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Forum
Paul B. Henze
troop commanders set up their headquarters in the district post office compound.
The first task was to push the Wehrmacht back into the Westwall and establish firm control. That went fast, though mortar and artillery barrages, sniping and periodic firelights continued until February when the Westwall was finally breached.
The population was ordered to surrender all weapons, ammunition and explosives. These items were collected in secure places under guard. “All weapons” meant not only military weaponry, but hunting rifles, swords, daggers, knives - anything that could be put to violent use, including cameras, binoculars and telescopes.
One of mynext tasks, as a German speaker, was to escort teams of local young women with typewriters to all the villages under American control to register every single individual over 12, giving them identity cards with fingerprints.
For the next eight months, people were forbidden to leave their town or village without a written permit. Night-time curfew was strictly enforced by military patrols. All persons were required to show a Military Government-issued identity document (Ausweis) on demand from a Military guard or patrol.
The population consisted almost entirely of middle-aged and older men, women and children. Former German soldiers were sent to internment in camps in Belgium. Most Nazi officials had fled. We posted proclamations dissolving the Nazi party and its subsidiary organizations.
We needed a civil administration and moved quickly to form one. We sought advice from local clergy, appointed respected local citizens as mayors and chose the scion of a distinguished old cloth-manufacturing family as Landrat (county manager). We set up a rudimentary police force and kept lower officials in their jobs to provide elementary services - electricity and water, Hospital operation.
Pre-Nazi German law remained in effect. Within a month we had responsive local officials administering the area. To provide employment, we got some of the load factories operating - but when the Morgenthau Plan, which aimed to turn occupied Germany into a “goat pasture* was proclaimed a few weeks later, Fifth Corps ordered us to close them. This policy along with the non-fraternization rules which were announced soon after (but seldom obeyed), was the only aspect of American military occupation
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