We were late in getting away and found ourselves just a little before sundown at the torn-up city of Kassel, in the British zone. Rather than try to make it to Berlin during the night over detours and hazardous roads, we decided to stop and seek out a billeting office which handled overnight travelers in that bombed-out city.
Kassel, according to the story, was destroyed in one night. This city was a great industrial complex dealing with nearly all types of war material manufacture, but for some reason the bombers passed it by for quite a long time. The people of Kassel became tired of sirens screaming and air-raid warning as the bombers flew over to Hannover, Bremen, and some of the other great towns in Western Germany. As a result they did not rush to their shelters on the night the raiders hit. I was told that more than 40,000 people were killed within less than one hour's time. I did observe as we drove through this rubble-strewn town the next morning hundreds and hundreds of piles of brick on which flowers had been planted or were being planted at the graves of those who died in the raid.
Since there was not a single hotel or rooming house or other building suitable for a night's lodging in Kassel, the billeting office which took care of Americans passing through the town sent us to an underground bunker which was something of an underground hotel. It was three stories deep, built solidly out of concrete, air-vented with fans and all sorts of circulating equipment to keep it comfortable, and to provide actual living for several hundred people underground for an indefinite period. This had been taken over as a billet for the British and American soldiers that were stationed around there and others passing through from time to time. It was quite an experience to go into a hotel underground.
The next morning I took off for Berlin and upon arrival found the city cold, gray, and dour looking. We were quickly hustled through the formalities of assignment to the Berlin headquarters of the Allied Commission of Military Government in Germany. This changed to some extent the complexity of our duties although not very much.
I was the official deputy for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries under General Hugh Hester, who was the top man under General Lucius Clay responsible for policy. It turned out that my main responsibility was to carry out operations in the American zone. General Hester would sit with, or have his representative sit with, some of the Quadri-Parti agricultural meetings which were held in the days ahead at the four-powers headquarters in Berlin. In theory General Clay with the Russian, British, and French area commanders were the top policy-making body. Under them were the specialized quadri-parti groups, agriculture, industry, law, education and so forth.
The American Zone of West Berlin was a former bluestocking district of the city, and the American headquarters in Berlin was the old Luftwaffe building.
Surrounding this headquarters were very handsome and luxurious houses and apartments, mostly occupied by Generals in the Air Force. I was assigned a billet in the area; a three-story house, very well furnished, which formerly belonged to a Lieutenant General in the Luftwaffe who had been killed.
There was much confusion between November 19th to the 26th as there had been in our headquarters in Frankfurt, but sincerity of purpose seemed to be strong among the officers in charge. I commented in my notes that it might be that they would yet make something out of the mess.
I spent Thanksgiving Day with General Hester and the staff at his home. The Thanksgiving meal was a super treat for a guy who had been away from genuine good food for many, many months. I spent the days that followed getting acquainted with how things were to operate in the zone, and my ego was especially well burnished when I was advised by General Hester of two things; that a Lieutenant Colonel is not as high a rank as he would like to have for his deputy, and therefor he was going to recommend me for a full Colonel. Second, I was to accompany him to all of General Clay's staff meetings, sit on his left, and comment on the practical aspects of food problems as I saw fit; that he would be spokesman only for policy.
I found that when we went as agricultural officers with General Clay to high commission meetings where the four-power generals were all talking, I would usually be the only deputy and the only Lieutenant Colonel present. I am willing to concede that this gave considerable boost to my ego. I could argue with the Generals and others on the basis of the knowledge that I had, rather than the rank.
The American sector was still operating under the so-called Morgenthau plan. I knew that General Clay and a great many of the officers felt that this was silly and, of course, completely unworkable. But orders were orders and we had to approach the execution of the Potsdam Agreement in the context of Morgenthau's idea. We did not go as far as the Morgenthau plan envisioned, but we did say and did specify that the industrial capacity and the standard of living for Germany would be so dismantled that it could provide a standard of living for Germany only equal to the lowest in Europe. Poland seemed to have the lowest standard. In carrying out this astounding policy, which now seems completely crazy and remote, a series of meetings and arguments and conferences between the four powers went on and on through the fall of 1945 to spring of 1946.
Our agricultural group was the most active because the Russians demanded prompt execution of the Potsdam agreement. What was now the American Zone in Germany was not sufficient to supply the population. Large quantities of food and fiber, cotton, cotton seed, oil, wool, and meats of all kinds had been imported from outside the Reich, principally Eastern Europe, the United States, Latin America, and Africa. These imports were paid for by export of industrial goods. Therefore it came to cutting down the industrial capacity to a minimum for export to supply needed imports. This all involved judgment on just how much the new Germany could produce on its own land resources. The more she could produce the more industrial capacity could be removed. A four-power group of the agricultural staffs of each of the occupying powers was given the task to come up with the figures.
In December 1946 I wrote in my little journal that the Russians seemed to know exactly what they wanted to do and what they wanted out of Germany. The Western Allies were torn between something like humanitarian aspects of the occupation and also the desire to build an see things go but facing the provisions of the Potsdam Agreement to tear things down.
How do you develop a formula which would reduce Germany to a standard of living equal to the lowest in Europe? It was agreed that the discussions would begin with agriculture. The German population would have to eat. So they have to figure the potential food production in Germany and equate that with the amount of industrial production that would be allowed so that Germany might export enough industrial goods to buy food to keep the country going at a minimum ration level. Thus began one of the most fascinating and fantastic games that I have ever witnessed. It was a game among statisticians who juggled figures to come out with a plan to suit their idea.
The Russians knew that the higher the agricultural production, the more food they could prove Germany would have, say by 1948 the target year. Therefore more industrial plants could be taken out and shipped to Russia or other countries. They built up a mass of statistics which showed thet Germany could actually be exporting food in 1948. This meant, then, that they would need only an industrial complex large enough to support the economy of Germany with a self-sufficient food supply.
The Russians were smarter than the Americans, the British, or the French. They used the German statisticians and the German records that had been found in Berlin on food production. They had far more and better statistics that the Americans or the British or the French. Their arguments in terms of statistics were very, very strong. From the very beginning in the United States Zone we had a great deal of trouble finding solid German statistics. The reasons were at least two: 1) that we only had about two persons on our staff who were capable of reading German and deciphering the statistics. 2) We were forbidden as yet to utilize German civilians in our work. We went our Warrant Officer, Carl Ross, up to a political prison camp near Kassel to interview the former Under-Minister of Agriculture in Germany. Moritz was a Jew and one of the ablest individuals in Germany as far as the agricultural economy was concerned. Ross came back with a great deal of information but no statistics. However, we finally assembled enough statistics to confront the Russians with very serious questions.
The Russian figures showed that German industrial capacity could be reduced by from fifteen to twenty-five percent and agricultural production might be increased by even more by 1948. That meant that Germany would be surviving under the Potsdam formula. Pressed by Garrett and some of our statisticians to show how the cattle production -- then at an all-time low -- could be nearly doubled in three years, the Russian reared back and said, "We'll see that more cows have twin calves."
In the meantime nearly everything of an industrial nature was being dismantled in Eastern Germany and considerable marking of plants to be removed or destroyed was taking place in Western Germany. The agricultural argument went on endlessly all winter and into the next spring when finally a figure was agreed upon, but not accepted fully by the four representatives on the Agricultural Commisssion.
Under the system, when the four-power technical commissions agreed upon a plan it was sent up to the next level for review. But it became very obvious, in the review on the American side, that the agricultural scheme agreed upon by the four agricultural commissioners was impossible and could not be realistically carried out. General Hester sent out a rush call for Dr. Carl Brandt, a former German economist then with the Hoover Food Institute at Stanford University, to come to look at what was to be presented to the Allied High Commission.
Brandt, an exceedingly able person, a German who had long been familiar with German agriculture, produced a massive memorandum riddling the work of the quadri-partite group. The whole matter stalled and in one sense each country began taking out of its zone the industrial capacity they thought they would need or could use in their own countries.
Russia had a particularly good system in handling her dismantling program. Russia would open key factories and make big propaganda, which was pretty damaging to the West where the factories were kept closed. They said they were rebuilding Germany. Once the factory had resumed production and the technical people able to operate the plant were in place, Russian agents would swoop down some night, close the factory, select the technical personnel they wanted to retain and immediately begin dismantling the whole outfit to ship to Russia.
As much as two years later, traveling in Poland and parts of the Ukraine of Russia, I saw whole train loads of factories and industrial equipment standing on the rail tracks because Russia was unable to absorb and handle such a vast aggregation of equipment so quickly. Some years later, under a change of policy by Russia in Eastern Germany some of these factories were returned.
After literally months of negotiation and argument among the four powers, the only law passed by the Allied Commission treating Germany as a single economic unit had to do with cooperatives. Germany had a remarkable system of agricultural cooperatives, based on the Raffaisen plan, which begain with a series of small rural savings associations and then spread out into marketing, processing, distribution and transportation cooperatives of gigantic size. The commission decided to restore this system throughout Germany.
The Russians jumped at the idea -- the word "cooperative" looms large in their vocabulary. The fundamentals were quickly agreed to by the four agricultural commissioners, but when it came to free and open election of officers for the various societies, that was another matter.
The Americans, British, and French insisted upon an open election whereby there would be two or more candidates and the election carried out in "true democratic process." Russians subscribed to the system as set out in the law, but their interpretation on the "democratic process" was different. Russia insisted that only one slate of candidates be set up for election. The law was finally drafted, and sent up for ratification. The Allied Commission proclaimed the law and it became the law for all of Germany. However, the law was never really put into effect. Each country went ahead handling their cooperatives as they saw it advantageous to do so. During these long and almost continuous sessions of the Agricultural Commission in the fall and winter of 1945, we learned much about how the Russians operated. They had exceedingly able and, indeed rather affable representatives on various committees. They were well qualified technically and were sharp negotiators. Apparently they were given a line from Moscow on what to say at the opening of each meeting. Sometimes they repeated the same charges against the west for days on end. That set speech always preceded any business. It was so, in later days, that I would simply open the meeting if it was my day to preside (the chairman rotated weekly) by saying, "We will now hear Mr. Cheuinkoff make his speech." He would grin and launch into his tirade, after which we would get down to business.
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