2 - Gender, Race, and Power - American Soldiers and the German Population

Summary

More than two million American soldiers moved into southern and western Germany at the end of World War II. The troops who participated in the invasion in 1944-5 knew that some of them would be called upon to stay as occupation forces. Yet, few of them could have imagined that American forces would remain in Western Germany for decades to come. Nor could they have predicted that with the beginning of the Cold War, the troops' role in Germany would change from occupiers to guarantors of West German and West European security - a role they continued to play long after the end of the Cold War and Germany's division.

American troops, which numbered fewer than 80,000 in 1950 and between 250,000 and 300,000 thereafter, became a permanent fixture of postwar German society. American Army bases were located in Bavaria, Hessen, parts of Baden-Wurttemberg, West Berlin, Bremen, and, after 1950, in Rhineland-Palatinate. Between the end of World War II and the early 1970s, social relations between American troops and German civilians in these areas reflected the shifting balance of economic and social power. At the end of the war, American troops possessed greater wealth than Germans and the social prerogatives of victors. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, differences in wealth and 1 The figures on troop strength are taken from Daniel J. Nelson, A History of U.S. Military Forces in Germany (Boulder, Colo., 1987), 45, 81, 103. power narrowed. By the beginning of the 1970s, Germans were both more prosperous than most GIs and no longer socially deferent to American military personnel. These changes led to considerable strains in the relationship between troops and civilians.