The American Soldier and the German Mind

I

PSYCHOLOGISTS, amateur and professional, have been seeking during these last five years to sound the depths of the German mind. Painstakingly they have raked over and sorted the data bearing upon the subject, and have sought to interpret to us the mental processes of a people who seemed to most of the world suddenly to have gone mad. Men and women who have dwelt among the Germans for a long time, as well as hurried travelers of the tourist sort, have recounted their experiences and impressions, each contributing his or her bit to the effort to solve the puzzle. None of what might be called the secondary aspects of the war, no aspect save the immediate and transcendent problem of the fight itself, has continued, perhaps, a source of such keen speculation and interest. Nobody in America so lowly or untutored, so lacking in curiosity, that he has not asked himself and his neighbors, what goes on in a German’s head?

Until recently, those who might pretend to speak with the authority which comes from contact with the object of study have been limited to that fraction of our folk that we are accustomed to call, somewhat snobbishly, the upper class-meaning, either persons of education who are conversant with German history and literature, or persons whose means have enabled them to indulge in foreign travel. Now, all at once, a quarter of a million Americans, a true cross section of our population, have been set down among the German people. From having information and opinions handed down to them, as it were, these men, some of them rich, most of them poor, some of them highly educated, most of them boasting not even a high-school record, find themselves in the very midst of our late enemies, seeing them face to face and perforce forming their own judgments of them.

This circumstance is not going to bring any definite answer to the question. There is not any definite answer — even the fondest devotees of psychology have never claimed that it is an exact science. The members of the army of occupation, when they return home, will not all have seen the same things, nor will they all think alike. On some points, however, they will be in substantial agreement. At any rate, the first-hand observations of so many Americans, typical Americans, create a genuine addition to the data we had before.

It would be indeed reckless for any one man to assume to speak for all the men in our army in Germany — to set down exactly what conclusions they have formed. There are too many of them. But I have had an unusual opportunity, since I came to Coblenz a few days after our advance-guard reached the Rhine, to hear a great number of representative views. It so happens that my particular assignment has carried me constantly back and forth through the occupation area, and has brought me into speech with hundreds of officers and enlisted men in all kinds of situations. Also, my official duties have required me to converse with many Germans.

The Americans entered Germany after months of the most unbelievable hardships and the fiercest sort of fighting. In the fury of attack and pursuit, clambering over mountains and through woods under shell and machine-gun fire, frequently they had had almost nothing to eat for two or three days at a time. They had been footsore, shivering, and rain-soaked; they had slept in trenches and shell-holes, amid the foul stenches of gas; themselves face to face with death, they had been surrounded by the wounded, the dying, and the dead. To these men this country, unscarred by war, with its homes and fields as peaceful as if the war had never been, seemed a very heaven of comfort. Now they found themselves installed in rooms with real beds. (They had begun to think that beds did not exist except in dreams!) And, with the supply system again restored to normal, they began to have three meals a day. Those who have never been without these simple comforts, who take them for granted and therefore never give them a thought, can never realize what they meant to the fighting divisions which constitute the army of occupation.

When our troops crossed the border in early December, they expected, naturally enough, to find the people sullen and resentful. They even looked for a certain amount of actual hostility, of the sort that a conquering army meets in individual civilians who cannot control their feelings. To their astonishment, they were greeted by smiles and kindnesses. What the inhabitants were required to do, in the way of providing assistance and quarters, was done, not as if under compulsion, not even with signs of reluctance, but with the eagerness of friends. Now, for four years the men and women of Germany had been hearing and giving heed to a gospel of hate toward Americans. At first it had been because we were sending food and munitions to the Allies, and then because, being ‘the dupe of England,’ and ‘a nation of dollar-grabbers’ who desired only to safeguard our loans, we had ourselves entered the war. It could be set down as a fact — so most of us reasoned and still reason — that these people could cherish toward us no real friendship.

Thus, the quality of the Germans that first, impressed itself upon the Americans, after we got settled down and had time to think of the matter at all, was their canniness. Their puzzling mixture of phlegm and intense emotionalism has often been dwelt upon. Here we found a turn of mind that was mere business sagacity. The war was over; the men whom they had fought, were here, their masters. What could possibly be gained by throwing obstacles in our way and stirring up our anger? Obviously nothing. On the contrary, was there not much to be gained, perhaps, by making our stay easy and agreeable? This is the way we believe they worked it out. And who can deny, even with the ‘perhaps’ suggesting a confession of possible disappointment, in the hope of positive advantage, that it was an eminently sensible decision?

Unquestionably their prudence was stimulated by, though not mainly due to, fear. However much they might justify the deeds of their own invading armies on the ground of military necessity, they were well aware that these deeds had been such as to create in their enemies a spirit of revenge. They did not know that the doctrine of Schrecklichkeit was not favored by other nations as by their own. True, they reassured themselves that this was peace (or a sort of one) and not war, and that therefore the occupation was to be a peaceful one; but they were not taking any chances, and they were determined to prevent, by all possible friendliness, any evil to themselves. The surprise of many of their number at finding the Americans mild-mannered and considerate, and honest payers for wares bought, was in some cases downright ludicrous.

I do not mean to be understood as doubting that many individuals, humble peasants or tradesmen, in whose houses the men were quartered, performed acts of kindness out of natural goodness of heart. That sort had never been hard haters anyway, except in moments of stress or acute personal loss; never thoughtful and consistent haters. Many a tiny Christmas tree was mounted in a soldier’s room, and many a stray native egg was offered as a reinforcement to an army breakfast, from no ulterior motive. But the disposition to extend favors that were not looked for ran through all strata of the population, to a degree that put sincerity as a motive out of the question. Sleek merchants who, you knew well, had been despising and deriding Americans in 1917 and detesting them in 1918, bent over their counters with smiles and unctuous good-days; wealthy householders of Mainzer Strasse or Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse received officers into their homes as if these officers had been their own returned from the war; a man who had, a month since, been a Prussian officer, seeing you about to pass with your cigar unlighted, stopped with a bow and a smile and proffered a match.

Too wide generalization is deceptive, and unfair. It is always necessary to modify. Just as there were Germans who were friendly without design, so we found Germans who accepted the humiliating entrance of a foreign army with reserve and dignity; not friendly, not unfriendly; obeying our army’s regulations, and providing what was demanded of them, but without any pretense in word or manner that they welcomed our presence. They were the sort who came nearest to meeting our approval. But they were not a common sight. If there had been more of them, that would have been more dangerous ‘propaganda,’ so far as winning over the Americans was concerned, than was the usual attitude we encountered.

Soon after our arrival the army authorities put into effect a rule against social intercourse between soldiers and inhabitants. Statements have been published that, despite this, there has been a great deal of fraternizing — that is the official term. In the homes where the men arc billeted, where they are in close contact with German families who go out of their way to minister to their comfort, without doubt there has been much friendly association. Especially is this true in small villages where there are no shop-windows and no diverting street-life to take the soldiers out of the house.

During the first month or two of the occupation, before the schemes for recreation and entertainment were under way, and the periodical holidays at leave-centres were arranged, there was more of this mingling than there is now, in the spring. From the beginning, however, it has been more with the women and children than with the men: the result of an easily understood yearning, on the part of a lot of homesick boys, for the sort of atmosphere they knew in their own homes.

There is little intercourse of the kind the army commander sought to prevent, the kind that might lead to ‘poisoning the minds’ of the innocent and unthoughtful. One does not see groups of soldiers and German men sitting and talking together, in the restaurants or on the streets, or elsewhere. What are the topics of conversation when the Americans talk to the natives in their houses can be only conjectured; but from my knowledge of the American soldier, I venture to say that, with the little that he has picked up of the language, he spends considerably more of his time telling the Germans of the advantages of living in America than he spends listening to them tell of the virtues of the Fatherland. I believe that a certain general was right when he said that the Americans, not merely by what they said, but by their behavior, especially toward women and children, had done more proselyting for American ideas than the Germans had done for theirs.

From the beginning, the inhabitants were outspoken in their hope that the Americans would plead their cause at the Peace Conference, to the extent of standing out for more lenient terms than France or England would seek to impose. Their truly childlike frankness in giving voice to this hope, as well as to their desire for early food-shipments from across the sea, made it plain, to the least suspicious of men, that their o’erweening friendliness had a motive behind it. Here was another attribute of the German mind that impressed itself upon the soldiers: craft in the conception of a policy combined with an execution so guileless as to defeat that same policy. The simplest doughboy could not fail to see the connection between benefits conferred and benefits expected.

‘The French and English are our enemies, the Americans are our friends,’ a youth of twenty-one said to me as he offered me some of that rare commodity, sugar, with an ingratiating smile. This was only a few days after the troops’ entrance into Germany, and not six weeks after the Americans and Germans were fighting to the death along the Meuse.

The Germans in our zone were continually drawing comparisons between the Americans on the one hand and the French and English on the other, always to our advantage. They told us how pleased they were that it was the Americans, instead of either of our vindictive allies, who had come to occupy their district. (Incidentally, from several visits to both the French and English areas, I know that the armies there are no whit more severe than our own in their treatment of the inhabitants). They lost no chance to refer to kinsfolk who dwell in New York, or Philadelphia, or whatever the place might be, and to accent the consequent hold that America had upon their affections. Along with these compliments and declarations of good-will went always the refrain, — not left to the imagination, but expressed in plain words, — ‘We are looking to America to keep the others from being too hard on us.’

It appeared to some of us surprisingly credulous in the Germans to expect that, even if they did make an agreeable impression upon the soldiers, this would have any appreciable effect on the temper of the delegates at Paris, who were already setting about their work and would surely not modify their views because Private John Doe, or several hundred of him, might write home that the householders at Putzenbach or Neider Bieber or Cottenheim had been very kind in providing candles and clean sheets. Yet, had the motive not been made so plain, it is conceivable that the policy might have had valuable ultimate results for Germany, in softening American dislike; fair words and kind deeds might possibly have served to dim the soldiers’ recollection of German crimes, and to send them home, an army of apologists, to spread the doctrine that the Germans were not so guilty as they had been painted. But, as it was, the whole thing was too obvious. Change the name in Kipling’s line, and it tells the story of their success in winning over the soldier: —

There are those in the army who are convinced that this campaign of conciliation was directed from a high central source; that, as soon as the occupation programme was agreed upon, and before we actually came into Germany, the injunction to be friendly to the Americans was passed down through provincial chiefs to Bürgermeisters, and through them to councils and boards and lesser officials, and so was spread among the people themselves. The unanimity of the inhabitants’ conduct, the similarity in their methods of approach and in their language, at widely distant places, certainly lent color to such a conclusion. The other view is that the excessive cordiality was simply the instinctive action of several hundred thousand persons to whom selfprotection and self-interest dictated this as the wisest course. Whichever is true, it tends to confirm the impression, gained during the war, that there is something like a collective German mind cased in a fixed mould.

II

I have used the past tense in describing the attitude of the Germans, though the army of occupation is still in being, and the Americans are still billeted in German homes. The reason is that, two or three months after the Armistice was signed, there came about a perceptible change in the bearing of the inhabitants.

Together, the two motives that had inspired them, hope and fear, ceased to exist. They learned, even the lowliest of them, that the American representatives at the Peace Conference were showing no disposition to condone the attack of 1914, or to waive the obligation of Germany to make good the wholesale destruction and theft of property. And they found that there was no bodily harm to be feared from the Americans, who, in obedience to their commanders, everywhere conducted themselves with soberness and forbearance. As they had before asked themselves, ’What is the use of keeping alive the foreigners’ dislike?’ so they could now ask themselves, ’What profit is there in assuming a cordiality we do not feel?’

Those who had been kind from the heart remained so; but the smirks and smiles of the others faded away. No longer was evident the scrupulous stepping aside, the unrequired and unwanted lifting of hats, the determination to be polite on all occasions. The natural resentment of any population at the presence of foreign troops came to the surface. This new behavior did not take the form of actual resistance — without army or arms, the inhabitants were too helpless for that. The majority of them committed no overt offenses. But there were numerous instances of what the soldiers call run-ins. Americans were ostentatiously scowled at, or bumped into, or addressed with sneers. Directions to local authorities were not carried out with alacrity. A high official of one district had to be placed under arrest for failure to comply with an order from Army Headquarters.

As a result of these incidents, officers and soldiers alike are setting this down as another characteristic German trait: servility under a firm hand (or the fear of one) and insolence under mild treatment. Now, the American soldier lapses easily into extreme mildness. In ordinary day-to-day intercourse, that is his normal state. And when he came into Germany, realizing that he was among a people who had suffered defeat, he had no desire to rub it in. When he saw they were making no trouble, he was immensely glad of it. The easygoing ways of both the officers and their men, a great many Germans mistook for softness. Of course, it was not that, — if the German civilians had been more familiar with the details of the Argonne-Meuse fight they would not have made this error, — and when the population threw off its mask of friendliness the Americans in turn threw off their mask of softness. True to form (the Americans are saying), the Germans have responded promptly to a display of firmness. Through fines for disobedience of the army’s regulations, a few sharp reminders addressed to city and village big-wigs, and one does not know how many unrecorded encounters in which fists played a part, the people are having impressed upon them these two simple facts, namely, that American orders are to be obeyed, and that the American flag and American officers and soldiers are to be treated with respect. As proof of the need of such a demonstration there is the manifesto issued by the Bürgermeister of Coblenz, reminding the people that they must obey the rules of the military government and act with proper courtesy toward the Americans. The highly placed began to realize sooner than their more humble fellow citizens that insubordination would not be tolerated.

‘It has become known,’ said the Bürgermeister, in the notice published in the local newspapers, ‘that in the last few days fights have taken place between civilians and American soldiers. In one of these loss of life has resulted. It has been reported that American soldiers have been repeatedly insulted by civilians. The causes of these incidents remain in doubt, but all citizens are emphatically warned that serious results may come to the many from the actions of a few. The population is urgently requested to refrain from thoughtless acts in dealing with the Americans, and to exercise the utmost self-control.’

At the same time that it has insisted that the German civilian leaders must maintain the good conduct of the people, the army command has informed them that any improprieties or acts of violence on the part of Americans are to be reported at Headquarters. That the discipline and general behavior of the troops has been excellent, cannot be questioned; but nobody pretends that every one of a quarter of a million soldiers is a model of virtue and restraint, and the inhabitants are given to understand that a soldier who takes advantage of his position to impose upon them will be properly dealt with.

A most surprising discovery of the American soldier last winter was that the Germans did not consider themselves defeated. He had pursued them steadily for weeks; he had seen them captured by the thousand; he had seen vast quantities of their cannon and machine-guns fall into our hands; he had been informed of the meagre force they had in line at the place where our next great offensive was to be made; and he knew the exacting terms of the Armistice. To him nothing was plainer than that they had been thoroughly beaten. Yet he had to pursue a conversation with a native only a few minutes to learn that the Americans were not here as conquerors, but simply by ‘agreement,’ or ‘arrangement,’ whatever that might mean.

‘We were never defeated; we merely withdrew, in perfect order, in accordance with the terms of an understanding with an enemy who outnumbered us,’ said a citizen of Coblenz to a New York newspaper correspondent at Christmas-time.

The newspapers of late November carried large headlines announcing the imminent passage through the city of ‘our unconquered army.’ The passage was not called a retreat, or even a withdrawal. It was a Heimkehr (home-coming). The people were reminded that they were to greet the troops ‘as conquerors.’ In copies of the newspapers of the day, after the troops entered Coblenz, in their march eastward, I find glowing descriptions of the flags hung from windows, the cheering of crowds along the sidewalks, and the scattering of flowers in the soldiers’ path.

Most conversations between Americans and Germans have turned upon some unexciting topic, like the probability of rain on the morrow, the coldness of a room, the affection of the military palate for eggs, or the scarcity of soap. But there have been discussions of war and peace and world-affairs in general. In these the Germans have usually preserved a genial, chatty tone, as if to say, ‘Oh, well, the rather unfortunate episode is all past now; let us talk it over as we would relate our dreams of last night — and why cherish any ill-feeling about it?’ Now and then, however, a chance remark, or, maybe, a deliberate prod, will generate a sudden heat; words will come forth in an avalanche, and you will be hearing that Germany is still unconquered, that the war was forced upon her by a world of envious foes, and that America would never have entered the war if it had listened to Germany’s side and had not been deceived by England.

In comments upon the Germans’ present attitude, I have often seen it described as ‘unrepentant.’ That, it certainly is, in the opinion of what I feel sure is the vast majority of the army of occupation. But should this fact, if it is a fact, cause any surprise, or, in itself, any special new condemnation? A nation that would fight such a war as Germany fought for four years, and in such a way, could hardly be expected to turn really contrite, all at once, just because the promised victory did not come. Those who thought she was right before still think so, and are sorry, not for the war, but for the failure to win it. We do not say that many of them will not look upon the thing differently in the future. But such changes of heart take time; and there has not been time enough yet.

A question that a good many of us are asking is: How many Germans are there who did not really think their country was right in the war, who did not sympathize with its purposes, but whose voice was necessarily stilled while the fight was on? If the number of these is as large as some profess to believe, then there may indeed soon be a liberal Germany. We read of the National Assembly at Weimar, and of the great voting strength of so-called liberals and radicals and republicans. But meanwhile, from Berlin and other places in the Fatherland, — even from that same National Assembly at Weimar, — we hear rumblings that sound very like echoes of the old German spirit.

And here, in the American zone, we find Von Ludendorff unpopular only because he failed, the Kaiser pitied as a martyr, and Von Hindenburg a popular idol, and are left with the feeling that all these parties, the Centrum, the People’s Democratic, the Majority Socialists, and the rest, are shadowy things, made up of just — Germans. By compulsion they may be kept from continuing exactly the same sort of Germans we have known in the past; they may be patched-up and madeover; but we here are not expecting to see any genuinely changed Germans until, possibly, the children who are now the playfellows of our American soldiers have become men and women.