That Was Then: Allen W. Dulles on the Occupation of Germany

Allen W. Dulles

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003

Summary:  U.S. troops on conquered territory, infrastructure in ruins, international squabbling over reconstruction: a window onto occupied Germany seven months after V-E Day, when progress was still unsteady and Europe's future hung in the balance.

A Note from the Editors:

In thinking about the reconstruction of Iraq, many have looked for insight to the American experiences in rebuilding Germany and Japan after World War II. Optimists point to similarities across the cases and argue that they bode well for the Bush administration's efforts today. Pessimists point to differences and draw the opposite conclusion. In truth, some aspects of the occupations look familiar and some do not. As the saying goes, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. What is most striking about the comparison is that in all three cases, several months into the postwar era the future of the country was still hanging in the balance.

Picking their way through the rubble, officials early in the Truman administration had as little clue about the eventual outcome of their experiments as their counterparts in Washington and Baghdad do today. They saw little choice but to grope forward as best they could, responding to immediate problems and fast-moving events while trying to keep their eyes steady on a grand long-term vision. Knowing how the story ended, it is difficult for us to escape the tyranny of hindsight and see those earlier cases as they appeared to contemporary observers -- in their full uncertainty, as history in the making rather than data to be mined for present-day polemics. Foreign Affairs is pleased, therefore, to be able to open a window directly onto occupied Germany seven months after V-E Day, taking readers back in media res.

During World War II, Allen W. Dulles served as the Bern station chief for the Office of Strategic Services. (He would later serve as the head of a successor organization, the Central Intelligence Agency, from 1953 to 1961.) Dulles was the main American liaison with the German resistance and a close observer of the early stages of the postwar occupation. After the OSS was disbanded in late September 1945, he decided to return to private life. On December 3, less than a week before leaving government service, he gave a frank and unvarnished update on the situation in Germany to an off-the-record meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations.

At the time the meeting was held, the United States and the Soviet Union were watching each other warily across the ruins of Europe but had not yet descended into what would become known as the Cold War. Germany was still one country, although divided into four occupation zones. George Kennan's "Long Telegram" and Winston Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech were still months off, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO still years in the future. Washington was trying to put Germany back on its feet while simultaneously demobilizing and turning to domestic matters. Few Americans had any inkling of just what their country's commitment to postwar Europe would eventually involve; most simply wanted the troops to come home.

According to the Council's archival policies, all substantive council records more than 25 years old are open for use, subject to permission being obtained from any living person for remarks attributed to them. Since the notes of that Dulles meeting are no longer protected, we are publishing them here for the first time, with only slight editing, as a contribution to public debate.

THE PRESENT SITUATION IN GERMANY

Digest of a meeting with Allen W. Dulles at the Council on Foreign Relations, December 3, 1945

Germany today is a problem of extraordinary complexity. For two and one-half years the country has been a political and economic void in which discipline was well-maintained. There is no dangerous underground operating there now although some newspapers in the United States played up such a story. The German leaders, of course, could not admit defeat and today the attitude of the people is not so much a feeling of shame and guilt as one of having been let down by their leaders.