the civil reintegration of demobilized soldiers of the german wehrmacht and the imperial japanese ar

290 Pages·2010·1.32 MB·English

FROM SOLDIERS TO CITIZENS:
THE CIVIL REINTEGRATION OF DEMOBILIZED SOLDIERS OF THE GERMAN
WEHRMACHT AND THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY
AFTER UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER IN 1945

By
BIRGIT SCHNEIDER

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
Department of History
MAY 2010

© Copyright by BIRGIT SCHNEIDER, 2010
All Rights Reserved
© Copyright by BIRGIT SCHNEIDER, 2010
All Rights Reserved
To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of
BIRGIT SCHNEIDER find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

___________________________________
Raymond C. Sun, Ph.D., Chair

___________________________________
Noriko Kawamura, Ph.D.

___________________________________
Brigit Farley, Ph.D.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me be successful in the Ph.D.
program at the History Department at Washington State University and beyond. First and
foremost, I would like to thank my committee chair, Raymond Sun, for his constant trust
and support, and for many enlightening discussions. I could not have finished this project
without him. I would also like to thank my committee members, Noriko Kawamura and
Brigit Farley, for their help, insights, and thoughts on my work.
I would like to thank Alex D’Erizans, Victor Cheng, Sun Yi, Elise Foxworth,
Susanne Klien, Midori Keech, and Vincent Pollard for their critical and supportive
questions and comments at the conferences where I presented parts of this dissertation, at
GSA, NYCAS, AHA-PCB, JSA-ASEAN, and JSA. Further, I would like to thank
Professor Hiroshi Fujino for his tremendous help in getting in contact with Kimura
Takuji, and Kimura-san for sharing his thesis with me. With Franziska Seraphim, who I
met by chance in the Modern Japanese History Reading Room, I had the chance to
conduct some interesting conversations, both scholarly and mundane. Beatrice Trefalt
and Frank Biess pointed me toward important published and unpublished material. Dr.
Tischner, one of my instructors at Leipzig University, now working at the Konrad
Adenauer Foundation, gave me several valuable hints about how to approach my topic.
The staff at the archives in Bad Godesberg, Koblenz, Freiburg, Munich, and
Wiesbaden has been extremely helpful at suggesting materials, helping me find items,
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and pointing me toward the important documents when I did not see the wood for the
trees. In retrospect, seat 16 was not so bad.
Thanks, Sergey and Larry. Things would have been much more difficult without
you. Thanks also to Dan Cohen and Shawn Takats and their team for making citations so
much more fun.
In addition to the people who have provided valuable feedback and comments for
this dissertation, I would like to thank Cynthia, Verena, Kerstin, Lisa, Heidi, Janet, and
Mary, who have been great friends despite the distance. Thanks for listening, and for all
the fun times beyond the Ph.D. work.
My Japanese host family has been truly inspiring in their exceptional hospitality,
friendship, and generosity. Fond memories of Kazuo, who passed away unexpectedly in
March 2010, will always remain with me. I would also like to thank Steffi Ott and her
WG in Freiburg and Sandy Neugebauer in Berlin for their hospitality and the good times.
I would further like to thank my family; my parents, Gerlinde and Gerald, my
sisters Ulrike and Sabine and her husband Roland, my in-laws Christa and Eckard, and
my brother- and sister in-law Jan and Laurencia, for encouragement, support, and a lot of
fun. Christa and Eckard, thank you for hosting me for weeks and for putting up with me.
Finally, I would like to thank my husband Christoph for his unfailing love and
support, for bearing my exuberance and desparateness, for cheering me up at the most
unexpected moments, for cooking for me, and for preventing me from completely
monkeywrenching this dissertation. I could not have done it without you. Thank you.

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FROM SOLDIERS TO CITIZENS:
THE CIVIL REINTEGRATION OF DEMOBILIZED SOLDIERS OF THE GERMAN
WEHRMACHT AND THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE ARMY
AFTER UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER IN 1945

ABSTRACT

by Birgit Schneider, Ph.D.
Washington State University
May, 2010

Chair: Raymond C. Sun

Demilitarization and democratization of Germany and Japan constituted the
Allies’ essential goals of the Second World War; when the war was concluded and plans
for postwar settlements were set up, the two countries’ militaries were dissolved and their
personnel disbanded. Demobilized soldiers returned to their war-maimed countries as
soon as they were released from the custody of the respective Allied power to which they
had surrendered. Most returned before 1948, although for some, Soviet captivity meant
up to ten years of forced labor. This dissertation analyzes the situation of demobilized
soldiers after their return home. It examines how returnees—former soldiers, now
civilians—were perceived and treated by the American occupation in the American zone
of occupation of Germany and in Japan, and by their own governments. Demobilized
soldiers were, based on their indoctrination in the military and their engagement in the
fighting of the war, understood as potential proponents of militarism, and as adversaries
of democracy by the occupation. The German and Japanese administrations saw them in
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a more productive light, as a significant economic force and as potential supporters of
democracy. As a consequence, policies with regard to demobilized soldiers oscillated
between restrictions imposed by the occupation and material support provided by the
national governments; between demilitarization and reconstruction. The analysis of
archival material has yielded that the material provisions proved to be decisive in
assuring the integration of former soldiers in postwar civil society, and in avoiding their
alienation with the democratic governments.
Demobilized soldiers were at the same time the embodiment and the culprits of
defeat, both perpetrators and victims of militarism. Their numbers and presence in
contemporary discourse underscore their significance in postwar German and Japanese
societies. Tracing the transition from war to peace through the study of veterans under
American occupation, this dissertation shows how the occupation as well as German and
Japanese policies were successful despite their very different motivations in preventing
the re-emergence of militarism, and in integrating veterans into German and Japanese
civil society.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................................iii

ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................iv

LIST OF TABLES..............................................................................................................vii

ABBREVIATIONS..........................................................................................................viii

GLOSSARY........................................................................................................................xi

CHAPTER

INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1
Postwar: Transition from war to peace...........................................................................1
Civil reintegration and the creation of postwar society................................................11
Demobilized soldiers in postwar society......................................................................18
Structure of the dissertation..........................................................................................23
Conceptualization.........................................................................................................29
Literature Review.........................................................................................................34
Germany: Facing the Nazi past through postwar history..........................................34
Japan: The postwar in perspective............................................................................50
Comparative studies and conclusion.........................................................................62
CHAPTER 1. DEMOBILIZATION BETWEEN ALLIED OCCUPATION AND
NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION..............................................................................66
Preconditions: Allied policies and the ideologies behind occupation..........................66
Germany: Abolishing the Wehrmacht ......................................................................69
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Japan: Demilitarization and Democratization...........................................................73
The Implementation of Demobilization........................................................................79
Germany: Overwhelmed with soldiers.....................................................................79
Japan: Repatriating soldiers in Japan, and soldiers and civilians from Asia............96
INTERLUDE: THE WAY HOME.................................................................................116
CHAPTER 2. HOMECOMING BETWEEN AMERICAN OCCUPATION AND
NATIONAL GOVERNMENT...................................................................................123
Occupation measures: Demilitarization and Reeducation..........................................128
Germany: Denazification in practice......................................................................128
Japan: Pensions and the Purge................................................................................134
The administration’s measures...................................................................................144
Germany: Toward the equal treatment of returning POWs....................................144
Japan: Alleviating distress......................................................................................163
Competing for support: War victims and Displaced Persons.....................................172
INTERLUDE: UPROOTING AND DISLOCATION...................................................181
CHAPTER 3. REINTEGRATION?...............................................................................188
Veterans’ associations and their influence in returnees’ legislation...........................188
Germany: The Verband der Heimkehrer................................................................188
Japan: The Gun’onren and the absence of non-professional soldiers’ associations198
Toward a Veteran identity..........................................................................................206
Germany: Veterans’ identity as POW identity.......................................................206
Japan: Yasukuni Mondai.........................................................................................213
Returnees – advocates for democracy?.......................................................................217
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CONCLUSION...............................................................................................................225
BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................................247

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