1st December 2007
In previous posts I quoted some first impressions of Germany after the war, written by British soldiers, diplomats, administrators and journalists.
I've recently read John Gimbel's history of the US Zone of Occupation in Germany (The American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military, 1945-1949, Stanford University Press, 1968) and was interested to find that many US administrators, soldiers and journalists, from the president downwards, expressed similar views to the British, when they first saw Germany after the war:
President Truman (to quote Gimbel): described his own sense of depression as he drove among ruined buildings in Berlin and past the "long, never-ending procession of old men, women, and children wandering aimlessly ... carrying, pushing, or pulling what was left of their belongings."
Lucius D Clay, initially Deputy, then Military Governor of the US Zone, wrote to a colleague on April 26th 1945 (12 days before VE day on May 8th):
"In one of his earliest recorded observations of the scene over which he would bear primary responsibility .... Clay reported that: "retribution ... is far greater than realized at home ... Our planes and artillery have ... carried war direct to the homes of the German people."
In his own memoirs, Decision in Germany, Clay wrote of his first visit to Berlin on June 5th 1945:
"Where-ever we looked we saw desolation. The streets were piled high with debris which left in many places only a narrow one-way passage between high mounds of rubble, and frequent detours had to be made where bridges and viaducts were destroyed. Apparently the Germans along the route, which was lined with Soviet soldiers, had been ordered to remain indoors, and it was only at the intersections that a few could be seen on the streets which crossed our route. They seemed weak, cowed, and furtive and not yet recovered from the shock of the Battle of Berlin. It was like a city of the dead. I had seen nothing quite comparable in western Germany, and I must confess that my exultation in victory was diminished as I witnessed this degradation of man. I decided than and there never to forget that we were responsible for the government of human beings."
Gimbel also quotes the US military governor of the province of Hesse describing how Americans "came into towns and cities that were deathly quiet, that smelled of death and destruction. They came into villages where white flags were draped outside every door, where faces could be felt, not seen, behind barricaded windows."
... and two journalists from the New York Herald: Walter Millis, an editorial writer, on arriving at Berlin: "This is more like the face of the moon than any city I had ever imagined," and Joseph Barnes, the foreign editor of the paper, posing the question to the authorities: "Why didn't any of you people tell us about this."
For comparison, some other (mostly) British first impressions, quoted in earlier posts, are listed below:
Alex Cairncross
Ratchford & Ross
George Clare
Yvone Kirkpatrick
Raymond Ebsworth
Fenner Brockway
Noel Annan
William Strang
Ethel Mannin
Michael Thomas
Lieutenant-Colonel Byford-Jones
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