Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945

by David Reynolds

Readable, scholarly, and above all, enormously entertaining, this very personal approach to history details the complex relationship between American GI's--famously lampooned as "over-paid, over-sexed, over-fed, and over here"--and their British hosts (for their part, "under-sexed, under-paid, under-fed, and under Eisenhower") during World War Two's occupation of England. "...an important and original contribution to our understanding of the Second World War."--John Keegan, Daily Telegraph. An outstanding study of a most important aspect of the war, never before examined in such depth."--Alistair Horne, The Times.

Genres: History, World War II, American History, Nonfiction, School, United States

592 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. For more information please see David Reynolds.

A Professor of International History and a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. He was awarded a scholarship to study at Dulwich College, then Cambridge and Harvard universities. He has held visiting posts at Harvard, Nebraska and Oklahoma, as well as at Nihon University in Tokyo and Sciences Po in Paris. He was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, 2004, and elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2005. He teaches and lectures both undergraduates and postgraduates at Cambridge University, specialising in the two world wars and the Cold War. Since October 2013 he has been Chairman of the History Faculty at Cambridge.

Reviews

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

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To put it simply, but surprisingly appositely, this book is an elaboration of the famous cliché about American soldiers in the UK during World War 2…..

“Over-paid, over-sexed and over here”.

It is written by David Reynolds though, a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and a visiting Fellow at Harvard University, so as you would expect the book is backed up with buckloads of research, examples and very balanced arguments. (Almost too balanced sometimes...) It’s a great read; a fascinating account of the GI presence in Britain during one of the toughest periods of our history. It concentrates on social history and people - discussing strategy mostly as an explanation of people’s changing attitudes towards one another. One gets a real feeling of what it must have been like to be a GI over here in the UK, and what it must have been like to be a British citizen, hosting these larger-than-life and somewhat exotic visitors.

I found this book very well written and I learnt a great deal from it. I found it hard to put down. Highly recommended.

Some of the points I found particularly interesting

Relations between Britain and the US had been poor before the War. Both had experienced the Depression, America to a greater extent.

The British were upset that America wouldn’t join in the War, even when they were given material help with the war effort, they still felt angry that America didn’t join the War until forced to by Hitler declaring war on them.

The salary of the GIs was three times as high as that of the British soldiers.

The GIs had three uniforms rather than just one, and this was a bone of contention too.

They also had access to many more luxuries (via the American Red Cross centres and other outlets.)

In many instances the GIs viewed Britain as a poor backwater, with few of the comforts that were to be found in American homes now that America was pulling out of the Depression.

The British generally had much more respect and liking for the American Airforce than they did for the American Army. This was because the Airforce was already fighting, rather than just sitting around on British soil waiting for action. Attitudes towards the American Army changed after Operation Overlord and the invasion of France.

There were racial issues. The Americans brought their prejudices to Britain with them, and many of the British found them unacceptable. Black troops formed a minority of the American Army – less than 10%, and they were mainly given supportive rather than fighting roles. The commanders of the American Army tried to keep them separate from their white counterparts where possible, e.g., they would be given passes on different days to the white soldiers, so they wouldn’t end up socializing together.

We had our own issues though. Class rather than race was our bugbear. In the USA 1% of the population owned 30% of the wealth. In the UK, 5% of the population owned 79% of the wealth. The USA middle class was much bigger than the UK middle class. As we were perplexed by their attitudes to race, they were perplexed by our attitudes to class.

The war did much to bolster the American economy, and much to destroy the British economy. Overall, the war was estimated in 1945 to have cost Britain a quarter of its national wealth. Meanwhile America’s GNP increased 50% in real terms It was the war that pulled America out of the Depression more than anything else.

The difficulty of keeping unoccupied armies busy and entertained is a challenge for all commanders. Sex was the preoccupation of unoccupied armies. The answer was usually lots of drilling, plus, with the American Army – sweetening the experience of ‘waiting’ with high salaries and a good quality lifestyle. Even so a combination of factors made the issue of rampant American soldiers with lots of money, and lonely British women with very little money, ( and days often filled with tough or boring work), a difficult situation. It seems that both sexes were looking for escapism, and they frequently found it in one another.

The American Army was incredibly strict about not allowing their soldiers to marry British women. It was seldom allowed unless the woman concerned was pregnant, and even then it was discouraged. Nevertheless there were two big marriage surges, firstly, just before D-Day and secondly, when Germany was defeated. All in all (and it is difficult to be precise), a guestimate of 40,000 to 45,000 marriages took place between GIs and British women. For the most part they seem to have fared well, with only a 5% divorce rate compared with 33% in the general population. Given the erratic and difficult circumstances of many of the marriages, this would seem a pretty fine outcome.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very comprehensive analysis of U.S. soldiers during their “occupation” of Britain prior to the invasion of France in June, 1944. By May, 1944 there were over 1.5 million U.S. troops in Great Britain. Most were young men – so one can easily infer what this can lead to – boozing, broads and brawling! And even more so since prior to the invasion most were rather inactive.

The author examines these aspects from many different angles. There was geography for one thing. England is much smaller and more densely populated than the U.S., so training hundreds of thousands of soldiers was severely limited in comparison to what they underwent in the U.S. Accommodation had to made for these soldiers while England was still on a war footing and had lost much housing due to the Blitz. While the GI’s were “inactive”, those in the 8th Air Force were not – they had a deadly commute over the European continent. Black GI’s experienced callous discrimination from their own countrymen, but were welcomed by British civilians. British soldiers for the most part despised the U.S. GI’s for their higher pay, boisterous manners, and for “stealing” British girls.

The logistics could be overwhelming for both sides. The U.S. army had less than half-million men in 1939; by the end of the war they had an army of 12 million. A massive invasion involving several countries had to be planned and undertaken.

All of these problems and more are well laid out in this book. There are descriptions of successful and not so fortunate marital unions between GI’s and British women. I grew up on a street where there were two British war brides from England, so this book had personal resonance for me. The author is excellent in pointing out the myriad differences in both the American GI’s and the British people. He discusses stereotypes, but gives many examples of people who did not fall into simple categories. He ultimately presents all as individuals, not just as soldiers or British young girls who were infatuated with American wealth.

There is a good chapter on Canadian soldiers and the tragedy of Dieppe. Canadian soldiers, until 1943, made up the largest foreign military contingent in England and many of them were there far longer than U.S. soldiers. The chapters on the U.S. air force, on black soldiers, and the days just prior to the invasion were particularly vivid and emotional.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the months prior to D-Day in the summer of 1944, the American 'invasion' of Britain reached its height, with some 1.65 million GIs stationed in the country awaiting the 'big push'. The story of the GIs in Britain has long been the subject of much myth - the old chestnut 'overpaid, over-sexed and over here' still has a great deal of currency even today.

David Reynolds set out to explore the neglected history behind that cliché, reminding the reader in the process of the important fact that this US army was a citizen army, that the soldier was also the civilian. Too often, he argues, social historians have left the war years to the military historians, who lump all the soldiers together in one gray-clad mass, handing them back to the social historians at the close of the war. This conveniently skates over the fact that the experiences of men who never intended to be soldiers, drafted into the armed forces and stationed in a country at once strange and familiar can allow a real insight into Anglo-American relations in this period.

Reynolds covers these years in admirable detail, ranging from initial problems of finding enough accommodation and barrack space for the GIs in an already crowded country, through to the various schemes and events organised to try and accommodate the GIs to the British population and vice versa. He explores issues such as venereal disease rates, wartime pregnancies and marriages, conflicts with British Tommies and local populations, the US imposition of segregation on a country unfamiliar with non-white faces, let alone the concept of segregation, how the troops were occupied on leave and entertained on base, all the way from the lowest ranking private to the efforts of Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Churchill to ensure a certain amount of harmony between the two countries' political and military hierarchies.

This is an excellent book, truly doing justice to the men and women of this period, all of whom, as Reynolds points out, defy any real attempts to portray the 'typical experience' of an American GI, a British Tommy, or a local community. And on a personal note, how refreshing to read a book that pays as much attention to women as men, the experience of GI girlfriends given as much attention as those of the GIs themselves.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book on the experience of the GIs who were stationed in the UK during the Second World War and that of their British hosts. This is a book that takes itself a tad too seriously. While it it important, I suppose, to go over every official policy of the US Army and the British Government dealing with the situation of American troops in Britain, it becomes tedious after a while. Plus the author needlessly goes into the various strategies that brought these troops across the pond, and feels the need to examine the strengths and weaknesses of oral history as a tool for researching such a topic. Of course the oral history is used as illustrations of the American and British experiences here but I feel the book needed the hand of a powerful editor. What was outstanding was the portrayal of how the Black GIs coped with being in a society that was unused to people of color in their midst, and an army that imposed a racial separation system similar to what many of them had experienced in America itself. All in all: not bad, but not as enjoyable as it could have been.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cultural history of 1940-1945 and American soldiers' experiences in Britain. Well, I would call it a cultural history since it spends a lot of time discussing the cultural clash and ideas underpinning their interactions, but you could also call it social history since it examines diaries, letters, oral histories, of the lowly. Good read but long.

[Joanne Otto · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is much of interest in this book about the relationships that developed between the Yanks and the Brits during the occupation. They are examined from every possible angle from sexual to martial and seemingly everything in between. the book was more thorough than it had to be for me. What I enjoyed most was the specific human relationships described-both positive and negative. But I'm certain a real historian would greatly appreciate all the statistics and tables that are also included in it. They were just a bit much for me.

[Rich Hornbuckle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent. Takes the concept that "Britain and America Are Two Nations Divided by a Common Language" to another level. The approach to the material is done both clinically through official records from several sources on both side of the Atlantic and through anecdotal stories taken from period correspondence and later day interviews.

[Richard Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book by accident whilst browsing through a secondhand bookstore in Wexford, Ireland.
An amazing amount of detail and research has gone into this book.
It's quite a large book and nearly put me over my hand baggage weight limit on my flight back home to Madeira.
But well worth it.

[Shane Gower · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extensive and detailed with every story you’ve ever heard about the Americans in Britain during the war. In places it read like a novel, but it was so detailed I had to put it down a while and come back to it. It took me almost 2 years to finish it.

[Andrew Brozyna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This nearly 600 page text covers every possible angle of the American troops' interaction with the people of Britain. Reynolds details the official American, British, and Canadian authorities' policies towards foreign troops mixing with the locals. The nations tackled issues such as soldier health, marriage, racial segregation, crime, public opinion, morale, and military readiness. The broad view of official policy is complimented with specific personal experiences of individual soldiers and civilians. A massive amount of research and detail went into this text, while the writing is still very engaging.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my British-American Relations class, it covers what it was like having all of those American GIs stationed in Britain during WWII. Not as entertaining as one might think, but still pretty interesting. Very academic.