Designed to make possible the rapid movements of troops into any part of Germany in a matter of hours ... they failed in that concept when it came to the battle test. On the contrary, they were really the undoing of the German army for once any American army got a toe-hold on an autobahn, our troops, highly mobile, literally ran over, around and through the Nazi Army. So what might have been designed as an element of great physical strength in the German military set-up was in fact a great weakness.
The narrow winding roads to the Italian Appenines were much more of a hindrance to the movement of American troops than any of the designed defenses in the German autobahn system.
German buildings were built largely of stone and concrete construction with wood interiors. The raging infernos created by fire bombs gutted the buildings and burned and twisted the steel until it was no longer safe for repairing -- high explosives blew them into great snaggled groups which looked ever so much like a dying forest. Strange, too, is the fact that the last thing to fall on all bombed buildings are the chimneys. They were rarely down, even when all of the rest of the building was gone. Some explosive expert can probably explain why -- but there they stood, gaunt reminders of warm homes and cheery fires of a day past.
Upon returning to Frankfurt on the 17th I spent the next several days in the office trying to sort things out, attempting to develop some staff relationship with Berlin, as well as with the growing agricultural staff in various military zones. This was a period for a great deal of soul searching and trying to understand just what we were up to in the dismantling, as well as the restoration and reconstruction of Germany not only as an economic unit, but as some would have it, a different German society. This was a very big order and the one order I seemed to have received from my superiors was to democratize German agriculture. Under Hitler it had been organized from the very top to the lowest farm. Planning was done at the top in the most meticulous way and orders were sent down through what was called the Reichnachstand, the food and agricultural organization.
At the other end of the system was a method of gathering the crops, accounting for it to the last bushel, and then having this crop moved in desired and planned directions at specific prices. The facts were that the food and the products moved by orders and plans rather than through an economic system in which price moved the product from one area to the other.
It was all equalized by a rather ingenious system in which the industrialists of the Ruhr put into a common fund a very large amount of money in form of a subsidy. The farmer in Bavaria who produced 100 bushels of wheat which would be sold eventually in the Ruhr, was given the normal price that he would receive for this grain if it moved out of Bavaria into the Ruhr. This would mean that he would get what the product sold for in the Ruhr less the freight and handling cost from his farm. Under this German system he got the going price at the Bavarian level. He also received a certificate which entitled him to draw on the pool in Berlin for the amount of the freight and handling charges for the product in the Ruhr. The result being that the Ruhr consumer got the wheat for about the price it sold for on the Bavarian farm, while the Bavarian farmer, through this pool system, got the full amount for his product plus the freight and handling charges.
The system, no matter how complicated and unyielding it may sound, actually worked for the Germans. However, with the breaking up of Germany into zones and then the system of each General closing the borders of his zone for almost any movement of any kind except under military orders the whole system had been stalled.
This military zoning caused other very serious complications, and I was inclined to think that somebody had simply taken a pencil and drawn lines according to his own whims. Although the zone system was laid out under a large master plan, the details of it, and the little quirks in the lines, were simply the results of those human judgments which always accompany big decisions.
In the city of Mannheim the line between the French and the American zone had almost split the town and community in two. Why? When the lines were drawn the French for some reason were anxious that they have certain parts of Mannheim and the community around it in their zone. On the other hand the Americans spied a large system of warehouses in the Eastern part of Mannheim which we wanted. So someone just took a pencil and drew a line.
This decision -- and division -- did not seem to amount to much until we tried to establish the economic system. It is true the Americans got the warehouses and also a goodly number of retail outlets and a farm machinery assembly factory where machines had been put together and sold throughout Germany, Europe, and the world. But now all factories were shut down.
I felt that as one of the moves to get agriculture going again and to start food production we should somehow utilize whatever finished machinery we could find in the various factories. I found in the Mannheim assembly plant quite a large number of tractors, partially assembled. When I began to try to get these tractors finished, I discovered that the motors were made in a part of the French zone. I also found that the generators and the magnetos were made in the British zone. Obviously there was no possibility of getting the tractors going unless those parts could be moved from the various zones into the Mannheim factory.
On my own initiative in the Food and Agriculture staff at Frankfurt, I suggested that we ought to have a conference in the French zone to deal with this particular thing. Our colleagues in the British and French zones were notified and the French were gracious in suggesting that they would be the host for this meeting. As a result, quite a group from the three zones assembled at a palatial residence which had been turned into a military club by the French.
Our group had no authority to give orders but we did make an agreement at this point that some order should be given by the proper authorities in Berlin to allow the tractor parts to move into Mannheim and thus complete the assembly of new and needed tractors. It was also understood that tractors would be parceled out among the three Zones -- that the tractors were not the exclusive property of the American zone.
This worked out pretty well, a proper recommendation was made, and the industrial officers in all three zones at the Allied Commission headquarters in Berlin did made the proper clearance permitting the movement of this machinery. However, after the parts had been assembled on the tractors, there was one little complication. At this particular time the Russians were part of the four-way operation in Berlin and the general occupation of Germany. They heard of this tractor deal and immediately demanded their portion of the finished German tractors. However we never did get around to dividing up the spoils because there was far too small a number at best. Incidentally there were good tractor factories in The Silesia section of the Russian occupied zone.
On this occaision I found my French colleagues the most gracious hosts. Things were laid on, as the British say of such an occasion, in a grand manner. There were seven courses of food with a different wine for each course, plus all the trimmings of a genuine French dinner. This caused me to note in my journal that the "French are peers at being good hosts, but in a way our dinner tonight was something like Belshazzar's feast. I don't know what the watchman on the walls would see at this time, but during our feast a German boy was nabbed by the police for stealing crackers out of the kitchen cabinet. He said he was hungry."
The contrast -- the haves and have-nots -- the conqueror and the conquered -- was highlighted by that one little incident. I was to see it repeated in variation in the days to come.
$Id: chapter14.html,v 1.2 2006/11/19 19:41:10 chesnutt Exp $