Occupiers, Allies, and the Long Postwar

In 1954, the German journalist and Nazi-era exile Norbert Mühlen wrote an essay for the American Academy of Political and Social Science in which he sardonically described the evolution of America's postwar occupation armies from triumphant victors to "an uneasy and implausible mixture of conquistador and social worker." The apparent moral and strategic clarity of defeating German and Japan had, by the early 1950s, devolved into the complex trade-offs of political and economic reconstruction. The fundamental messiness of this transition makes it particularly fascinating for historians. Susan Carruthers and Steven Remy have written compelling accounts that highlight the frustrations, dead ends, and difficult choices that Americans faced during the decade after World War II.

The two books under review here reflect important trends in the historiography of America's role in the world after 1945. First, there has been a tremendous interest in the political, cultural, and military aspects of postwar occupation. This has stemmed, not unreasonably, from more than fifteen years of American engagement with occupation and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global military realignment after 2001. Given the life cycle of academic books, it seems appropriate that the past few years have seen a number of excellent titles that situate the American military presence overseas during the Cold War within the context of international, domestic, and regional politics. This effort has been remarkably interdisciplinary, with important contributions by historians, sociologists, and political scientists. The sociologist Amy Austin Holmes's recent book on American "protection regimes" and domestic politics in Germany and Turkey stands out as an excellent example of where comparative studies can take us. Likewise, Maria Höhn and Seungsook Moon's edited volume, "Over There": Living with the US Military Empire from World War Two to the Present (2010) highlights the global dimensions of America's Cold War and post-Cold War development of overseas bases.

Second, the period immediately following the end of the Second World War has experienced a substantial resurgence of scholarly interest. The postwar period is no longer defined by the growing tensions of the early Cold War and is now widely seen as a dynamic historical period on its own terms. As historians move away from a view of these years that privileges the behavior and attitudes of the superpowers, a much more nuanced and multi-polar story emerges. One example of many is the florescence of scholarly treatments of the return of German and Japanese soldiers from imprisonment after the end of the war. Frank Biess (2009) and Yoshikuni Igarashi (2016) have both written outstanding studies of the domestic contexts of returning soldiers, a parallel made even more explicit by the fact that both books are titled Homecomings. Historians have not lost sight of the critical role of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, but are much more willing to look for less teleological narratives. Newer literature on the postwar period emphasizes the plural visions of reconstruction and renewal, the contingencies of national and sub-national politics, and the long shadow of the war years. Tony Judt's magisterial 2005 study of Europe after World War II has helped to inspire a more expansive view of the entire notion of a "postwar," one that in the case of Europe may reasonably extend to 1989, if not beyond.

At the beginning of Susan Carruthers's highly readable and engaging study, she takes up these challenges directly. "While we've come to know a good deal about how citizens of the former Axis powers 'embraced defeat,' we know considerably less about the awkward and hesitant way in which Americans—in and out of uniform—embraced supremacy in the postwar world" (p. 14). Readers familiar with Carruthers's earlier work on American anxieties about captivity in the early Cold War will recognize the threads that...