Master’s Thesis on WWII souvenir hunting
 

In the course of doing research for my own thesis, I came across this very interesting thesis written by someone named Seth Givens in 2010.

It is about American souvenir hunting in World War II, and has plenty of references to Lugers as a common prize and in anecdotes used for supporting his points. If this link does not work let me know and I will try to find another way to upload it.


https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO...hiou1275450120

Here's the direct link to download it as a PDF. it's quite well researched and written...

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_f...ion=attachment

Thank you for posting this. While I like to pick up items from the war, I wouldn't consider myself a collector. But I am a collector of some other things and I'm betting the concepts/ideas pertain in a way.

Anyone having watched Band of Brothers would seen a movie where the actual looting of civilian homes was shown.
Not items of war but civilian personal and household items. Watching this even though viewing in my home on a television shocked and dismayed me thinking of American WWII GIs behaving in this manner.
Guess this type of action it Just never occurred to me,after all we were supposed to be the good guys.

That is more or less what my study is about, the memory of WWII through the objects brought home. There are so many around the USA, surely they could not have all been legitimately brought here from the Reich.

In doing a quick scan through the document I will share this:

"As Sergeant Donald Burgett of the 101st Airborne reported, “At the end of the first day, we had a stack of pistols of all description well above six feet high, and about twelve feet in diameter. Troopers constantly picked through this pile for choice Lugers, Walthers, Berettas, P-38s, old ‘Broomstick’ models, and so on. By the end of the war, GIs found numerous opportunities to acquire a prized pistol. Whether through taking the weapon from a dead or surrendering soldier, bartering, or selecting just the right one from a disarmament pile, any type of pistol the soldier had wanted was in vast abundance".

Yep, The American serviceman was a great souvenir hunter. I do object to the term "looter". "To the victor belongs the spoils". This has been true of the winning army since war began. The Germans were viewed as an Evil, with the capital "E". Viewed from the vantage point of past history all beliefs have mellowed. "War is Hell" and all sides have done acts that would not be condoned in peaceful times. That is the nature of conflict. My relatives fought on both sides in both World Wars. There are conditions during wartime that require the moral norms to be changed. That's just the business of war.

With apologies to our friends here that had relatives that fought on the "other side", the souvenirs brought home by Allied victors are trophies of the victorious over the vanquished. When I speak to many of the young that question why I collect German artifacts I remind them on what it symbolizes.

G2

I guess you can be shocked if you choose.
Pretty unsophisticated view in my opinion, all things considered.
Young guys yanked off the farm or streets and tossed into a meat grinder where their life expectancy becomes questionable minute to minute.
Witnessing things they never imagined or ever wanted to imagine.
They are told their job was to defeat a great evil and save the world from it.
A great many had fathers who had been thrown against German aggression just a few years before.
Germans were not held in high regard in terms of those events.
My father was 506th PIR. He was involved in liberating a couple of camps. We had pics he took with a captured Leica when I was a kid.
You seem to think looting was wide spread and extensive. Not necessarily so, but it did happen. I grew up surrounded by WW2 vets and most all souvenirs I saw were military related.
To simply and quickly assess these men as other than "The good guys" is very short sighted, unrealistic and disrespectful.
War sucks. Bad things happen. Sometimes a GI does what he can to make the best of it.

MikeP said:

To simply and quickly assess these men as other than "The good guys" is very short sighted, unrealistic and disrespectful. War sucks. Bad things happen. Sometimes a GI does what he can to make the best of it.

Truth.

G2

Of course no spoils of war discussion is complete without a reminder that those US residents who helped the war effort in WW1 were rewarded with the post-war arrival of a very lightly deactivated Maxim machinegun, as a token of gratitude from the US government.
dju

As an aside, in downtown Lakeview Oregon they have a small house that has been turned into a local museum. On the front wood railing they've attached an MG08/15. First saw it 37 years ago and it was still present in 2007. Surprised it hasn't been stolen. I have no idea if it's deactivated.

G2

Quite different from today, when a soldier can't even bring home a bayonet. I understand that in WW II the enlisted men could not send home more money than they made, to prevent 'looting.' My dad was in the ETO AAF and they were warned against bringing home weapons, But he picked a US 45 auto out of the trash tossed by another airman, took it apart, wrapped it in tape and stuck it in the bottom of his foot locker - and it arrived home. There was also a lot of trading german helmets, flags and daggers, but none of that interested him, but he did bring home his flight kit and uniforms that I have.

I had a buddy who was deployed in Afghanistan and was back home getting his degree on the GI bill. He said one of the saddest days for him was being ordered to blow up a pristine C96 “Red 9” amongst other enemy ordinance and not being able to do anything about it thanks to the strict war trophy laws.

Folks who have never served in combat (myself included, although I've been in a combat zone) is that people don't understand - you simply can't look at it from a peacetime civilian attitude. Day after day of being under stress and fire - GI's (male and female) that they kid around differently, they might do things that in the civilian world would be unacceptable - you simply can't put civilian attitudes to those in combat.
Not saying they are expected to do bad things, but when you might be under fire or fighting for your lives at any point, you react a lot different than back on the block / farm / street. Life itself is looked at different - when you've been told that the enemy is evil and they need to be killed (how else do you get normal folks to kill?) - it has to affect the troops.

PTSD has always occurred and is called different things each war, it can be many battles / years or it can be a couple of things that happen.

Unless you've been in their shoes, please don't judge.

Quentin - I would love to read your thesis - I looked at doing something similar for my degree, but I was a polisci major (would have preferred a history major, but I took what was offered by U of OK in Europe before I retired from the army).

Ed,

I will most certainly post it once I complete it. I am spending much of this summer trying to line up interviews and do some reading now that my books are finally in. I’ll be researching/writing it for the better part of the next 11 months.

Most Infantrymen had a clear impediment towards collecting souvenirs. Weight. We carried up to and over 90 pounds. Adding anything to that..it would have to shoot, explode or be eaten.