In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States Army became the principal agent of American foreign policy. The army designed, implemented, and administered the occupations of the defeated Axis powers Germany and Japan, as well as many other nations. Generals such as Lucius Clay in Germany, Douglas MacArthur in Japan, Mark Clark in Austria, and John Hodge in Korea presided over these territories as proconsuls. At the beginning of the Cold War, more than 300 million people lived under some form of U.S. military authority. The army's influence on nation-building at the time was profound, but most scholarship on foreign policy during this period concentrates on diplomacy at the highest levels of civilian government rather than the armed forces' governance at the local level. In Army Diplomacy, Hudson explains how U.S. Army policies in the occupied nations represented the culmination of more than a century of military doctrine. Focusing on Germany, Austria, and Korea, Hudson's analysis reveals that while the post--World War II American occupations are often remembered as overwhelming successes, the actual results were mixed. His study draws on military sociology and institutional analysis as well as international relations theory to demonstrate how "bottom-up" decisions not only inform but also create higher-level policy. As the debate over post-conflict occupations continues, this fascinating work offers a valuable perspective on an important yet underexplored facet of Cold War history.

This thesis studies the efforts of the U.S. Military Government in Bavaria to bring about democratic reform and denazification. It focuses on the period from V-E Day on 8 May 1945 to 5 June 1947, when Secretary of State George Marshall first publicly announced the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan). This study reveals that the organizational restructuring and ultimate diminishment of military government played an important role in achieving German political autonomy. The study further reveals that democratic reform efforts along federalist lines were relatively successful in Bavaria, and that, contrary to some critics' assertions, the American military government played a prominent role in this achievement. The study then focuses on denazification efforts. It determines that total denazification failed because, in part, the American military government pursued contradictory policies of attempting to restore political autonomy to Bavarians and at the same time pursuing aggressive denazification. Nonetheless, denazification did not wholly fail and aided somewhat in bringing about democratization through stigmatizing Nazism as a political ideology. This study concludes by pointing out that, despite some failures, especially in denazification, the American military government and Bavarians forged a viable, if imperfect, democracy during the crucial period from 1945 to 1947.