page_title: Allied-occupied Germany
section_title: Occupation policy
hierarchical_section_title: Allied-occupied Germany / Occupation policy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photomontage published in The Tacoma Sunday News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington) on June 3, 1945 entitled "Remember This! Don't Fraternize" that was prepared by U.S. combat photographer Arnold E. Samuelson in Austria and sent for publication to his hometown newspaper. The montage includes six photographs of Nazi atrocities and concentration camp victims taken by American combat photographers in Germany and Austria. The photograph of emaciated concentration camp survivors (bottom, second from the right) was taken in Ebensee by Arnold E. Samuelson. The extended newspaper caption reads: "Lest they forget --The pictures reproduced above form a photographic placard used to remind American soldiers in Germany of the Nazi brutality in concentration camps and were taken by First Lt. Arnold E. Samuelson, photographic officer of the 167th Signal Photo Company whose home is at 4121 N. 18th St. Tacoma. Lt. Samuelson wrote that VE Day brought him his toughest assignment of the war when he photographed what he described as the 'worst concentration camp operated by the Nazis' at Ebensee, Austria, after it had been liberated by the 80th Division of the Third U.S. Army-- Photos by U.S. Army Signal Corps." Arnold Samuelson (1917-2002), U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer during World War II, who commanded a unit of photographers who took pictures of the advance of American troops through France, Belgium, Germany, and Austria, including the liberation of concentration and POW camps. The son of Swedish immigrants to the U.S., Samuelson was raised in Tacoma, Washington. He learned photography as a child, and after graduating from high school, went to work in a photo studio. Subsequently, he went to work for the Eastman Kodak Company in Portland, Oregon, where he sold camera equipment. In March 1942 Samuelson applied to flight cadet school and in May of that year was inducted into the U.S. Army. He served in the Army Air Corps before going for training as a Signal Corps photographer in January 1943. Samuelson graduated from both photographic training and officers' candidate school in July of that year, and the following month was assigned to the 167th Signal Corps company. For the next 10 months he was stationed in Camp Crowder, MO. On July 24, 1944, the 167th Signal Corps company departed for England, where it was assigned to the 12th U.S. Army Group. Samuelson was sent to France in September. Starting in Normandy, his unit moved through Belgium and in and out of Germany. After participating in the Battle of the Bulge, Samuel was sent to the 12th Army Group headquarters in Paris. Following three weeks of desk duty he was reassigned to the 9th Armored Division. His unit was among the first U.S. troops to cross the Rhine River (at Remagen). They continued south through Germany and on May 1 crossed into Austria, where they photographed Hitler's hometown of Braunau. His unit then proceeded on to Linz. On May 8, the day after V-E Day, Samuelson's unit entered the newly liberated Ebensee concentration camp and photographed its survivors. The photographers could hardly believe the state to which these men had been reduced. Samuelson expected to be transferred to the Pacific theater, but was saved from that fate by a general who owed him a favor. He then returned to Paris for a few weeks before departing for the U.S. on June 20. He served another six months at Camp Polk, LA, and then was discharged. After his return to civilian life, Samuelson rarely talked about his experience as a combat photographer and seldom opened the military trunks containing his World War II photographs and memorabilia. However, 25 years into his retirement in Texas he decided to return to Europe and see if anything remained of the Ebensee camp. With the assistance of a historian at a Salzburg research institute who he discovered through the Internet, Samuelson learned of the existence of the KZ Ebensee Memorial and was introduced to its director during his visit in the summer of 1996. The following winter, Time magazine featured one of Samuelson's Ebensee photos on the cover of its February 24, 1997 issue. He was pleasantly surprised that the magazine credited him as the photographer. Soon after, he received a call from Ebensee survivor, George Havas, who had recognized fellow survivors in Samuelson's photograph. Havas, a volunteer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, had learned of the photographer's whereabouts from the director of the Ebensee Memorial. In May 1997 Samuelson returned to Austria when he was invited to be an honored guest at the dedication of the permanent exhibition at the Ebensee Memorial. For his 80th birthday on November 21, 1997, Samuelson's three daughters took him to Washington, D.C., where he met with Havas in person for the first time. Photographed by Arnold E. Samuelson. Artifact photographed by Max Reid. Buchenwald, [Thuringia] Germany. June 3, 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Arnold E. Samuelson. Deutsch: Fotocollage mit Bildern von KZ-Opfern: Erinnere Dich&#160;! Keine Fraternisierung&#160;!
context_page_description: Allied-occupied Germany was the state of Germany upon defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, when the victorious Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty over Germany as a whole, defined as all territories of the former German Reich west of the Oder–Neisse line, having declared the destruction of Nazi Germany at the death of Adolf Hitler. The four powers divided "Germany as a whole" into four occupation zones for administrative purposes under the United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union, respectively. This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference. The four zones were as agreed in February 1945 by the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union meeting at the Yalta Conference; setting aside an earlier division into three zones proposed by the London Protocol.
  At Potsdam, the United States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union approved the detachment from Germany as a whole of the German eastern territories east of the Oder–Neisse line, with the exact line of the boundary to be determined at a final German Peace Treaty.
context_section_description: At the end of the war, General Eisenhower issued a non-fraternization policy to troops under his command in occupied Germany. This policy was relaxed in stages. By June 1945 the prohibition on speaking with German children was made less strict. In July it became possible to speak to German adults in certain circumstances. In September the policy was completely dropped in Austria and Germany.
  Nevertheless, due to the large numbers of Disarmed Enemy Forces being held in Rheinwiesenlagers throughout western Germany, the Americans and the British – not the Soviets – used armed units of Feldgendarmerie to maintain control and discipline in the camps. In June 1946, these German military police units became the last Wehrmacht troops to surrender their arms to the western powers.
  By December 1945, over 100,000 German civilians were interned as security threats and for possible trial and sentencing as members of criminal organisations.
  The food situation in occupied Germany was initially very dire. By the spring of 1946 the official ration in the American zone was no more than 1,275 calories (5,330 kJ) per day, with some areas probably receiving as little as 700 calories (2,900 kJ) per day. In the British zone the food situation was dire, as found during a visit by the British (and Jewish) publisher Victor Gollancz in October and November 1946. In Düsseldorf the normal 28-day allocation should have been 1,548 calories (6,480 kJ) including 10 kilograms (22 lb) of bread, but as there was limited grain the bread ration was only 8.5 kilograms (19 lb). However, as there was only sufficient bread for about 50% of this "called up" ration, the total deficiency was about 50%, not 15% as stated in a ministerial reply in the British Parliament on 11 December. So only about 770 calories (3,200 kJ) would have been supplied, and he said the German winter ration would be 1,000 calories (4,200 kJ) as the recent increase was "largely mythical". His book includes photos taken on the visit and critical letters and newspaper articles by him published in several British newspapers; The Times, the Daily Herald, the Manchester Guardian, etc.
  Some occupation soldiers took advantage of the desperate food situation by exploiting their ample supply of food and cigarettes (the currency of the black market) to get to the local German girls as what became known as frau bait (The New York Times, 25 June 1945). Some soldiers still felt the girls were the enemy, but used them for sex nevertheless.
  The often destitute mothers of the resulting children usually received no child support. In the earliest stages of the occupation, U.S. soldiers were not allowed to pay maintenance for a child they admitted having fathered, since to do so was considered "aiding the enemy". Marriages between white U.S. soldiers and Austrian women were not permitted until January 1946, and with German women until December 1946.
  The children of African-American soldiers, commonly called Negermischlinge ("Negro half-breeds"), comprising about three percent of the total number of children fathered by GIs, were particularly disadvantaged because of their inability to conceal the foreign identity of their father. For many white U.S. soldiers of this era, miscegenation even with an "enemy" white population was regarded as an intolerable outrage. African-American soldiers were therefore reluctant to admit to fathering such children since this would invite reprisals and even accusations of rape, a crime which was much more aggressively prosecuted by military authorities against African-Americans compared with Caucasian soldiers, much more likely to result in a conviction by court-martial (in part because a German woman was both less likely to acknowledge consensual sexual relations with an African-American and more likely to be believed if she alleged rape against an African-American) and which carried a potential death sentence. Even in the rare cases where an African-American soldier was willing to take responsibility for fathering a child, until 1948 the U.S. Army prohibited interracial marri
caption: American propaganda poster using images of concentration camp victims to warn against "fraternization"
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "100", "Image YResolution": "100", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop 7.0", "Image DateTime": "2004:07:15 09:44:35", "Image ExifOffset": "156", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "294", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7600", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "376", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "463"}