Rebuilding Iraq seen from Germany's experience after World War II

Ralf Dahrendorf, Sociologist, Project Syndicate

When I hear Americans such as U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice compare the occupation of Iraq with that of Germany (and sometimes Japan) after World War II, distant memories flood in, for I am a child of that experience.

Indeed, in the 12 months following the unconditional surrender of Hitler's Nazi regime in May 1945, I lived under serial Russian, American, and British occupation. Sometimes I think of myself as an expert in comparative occupation studies.

The first conclusion I draw from such experience is this: Everything depends on who the occupying power is. When Soviet troops invaded Berlin at the end of April 1945 many of us went into the streets to welcome them. Such enthusiasm did not last long.

One day, Red Army tanks turned from the main street in our quarter towards the crowd. When the crowd dispersed, the soldiers started looting, raping, and pillaging. This continued for only a few days, but fear of the occupying Soviets never left even as they began to distribute food and set up a rudimentary administration. It soon became clear that they were in fact creating another dictatorship in place of the one they had removed.

In July, when Americans replaced the Soviets in our Berlin district, this changed. True, my beloved wristwatch (which I had miraculously saved throughout the weeks of Soviet occupation) was taken from me by an American soldier on my way home from school. But it soon became clear that this occupation held out hope of a better future.

This was even more evident when a few months later my family moved from Berlin to Hamburg, then under British occupation. Suddenly, non-fraternization with Germans -- the American rule -- was replaced by frequent contacts aimed at re-education, especially of the young.

In those months, the seeds of my conversion to all things British were planted, which flowered decades later in my becoming a British citizen.

Such differences matter no less in Iraq today, and have done so from the first days of the occupation, when the British took Basra and the Americans Baghdad. But another difference is even more important.

When Germany was occupied, the old regime's defeat was total, utterly beyond dispute. After five and a half years of war no one doubted the inevitability of occupation. That was different after Germany's Blitzkrieg against Poland.

When my school was sent to the Polish spa in the town of Zakopane, we were obviously enemies, unwanted in every respect. Soon a quarantine was imposed to prevent us from misbehaving towards the local people and, above all, to protect us from their wrath. I can still feel, with shame, the sense of being not only unwanted but of being an illegitimate invader in a proud country.

It could be argued that the Iraq war was too short, certainly too short for Iraqis to feel, as we Germans did, that the occupation was inevitable and bound to last for a long time.

While Iraqis may be pleased to be rid of a murderous regime, they had little time to get accustomed to the notion of being an occupied country. In Germany, we thought for a while that the occupation would last forever, and that we perhaps deserved no better. I doubt whether many Iraqis share that feeling.

But the most important aspect of the German experience was the sense of where the occupation would lead. In the old Soviet zone, it soon became clear that it would lead to a totalitarian satellite regime.

Those who could left the Soviet zone and settled in the West; those who could not faced the sullen existence of subjects rather than citizens.

In the Western zones, a different set of expectations soon prevailed. As the occupying armies were replaced by civilian officials as administrators, and Germans were recruited to help them, the silver lining of Western democracy became more and more noticeable.

Again, differences mattered. In the French zone, so I learned later, the signs were less hopeful. More than that, there were hints of a desire for annexation, with the Saar region actually separated from Germany for a time. In the American zone the process was slower and controls were stricter than in the British zone, where local politicians were soon entrusted with power.

On the other hand, economic life flourished earlier in the American zone, whereas the British tried to extract direct benefits by, for example, dismantling steel works and bringing the parts to Britain.

In retrospect, that turned out to be a blessing for Germany. A reviving Germany built modern factories, whereas the occupiers were saddled with old ones. But Germany revived because the Western occupation forces made clear their intention to let it do so, and helped indigenous forces on their way. After initial uncertainties, there was soon a clear and widely recognized vision of where the country should go.

Western Germany's occupation forces not only set an example of how this vision could be achieved, but found the right people and the right institutions to bring about reconstruction and progress.

In principle, this can be accomplished elsewhere. In practice however, one cannot help wondering whether the German experience resulted from a unique set of circumstances, or at any rate one not easily reproduced under the vastly different conditions of today's Iraq.

The writer, who has written numerous books, is a member of the British House of Lords. He is also a former Rector of the London School of Economics, and a former Warden of St. Antony's College, Oxford.