The American Army in Germany, 1918–1923: Success against the Odds by Dean A. Nowowiejski

Abstract

Nowowiejski’s new book is, in his words, “an institutional history of the United States Army in Germany after World War I” (viii). Although the author notes that the army’s Rhineland occupation was an important precedent for its much more extensive occupation duties in various nations after World War II, he does not engage the literature written by political scientists on military government or on the military’s involvement in “stability operations” (4). This book instead employs the methods of social, administrative, and political history to draw a detailed portrait of the American army’s experience in its occupation zone centered on Coblenz from late 1918 to early 1923. Topics include the march of the Third Army into the U.S. zone in late 1918, where it largely demobilized and was replaced with new units designated as the American Forces in Germany (afg); the training, social, and recreational life of afg soldiers and officers; the administrative organization of the afg and its relations with the Germans under its jurisdiction; and the political and military activities of Maj. Gen. Henry T. Allen, who served as commander of the afg, military governor of the U.S. occupation zone, and the American representative to the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission (iarhc).Nowowiejski emphasizes that Allen, the focus of much of the book’s narrative, was “a model commander and accomplished soldier-diplomat” (9). Uncommonly for American officers, Allen had an extensive background in political–military affairs, having served as the military attaché to Russia and to Germany, the military governor of Leyte in the Philippines, and a division commander in the World War. In the American occupation zone, Allen built a highly trained and disciplined force that garnered respect from both the Allies and the Germans. With the former, he upheld American prerogatives against French encroachments on the American zone; with the latter, “he acted in the role of benevolent military governor,” defending German rights under the Versailles Treaty and protecting German property (153). Often operating without instructions from Washington, he was an effective voice for 1920s-style American internationalism in the iarhc, working against French efforts to separate the Rhineland from German sovereignty while promoting U.S. business interests and Germany’s economic recovery from the war. To a remarkable degree, Nowowiejski argues, Allen succeeded in acting “as a balancer, protecting both the French and the Germans from their own extremes” (237).Given this argument, it is surprising that Nowowiejski spends relatively little time exploring exactly how Allen and the afg perceived and interacted with German politics. To be sure, he notes that the Americans largely relied upon the existing Prussian bureaucracy to administer civil affairs in the occupation zone and “refused to recognize the people’s committees or workmen’s councils that had taken local control during the German revolution” (149). But he is silent regarding Allen’s view of the resurgence of militaristic German nationalism after the publication of the Versailles Treaty and the rise of the “stab-in-the-back” myth explaining Germany’s defeat in the war, a central idea in German politics in the early 1920s. This is a significant issue to ignore, especially since these trends in German politics had much to do with Germany’s failure to meet its treaty obligations, including an obligation to pay the United States for the cost of the afg’s occupation of its Rhineland zone.Overall, however, this book is a useful and interesting overview of the United States Army’s inaugural effort to carry out a military occupation in Europe. Deeply researched and well-written, it contains a wealth of information sure to be helpful to any student of U.S. foreign and military policy in the early 1920s, as well as to social historians interested in ordinary American soldiers of the period.