Daily Encounters: Fraternization

Do Not Fraternize with the Enemy!

As World War II came to a close, the U.S. military became the government in the American occupation zone and Germans were technically their conquered subjects. Interactions were regulated from the start, with a non-fraternization ban beginning in September 1944 as the first troops entered German territory. This prohibited all communication and mingling among Americans and Germans. The ban was part of the concept of a hard peace, which aimed to punish all Germans for their collective guilt. Non-fraternization would also hopefully avoid unfavorable opinions at home, foster respect for the soldiers, and most importantly, prevent the guilty Germans from influencing the minds of soldiers or threatening their security.¹ The military newspaper The Stars and Stripes highlighted the apparent importance of non-fraternization, portraying GIs as conquerors and not “pals,” “liberators,” or “suckers.”²

In reality, non-fraternization was impossible to regulate and bad for the public relations of the occupation government. It exposed the chaos behind the occupation, as the ban had led to extremely high rates of venereal disease, illegitimate children, and sometimes punishment for soldiers and women. In May 1945, Life magazine reported that the “same doughboys who went through Dachau’s incredible horrors were the very next day being kissed and wreathed in flowers by the German women of Munich.”³ Such reports had the potential to shock and worry readers in the US, who mostly continued to view the German people as a threat due to their collective guilt. However, the women who American soldiers encountered were rarely a threat to them. Although the majority had actively or tacitly supported the Nazi regime’s rise to power, most citizens who wished for an end to war “looked to American troops for freedom from the hardships of war and as a bulwark against the Red Army.”⁴ Many Germans also portrayed themselves as victims and bystanders of the Nazi regime, and the myth of the willing Fräulein also had gained strength among the troops. One month after the end of the war, fraternization was the rule rather than the exception. The ban was modified in June 1945, and on October 1, 1945, was discontinued.

Life magazine covered fraternization and its supposed dangers on July 2, 1945. The article included an image of a dangerous German girl with a baby, who had bought Nazi propaganda but could “switch over to lonely U.S. soldiers.” The article stated:

“There’s one blonde Fräulein with braided hair who always walked past two MPs every day on her way to do shopping, swinging her hips from side to side even more noticeably than usual. As she passed she would look slyly at the MPs, tap one hip and utter the word, ‘Verboten.’ […]
In Germany fraternization is officially a matter of high policy. But for the GI it is not a case of policy or of politics or of going out with girls who used to go out with the guys who killed your buddies. You don’t talk politics when you fraternize. It’s more a matter of bicycles and skirts waving in the breeze and a lonesome, combat-weary solider looking warily around the corner to see if a policeman is in sight.”⁵

Life Magazine, July 2, 1945

According to such narratives, interactions with flirtatious and willing German women thus apparently provided a new level of danger to the naïve, lonely GI.

“Fratting”: Relations with German Women

Once fraternization was no longer illegal, contact between American soldiers and German women became rampant. A survey from fall 1945 suggests that during a typical week, over one-quarter of the troops were having sexual contact with German women.⁶ Fraternization had become synonymous with sexual relations with German women, although it technically meant any interaction between Americans and Germans.  However, fraternization with women proved essential to the occupation, as the “stabilization of intimate relations between conqueror and conquered went hand-in-hand with the establishment of ‘normalized’ German-American relations.” The German male was supposed to accept fraternization, thus accepting defeat and showing his “ability to work within a democratic political framework.” Fraternization still held potential for violence, including from American soldiers towards women, or from other Germans against women who had relations with Americans. Venereal disease also remained quite high until a public health campaign helped minimize its spread.

In these interactions with women, the main issue was male sexual misconduct, not the misbehavior of supposedly open and flirtatious loose women.⁷ Women’s bodies and the types of relationships remained regulated: The GI was quite free to explore his pleasures, while German women were often unable to do the same. GIs usually had no legal responsibility for their actions, while women entered relationships for a variety of reasons, from economic need to romance. However, it is important to remember that most German-American relationships were temporary ones in the occupation context of sex as a commodity.⁸

Services for Food

The context of the occupation is essential to consider when examining fraternization. Women were navigating various changes and challenging circumstances. Due to economic necessity, women would provide diverse services for American soldiers, from laundry or sewing to working as household servants or even in military posts, to sexual services. In return, they received gifts of food, ration cards, or cigarettes and chocolate, which they could trade. Through the GIs, Germans could taste various kinds of food for the first time, such as peanuts, cinnamon gum, and toast bread. To most Germans, GIs lived a luxurious lifestyle, able to buy whatever they wanted, with plenty of food, and they often talked about their homes in the US. Such interactions proved key to occupation policies: GIs had become providers to a population in deep material need, and the soldier was “the world’s best salesman of democracy.”⁹ As occupation military governor General Lucius D. Clay later stated, it was not possible to “develop democracy on a starvation diet.”¹⁰ It had become clear that democracy could not be forced upon the German population, but perhaps experienced and encouraged in the form of encounters between GIs and Germans. By 1947, German people were no longer seen as threatening, but rather in need of protection and guardianship.¹¹ Contact with Germans was now the best way to reeducate them.

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Footnotes

[1] Ann Elizabeth Pfau, “Fraternization and the Uncensored Occupation,” in Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), online at http://www.gutenberg-e.org/pfau/index.html, 5-8 & 12-13. See also Office of the Chief Historian, European Command, “Fraternization with the Germans in World War II,” Occupation Forces in Europe Series, 1945-1946, Frankurt a. M., Germany: Office of the Military Government of the United States, 1947, 26-32.

[2] “Will We Gum Up the Victory?” Stars and Stripes, Paris ed., September 22, 1944.

[3] Sidney Olson, “End of War: Defeated Land,” Life, May 14, 1945, 110, Google Books.

[4] Pfau, 14.

[5] Percy Knauth, “Fraternization: The word takes on a brand-new meaning in Germany,” Life, July 2, 1945, 26, Google Books.

[6] All quotes in this paragraph from John Willoughby, Remaking the Conquering Heroes: The Social and Geopolitical Impact of the Post-War American Occupation of Germany (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 34, 39, & 41. Also see Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany, 1944-46 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, United States, Army, 1985), 327.

[7] Pfau, 3.

[8] Ibid., 61.

[9] Byron Price, “Relations between the Armed Forces and the German People,” U.S. Department of State Bulletin, 13 December 1945, 885-86.

[10] Lucius D. Clay, Decision in Germany (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1950), 265-66.

[11] Petra Goedde, GIs and Germans: Culture, Gender, and Foreign Relations, 1945-1949 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2003), 126.

Images:

Image 1: Fraternization with the Germans in World War II, available at archives.org.

Image 2: Department of Defense image, available in Earl F. Ziemke, The U.S. Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944-1946 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History United States Army, 1990), chapter 18, page 323.

Image 3: Ibid., chapter 18, page 326.

Image 4: Available at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Bildarchiv.

Image 5: Available at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Bildarchiv.

Image 6: Department of Defense image, available in Ziemke, chapter 24, page 436.

Image 7: Available at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Bildarchiv.