At the end of the war in 1945 Germany was a country
with no government, little functioning infrastructure,
millions of refugees and homeless people, and huge
foreign armies living largely off the land. Large parts
of the country were covered in rubble with no clean
drinking water, electricity, or gas. Hospitals
overflowed with patients but were short of beds,
medicines, and medical personnel. In these conditions
the potential for epidemics and public health disasters
was severe.
In The Perils of Peace
Jessica Reinisch considers how the four occupiers -
Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States
- attempted to keep their own troops and the ex-enemy
population alive. While the war was still being fought,
German public health was a secondary consideration for
them: an unaffordable and undeserved luxury. But once
fighting ceased and the occupation began, it rapidly
turned into an urgent priority. Public health was then
recognized as an indispensable component of creating
order, keeping the population governable, and
facilitating the reconstruction of German society.
But they faced a number of problems in the
process. Which Germans could be trusted to work with the
occupiers and how were they to be identified? Who could
be tolerated because of a lack of alternatives? How, if
at all, could former Nazis be reformed and reintegrated
into German society? What was the purpose of the
occupation in the first place?
This is the first
carefully researched comparison of the four occupation
zones which looks at the occupation through the prism of
public health, an essential service fundamentally shaped
by political and economic criteria, and which in turn
was to determine the success or failure of the
occupation.
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