The Sex Bomb

__"The Sexual Behavior of American GIs during the Early Years of the Occupation of Germany" by John Willoughby, in The Journal of Military History (Jan. 1998), Society for Military History, George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va. 24450–1600.__

Now that the Soviet Union is a thing of the past, sex often seems to be the U.S. military’s chief foe. But it’s not the first time top commanders have had to face this enemy. During the first few years of the occupation of Germany after V-E Day, writes Willoughby, an economist at American University, "the apparently unrestrained sexual activity of the American GI" spawned anti-Americanism and threatened U.S. efforts to build a new democratic German nation.

At first, the high command tried to prohibit all fraternization between Americans and Germans. But that proved impractical. On June 8, 1945, General Dwight Eisenhower declared that the ban did not apply to German children. Before long, the GIs had a new greeting for their girlfriends: "Good day, child." The army gave up and permitted relatively unregulated fraternization. In October the Allied Control Council, representing the United States and the three other occupying powers, lifted all but a few restrictions on soldiers’ relations with Germans.

Fresh from foxholes and front-line combat, thousands of miles from home (and exercising less self-control than their British counterparts), the American GIs found willing Fräulein without difficulty. "The women of Berlin are hungry, cold, and lonesome," a writer named Walter Slatoff reported in the Nation in May 1946. "The GIs have cigarettes, which will buy food and coal. The GIs have food—chocolate, doughnuts (taken in large quantities from the Red Cross Clubs). . . . And the GIs provide a kind of security and meaning in an otherwise meaningless city." But these relationships bred resentment among the Germans, exacerbated by the sometimes crude, drunken, or criminal acts of the occupiers.

The generals took steps to bring their troops under control. They let it be known that crude public behavior would not be tolerated. On the sex front, the army in 1946 let soldiers bring their wives to Germany to live as dependents. Also, the relatively few GIs in serious relationships with German women were allowed to marry. The strong dose of domestic bliss helped to settle things down. Still, many young, unmarried soldiers remained, with no shortage of impoverished Fräulein willing to accommodate them. But the German economy noticeably improved in 1948, and the next year, the relatively independent Federal Republic of Germany emerged. The sex threat to German democracy was over.