Gangs in the Forest: The Construction of the Criminal Archetype in Post-Second World War Western Germany

Abstract

Histories of post-Second World War Germany are replete with lurid descriptions of crime and social disorder, which has in turn frequently been blamed on non-Germans under the euphemism "DPs" short for "displaced persons" That DPs are imagined to have committed crime frequently or that they comprised many (if not most) of the criminals in postwar Germany has only rarely been questioned. Instead, assertions of excessive foreign criminality have followed the logic underpinning depictions of a more generalized crime wave: that war destroyed the social fabric and societal infrastructure that ensured lawfulness, resulting in widespread theft and looting, proliferation of gangs and group violence, and other forms of more insidious crime that together made for a slow and painful recovery after the Nazi surrender on May 7, 1945. The "social disintegration" account is intuitively satisfying when considered against the destruction caused by the Second World War. Its explanatory power lay in supporting contradictory narratives fitting, for instance, both a "Zero Hour" (Stunde Null) interpretation of the end of war in which society came to a halt on May 7, and a continuity thesis of conflict and trauma continuing past surrender. The ubiquity of "social disintegration" has hindered its close interrogation, including of its origins, the historical phenomena it instantiates, and the emotional realities that may underlie it, all of which would be revealed by closer inspection.