Page 116 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

116 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

the planning and training of personnel to be used, for which a special school was inaugurated
in Charlottesville. G-5 sections (civil affairs and military government) were established at
army group, army corps and even division levels. .
48
In conquered enemy countries, the purpose of Anglo-American military occupation was
to eliminate the authoritarian or totalitarian structure and set up the bases for a transition
towards a different internal political order, also leading to a new international order. There
was a difficult co-existence of military needs (the liberated territory was also the zone behind
front) and political-administrative demands, especially in a country like Italy, where the front
moved slowly towards the North between September 1943 and April 1945. The military were
very much worried about their civil duties. «The sooner I can get rid of all these questions,
that are outside the military in scope, the happier I will be! − wrote General Eisenhower in
November 1942 to the Chief of the Army General Marshall at the beginning of the campaign
in North Africa − «Sometimes I think I live ten years each week, of which at least nine are
absorbed in political and economic matters». Entering a city in Sicily in July 1943, an Ameri-
can officer commented: «And what a lot of headaches I found. Water supply damaged. No
power. No food. No fuel, and corpses all over town to bury» .
49
Civil tasks required competences beyond those normally taught in military academies.
In particular, one had to have the ability of assessing advice and information provided by
notables of the ruled population. The American Army, like all other armies, at that time was
based on draft and many officers were available, who performed the most diverse administra-
tive tasks in their civil lives. In the Second World War, another advantage was that military
operations had actually ceased and there were no further guerrilla warfare or sabotage in the
conquered or liberated territories, unlike in Afghanistan or Iraq today.
Unlike in Germany or Japan, in Vietnam during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies the
guerrillas prevented the functioning of political and administrative structures. In Vietnam,
the duty of American soldiers was not to replace a defeated government, but to strengthen
Saigon’s government, which was an ally to the United States. The British faced the same
problem of governing and at the same time contrasting guerrillas in different parts of their
Empire shaken by the decolonization wave, but owing to the strength of their imperial tradi-
tion, they generally resolved it more cleverly. In these cases, it was necessary to find a cred-
ible interlocutor among the political class, who enjoyed the consensus of the local population
but at the same time would be a friend to the foreign power that supported him, had charisma
but was not too authoritarian, and could carry out reforms, in the hopes, usually illusory, of
eliminating the grievances exploited by revolutionary guerrillas . Obviously the guerrillas
50
48 The American experience is referred to for the sake of brevity, but it must be remembered that the occupa-
tion was carried out by the English and Americans jointly, except for in Japan. On the British organization,
see F. S. V. Donnison, Civil Affairs and Military Government: Central Organisation and Planning, london,
1966.
49 Coles-Weinberg, wrk, quote., pp.45 and 192
50 Actually, «The revolutionary strategist does not look for a solution of the problems he denounces. His de-
nunciation has the double purpose of giving him a role and to throw fuel on the fire. For this reason, it would
be illusory to think that to offer a solution to the specific problem raised would suffice to undermine subver-
sion» (E. Langlois, Guerre classique et guerre révolutionnaire: l’illusion de la différence, in Stratégique, n.
85, 2005, p. 11).