After Armies: Lessons in Occupation

Abstract

The Good Occupation is one of those books that you are surprised hadn’t already been written. Fortunately, Susan Carruthers has elegantly and capably taken it on. Indeed, though there is no shortage of books on World War Two, little has been written about the “after armies,” the men and women left to clean up the mess of war. According to Carruthers, the postwar occupations of Japan and Germany have become little more than “hollow abstractions,” defined by the same mythical “goodness” that has long marked descriptions of American involvement in World War Two. Her goal is to correct that oversight. With great empathy and restraint, Carruthers shows the awkward, halting, and often reluctant work of occupation. In both Japan and Germany, American troops were uncertain of their roles and unclear of the objectives. Sometimes they were flat out bored. As Gen. George S. Patton scribbled in his daily dairy while occupying Bavaria, “nothing of importance happened.” The American GIs discovered that peacetime soldiering could be harder than combat. There were few markers of success, no clear victories to savor. That the work done in Japan and Germany would latter (and still) be held up as exemplars of postwar reconstruction thus deserves our deepest attention.