,” March 19, 1945. All emphases in the original.

49 See Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BArch), R 9361/III/96585/RS C5460. The details match the information in Padover and Gittler's report. H. K., who applied for a marriage license to the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt), was born in 1923. BArch records further confirm he was a signaller in the SS, which he joined in March 1941, and prior to that he was in the Hitler Youth from November 1932 onward.

50 Tomasz Kranz, “Ewidencja Zgonowi Smiertelnosc Wiezow KL Lublin,” Zeszyty Majdanka 23 (2005): 7–53.

51 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 17, Interrogations: summary reports on attitudes, SHAEF PWD, Intelligence Section, Summary Report on the Attitudes of German Ps/W Towards the United States, June 19, 1945.

52 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, Series IV: Topical Files: MS 1140, Box 19, Folder 29, Dept. of the Army. Civil Affairs Division. New York Field Office—Study and Reports: “Letters from Young Germans,” November 10, 1948.

53 Seán Street, “Crossing the Ether: Public Service Radio and Commercial Competition in Britain with Special Reference to Pre-War Broadcasting” (PhD dissertation, Bournemouth University, 2003), 381.

54 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Profiles 1944–45, Correspondence Donald McGranahan to Chief, Intelligence Section, PWD/SHAEF, “The Children in Buchenwald,” May 4, 1945.

55 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Captain Donald McGranahan, “A Talk to the Children of Buchenwald,” April 24, 1945. Emphasis in the original.

56 WRC, Richard Crossman Papers, MSS.154/3/PW/1/67-71, Daniel Lerner, “Notes on a Trip through Occupied Germany,” April 18, 1945. Emphasis in the original.

57 Morris Janowitz, “German Reactions to Nazi Atrocities,” American Journal of Sociology 52, no. 2 (1946): 145.

58 Donald Bloxham, “The Genocidal Past in Western Germany and the Experience of Occupation, 1945–6,” European History Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2004): 311.

59 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files, Box 18 Folder 6, Reports on Morale, William Harlan Hale, “German Mind.” Summary from Notes on Soldiers and Civilians. May 1944–Jun 1945. See Taylor, “From Psychological Warfare to Information Operations and Back Again,” 422. All emphases in original.

60 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files, Box 18 Folder 6: Reports on Morale, William Harlan Hale, “German Mind.” Summary from Notes on Soldiers and Civilians, May 1944–Jun 1945; emphasis in the original.

61 NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Alfred Toombs, Aachen Report. To: Messrs. Sweet, Padover, and Gittler, Ninth Army, February 14, 1945; NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Saul Padover, Lewis Gittler, and Paul Sweet, “The Political Situation in Aachen,” February 2, 1945. See also Henke, Die amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands; Biddiscombe, The Denazification of Germany.

62 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Box 18, Folder 26: Interview Reports with Psychological Warfare Personnel 1948, 1950, William Hale, Person Interviewed: Wallace Carroll, May 15, 1950. At that time, Carroll was newspaper editor with the Division of Public Affairs, Department of State; emphasis in the original.

63 Bloxham, “The Genocidal Past in Western Germany and the Experience of Occupation, 1945–6,” 306.

64 Bloxham, “The Genocidal Past in Western Germany and the Experience of Occupation, 1945–6,” 306–07.

65 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 253.

66 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 191.

67 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 285.

68 Dack, “Questioning the Past,” 196.

69 Schreiter draws similar conclusions from her analysis of interview transcripts from the US Strategic Bombing Survey. Already in this early period, Germans began to justify their wartime behaviors toward the survey interviewers by claiming that they had only done their duty. Schreiter, “Revisiting Morale under the Bombs,” 374.

70 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 22, Standing Directive for Psychological Warfare against Members of the German Armed Forces, SHAEF, PWD, April 18, 1944.

71 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 19, Folder 3, Leaflets, n.d.

72 For example, Yale University Archives & Manuscripts, William Harlan Hale Papers, Series IV: Topical Files, Box 18, folder 26: Interview reports with psychological warfare personnel 1948, 1950, William H. Hale, Psychological Warfare Interview Report. Person Interviewed: Wallace Carroll, May 18, 1950. For a general evaluation of “the impact of Allied propaganda on the German military and civilian population,” see Lerner, Sykewar. William R. Kintner argues that psychological warfare became effective only after the German defeat at Stalingrad. See Kintner, “The Effectiveness of Psychological Warfare,” Marine Corps Gazette 32, no. 1 (1947): 48–56, esp. 49. In the Mediterranean theater of war, 180,000 German POWs were interviewed by questionnaire to find out about the reactions to psychological warfare. Kintner, “The Effectiveness of Psychological Warfare,” 50. For an example of the way in which PWD field intelligence officers would suggest content for leaflets and radio broadcasts, see NYPL, Saul K. Padover Papers, MssCol 2325, Special Reports 1944, Saul Padover and Lewis Gittler, Correspondence to CO, PW Detachment, “Subject: German Civilians Shot by Wehrmacht Sharpshooters across the Rhine at Düsseldorf. Suggested Use: Radio Luxembourg, BBC, MITTEILUNGEN, Tactical Loudspeaker, Tactical Leaflet,” March 28, 1945.

73 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 9, SHAEF-PWD, Intelligence Section, “Listening to Allied Radio Broadcasts by German Civilians under the Nazis,” June 5, 1945.

74 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 9, SHAEF-PWD, Intelligence Section, “Listening to Allied Radio Broadcasts by German Civilians under the Nazis,” June 5, 1945.

75 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 9, SHAEF-PWD, Intelligence Section, “Listening to Allied Radio Broadcasts by German Civilians under the Nazis,” June 5, 1945.

76 Philip M. Taylor gives a figure of 1.5 billion leaflets, whereas Lynette Finch quotes a figure of 14 billion. See Taylor, Philip M., “‘Munitions of the Mind’: A Brief History of Military Psychological Operations,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy 3, no. 3 (2007): 200CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Finch, Lynette, “Knowing the Enemy: Australian Psychological Warfare and the Business of Influencing minds in the Second World War,” War & Society 16, no. 2 (1998): 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

77 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 10, SHAEF-PWD, Intelligence Section, “Exposure during the War of German Civilians to Allied Leaflets,” June 28, 1945.

78 Herz, Martin F., “Some Psychological Lessons from Leaflet Propaganda in World War II,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 13, no. 3 (1949): 480–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. After the war, Herz was a Foreign Service officer for thirty years and later director of Georgetown's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

79 Herz, “Some Psychological Lessons from Leaflet Propaganda in World War II,” 471–77.

80 Herz, “Some Psychological Lessons from Leaflet Propaganda in World War II,” 480.

81 Herz, “Some Psychological Lessons from Leaflet Propaganda in World War II,” 487–88.

82 Janowitz, “German Reactions to Nazi Atrocities,” 144.

83 Herz, “Some Psychological Lessons from Leaflet Propaganda in World War II,” 146.

84 Overy, “Making and Breaking Morale.” See also Pauline Elkes, “The Political Warfare Executive: A Re-Evaluation Based upon the Intelligence Work of the German Section” (PhD dissertatioin, University of Sheffield, 1996).

85 USHMM, Morris B. Parloff Papers, 2015.495.1, Folder 5: Correspondence: compilation, typescript, titled “World War Two Lite: Highlights of Letters. From Morris to Gloria Parloff, 1942–1945.” Typescript, 2001, Morris B. Parloff, Letter from Morris B. Parloff to Gloria Parloff, January 23, 1945.

86 Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 8, Headquarters 12th Army Group, Publicity & Psychological Warfare, “German Attitude to American Occupation,” July 19, 1945.

87 McGranahan, Donald V., “U.S. Psychological Warfare Policy,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1946): 448Google Scholar.

88 McGranahan, “U.S. Psychological Warfare Policy,” 448–49. See also Crossman, Richard, “Psychological Warfare,” Royal United Services Institution Journal 97, no. 587 (1952): 319–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 McGranahan, “U.S. Psychological Warfare Policy,” 449–50. See also a report that details the attitudes of “anti-Nazis” toward the Allied occupation, which reflects on some of these issues: Yale MSSA, William Harlan Hale Papers, MS 1140, Series IV: Topical Files: Box 18, Folder 8, Headquarters 12th Army Group, Publicity & Psychological Warfare, Konrad Kellen, “German Attitude to American Occupation,” July 19, 1945.

90 Crossman, “Psychological Warfare,” 327; emphasis in the original.

91 Crossman, “Psychological Warfare,” 328; emphasis in the original.