Chapter 55: Jun 1945 Allies Take Over the German Government

ALLES IN ORDNUNG

The German phrase “Alles in ordnung” is literally translated as “All in order”. It is a cultural point that reveals the true German sense of actually following orders. That is the primary reason why most of the Nazi war criminals at Nurnburg used the excuse of “I was only following orders” when they were interrogated about their war crimes. It is an attitude that cuts across all identifications in society. It is genderless, sexless, and certainly bears no relationship to economic circumstance. I have no doubt on my mind that the Nazis hung by the allies at the end of the war all thought they were doing the correct thing in following orders because it was a natural part of their genetic background.

The German populace in a defeated state of mind is no different than when their armies were sweeping across Europe crushing all in their path in the name of the Thousand Year Reich and with unswerving loyalty to their Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler.

The best and brightest students were quick to join the Nazi party and the culture of Nazi belief was found in all facets of German government at the local level, the province level and at the State level. The universities were riddled with Nazi party members ready to report the slightest anti-Nazi infraction to the Gestapo even if it involved a family member. In the face of such dedication, most Germans opposed to Hitler kept their mouths shut and simply followed orders because that was the key to survival during the war years.

The average German citizen was bombarded with around the clock propaganda from Herr Joseph Goebbels filling their obedient minds with disinformation about almost everything. Only the skeptical managed to keep their minds defended against such an onslaught of wrong information constantly bombarding their ears with false intelligence about the conduct of the war. In retrospect, the average German citizen knew deep down inside that the invasion of Russia or “Operation Barbarossa” was doomed to failure because the German Wehrmacht was not prepared for war against a strong enemy like the Soviet Union. They already knew from the news leaked about Poland that Stalin was just as ruthless as their own leader Hitler and that he would fight to the bitter end regardless of the losses.

However, because of that special “Alles in Ordnung” attitude they followed orders both in the military side and on the civilian front and marched in perfect rank and file right over the cliff of World War Two.

The German governmental bureaucracy was rooted back in the 1800s with precise and redundant systems of hand written records. Strangely, they kept deep records on all aspects of the concentration camp operations making their efforts to erase the evidence before the end of the war somewhat fruitless.

Of course, there were created two German governmental systems. The one in the West contained a large number of former Nazi officials because they were the best people for the job. In the east, most of the former Nazi government officials were shipped off to slave labor camps in Siberia or simply executed on order of Stalin. Nazi party membership under Soviet rule was a sure ticket to imprisonment. The organization in the Eastern zone was totally destroyed and the Russians placed their military personnel in charge of all governmental functions using the thought that Germans were guilty of war crimes and deserved the harshest treatment possible. They used the carrot and the stick effectively to control the population to work for them and the Germans responded with their typical “alles in ordnung” attitude and obeyed their new masters.

In the West, the allies drafted the best minds for the application of government regardless of Nazi party credentials with the exception of SS personal connected with the concentration camps and they continued the German systems of record keeping doing their best to reconstruct the pre- war records at all levels.

In the beginning, the government offices were under control of the Zone of the ally in charge, American, British or French. There were differences from zone to zone but as time wore on that changed to a more identical system of government controls. As time went on in the Western Zones, the German bureaucrats came slowly back into power under the democratic guidance of their respective ally in charge. The French were the first to withdraw back to their own country because they had severe problems of their own with the influence of the wartime Vichy government that was stanchly anti-communist in their leanings. The British tired of the controls quickly knowing that they really needed to get back to their own country to correct the many flaws and damage to systems in Great Britain. The French military which was never large in the first place had no interest in maintaining an occupation force and they shut down their operations quickly.

The British maintained a few bases in Germany and did their best to confront the Russians on the other side of the newly created “Iron Curtain” but they followed along with their civilian voters in quickly voting Winston Churchill out of office in a surprising election that sent him into permanent retirement away from politics.

Only the Americans made Germany a center for confrontation against the Soviet Union leaving an occupation force of almost half a million men in the decade after the war even after becoming involved in a nasty war in the Pacific in Korea which was fomented by the Chinese Communists to secure the entire Korean Peninsula under their control. The war was under the umbrella of the United Nations but it was basically the Americans that mainly fought the war to a stalemate that split the country in half just like Germany.