One of de Gaulle’s great successes in the Second World War was to allow France to punch above its weight in the Alliance. However, the French army struggled to match in military proficiency de Gaulle’s lofty aspirations for French power and influence. The Vosges campaign proved yet another punishing trial for the French army. Its professional cadres seriously attrited in Tunisia, in Italy, and in the march from the Mediterranean coast, distant from its North African base, utterly dependent on the Americans for supplies, the command echelon riven by rivalries of a political, doctrinal, and personal nature, the poorly equipped First French Army was forced to endure a bitter campaign in the harshest of winter conditions, while simultaneously “amalgamating” clusters of poorly trained and disciplined FFI and volunteers. While the reconquest of Alsace and that of the “Atlantic pockets” were symbolically important to de Gaulle and the French, they were low priorities for the SHAEF commander, whose mission for Sixth Army Group was to “hold the flank” while advances were to be made further north. Eisenhower’s personal rivalry with Jacob Devers, combined with a lack of confidence in the volatile de Lattre and a rebuilding French army, possibly caused him to “miss opportunities” for an early crossing of the Rhine in late November 1944, and the disruption of the German Ardennes offensive, which caught him by surprise on 16 December. While Eisenhower blamed Devers and de Lattre’s timorousness and lack of mastery of armored warfare for the persistence of the Colmar Pocket, and pressured Sixth Army Group to eliminate it, he constantly diverted resources which might have allowed them to do so to Patton. Tensions between de Gaulle’s political agenda and Eisenhower’s operational focus, apparent since Algiers in 1942, exploded with the Strasbourg crisis of January 1945, which was successfully resolved only after Churchill’s intervention. However, the Allied failure to clarify the French role in the post-war occupation of Germany created conditions for further clashes between Eisenhower and the French during the culminating invasion of Germany.

Chapter 2 introduces the Fragebogen to analytical review and delivers the first history of the project’s origins. Here, analytical focus moves away from the policymaking architecture to the rudimentary construction of a functioning screening system. Tracing the questionnaire’s origins to 1943 Allied-occupied Italy, this chapter analyzes and compares the independent Fragebogen projects that emerged under American, British, French, and Soviet administrations and corrects previous interpretations about the scope and character of denazification. The decision to adopt a self-administered questionnaire was bold and experimental, but the Fragebogen was an inadequate mechanism for the complex task of judging Germans. The form was hastily written and contained both punitive and redemptive features, and by today’s standards, included undemocratic and arguably immoral questions. While trumpeted as a device for objective screening, the program allowed for subjective responses and discretionary evaluation. The development of the project did not show clarity and confidence, but stumbled forward out of necessity, indecision, and because of the absence of any alternative strategy.

Chapter 1 traces the ideological and practical origins of the inter-Allied denazification campaign and the unorthodox questionnaire program that it proposed. It surveys the wartime planning landscape in 1943 and 1944 and introduces the individuals and institutions that created the Fragebogen. Hundreds of civilian experts, including college professors, police officers, lawyers, and Jewish refugees, were employed to build denazification policy and to overhaul military civil affairs programs. This army of academics brought with them innovative social scientific approaches and instruments, as well as new perspectives and concepts regarding ideological, sociological, and political transformation. This was the rich civilian-engaged environment that permitted the adoption of an experimental political questionnaire. However, the civilian planners were continuously challenged by an inherent contradiction in all strands of occupation policy: the pursuit of both punitive and restorative goals. The result was that a practical strategy for the occupation was never produced by the Allied powers, nor was there a shared consensus on political screening.

Chapter 3 lifts the unevaluated Fragebogen off the desks of planners in England and delivers it to American, British, French, and Soviet soldiers operating in Germany. It chronincles the implementation of the questionnaire program, beginning in 1945; how the form was distributed, collected, and evaluated, and what role it played in the larger military occupation. Accessing army field reports, military government records, newspapers, and published and unpublished first-hand accounts, a more intimate history of denazification administration is imparted. It is shown that the questionnaire was an indispensable thorn in the side of the military occupiers, one that pained them at every turn. The Allied armies and German commissions who oversaw the program did not have the expertise, resources, or willingness to see it through to completion. Still, denazification was a hollow shell without the Fragebogen. Most of what was visibly achieved—namely, the removal of thousands of incriminated Nazis from influential employment—was due to this screening device. From the moment invasion soldiers entered Germany, no matter what flag they carried, questionnaires were essential to the occupation regimes.