GIs in Germany is an extremely helpful survey of the deep and multifaceted exchanges that have occurred between Germans and Americans since 1945. The essays provide both an overview of the literature on the subject and insightful research into the motives, nature, and impact of that interaction. The volume derives from papers presented at a conference in Heidelberg in November 2000. Though thirteen years seems a long time for such an anthology finally to appear, most of the articles have obviously been diligently updated to reflect scholarship that has appeared in the intervening years.

The work is divided into five parts. Maulucci's introduction provides an excellent historiographic overview. Part One covers strategy and politics, placing the deployment of American troops in the international and domestic political context. Hubert Zimmerman's contribution, for example, looks at the economic dimension of the U.S. troop presence, whereas contributions by Hans-Joachim Herder, Bruno Thoß, and Dennis Showalter cover the evolution of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strategies for the defense of Europe and of the role played by American and German forces. Related essays in Part Four describe the Americanization of the Luftwaffe, in a piece by Wolfgang Schmidt, and the relationship of the American military model to the German doctrine of Innere Führung (internal leadership), which, as Klaus Naumann shows, were intended to produce a Bundeswehr compatible with democratic norms.

The most interesting section of the book is Part Two on American military communities (a topic addressed in other sections as well). Quartering American troops in the early years of the occupation was a controversial aspect of German-American relations. In a country already short on housing stock because of the war, simply finding room for a few hundred thousand American soldiers was no easy task. American troops displaced and angered natives, while office and administration facilities often occupied commercial real estate that became extremely valuable once the economy began to pick up. The building of bases eased the housing crisis and pumped millions of Deutschmarks into the local economy. But it also had the side effect of removing American soldiers from the local community, creating “Little Americas” that diminished American-German interaction and potential cultural exchange. Theodor Scharnholz's detailed analysis of the city of Heidelberg nicely illustrates these dynamics.

One of the strengths of the work is its emphasis on the many paradoxes of the GI presence, such as the one just mentioned. In another example, strategic and economic considerations came into frequent conflict as American policy makers sought to balance the desire to defend West Europe against the costs of maintaining such a large presence. The German demand for a defense as far east as possible was difficult to reconcile with the inferiority of the NATO alliance in conventional military terms. How could Europe be defended but not destroyed, given the alliance's reliance on tactical nuclear weapons in the 1950s? On the social level, Jennifer Evans and Gerhard Fürmetz describe in Part Three the tensions inherent in maintaining law and order in the American military community, whose special legal status and access to firearms complicated enforcement. At times, as a result, Germans needed “Protection from the Protector” (the title of Evans' contribution).

The final part of the work covers the 1970s and 1980s, and paints a troubling picture of the United States Army at the height of the Vietnam war. Terrible morale and crumbling facilities plagued American troops. Racial tensions flared and drug use increased, as Alexander Vasansky shows. And Howard J. De Nike describes how active dissent grew within the ranks of American soldiers. German resistance to the American military presence increased in these two decades, as Germans objected to the pollution and noise created by NATO bases—a phenomenon analyzed in detail by Anni P. Baker's study of the Wiesbaden air base. Lou Marin, a peace activist, provides an insider's perspective on the widespread opposition to the stationing of intermediate range nuclear missiles in Europe during the 1980s. Taken together, these essays provide an impressive overview of the broad impact that the “twenty-two million United States servicemen, military employees, and dependents” (1) had who lived and worked in Germany from 1945 to 2000.