Office of Military Government, United States

The Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) was the United States military-established government created shortly after the end of hostilities in occupied Germany in World War II. Under General Lucius D. Clay, it administered the area of Germany and sector of Berlin controlled by the United States Army.The Allied Control Council comprised military authorities from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and France. Though created on Janruary 1st, 1946, OMGUS previously reported to the U.S. Group Control Council, Germany (USGCC), which existed from May 8, 1945 until October 1, 1945. OMGUS was eliminated on December 5, 1949, and the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany assumed control of its functions.

The Restitution and Reparations Branch of OMGUS located and returned material to countries from which claimed property had been looted by the Nazis during World War II.

OMGUS in 1945 began its own newspaper based in Munich, Die Neue Zeitung. It was edited by German and Jewish émigrés who fled to the United States before the war. Its mission was to destroy Nazi cultural remnants, and encourage democracy by exposing Germans to how American culture operated. There was great detail on sports, politics, business, Hollywood, and fashions, as well as international affairs.

Origins

The US Army tasked with the occupation, denazification, and democratization of post-war Germany was plagued by numerous problems immediately following the capitualtion of Germany and the cessation of hostilities.One such probelm was confusion emenating from the numerous chains of command and military authorities that succeeded the German occupation from May 1945 onwards. Initially, neither the United States Executive, nor the US Army wanted the responsibility of occupying Germany and seeing it along the path of democratization, though inevitably the US Army was given the task by default, "as the only force that had the logistic and administrative capability to perform the mission." One of the primary reasons for this outcome was the precedent of US Military Governance well before the initiation of post-war planning and the official formation of OMGUS to administer affairs. This precedent was accomplished through the publication of two Army Field Manuals, FM 27-5, Military Governance, and FM 27-10 The Rules of Land Warfare as early as 1940, setting the stage for future occupation policy. The invasion and occupation of Sicily in 1943, saw to the creation of a Military Government Provisional Section (G-5 Civil-Affairs Staff Office) within the 7th Army on the order of Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower, which would become the basis for military government in occupatied Germany. Following suit, the US Third Army created its own G-5 Staff Office to administer the territories it occupied.

Compounding the issue were unstable boundaries of US Army divisions at the time of Germany's capitulation, in which the Third Army assumed direct command of the administration of the Eastern Military District (Bavaria) under General George S. Patton, and the US Seventh Army commanding the Western Military District (Greater Hesse, and Wurtemburg-Baden), with the civil-affairs staff of each Army reporting to their commanding officer. Following the dissolution of SHAEF on July 17th, 1945, both of these districts reported to United States Forces - Euopean Theater (USFET) Command under General Eisenhower, "dual-hatted as both USFET Commander and Military-Governor of Germany," until his apointment to the Joint-Chiefs of Staff. Eisenhower's departure saw to the succession of Gernal Lucius Clay as USFET Commander and Military Governor of Germany, whom would remain so throughout the duration of OMGUS from 1945 to 1949.

to both confusion in the parallel chains of command up until OMGUS’ creation in 1946, as well as the severe personell shortage that ensued with the cessation of hostilities. Faced with the impening uncertainty of the post-war occupation after four years of war, most soldiers left Germany as soon as their ticket came up

Structure

OMGUS and its subordinate offices were responsible for the civil administration, safety, and legal While initially convoluted, the structure of OMGUS and its subordinate offices became increasingly consolidated under General Lucius Clay by 1946.

Structurally, OMGUS was composed of five independent US Military Government Offices (Landkreis), Wurttemberg-Baden, Greater Hesse, Bavaria, Bremen, and Berlin. These five independent offices reported directly to Office of Military Government – US Zone stationed at Frankfurt-am-Main, Greater Hesse, which served as the headquarters for OMGUS, and the Military Governor. Up until the municipal elections held in Febraury 1946, the job of civil administration and security was conducted by the 3rd and 7th Armies at the tactical level, with detached liason offices reporting to the Military Govenors of each independenty office.

The OMGUS chain of command operated parallel to that of the Joint-Allied control of Occupied Germany through the

The Military Governor throughout the duration of OMGUS from January 1^st, 1946 to December 1949 was that of General Casius Clay. Internally, each of the Office of Military Government Offices in the US Zone was commanded by a Brigadier General.

Additionally, a number of offices served directly under the OMGUS chain of command. This included the Information Control Division, tasked with carrying out the ideological censorship and Denazification propaganda in US zones of occupation, as well as the Survey group, who conducted some 159 surveys to gauge German sentiment during the period of occupation. 

Propaganda Under OMGUS

Propaganda and information control in Allied occupied Germany was a primary tool utilized by OMGUS and the Allies. This informational control was informed by two concurrent processes occurring in the wake of the Second World War. The first, Denazification, was a primary objective of OMGUS and served to root out whatever remained of the Nazi Party, its associations with German society, and its ideology, particularly from 1945 to 1947. This propaganda was disseminated to persuade the German people of the finality of their defeat in World War II, as well as to pave the way for US designs of democratization in Germany. The other, taking much more precedence in the later years of OMGUS from 1947 to 1949, was the increasing competition for political, economic, and cultural influence between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union as Germany became increasingly divided between the two ideologically divided super-powers.

OMGUS’ informational control constituted a vast campaign of mass media dissemination in the form of newspapers, radios, journals, films, conferences, posters, and even musical and artistic exhibitions. Much of this campaign was carried out by the ICD. Formerly the psychological warfare division of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) up until the conclusion of hostilities, the ICD was formed as an independent office until being absorbed by OMGUS in February of 1946..  

The chronology of the US Army’s informational control policy and propaganda campaign can be broken-down into three main stages including their assertion of a media monopoly by the US Army during the initial occupation, a combination of active censorship and propaganda, and finally an active propaganda campaign in the midst of the Cold War.

During the initial first months of the US occupation of Germany, the US Army proceeded to create a monopoly over informational and mass media, shutting down newspapers, radios, and journals. As such, US media sources were the only mass media available in occupied Germany, provided primarily by Radio Luxemburg, US Army information fliers (Mitteilungblätter), and Army newspapers.

With the assumption of control by the Office of Military Government, this process of media monopolization gave way to gradual inclusion of German media under the auspices of strict censorship and oversight by the ICD. In 1945, the ICD assessed and vetted an initial 73 German editors to resume operations of paper media, newspapers, and journals. Though the ICD and OMGUS assumed a stance of open and positive inclusion by Germans removed from Nazi affiliation, these editors operated under conditions of post-publication censorship, whereby non-compliance could lead to the revocation of media licenses. OMGUS itself created a number of mass media institutions itself including the newspaper Die Neue Zeitung in 1945 in Munich, Bavaria.  Its mission was to destroy Nazi cultural remnants, and encourage democracy by exposing Germans to how American culture operated. There was great detail on sports, politics, business, Hollywood, and fashions, as well as international affairs.^[1]

Further reading

• Backer, John H. Winds of History: The German Years of Lucius Dubignon Clay (1983)
• Goldstein, Cora Sol. Before the CIA: American Actions in the German Fine Arts (1946–1949) (University of Chicago Press, 2008)
• Merritt, Anna J., and Richard L. Merritt. Public opinion in occupied Germany: the OMGUS surveys, 1945-1949 (University of Illinois Press, 1970), OMGUS polls
• Gerhardt, Uta. Bestandsaufnahme mit Zeitwert. Ein nachträglicher Blick auf das Kompendium "Public Opinion in Occupied Germany", in: Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 2 (2005), pp. 143-147.
• Smith, Jean Edward. Lucius D. Clay: An American Life (1990), a major scholarly biography

Primary sources

• Clay, Lucius. The Papers of General Lucius D. Clay: Germany, 1945 - 1949 (2 volumes, 1974)

References

• Records of U.S. Occupation Headquarters, World War II (RG 260)
• Records of U.S. Army Operational,Tactical, and Support Organizations (World War II and Thereafter) (RG 338)
• Papers of the Office of the Military Government; Restitution Claims at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, NY