FINALIDAD DEL SISTEMA DE RESPONSABILIDAD

In the cases of West Germany and Japan, the primary goal of U.S. occupation was to achieve extensive ideological transformation of the defeated regimes and the populations that had supported them. In the German context, this meant the elimination of Nazi ideology. JCS 1067 instructed the occupation forces in the ideological transformation deemed necessary for German reconstruction, asserting, “The principal Allied objective is to prevent Germany from

290 _{Pei and Kasper, “Lessons from the Past,” 7.}

291 _{Jeffrey White, “Complicity in Iraq: How Deep?” PolicyWatch 715, Washington Instiute for Near East Policy, 25}

February 2003, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/complicity-in-iraq-how-deep.

ever again becoming a threat to the peace of the world”. To do so, the document charged occupation authorities with “the elimination of Nazism and militarism in all their forms,” and “the immediate apprehension of war criminals for punishment.”293 _{Nazi militarism was} understood as the ideological force that had corrupted the German political sphere, and only with the purging of key Nazi sympathisers could the “eventual reconstruction of German political life on a democratic basis,” occur.294

Some of the most detailed directives in the JCS 1067 concern the subject of de-Nazification, but it is important not to overstate the success of the Allied policy. Although the demilitarisation procedures succeeded in completely dismantling and disarming the German

Wehrmacht and the population at large, it is not clear that the denazification procedures were equally successful.295 _{The policy proved to be not only overly ambitions, but also extremely} difficult to administer. Efforts to classify degree of Nazi affiliation were obscure and subjective, leading to oftentimes arbitrary enforcement of the regulations. While only one tenth of the adult German population had claimed membership in the Nazi party,296 _{the removal of low} level party members and affiliates elicited serious practical and ethical problems at a time when Germany was struggling to rebuild its infrastructure and recover economically. As Tony Judt explained, it very quickly became clear “that Germany (and Austria) could not be returned to civil administration and local self-government…if the purging of responsible Nazis was undertaken in a sustained and consistent manner.”297 _{The Congressional committee} investigating Allied denazification policy concluded in its final report that, “It seems reasonably clear now that the American denazification policy went too far and tried to include too many. Its categorization was too broad and too rapidly applied.”298 _{Congressional pressure on the} military government during the fall of 1947 forced a closure of the denazification programme by May 1948, as it was determined that the programme was hindering more crucial efforts at

293 _{FRUS III, 484, 4c.} 294 _{FRUS III, 484, 4c.}

295 _{Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory, 138.} 296 _{Peterson, The American Occupation of Germany: Reterat to Victory, 151.}

297 _{Tony Judt, “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” Daedalus Vol. 121, No. 4}

(Fall 1992): 88.

77

economic recovery.299 _{Denazification was a dead letter by the early 1950s, a conclusion Judt}

maintained “would have been all but unthinkable in 1945.”300

Efforts at ideological transformation were similarly prominent in the reconstruction of Japan, where policy objectives were primarily embodied in the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July 1945.301 _{As the first term of Japanese surrender, and thus the primary requirement for Japan’s}

reconstruction and the end of the military occupation, the Potsdam Declaration declared: There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest, for we insist that a new order of peace, security and justice will be impossible until irresponsible militarism is driven from the world.302

By taking aim at Japanese militarism, the U.S. approach to Japanese reconstruction differed markedly from its approach to Germany. Demilitarization in Japan focused on “dissolving militaristic, ultranationalist, and secret patriotic societies,” as well as “preparing directives for the removal and exclusion from public office of exponents of militaristic nationalism and influential members of the secret societies.”303 _{This difference was due to the prominence of}

certain “old Japan hands” from the State Department in the post-war planning process for Japan. Individuals such as Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew and head of SWNCC’s Subcommittee on the Far East Eugene Dooman asserted that the militarism of World War II was an “aberration” in Japanese history, making the only major objective of the occupation “to eliminate military control of Japan and free the moderate and liberal forces that were believed to exist in Japanese society.”304 _{For this reason, U.S. authorities administered Japan largely}

through the Japanese civilian bureaucracy, and political purges were of a smaller magnitude. While denazification efforts affected 2.5 percent of the German population, similar purges in

299 _{Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military, 170-172.} 300 _{Judt, “The Past Is Another Country,” 88.}

301 _{Later documents such as the SWNCC 150 and National Security Council document 13/2 (October 1948)} revised some elements of American occupation and reconstruction policies, but the changes were almost wholly situated in the economic domain.

302 _{Potsdam Declaration: Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, Issued at Potsdam 26 July 1945.} 303 _{Kades, “The American Role in Revising Japan’s Constitution,” 220.}

Japan affected only .29 percent of the population.305 _{Although U.S. reconstruction and re-} education policies in Japan are commonly asserted to be of crucial importance to the Japanese shift from militant nationalism to peaceful democratization, it is unclear from the historical analysis what effect, if any, the U.S. policies may have had.306 _{Furthermore, later Japanese} governmental review of the purges in 1951 resulted in uniform rehabilitation of purged individuals and the immediate release of those still in prison.307 _{Upon review, it appears that} innate Japanese democratic principals, which existed prior to the militarism of the 1930s and 40s, may be more responsible than Allied reconstruction policies for the peaceful trajectory of Japanese development in the postwar period.

305 _{Dobbins et al., America’s Role in Nation-Building, 60.}

306 _{Licklider, “The American Way of State Building: Germany, Japan, Somalia and Panama,” 90.} 307 _{Dobbins et al., America’s Role in Nation-Building, 61.}