Armageddon - Leon Uris

Shrewd observers like Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury felt it came just in time, for the situation was degenerating badly.

In a quiet and efficient way Hansen had built a dazzling record. As first deputy he had sat as a member of the Supreme German Council for several months. At the end of the war he moved in on cartels, froze German assets, and broke the backs of a number of those evil industrial combines. He spearheaded the de-Nazification of two million Germans in the American Zone through the questions of the Fragebogen. A hundred thousand criminal Nazis were in American stockades, and an additional 300,000 were allowed to work only at common labor.

Hansen was tough, yet guided by an overriding principle that the American Zone had to establish its own democracy rather than exist under a military tribunal.

As quickly as clean Germans could be found, the courts and de-Nazification procedures were put into their hands.

Free elections were held in three “lands” in the American Zone with new constitutions governing them and schools reopened with new texts. A free press and radio returned to Germany after a long absence.

Hansen was instrumental in the spurring of youth groups formed on new principles and he encouraged the church to purge any Nazi taint.

Andrew Jackson Hansen was more responsible than any other man for bringing into military government leading American educators, jurists, clergymen, labor leaders, mayors and civic officials, doctors, engineers, and police who lent their skills in fashioning a new path for the German people. He arranged for Germans to travel in America to study American methods and establishments.

He spurred the revival of the opera, the symphony, the theater, and the arts.

On Hansen’s orders three battalions of Negro troops were converted from service units to infantry. A new pride changed them from outfits with severe discipline problems to first-rate troops. His own honor guard in Berlin was a Negro unit. Hansen alone predicted the next step had to be full integration. He felt that the example of a moving, living democracy would have the greatest possible effect on the German people.

A corner of America was established in Germany. The arrival of large numbers of wives and children in the early parts of 1947 did much to put a skid to the occupation orgy.

Schools were built and women’s clubs, PTA’s, and a social life put a large dent into the beer-hall and prostitution business. The reinstatement of family and communal life came as a saving grace in many cases.

The occupation forces published their own newspapers, had a radio network, built movies, servicemen’s clubs, bowling alleys, and libraries. Inexpensive vacations in Bavarian resorts were arranged and schooling through college made available to every soldier.

Law and order were maintained by a magnificent American constabulary of 30,000 mobile police. These white-helmeted, yellow-scarfed troops constituted a crack force that commanded the respect of the Germans.

The most spectacular victory was won by the friendliness of the Americans. The Germans realized that they had come not to bleed the economy or debase the vanquished, but to protect, cleanse, teach, and rebuild.

While General Hansen and his country established a record of progress, the other side of the coin was a dark picture. He took command on the heels of a cruel winter that had paralyzed all of Europe.

In Germany canals froze, putting more burden on the wrecked rail system, now short thousands of cars and running on obsolete engines and punctured lines. There were no spare parts either in the transportation or the manufacturing complex.

As the coal mines functioned at but a fraction of capacity, and the means to transport it collapsed, manufacturing all but stopped.

The land failed to respond because of a lack of fertilizer and there were few seeds.

Housing remained the worst of any civilized nation and the cold brought all normal functions to a standstill.

The terror was compounded when seven million Germans were expelled from Hungary, Poland, East Prussia, and Czechoslovakia and poured into the American and British zones.

Hansen had observed the dwindling of the American Army. He inherited a force so thin it would not be able to meet a direct military challenge.

There was confusion among the Americans on what to do with Germany.

A harsh line wanted to reduce Germany to an agrarian economy. Hansen knew this plan would never work. Germany had a land area of less than the state of California and ten times the population with almost no natural wealth. In her best days, Germany had never been self-sustaining in the raising of food. Germany had to manufacture and trade to survive. This was an absolute economic law. The plan to reduce her to a vast farm would have invited mass starvation and sown the seeds of another war.

A second plan was to chop Germany into small territories and have each neighbor annex a piece. However, none of these units by themselves were sustaining and would create a burden on the annexing country which would be also compelled to take a hostile German minority. This plan could only foster a German “unification” dream.

Hansen had to take the unpopular view that Germany had to manufacture and trade. Moreover, the occupation zones had to be reunified, for the country could respond only as a single economic unit. The American Zone had pretty Bavarian scenery, but no ports or great industry; neither could the British or Russian zones survive by themselves.

Yet, Hansen inherited a situation where each of the four occupation zones was cut off from the other with little exchange of product, ideas, or population.

On the Supreme German Council, the French position broke Western unity. General Ives de Lys argued out of fear of Germany; the French wanted economic domination of the Saar and Internationalization of the Ruhr.

The Ruhr represented Germany’s chief asset. Without it Germany could never establish a trade balance. Such a French plan would have continued the British and American zones as liabilities, costing billions to sustain.

The French wanted a permanent four-power army on the Rhine, but Hansen would have no part of Soviet troops beyond the Elbe.

General de Lys continued to operate on the contention that business could be done with the Soviet Union and the French did not want to offend them.

Marshal Alexei Popov bogged down the Supreme German Council on the basic issue of operating Germany as a single economic unit with free trade between zones governed by a common policy. He deceitfully paid lip service to unity, but in fact sealed the Russian Zone from any contact with the West.

Every attempt to establish four-power administrations over trade and industry was blocked by Popov as the Russians continued to strip their zone and reshape it in the image of a Soviet puppet.

Reports filtered back to Hansen that thousands of German prisoners with technical skills had been detained in the Soviet Union. Russia’s grand plan for her zone was much the same as what Hitler intended to do with Poland, reduce it to serfdom and set it up as a buffer.

Popov aided the elaborate Communist scheme by holding Germany down, draining off reparations from current production, and keeping her from re-establishing a trade balance.

All this brought joblessness, hunger, and all the other breeding grounds of Communism.

The key issue at the Supreme German Council was a four-power agreement on German steel production. Popov wanted a figure large enough to deliver reparations, but small enough to prevent a German recovery. Even though all of Europe was coal-starved, the Ruhr mines were permitted to operate at a fraction of capacity, for the collapsed economies of France and Italy also played into the path of Soviet aims.