Chapter 59: Jan 1946 Occupation Begins

Unlike President Obama, I would say that I support the long-standing bipartisan post-war belief that American global strength and leadership secures our national-security interests, and it also promotes order and stability in the world. And it gives us immense influence in the world and deters our adversaries and reassures our allies. Tom Cotton

I would have to say that at the very beginning of occupation of Germany by the allies the only country that had planned it to last forever was the Soviet Union. None of the other allies had any agenda that wanted to prolong the occupation a single day longer than needed. The Russians knew that once their designs on Germany and even their plans to blackmail the western powers to release the entire city of Berlin to the Soviet Union.

France, Britain and the United States all declined to implement any long range plans in the hope that the German Government would adopt a democratic status and would abide by the rules and regulations of the unconditional surrender. There were nuances of levels of commitment by the western powers that related back to their home countries and their politics and government bureaucracy.

France was gripped by the shame of collaboration with the Nazi rulers with at least fifty percent of the nation involved in war time collusion with the enemy. The country was also in dire economic straits and needed assistance from the United States to repair damaged infrastructure due to the war. De Gaulle wanted every last American out of his country so that he could assume almost a de facto dictatorship of the government. At the same time, France was attempting to hang on to their colonial empire that had suffered greatly during the war years and it forced them to retrench their overseas commercial interests to a much smaller piece of the pie.

Britain was changing rapidly as soon as the war ended. Churchill was pushed out of office and the Labor Unions gained power changing the entire economy. There were lingering food shortages and they relied on the United States to furnish them with farm products to meet their population demands. Rationing continued for almost two years after the war ended and the returning soldiers forced the female population out of the work place because of cultural reasons. At the same time, immigration was becoming a drag on the economy with large numbers of immigrants carrying British passports from all parts of the empire decided it was time for them to settle in Britain. A new very anti-war and anti-immigration controls government was not prepared to lead Britain into the post-war confrontation with the Soviet Union and it was discovered that a vast communist influence had a hold in almost every sector of the British society including the secret services that were supposed to root out just such infestations before they took hold.

The United States had kept almost a half million troops in Europe with planning to oppose any attempts by the Soviet Union to expand their control of Non-Soviet Europe. Almost all of the countries of Europe were infiltrated with subversive communist alliances and they were all clamoring for a change from democracy to socialism that might eventually lead to a communistic economy and society. Rapid expansion of Russian and Chinese communism was seen as a major threat to the free world and the American occupiers created at first a mingling of the American and the British zone to make it seem similar in almost every respect. Eventually, even the French saw the wisdom of unity and joined the other western powers in the occupation much to the dismay of the Soviet Union.

When the Berlin Airlift took place later in the post-war period, the Americans led the way with non-stop aircraft that landed at the Berlin airfields with much needed supplies after the Soviet Union cut off the ground transportation systems to the western supply lines. At least the mask of pretense was off the diplomat’s faces. The Stalinist dictatorship that signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler and then carved up Poland like a Christmas goose was diametrically opposed to the democratic principles of the free western allies and the cold war was a reality and not just mere speculation.

The four zones of occupation in Germany had originally been planned as only three zone excluding France from the plan. That was later changed at the insistence of General De Gaulle and France occupied those southern German territories that bordered on the French border and also one/fourth of the city of Berlin after Russia relinquished three/quarters of the city proper to the western allies. This was more of a Kremlin scheme to gain back the regions that the American had already occupied in southern Germany beyond the previously agreed limits of their attack forces. No doubt that they already had plans to evict the western allies from their zones in Berlin at some later date by shutting off the ground lines of transportation from the free western zones established for the Americans, British and French forces occupying the country.

As time went on, the disparity of the booming activity in the western zones of occupation and the total neglect of the Russian zone to rebuild the German infrastructure was visible to the naked eye as the garbage piled up in the Eastern zone and the clean-up progressed throughout the rest of Germany in the free western zones.

This pattern of occupation was mirrored in the city of Berlin and the residents of the Russian zone began on day one of the occupation to devise plans to evacuate to the western zones as quickly as possible. They knew that the Russians would be soon reinforcing the separation of the east from the west and the wanted to get out before it was too dangerous to even attempt to do so.

The headquarters of the early American zone was in Frankfurt.