GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany

by Maria Höhn

With the outbreak of the Korean War, the poor, rural West German state of Rhineland-Palatinate became home to some of the largest American military installations outside the United States. In GIs and Fräuleins, Maria Höhn offers a rich social history of this German-American encounter and provides new insights into how West Germans negotiated their transition from National Socialism to a consumer democracy during the 1950s.

Focusing on the conservative reaction to the American military presence, Höhn shows that Germany's Christian Democrats, though eager to be allied politically and militarily with the United States, were appalled by the apparent Americanization of daily life and the decline in morality that accompanied the troops to the provinces. Conservatives condemned the jazz clubs and striptease parlors that Holocaust survivors from Eastern Europe opened to cater to the troops, and they expressed scorn toward the German women who eagerly pursued white and black American GIs. While most Germans rejected the conservative effort to punish as prostitutes all women who associated with American GIs, they vilified the sexual relationships between African American men and German women. Höhn demonstrates that German anxieties over widespread Americanization were always debates about proper gender norms and racial boundaries, and that while the American military brought democracy with them to Germany, it also brought Jim Crow.

Genres: Nonfiction, Germany

352 pages, Paperback

First published July 15, 2002

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is enjoyably written, well-researched and organized, though it still somehow doesn’t quite succeed at what it set out to do. Possibly a clue to its flaw can be found in the story of its production as set out in the introduction: the author states that her original goal had been to study the rise of consumerism in the Rhineland-Palatinate after the arrival of American troops in the process of building NATO in the 1950s, but at some point her interest turned to the question of how gender and race informed that narrative. As a result, it seems like the two goals are at odds with one another, and neither is fully developed.

The author is a native of the region she is studying, and grew up in the atmosphere that had been defined by the period she studies. After the Second World War this region, which borders on France, was part of the French Occupation Zone, and the local populace, suffering from the shame of the lost war, the deprivation of a shattered economy, and the increasing horror at revelations of how far the Nazi government they had once supported had departed from moral bounds, sullenly resented the situation. This wasn’t helped by the fact that French soldiers were on the whole stand-offish and unhelpful, and perhaps most importantly too poor to give out chocolates to children, as American soldiers had done during the war itself. With the hardening of the Cold War, and Germany’s increasing strategic importance, a major American base was built in the region, on top of an older Wehrmacht facility, and suddenly an economic boom came to the sleepy rural region. American soldiers had money to spare, and were approachable and pleasant to the population. Although the new situation continued to be thought of as an “occupation” (it wasn’t, even less so after the restoration of German autonomy in 1955), most people in the area found it an agreeable one in most ways.

Alongside this development, of course, was a certain amount of reaction, fear of change, and actual inconvenience, as when the American military seized lands for further development of their facilities or drove tanks on dirt roads that quickly disintegrated under the punishment. Much of Höhn’s middle section focuses on the moral panic brought on by American GIs bringing “loose morals” into a largely traditional society. Since the US, unlike the French, did not establish brothels for their troops, the men naturally looked to local women and girls for companionship. Conservatives feared that this, along with the easy spending of GI’s, was attracting loose women or “Veronikas” to the area, and clergy and social workers exhorted locals to keep their daughters away from the newly established bars and other establishments frequented by “Veronikas.”

At the same time, local Germans learned from the American military establishment that African American troops were of a different category. Over time, moral concerns came to be expressed in increasingly racialized language, despite the German constitution’s prohibition of racial discrimination. Americans did it, so why couldn’t Germans? The situation was only exacerbated by the belief of many locals that the bars which catered to Black servicemen were largely Jewish-owned, rearing the ugly head of anti-Semitism, never completely wiped out among the people.

Höhn chronicles these developments as well as a number of other interesting political issues (as when an SPD mayor begins using some of the same “conservative” language to oppose further militarization of his city)., but somehow the conclusion is unsatisfying. It seems as if she didn’t have enough gender theory to go very far in terms of what the discourse about “Veronikas” said about gender relations, and not enough race theory to speak meaningfully about the experiences of Black GIs and their girlfriends. So the issues are documented, but their relationship to consumerism and “Americanization” not really explained. It seems like further work could take this same story further.

[Matthew Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating look at recent history. My own parents met in 1950s Germany, and this gave me lots of insight into the circumstances in which they met. Höhn especially explores German and American reactions to relationships between German women and African American soldiers, and the application of social controls to prevent such relationships. She also examines the economic impact of "dollar rich" GIs during post war deprivations, and how German attitudes toward an American culture of social informality and material prosperity were shaped and altered over this period.

[Karen Schnabel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful look into the culture clash of old world Germany and American life. Since my German mother was in her 20s during this time and in this area (Idar-Oberstein) the book provides me with some understanding of some of the decisions made by my mother and her family. Personally I would have liked more information on the high number of illegitimate births in this area and how these were “handled” and, what affects these had on the local community.

[Rebecca Crunden]

⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I'm going to be labelling the books I'm using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.