Turning Enemies into Allies Part III: The Americans

 In the summer of 1945 when the American garrison arrived in Berlin as occupiers, Germany was viewed by most Americans as the devil incarnate. Berlin was particularly despised as "the heart of darkness"  -- the HQ of the National Socialist state. It was also known as the site of the Wannsee Conference, where the policy of systematic extermination of European Jews had been adopted. The road to friendship seemed almost impossible. 

But then again it wasn't....

 

Although the Americans proclaimed their conviction that any people in the world could learn pluralistic democracy, Germany was viewed as a particularly “hard case.” President Roosevelt retained a deep-seated dislike of the Germans going back to his youth, when he had briefly attended school in Germany; he viewed the Germans as arrogant and provincial. General Clay went to Germany convinced that his job was to solve “the German problem;” i.e. providing Germany with security, while ensuring that that it did not ever again become a threat to its neighbours. Among American policy makers it was accepted as fact without further reflection or analysis that Germany was responsible for starting both World Wars, and the logical consequence of this was that there was something inherent in the German character that made them irresponsible partners in the international community. The role of the Allied Occupation was therefore to “reform” Germany and transform it into a nation capable of decent behaviour. This was boiled down into the official policy summarised as the four “d”s – de-nazification, demilitarisation, de-industrialisation and democratisation.

Nor were these attitudes toward Germany confined to the American political and military leadership. The contempt for Germans was manifest in many ways by ordinary Americans. The very flour sent to Germany to keep the population from starving was sent in sacks from the Abilene Flour Mills of Kansas with the stamp: “We come as conquerors, not liberators.”[i] American officers arriving in Berlin in 1945 reported without embarrassment: “The German prisoners, though laconic, scowled at my motion picture camera. I felt a sense of poetic justice watching these blond-haired Blitzkriegers painstakingly dismantling the outer rim of Fortress Europe.”[ii] There was a widespread feeling among the ordinary people in the United States that if the Germans were hungry and homeless than they had only themselves to blame. An American correspondent summarised the feelings: “When you see absolute devastation you do not grieve…Our soldiers say, ‘They asked for it.’”[iii]

But General Clay, perhaps because he came from the South and remembered post-Civil War “reconstruction,” rapidly recognised that reform and progress were not possible if policy was vindictive. Nor could a new democratic nation develop if virtually the entire population was excluded from any meaningful kind of participation in politics or society because of their “Nazi” past. 

Furthermore, the American concept of “collective guilt” meant that the American policy of denazification conflicted head-on with the American policy of democratization. Likewise, since the American goal was an independent (if pacified) Germany rather than perpetual occupation on the French model, “de-industrialisation” interfered with the re-establishment of economic self-sufficiency. Because “collective guilt” was unviable when trying to establish a functioning economy and government, “collective amnesty” became the effective practice if not the official policy. 

As the images of the concentration camps faded and troops were rotated out, it also became impossible to sustain the policy of non-fraternisation and the rhetoric of hatred. As Clay himself admitted: it simply went too much against the grain of the average American soldier to ask him to stop being friendly – added to which it has never been possible to stop large numbers of healthy young men from interacting with young women.

Since, it was beyond the power of any higher authority to keep young men away from young women, it was better to allow encounters to take place in an open and ordinary way. Otherwise, they would  inevitably happen in the dark with all the accompanying disadvantages of disease, violence and crime. 

With remarkable agility, the 17 and 18 year old recruits of the U.S. army and air force, the products of an almost unimaginable provinciality on a continent not yet connected to the world by television or internet, soon found their way around the Kneipe of Berlin and Biergarten of West Germany. Some remember with pleasures the restaurants of Celle. Cpl. Jack Fellmann soon learned to frequent those “neat little” Berlin Kneipe with a back door “for a hasty exit in case the MPs came.”[iv] Sgt. John Zazzera, stationed at Rhein-Main, remembers:

Off-duty time was great. It was a great time for checking out the area, including wine, women and song. My friends and I frequented the Palmgarden, a favourite spot, but we soon ‘graduated’ to local German establishments in Offenbach. I met a German girl in one of them and almost married her.[v]

In fact, despite the pressures they were under, an amazing number of men assigned to the Airlift did marry German women.

But not all contacts involved the opposite sex. Like the German civilian charter companies, the USAF turned to the Germans for maintenance support. Tunner had found a former Luftwaffe maintenance officer, Major General Hans Detlev von Rohden, who had actually served in the air transport division of the Luftwaffe and was familiar with the problems facing the Airlift as well as being fluent in English. He naturally selected the best of his former colleagues and subordinates and translated the U.S. aircraft manuals into German. The German crews were then trained on the aircraft engines in German and supervised by German-speaking Americans. With time, however, their proficiency was so great that the Germans themselves took over key positions. Tunner concluded:

The German mechanics proved to be so capable that eventually eighty-five of them were assigned to each squadron. We had more German mechanics than American![vi]

Clearly this kind of professional experience built up trust and respect between the men working together on the same aircraft day after day.

Yet just as with the British, it was the German children who proved most adept at breaking down barriers. As Christmas approached, American airmen asked their relatives to send gifts to the children of Berlin rather than to themselves. The appeal was answered and thousands of gift packages arrived in the departure fields intended for the children of Berlin. They called it “Operation Santa Claus,” and it truly turned enemies into not just allies but friends – often life-long friends.

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[i] Michael Haydock, City under Siege, Brassey's, 1999, p. 239.

[ii] Richard Cutler, Counter-Spy, Brassey's, 2004, p. 136.

[iii] Thomas Parrish, Berlin in the Balance, Perseus Books, 1998, p. 9.

[iv] Cpl. Jack D. Fellman, quoted in Edwin Gere, The Unheralded, Trafford, 2003,  p. 88.

[v] Sgt. John Zazerra, quoted in Gere, p. 105.

[vi] William Tunner, Over the Hump, Office of Air Force History, 1964,p. 183.

 

NOTE: The content of this blog post is based on Helena P. Schrader. The Blockade Breakers. Pen & Sword, 2008.

The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace.

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