Foreign News: Interpreters & Mistresses

Many U.S. occupation officers half-envied General Fatten. Their troubles were just beginning.

The reality of the occupation problem was being driven home to them in a thousand little failures. Americans were losing face, Germans recovering their arrogance. They sometimes spoke to U.S. officers with their hands in their pockets, a sign of gross disrespect in Germany. They openly mocked the G.I.’s kidding, gum-chewing, easygoing ways. Former Hitler Youth even joined “Resistance Clubs” to fight the foreigners.

The G.I.s, ill-prepared for the occupation at any stage, were totally unprepared for this. Newcomers, replacing the combat veterans, lacked even the stimulus of a dimming anger. Most of the officers who were supposed to help them understand often needed more help than the G.I.s did.

The necessary dependence on interpreters, the striking number of higher-rank officers in residence with mistresses of vanished Nazi bigwigs, the general air of maladroitness and cumbersome effort had given rise to a bitter description. By Germans, and by many a discerning G.I., the U.S. occupation rule of Germany and Austria was being called “the government of interpreters and mistresses.”