Non-Germans—particularly “displaced persons”—were routinely blamed for crime in occupied western Germany. The Allied and German fixation on foreign gangs, violent criminals, and organized crime syndicates is well documented in contemporary reports, observations, and the press. An abundance of such data has long shaped provocative historical narratives of foreign-perpetrated criminality ranging from extensive disorder through to near uncontrolled anarchy. Such accounts complement assertions of a broader and more generalized crime wave. Over the last 30 years, however, a literature has emerged that casts doubt on the actual extent of lawlessness during the occupation of the west and, in turn, on the level non-German participation in crime. It may be that extensive reporting of non-German criminality at the time reflected the preexisting bigotries of Germans and the Allies, which when combined with anxieties about social and societal integrity became focused on the most marginalized groups in postwar society. This process of “group criminalization” is common and can have different motivations. Regardless of its cause, it was clearly evident in postwar western Germany and we hypothesized that it should have created harsher outcomes for non-German versus German criminal defendants when facing the Allied criminal justice system, such as greater rates of conviction and harsher punishments. This hypothesis was tested using newly collected military government court data from 1945 to 1946. Contrary to expectations, we found a more subtle bias against non-Germans than expected, which we argue reveals important characteristics about the US and British military government criminal justice system.

中文翻译：

---

1945-46 年，被占领德国的英美军事政府法庭对非德国人的待遇存在偏见

在被占领的德国西部，非德国人——尤其是“流离失所者”——经常被指责为犯罪。盟军和德国对外国帮派、暴力犯罪分子和有组织犯罪集团的关注在当代报告、观察和媒体中得到了充分记录。长期以来，大量此类数据塑造了对外国犯罪行为的挑衅性历史叙述，范围从广泛的混乱到几乎不受控制的无政府状态。这样的描述补充了更广泛和更普遍的犯罪浪潮的断言。然而，在过去的 30 年中，出现了一篇文献，质疑西方占领期间无法无天的实际程度，进而质疑非德国人参与犯罪的程度。可能是当时对非德国犯罪行为的广泛报道反映了德国人和盟国先前存在的偏见，再加上对社会和社会完整性的焦虑，这些偏见与战后社会中最边缘化的群体有关。这种“集体犯罪”的过程很常见，并且可能有不同的动机。不管它的原因是什么，它在战后的德国西部很明显，我们假设它应该在面对盟军刑事司法系统时对非德国刑事被告和德国刑事被告造成更严厉的结果，例如更高的定罪率和更严厉的惩罚。使用 1945 年至 1946 年新收集的军政府法庭数据对这一假设进行了检验。与预期相反，我们发现对非德国人的偏见比预期的更为微妙，