Exporting British Policing During the Second World War: Policing Soldiers and Civilians

Exporting British Policing is a comprehensive study of British military policing in liberated Europe during the Second World War. Preventing and detecting thefts, receiving and profiteering together with the maintenance of order in its broadest sense are, in the peacetime world, generally confided to the police. However, the Second World War witnessed the use of civilian police to create a detective division of the British Army's Military Police (SIB), and the use of British civilian police, alongside American police, as Civil Affairs Officers to restore order and civil administration. Part One follows the men of the SIB from their pre-war careers to confrontations with mafiosi and their investigations into widespread organised crime and war crimes during which they were constantly hampered by being seen as a Cinderella service commanded by 'temporary gentlemen'. Part Two focuses on the police officers who served in Civil Affairs who tended to come from higher ranks in the civilian police than those who served in SIB. During the war they occupied towns with the assault troops, and then sought to reorganise local administration; at the end of the war in the British Zones of Germany and Austria they sought to turn both new Schutzmänner and police veterans of the Third Reich into British Bobbies. Using memoirs and anecdotes, Emsley critically draws on the subjective experiences of these police personnel, assessing the successes of these wartime efforts for preventing and investigating crimes such as theft and profiteering and highlighting the importance of historical precedent, given current difficulties faced by international policing organizations in enforcing democratic police reform in post-conflict societies.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction 2. The Origins of SIB 3. The Mediterranean Theatre 4. D-Day to Berlin 5. 'Dickie' Hearn and 62 Special Investigations Section 6. Planning for Liberation and Occupation 7. The Italian Job 8. The Greek Imbroglio 9. North West Europe 10. Coming Home

About the Author :
Clive Emsley is Emeritus Professor of History at the Open University, UK. He was President of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice for 10 years. His books include Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 (4th edition, 2010), Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1999) and The English Police: A Political and Social History (1996).

Review :
Exporting British Policing offers a novel and valuable insight into British police methods and practices, as they were applied overseas in the challenging conditions of wartime campaigns and postwar occupation. Emsley's account provides an important foundation for historians of both policing and war to think about the role officers play during wartime and the ways in which that service translated in terms of limitations and opportunities for officers when they returned home. As one might expect with Clive, this is no dry academic study but a lively account of a previously unrecorded aspect of British police history. A rare example of detailed scholarship, lively text, and the uncovering of a very under-researched aspect of British policing. This is the culmination of a long period of archival digging, and has the usual Emsley hallmark of quality: diligent research, expansive and innovative theories, and some wonderfully interesting contemporary quotes from the archives to illustrate his points. A great read. In Exporting British Policing, Clive Emsley, our foremost historian of the British Bobby, gives us a fascinating and meticulously researched account of the work of Civil Affairs and Special Investigation Branch officers during the Second World War. Deftly told, his book sheds light on a vital element of the Allied military element and on some of the less salubrious chapters of Britain's war.