Anti-fascist Organizations under the American Military Government Occupation of Postwar Germany

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ISSN: 1309 4173 (Online) 1309 - 4688 (Print) Volume 6 Issue 1, p. 161-173, January 2014

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H i s t o r y S t u d i e s Volume 6 Issue 1 January

2014

Anti-fascist Organizations under the American Military Government Occupation of Postwar Germany

American Askeri İşgali Altındaki Almanya’da İkinci Dünya Savaşı Sonrasında Faşizm Karşıtı Örgütler

Prof. Dr. Andrew Szanajda Overseas Chinese University - Taiwan

Abstract: This work examines how German anti-fascist organisations that were established before and after the end of the Second World War sought to make contributions to the post-war order after the collapse of the National Socialist regime. These organisations spontaneously emerged throughout Germany and took actions to reconstruct post-war Germany, which included contributing to Allied post-war objectives, including denazification, while serving as sources of information for the American military government civil affairs detachments, and also cooperated with the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of CIA. This article argues that although these organisations were banned as political groups, they nevertheless made significant contributions to the reconstruction of post-war Germany.

Keywords: anti-fascist organisations, denazification, American military, Office of Strategic Services, Germany

Öz: Bu çalışma İkinci Dünya Savaşı öncesinde ve sonrasında Almanya’da kurulan faşizm karşıtı örgütlerin Milli Sosyalist Nazi rejiminin yıkılmasından sonra savaş sonrası düzenin kurulmasına katkı çabalarını incelemektedir. Savaş sonrasında birdenbire Almanya’nın birçok yerinde ortaya çıkan bu örgütler savaş sonrası Almanya’sının yeniden inşa edilmesi için çalışmış, müttefiklerin savaş sonrasında Nazileri tasfiye edilmesi gibi hedeflerine ulaşmalarına yardımcı olmuş ve Amerikan askeri idaresine bilgi sağlayarak CIA’den önceki Stratejik Hizmet Bürosu ile işbirliği yapmıştır. Bu makale bu gurupların siyasi örgütlenmelerinin yasaklanmasına rağmen savaş sonrasında Almanya’nın yeniden inşasında önemli katkılar sağladığını ortaya koymaktadır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Faşizm karşıtı örgütler, Nazilerin tasfiyesi, Stratejik Hizmetler Bürosu, Almanya

Introduction

The Allies formulated plans for measures to be undertaken in post-war Germany that were to be implemented after the defeat of National Socialist regime. Meanwhile, the surviving elements of German resistance against the regime maintained their own post-war interests.

Representatives of the Allied occupation and German anti-fascist resistance came together before and after the collapse of the regime, having a common interest in pursuing the goal of purging Germany of National Socialist influences. There were various forms of resistance in Germany against the National Socialist regime; Communist resistance exceeded that of all other forms and never ceased, continuing after the regime’s collapse.¹ Leftist resistance continued the struggle against fascism after the collapse of the National Socialist regime, allying themselves with the American military government as individuals. Military government representatives found it expedient to cooperate with them in the interest of pursuing their immediate post-war aims before military occupation authorities officially

1 Allan Merson, Communist Resistance in Nazi Germany (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 309.

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sanctioned German political activity. At this time, military government detachments were severely understaffed and overworked, as well as being inadequately trained in the skills that were required to deal with post-hostilities conditions.² Individual antifascists thus took the initiative to establish antifascist organisations before the end of the Second World War. The establishment and functions of German wartime resistance organisations and post-war German anti-fascist committees have been examined, as well as right wing resistance activities against the Allied occupation as continued support for the National Socialist regime that extended after the end of hostilities.³ However, the cooperation that took place between German anti-fascists for the purpose of fulfilling post-war objectives has remained to be examined. The purpose of this work is to determine the extent of the contribution by anti-fascists before the end of the Second World War and during the immediate post-war period. German anti-fascists who had taken refuge abroad cooperated with the OSS during the Second World War. Amid the prevailing apathy and demoralisation at the end of the war within Germany, there was also anti-Nazi activity undertaken by anti-fascist organisations that had spontaneously emerged at the end of the war that lent assistance to the American occupation authorities insofar as this was permitted for certain tasks, although the extent of this cooperation was limited due to political considerations.

Leftist German resistance during the Second World War

During the National Socialist regime, communist resistance groups printed and distributed anti-National Socialist literature, engaged in sabotage, and a few of them conducted espionage for the Soviet Union. Most attempted to establish cells in workplaces that they hoped would serve as the initial basis for a mass uprising against the regime.⁴ Although left wing groups of resistance, including Communists, Social Democrats and militant splinter groups, had given up hope of being able to overthrow the National Socialist regime from within by 1937-1938, they maintained an interest in maintaining cadres of opposition among workers who could preserve an apparatus that would be capable of creating a mass basis after the collapse of the regime and take power as an anti-National Socialist alternative to middle class conservatives.⁵ After having been purged during the National Socialist regime, the processes of National Socialist terror made the structural preconditions for mass resistance

2 Gareth Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2012), 17-18.

3 Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945, 4; Heike Bungert, “The OSS and its cooperation with the free Germany committees, 1944–45,” Intelligence and National Security.

Volume 12, Issue 3, Jul 1997: 130-144.; Lutz Niethammer, Ulrich Borsdorf and Peter Brandt, eds., Arbeiterinitiative 1945. Antifaschistische Ausschüsse und Reorganisation der Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag, 1976); Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945; Perry Biddiscombe, Werwolf! The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944-1946 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).

4 Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 304.

5 Gabriel A. Almond and Wolfgang H. Kraus, “The Social Composition of the German Resistance,” The Struggle for Democracy in Germany, ed. Gabriel A. Almond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949), 64-65, 68.

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impossible to exist, and those who were purged in the process of persecution were numerous, especially during the Second World War.⁶

Resistance against the National Socialist regime was organised outside Germany in the form of Free Germany committees, which followed the example of the National Committee for a Free Germany (Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland) and the Association of German Officers (Bund Deutscher Offiziere) that were established in July and September 1943 by German communist exiles and German prisoners of war in Moscow. German communist émigrés in western countries founded the Free German Movement in Britain in September 1943, the Free German Cultural League in Sweden in January 1944, and the Free German Movement in Switzerland and the Comité Allemagne Libre pour L'Ouest (Free Germany Committee in the West) in France in late 1943. These popular front organisations that were more or less led by German communists sought to support the Allied war effort by uniting exiles from National Socialist Germany, providing information about National Socialism, and calling upon Germans in the regime to revolt.⁷

Comité Allemagne Libre pour L'Ouest (CALPO) and the Office of Strategic Services

Although the use of German Communists was supposed to be prohibited by political policy for several months for intelligence reasons late in the Second World War, the extent of the cooperation between the OSS and the Comité Allemagne Libre pour L'Ouest (CALPO) has been established with certainty.⁸ Composed of German political refugees and deserters from the German army, CALPO members fought together against the occupation of France alongside the French resistance.⁹ This organisation later cooperated with the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in secret intelligence matters and special operations in its subversive warfare against Germany during the last phase of the war, putting plans for popular resistance into practice.¹⁰ Its members considered themselves to be the Western wing of the Moscow Free Germany Committee, and while Moscow almost completely ignored them, the OSS increased their contacts with CALPO resistance groups beginning in late summer 1944.

CALPO delivered secret intelligence to the OSS, such as making its dossiers on war criminals available to the X-2, the OSS Counterintelligence branch.¹¹ In turn, the OSS lent its support to this organisation of German anti-National Socialists, such as providing money, cover, communications and equipment for its agents undertaking special operations into Germany that would have military and political objectives.¹² The Special Operations branch of the OSS employed CALPO agents on sabotage missions with the objective of interrupting German

6 Detlev J.K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life trans.

Richard Deverson (London: B.T. Batsford, 1987): 105; Horst Duhnke, Die KPD von 1933 bis 1945 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1972), 522-525.

7 Heike Bungert, “The OSS and its cooperation with the free Germany committees, 1944–45,” 131-132.

8 Anthony Cave Brown, The Secret War Report of the OSS (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1976), 541;

Heike Bungert, “The OSS and its cooperation with the free Germany committees, 1944–45,” 134.

9 Free Germans in the French Maquis: The story of the Committee "Free Germany" in the West (London: I.N.G. publication, 1945), 13-14.

10 Jürgen Heideking, Christof Mauch and Marc Frey, eds. American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A Documentary History (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 11-12.

11 Heideking, Mauch and Frey, eds. American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A Documentary History, 354 fn. 3, 356.

12 Heideking, Mauch and Frey, eds. American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A Documentary History, 354 fn. 3, 358-359.

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supply and communication lines.¹³ Their relations culminated in early 1945 with a top secret plan to assassinate high-ranking members of the NSDAP and of the Gestapo in order to undermine their strength, using approximately a hundred CALPO members led by American officers, and encouraged local anti-National Socialist Germans to follow this example.¹⁴ This plan, however, was shelved because the OSS director, William J. Donovan, expressed concern about the potential repercussions that would cause trouble for the OSS. The Special Operations branch later decided in May 1945 to cut its ties with Free German agents altogether as a result of the end of hostilities.¹⁵ The OSS thereby ceased all cooperation with the Free Germany movements at the end of the Second World War. American authorities also rejected their assistance in the administration, denazification and reconstruction of post-war Germany, mainly due to their suspected connections with the National Committee for a Free Germany in Moscow.¹⁶

Anti-fascist Organisations in Post-war Germany

The OSS used German émigrés as a wartime expedient while the defeat of Germany was in prospect, while there were other forms of German resistance that originated within Germany, and also sought to support the Allied effort in achieving political aims. German anti- fascist organisations spontaneously emerged after the end of hostilities. The pressure of National Socialist terror did not preclude the nearly spontaneous will of the workers’

movement to cooperate across traditional party lines and create anti-fascist committees throughout Germany in early 1945.¹⁷ These self-appointed anti-fascists sought to mobilize all healthy political forces among the population in order to create the preconditions for a democratic Germany.¹⁸

Resistance against National Socialism was thus resumed when measures against the supporters of the regime were undertaken after the regime collapsed , when local anti-fascists were able to emerge from underground when unfettered from the conditions of a totalitarian state with a ubiquitous secret police that had suppressed them. On one hand, these anti-fascist organisations were reported as engaging in activities that violated the military government’s prohibitions on political activities that extended beyond the immediate aim of eliminating National Socialist influences, such as demanding recognition as the provisional local government, in addition to undertaking purges of National Socialists in their communities.¹⁹ While the ban on German political activity was intended to purge National Socialist activity, the Allied occupation authorities did not encourage the process of political reconstruction in any form, or even allow it to emanate from German sources. This ban on political activity

13 Heike Bungert, “The OSS and its cooperation with the free Germany committees, 1944–45,” 136.

14 Heideking, Mauch and Frey, eds. American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler: A Documentary History, 354 fn. 3, 394.

15 Heike Bungert, “The OSS and its cooperation with the free Germany committees, 1944–45,” 136-137.

16 Heike Bungert, “The OSS and its cooperation with the free Germany committees, 1944–45,” 138.

17Detlev Peukert, “Der deutsche Arbeiterwidestand 1933-1945,” Aus Politik und Zeigeschichte: beilage zur Wochenzeitung das Parlament B 28-29/79, 14 July 1979: 29-30.

18 Ulrich Borsdorf and Lutz Niethammer, eds. Franz Brüggemeier, Zwischen Befreiung und Besetzung:

Analysen des US-Geheimdienstes über Positionen und Strukturen deutscher Politik 1945 (Wuppertal:

Peter Hammer Verlag, 1976), 108.

19 “Action Groups in Germany,” Office of Strategic Services. Research and Analysis Branch. Current Intelligence Study Number 25. R & A 3145S. 15 June 1945: 1, 3. www.foia.cia.gov. Accessed 28 February 2013.

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likewise extended to political meetings held by anti-National Socialist organizations.²⁰ However, anti-National Socialist individuals acted on their interests with a view to the future while all political power was in the hands of the occupation authorities.

Groups of grass roots opposition elements began to organise into antifascist committees following the regime’s collapse, restoring fighting associations against fascism similar to those that had been established before 1933 and had undertaken resistance activity in the early years of the National Socialist regime.²¹ Examples included: the Antifascist Fighting Organisation in Düsseldorf and Hamburg; the Fighting Community against Fascism and the Fighting Organisation against Fascism in Bremen; the Anti-National Socialist Movement in Halle; the Fighting League against Fascism in Essen; an Anti-Fascist United Front in Mühlheim and in Duisburg; an Anti-Fascist Action Committee in Oberhausen; the Anti-Fascist Freedom Movement in Bochum, and the Anti-Fascist League in Dortmund.²² Other anti- fascist societies or committees were established in Erfurt, Riederwald in Frankfurt-am-Main, Marburg, and Munich, and sixty-eight anti-fascist committees emerged in the Dresden region, among many other regions throughout Germany.²³ According to an estimate, there were at least five hundred such antifascist committees that functioned as the only remaining local political actors.²⁴Anti-fascists also arranged for the peaceful handovers of Oberhausen, Dortmund and Düsseldorf to advancing American troops.²⁵

Although the regional leadership of the re-established German Communist Party in Bremen in May 1945 described the western Allies as imperialist “class enemies” intending to restore a bourgeois state, these leaders also recommended cooperation with the occupation powers as “a temporary ally in the struggle for the liquidation of fascism in Germany.”²⁶ Anti- fascists were prepared to provide American military authorities with information about where National Socialist leaders could be found, and the location of stores and archives, considering themselves to be on the side of the American occupation authorities, while continuing a political struggle against the proponents of the regime that they had opposed as unarmed partisans, though now subject to the patronage of American authorities.²⁷ Members of the

20 U.S. National Archive. College Park, Maryland. RG 331 Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II. Weekly Civil Affairs to Weekly Survey Box No. 72. Headquarters 6^th Army Group G-5 Section APO 23, U.S. Army. Weekly Civil Affairs/Military Government Summary No. 35.

21 Hartmut Pietsch, Militärregierung, Bürokratie und Sozialiesierung: Zur Entwicklung des politischen Systems in den Städten des Ruhrgebietes 1945 bis 1948 (Duisburg: Walter Braun Verlag, 1978), 111.

22 Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945, 6; Carl J. Friedrich et al, American Experiences in Military Government in World War II (New York: Rinehart & Company, 1948), 246; Patrick Major, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945-1946 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 42-43.

23 “Action Groups in Germany,” Office of Strategic Services. Research and Analysis Branch. Current Intelligence Study Number 25. R & A 3145S. 15 June 1945: 2. www.foia.cia.gov. Accessed 28 February 2013.

24 Günter Benser, “Antifa-Ausschüsse – Staatsorgane – Parteiorganisation. Überlegungen zu Ausmass, Rolle und Grenzen der antifaschistischen Bewegung am Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges,“ Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 9 26 (1978), 785-787; Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945, 4.

25 Patrick Major, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945- 1946 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 41.

26 Hendrik Bunke, Die KPD in Bremen. 1945-1968 (Köln: Papyrossa-Verlag, 2001), 16-17.

27 Carl J. Friedrich et al, American Experiences in Military Government in World War II (New York:

Rinehart & Company, 1948), 246.

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Communist party in Düsseldorf contacted representatives of the American military government immediately after American troops arrived there. While they were disallowed from acting as an organisation, military government representatives cooperated with smaller groups of these anti-fascists to purge National Socialist elements from administrative positions and in arresting war criminals.²⁸

These activities at the early stage of the post-war occupation thus served as antecedent efforts that assisted the Allied occupation authorities with identifying and arresting individuals, or removing them from positions of responsibility, in accordance with post-war Allied objectives.²⁹ Antifascist committees provided occupation authorities with lists of incriminated individuals, as well as information about the levels of their complicity and the locations of prominent National Socialists. Members of these committees also arrested National Socialists and handed them over to American troops.³⁰ The evidence provided by eye-witness testimonies, later supplemented by the available documentary evidence uncovered by Allied investigators, subsequently provided for the pursuit of post-war Allied objectives. These were codified through legal frameworks in the London Charter of 8 August 1945, which defined war crimes and crimes against humanity, which was in turn followed by the enactment of Allied Control Council Law No. 10 that provided the practical application for the prosecution of these types of crimes, and the enactment of various Allied and zonal denazification legislation.

In other cases, antifascists also contributed to post-war reconstruction. These organisations did not consider themselves to be political parties, but emergency coalitions of all anti-National Socialist forces that were established to cope with the urgent problems that had ensued in Germany after twelve years of fascism and war.³¹ These actions included occupying National Socialist party and Labour Front offices, erasing National Socialist slogans and changing street names, as well requisitioning National Socialist buildings, office equipment, personal property and homes of notorious local National Socialists for their personal use, or distributing property and space to refugees and former concentration camp inmates, as well as compelling National Socialists to do manual labour for the community, such as clearing rubble.³² The central issues that preoccupied the newly formed organizations included denouncing National Socialists, preventing efforts to form an illegal National Socialist underground, contributing to the denazification of public administration and private industry, and contributing to resolving housing and food problems. The U.S. military government concluded that these organisations represented the spontaneous appearance of

28 Report of the hitherto activity of the Communistical Party in Düsseldorf. 2. January 1946. FO 1013/408. National Archive. London.

29 Gabriel A. Almond and Wolfgang H. Kraus, “The Social Composition of the German Resistance,”

The Struggle for Democracy in Germany, ed. Gabriel A. Almond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949), 67.

30 Rebecca L. Boehling, A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reform and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany (New York: Berghahn, 1996), 164; Borsdorf and Niethammer, Zwischen Befreiung und Besatzung, 90.

31 U.S. National Archive. College Park, Maryland. RG 331. Box 65. Action Groups in Post-Collapse Germany.

The Struggle for Democracy in Germany, ed. Gabriel A. Almond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949), 67; Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945, 15;

Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 265-269; Borsdorf and Niethammer, Zwischen Befreiung und Besatzung, 85.

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anti-National Socialist resistance forces that could never had achieved any effective strength while the National Socialist regime was in power, and were then “anxious to mobilise the healthy forces in German life for a new start.”³³

In spite of their positive contributions, anti-fascist organisations had to be disbanded under the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) directive against all forms of political activities. They therefore could not be officially recognised, and their activity was soon brought to a halt while political groups, especially active leftist ones, were treated with extreme mistrust. As the Allied armies had been on the borders with Germany, counter-intelligence staffs faced the problem of dealing anti-National Socialist organisations in Germany and how they would affect counter-intelligence operations, since they could not be considered to be pro-Allied. These organizations were considered to be working for their own ends, which varied according to their political backgrounds, and could be considered to be opposed to Allied interests as well as the NSDAP. If these movements had arisen under the National Socialist regime, it remained to be determined what ideology it was based on, and whether it was indicative of genuine disillusionment and conversion to more democratic ideals, or whether it was based on disillusionment over the failure of the National Socialist regime to carry out its aggressive plans.³⁴

It was thus considered difficult to appraise the inherent value of the anti-National Socialist underground in Germany. Although various organisations were clearly active to various degrees, their activities were not considered to be immediately valuable to military operations, and local reports of unrest did not necessarily mean that these underground elements would necessarily revolt against the National Socialists as the Allies approached.

Moreover, any movement could not automatically be considered to be pro-Ally. Although they were all anti-National Socialist, this was frequently thought to result from old political quarrels and because of the unfavourable turn of events under the National Socialist regime. While the strength of party convictions had kept members faithful to their partisan anti-Nazi attitudes under the National Socialist regime, such continued loyalties would preclude any conversion for the purposes of fulfilling Allied objectives; rather they would likely pursue old political policies that had caused them to be anti-National Socialist in the first place. These interests were to be carefully evaluated and verified before they would be allowed to develop under Allied protection.³⁵

These suspicions therefore decisively limited the anti-fascist organisations’ potential for active measures, which depended on the support or at least toleration by the occupation authorities, which considered allowing anti-National Socialist pro-democratic organizations to

33 U.S. National Archive. College Park, Maryland. RG 331. Box 65. Action Groups in Post-Collapse Germany.

34 U.S. National Archive, College Park, Maryland. RG 0319 Office of the Assistant Chief for Intelligence, G-2 Entry #A1 134-A. XE 019458. Anti-Nazi Groups in Germany & Austria. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff G-2. Counter Intelligence Sub-Division Evaluation and Dissemination Section. E.D.S. Report No. 12. Anti-Nazi Groups in Germany and Austria. 6 February 1945.

35 U.S. National Archive, College Park, Maryland. RG 0319 Office of the Assistant Chief for Intelligence, G-2 Entry #A1 134-A. XE 019458. Anti-Nazi Groups in Germany & Austria. Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff G-2. Counter Intelligence Sub-Division Evaluation and Dissemination Section. E.D.S. Report No. 12. Anti-Nazi Groups in Germany and Austria. 6 February 1945.

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assist with denazification.³⁶ Military government detachments in the field required further clarification on the matter of allowing German political activity, including by anti-fascist organisations, which remained guided by the SHAEF directives for military government in Germany prior to defeat or surrender found in the Handbook for Military Government in Germany issued on 9 November 1944. By 3 June 1945, SHAEF G-5 (Civil Affairs Division) officers considered that it remained too early to allow political activity under SHAEF instructions. They argued that most of the detachments had not had sufficient experience and the situation regarding political movements remained too uncertain. Concern remained for excluding renewed National Socialist activity in view of the consequences that might be expected; military government detachment officers would ultimately have to face difficult and uncertain questions while dealing political organisations.³⁷ However, the spontaneous emergence of the “Anti-Fascist Action Committees” that had been established just as Workers' and Soldiers' Councils had done during the 1918 revolution, was to be dismissed. The Allies agreed that revolutionary chaos was to be avoided, especially since Germany had been conquered rather than liberated, and consequently all of these organisations were dissolved.³⁸

Hence, individuals who adhered to post-war anti-fascist committees could begin exercising functions relating to post-war reconstruction after having reconstituted themselves as political units, when it became possible to do so after the National Socialist apparatus of repression was lifted. However, the American occupation military authorities imposed a ban on political party activity that forced them, especially the Communists, underground.³⁹ On the other hand, occupation personnel could find it expedient to cooperate with individuals, rather than organisations, in achieving post-war occupation objectives.

German Anti-fascist Organisations, the OSS, and the American Military Occupation

In spite of the ban on German political activities, various commanding officers interpreted this order differently.⁴⁰ On one hand, some military government officials suppressed or reprimanded them for building organisations and attempting to hold public meetings because there was the controlling influence of Communists in several of these organisations, which disquieted some officers who were responsible for security.⁴¹ The anti- fascist organisation in Leipzig, the National Committee Free Germany, assisted the American troops that occupied Leipzig on 18 April 1945 by appealing to the city population to raise white flags, eliminated pockets of resistance, instituted measures for public security, arrested

36 Hartmut Pietsch, Militärregierung, Bürokratie und Sozialiesierung: Zur Entwicklung des politischen Systems in den Städten des Ruhrgebietes 1945 bis 1948 (Duisburg: Walter Braun Verlag, 1978), 122;

Peter Brandt, Antifaschismus und Arbeiterbewegung. Aufbau-Ausprägung-Politik in Bremen 1945/1946 (Hamburg: Christians, 1976): 121; Jean Edward Smith, ed. The Papers of Lucius D. Clay (Indiana University Press: Bloomington 1974 Vol. 1. Document 19), 46-47.

37 Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1945. Vol. 3: European Advisory Commission; Austria; Germany (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1968), 941- 942.

38 Lothar Kettenacker, Germany Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 21.

39 Smith, The Papers of Lucius D. Clay, 47.

The Struggle for Democracy in Germany, ed. Gabriel A. Almond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949), 67.

Rinehart & Company, 1948), 246-247.

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leading National Socialists, informed the American commanders about the locations of hidden weapons stores, took possession of NSDAP property, endeavoured to secure food supplies and prevented plundering, and appealed to the population to work for restoring provisions.⁴² However, this committee was disbanded by an order imposed by the American military command on 26 April 1945, which ordered the suspension of the committee’s activities, and the leadership was placed under oath to serve as informers who were to report on any activity that violated this order.⁴³ In contrast, other anti-fascist committees were given some encouragement in Halle and Hanover. Most of them were placed under considerable restraint, reduced to being informers on the locations of prominent National Socialists and individuals in automatic arrest categories during the first phase of denazification, before they were eventually suppressed.⁴⁴

While the American military government did not support anti-fascists that had organised themselves into political formations or recognise them as autonomous self-help organisations, they were used as sources or filters of information.⁴⁵ There were many military government reports about how they rendered valuable assistance to occupation agencies, including the Counter Intelligence Corps, providing information compensating for blind spots.

46 Anti-fascist committees in eastern Germany also offered their support to the occupying western Allied forces to help bring about the end of the war in terms of locating National Socialists and war criminals, as well as cooperating with the denazification process, although they were neither recognised nor tolerated by American military units as cohesive political organisations.⁴⁷

When anti-fascist organisations were enabled to function in conjunction with the military occupation authorities, they were thus empowered with taking action against fascism on the basis of their convictions while also contributing to occupation objectives. Although the committees to which they adhered were not given official sanction, they nevertheless were empowered with taking positive actions as individuals making contributions to Allied post-war peace aims. However, cooperation between military occupation authorities and local individuals in different regions was subject to the discretion of the military authorities, whose freedom of action was limited by political directives prohibiting local political activity.

The OSS was also able to perform important services in the prosecution of National Socialist war criminals and denazification, which had been proclaimed as post-war occupation

42 “Action Groups in Germany,” Office of Strategic Services. Research and Analysis Branch. Current Intelligence Study Number 25. R & A 3145S. 15 June 1945: 1. www.foia.cia.gov. Accessed 28 February 2013.

43 Günther Krüger and Karl Urban, “Die Herausbildung antifaschistisch-demokratischer Verwaltungsorgane in Leipzig (April bis Oktober 1945),“ Staat und Recht 12 1964: 2070-2071.

The Struggle for Democracy in Germany, ed. Gabriel A. Almond (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949), 67-68; Patrick Major, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945-1946 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 43; Pritchard, Niemandsland: A History of Unoccupied Germany, 1944-1945, 20-23.

45 Niethammer, Borsdorf and Brandt, eds., Arbeiterinitiative 1945. Antifaschistische Ausschüsse und Reorganisation der Arbeiterbewegung in Deutschland, 636.

Rinehart & Company, 1948), 246.

47 Robert Büchner and Hannelore Freundlich, “Zur Situation in den zeitweilig englisch oder

amerikanischen besetzten Gebieten der sowjetischen Besatzungszone (April bis Anfang Juli 1945),“

Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbwegung 1972 14: 994, 996.

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objectives at the Yalta Conference and were then confirmed at the subsequent Potsdam Conference.⁴⁸ After the German surrender, OSS staff, including special intelligence, counter- intelligence and research and analysis agents, moved into Germany to uncover National Socialist officials and hidden assets, and to provide intelligence gathering for the U.S. Group of the Allied Control Council. Substantial OSS resources were devoted to providing evidence for the U.S. prosecuting staff at the War Crimes Trials.⁴⁹ The OSS was also made responsible for denazification functions, as military government authorities demanded lists of National Socialist officials who were to be arrested or barred from office. The Allied Control Council therefore required the assistance of the OSS in locating Germans with “respectable” records of opposing the National Socialist regime who could be appointed to administrative positions during the Allied military occupation.⁵⁰ In one case, an OSS agent was parachuted into Germany on 1-2 September 1944 to help revive the trade union movement in the Ruhr. He made contact with a group of socialists and trade unionists constituting the New Socialist Party in Bochum who identified National Socialist leaders when the Ruhr was occupied.⁵¹ This anti- fascist resistance in Bochum cooperated with representatives of the military government, and some of them served as informers for the Field Intelligence Service.⁵² Contributing to fulfilling these tasks also justified the continued existence of the OSS, which was disbanded on 1 October 1945.⁵³

Conclusion

Germany was liberated from fascism by foreign powers, while resistance within the National Socialist regime among the German population had been crushed by the National Socialist regime. Before and after the collapse of the regime, German anti-fascists allied themselves with the OSS as well as the American military government in continuing the struggle against fascism insofar as they found it expedient to cooperate with them at their discretion. This cooperation took the form of supporting armed resistance in the form of guerrilla warfare during the hostilities, and then in terms of isolated instances of administrative expediency in matters concerning achieving the post-war aims of denazification and the arrest of war criminals. While anti-fascists were forbidden from acting as organisations after the collapse of the National Socialist regime, they nevertheless contributed to Allied post-war aims as isolated individuals with their knowledge of local conditions, while being free to operate in pursuing ideological goals without being subject to political persecution. For these individuals, the struggle against the National Socialist regime did not end with the collapse of the regime.

Their resistance activity continued insofar as it could be undertaken under the auspices of representatives of the American military government when its representative found it

48 Bradley F. Smith, The Shadow Warriors: O.S.S. and the Origins of the C.I.A. (London: Andre Deutsch, 1983), 289.

49 Anthony Cave Brown, The Secret War Report of the OSS (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1976), 560.

50 Richard Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2005), 215.

51 Christoph Mauch, The Shadow War against Hitler: The Covert Operations of America’s Wartime Secret Intelligence Service, trans. Jeremiah M. Riemer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 179; Steward Alsop and Thomas Braden, The OSS and American Espionage (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 228-229.

52 Christoph Mauch, The Shadow War against Hitler: The Covert Operations of America’s Wartime Secret Intelligence Service, trans. Jeremiah M. Riemer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 180.

53 Edward Hymoff, The OSS in World War II (New York: Richardson & Steirman, 1986), 341.

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expedient to cooperate with them. Although their efforts for their contributions to denazification and the arrest of war criminals were not officially sanctioned, they nevertheless contributed to the efforts of the military government in the pursuit of achieving Allied post- war objectives. This also benefited post-war German society by contributing to the break with the National Socialist past, while German nationals continued their resistance activity in conjunction with American military government authorities.

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