-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
BETRAYAL - Our Occupation of Germany
Arthur D. Rahn
Former Chief Editor of Intelligence Office of the Director of Information
Control
Office of Military Government, Germany
Book & Knowledge
Warsaw, Poland
pps. 237 (no date) out-of-print
-----
--Some of the social life with the "krauts," however, was on a more formal
level. In June, 1946, a Cosmopolitan Club was founded in Bad Kissingen
(Bavaria) with the local MG commanding officer as its honorary president;
Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of the Kaiser, the first vice president; and
a former colonel of the German air force signal intelligence as president. In
other areas similar social groups existed without such formal organization.
Our officers generally showed an appalling lack of discrimination in choosing
their German friends.--
---" NOT until I sat down to write this book and reflected on my experience
and organized my notes did I realize that what had seemed to me and my
friends in Germany to be a chaos of corruption and incompetence had actually
been a planned development following a very definite pattern. In fact, it has
become increasingly clear that the pattern of events in Germany from 1944 to
mid-1947 mirrored in sharp perspective what was happening at home in America.
Developments in Germany, too, have paralleled our actions in the United
Nations and our relations with the Soviet Union, Greece, Spain, China,
Britain, Israel with the entire world."---
Om
K
--[5]--
CHAPTER FIVE
The Collapse Of A Great Army
Breakdown
"You young soldiers and sailors, farmers and factory workers, artists and
scholars, who are fighting our way to victory now, all of you will have to
take your part in shaping that world. You will earn it by what you do now;
but you will not attain it if you leave your job for others to do alone. When
you lay aside your gun at the end of the war, you cannot at the same time lay
aside your duty to the future."
--From address to International Student Assembly, September, 3, 1942.
THE GIs did not know... The GIs were not informed. Yet there were more than a
million GIs in Germany all through 1945. Anyone who had not been in the
occupation during that year would have reason to wonder how it was that these
fellows did not know what was going on around them. What had happened to the
pro-Roosevelt men in MG? Why didn't they speak up?
Well, these questions cannot be answered in just a few lines. To understand
what happened to the combat troops and the Roosevelt MG personnel,
experiences of the Americans in Germany during the first eight months or so
after the end of the war must be reviewed, how we were distracted from our
basic tasks, how we became demoralized and how the Roosevelt -forces
disintegrated and pratically[sic] disappeared.
It began in May, 1945. May was a wonderful month. The war was over, the
weather was warm and clear. For me, personally, May was especially wonderful.
After three months of sullen, obsequious Germans, of rubble heaps and
destruction, I was going to Paris, and I felt as though I were being
liberated, The trip was something to remember, too, especially the first lap
from Frankfurt to Luxembourg , for all along the embankments of the
highway there were fraeuleins (pronounced frowlines in "GI"), hundreds of
them goodlooking, healthy, sex-starved uninhibited blonds in groups of
two and three and sometimes of 10 and 12, smiling, waving and giving that
come-on look. My driver hooted and whistled as we went by. Every once in a
while we'd see some GI drive off into a sideroad, begin a conversation and
then scoot away at the approach of an officer or of the road patrol. $65 fine
for fraternization! * [* The fraternization ruling was instituted when we
first entered Germany as a security measure to make a distinction between the
German and the allied populations. With the latter, of course, the GIs had
unrestricted social relations.]
This was after VE day and the non-fraternization ruling had become a major
issue and a constant topic of conversation with all Americans in Germany.
During the war, of course, it had been different. When First Army, for
example, slugged across the bloody Roer River, battled from rubble-heap to
rubble-heap in the ruins of Juelich and Dueren and hurtled down the
super-highway past the modern, undamaged Ford plant into Cologne, the GIs who
arrived there alive were not going to allow any brasshat regulation to stop
their celebration. And there was a hot time in that town that night. Plenty
of wine, music, dancing in the streets. The sex-starved Rhenish fraeuleins,
the most beautiful in Germany and among the most willing, admired our tall,
well-fed GIs who had chased the "aryan SS supermen", the pride of the German
bedrooms, across the Rhine and were curious to find out whether men from way
overseas were different. That night, as many nights before, they had plenty
of opportunity to find out.
But that all stopped after VE day. "Stop", that was the command.
I've described how hard it was to halt the great army in motion just by
issuing an order. The GIs heard the words, but didn't understand what they
meant.
With the local population, however, it was different. On May 8th, 1945, on my
way back to Bad Nauheim from Regensburg a trip across two-thirds of
southern Germany I saw what seemed to be the entire population of the towns
along the highway standing at the side of the road, women holding their
infants in their arms, young girls and old men, all smiling and waving their
handkerchiefs. I asked myself what had happened, what country this was. The
Germans thought that after the capitulation on the previous day, we were
going to forget what had happened and be one big happy family. Some chance! I
didn't even realize what they were doing out on the road all of a sudden.
And who'd think of waving back to the "krauts"? The hell with that, brother!
The "krauts", it seemed, had never really understood our non-fraternization
ruling. They couldn't imagine anybody not wanting to have anything to do with
the "master race". They thought it was all a wartime security measure. Now
they reasoned the war was over and we could be friends and we could talk and
go to bed without worrying about being caught. And we'd bring little Willie
some chocolate and maybe get a pair of shoes somehow for papa.
I suppose if they had given the troops some important activity,
non-fraternization might have worked. Now there was MG for the important
work. The GIs were supposed to stand guard, drill, rest, play baseball and
take it easy. But there were fraeuleins half-naked, sunning themselves down
by the river. The GIs joked and watched them from the distance through the
binoculors[sic] they'd picked up in some German's house. But at night? Well,
in Bad Nauheim, where we were stationed, the mayor had to declare the park on
the other side of the tracks off limits for German civilians after dark too
many illicit couples. GIs everywhere were spreading rumors that in "other"
cities of the Zone, our fellows were fraternizing openly "That guy said you
see 'em walking right out in the open with their arms around the fraeuleins."
These stories were exaggerated, but there was no doubt that
non-fraternization was a failure. Of course, one couldn't expect anything
different from the GIs when even top officers considered it a ruling to be
winked at. One MG colonel, for example, later a top official in Military
Government, declared to a meeting of the officers of his large detachment:
"You know where I stand on fraternization, men, above all, use discretion."
Everyone present knew that the colonel had a fraeulein of his own. In
addition, for the ruling to be effective, it had to be understood. But many
GIs had as little understanding of the regulation as our bartender, who
thought it had been instituted to protect GIs from venereal disease. The
troops were too naive about the meaning of fascism and the objectives of our
occupation for non-fraternization to succeed. Even combat men who saw their
buddies die alongside them in foxholes and didn't want "to have anything to
do with the Germans" began to weaken under the inactivity and the lack of
orientation, saying: "My fraeulein is different, she says her folks never had
any use for Hitler." It was easy to rationalize fraternizing.
Escaping the $65 fine was an exciting game, requiring ingenuity and daring. A
good number of the fellows, probably even most of the GIs, in fact, were
resorting to subterfuge to avoid the penalty. The result was that many GIs
began to joke about fraternizing being their "occupation duty" "keep the
frowlines happy." Fraternizing assumed an exaggerated importance and GIs lost
respect for the occupation in general.
At last on August 6th, General Eisenhower announced in a special message to
the German people: "'The people under my command now have permission to
establish normal social relations with you. In this way it will be possible
for us to understand your problems of the next months better."
That very evening the streets were crowded with obedient GIs seeking "to
understand German problems better," walking arm-in-arm with their fraeuleins
publicly. The officers, too, eagerly assumed their responsibility to
"understand the problems of the Germans better," particularly their social
problems. All over the Zone, there were wild parties, American officers
dancing, drinking and sleeping with the wives of interned Nazis and German
officers and the daughters of nobility (a real countess!). These women were
well-dressed, had nice apartments, knew how to run a good party and had no
scruples after the festivities. In some headquarters regular love-nests
developed; the Army HQ at Frankfurt, no exception. There were local
detachments that kept high-class brothels. At one unit in Munich, I was
promised an actress, a beauty whose husband was interned in an SS camp, the
next time I would come to visit them.
MG officers had an advantage over the others, for they hired fraeuleins to
act as interpreters and secretaries as soon as they opened their detachment
headquarters. The daughter of Hans Frank, the butcher governor of Poland and
an outstanding war criminal, was not the only Nazi Weib (wench) working for
an occupation detachment. Many of the BDM (Nazi League of German Girls) and
Frauenschaft (Nazi Women's Auxiliary) were athletic, good-looking,
well-built, experienced (they had frequently worked and slept for the SS
previously) and English-speaking good company, nice to have around. It was
like a story of Ruritania, intrigue with these fancy, high-class prostitutes,
protecting their homes from requisitioning, nodding and granting favors to
their relatives and friends.
Some of the social life with the "krauts," however, was on a more formal
level. In June, 1946, a Cosmopolitan Club was founded in Bad Kissingen
(Bavaria) with the local MG commanding officer as its honorary president;
Prince Louis Ferdinand, grandson of the Kaiser, the first vice president; and
a former colonel of the German air force signal intelligence as president. In
other areas similar social groups existed without such formal organization.
Our officers generally showed an appalling lack of discrimination in choosing
their German friends.
Lacking facilities to entertain and the rank admired by caste-conscious
Germans, GIs were seldom able to compete for the favors of countesses and
wives of Nazi bigshots. But there was no shortage of female company for them.
Every night Berlin, for instance, down the block from the Titania Palace Red
Cross Club, there was always a line of fraeuleins calling to passing crowds
of GIs, "Where are you going, big boy" and 'What're you doing tonight, GI?"
And in August, 1946 the Army announced that the venereal disease rate had
climbed to an all-time high in Germany of "305 cases among every 1,000
soldiers a year" and that "progressively larger" numbers of American soldiers
were developing mental disturbances as a result of "sexual promiscuity." * [*
According to the European Surgeon General's office, the increases in mental
cases were mainly at redeployment areas, where soldiers returning home were
developing obsessions of "shame and fear."]
But gonorrhea and syphilis and psychological disturbances resulting from
sexual promiscuity were not the only results of fraternization, for it did
not take the fraeuleins long to realize that our fellows were often easily
susceptible to a dose of Hitler race poisoning.
Some Americans were not averse to exhibiting their anti-Negro chauvinism, as
Fleck and I found out while we were in Munich. We were sitting in the
backyard of our requisitioned apartment one evening talking with the German
woman who lived next door. Chuckling heartily, she was telling us how
Hitler's race propaganda had evaporated the night the Negro. troops had
arrived. "Next year", she laughed, "there will be a lot of evidence of how
little the race theory really meant." A GI who had been listening to the
conversation broke in, talking pigeon English for her benefit: "Negroes... no
good, they... not good people." The German woman was bewildered, she had
thought to please and to show her enlightenment. The fraeuleins, of course,
capitalized on our anti-Negroism, using it to indoctrinate our men in other
Nazi doctrines.
The story with anti-Semitism was similar. A poll conducted by the Army
Information and Education Division in October, 1945 6 months after the end
of the war revealed that 18% of our GIs believed that Hitler's treatment of
the Jews had been justified (gas chambers, starvation, torture, wholesale
extermination and all). A second poll conducted in April, 1946 6 months
later showed 22% holding this opinion and 10% undecided a total of
one-third of our troops expressing strong anti-Semitism. Our failure to
institute an immediate aggressive program of democratization, utilizing the
convinced antifascists to initiate a crusade for the cleansing of the nation,
had backfired on our own men. The failure of nonfraternization with its
subterfuge and its unfortunate effect on the prestige of the occupation and
the failure of fraternization with its debauchery with Nazi women, its
venereal disease and its mental poisoning, resulted in the demoralization of
the troops and contributed to the disintegration of the occupation in
general. Instead of being given a chance to carry their victory to completion
by participating in the democratization of the land they had conquered, our
combat men were involved in petty intrigues to escape the fines for
fraternizing or in all-out promiscuity with the Nazi women.
But fraternization was not the only distraction from boredom for the GIs and
from responsibilities for MG men. Along with the "lover" who boasted of his
amorous exploits during the non-fraternization era, there was another "hero"
in the occupation, the BTO, the "Big Time Operator", the fellow who kept his
buddies guessing about his "deals," his profits and his special "contacts."
Of course, the BTOs were not strictly a postwar development. War would not be
war without pillage, and our troops could vye with any in the art of plunder.
The trouble with the Hesse jewels thieves who were arrested in 1946 was that
they had acted too late, after the vast plunder spree had waned, and had
picked on a ducal family that could too easily obtain publicity. During the
war, there had been open hunting. One friend of mine, a lieutenant in a tank
outfit told how after the capture of Goering's castle, he had cut out old oil
paintings from their frames with his bayonet considering the
Reichsmarschall's tastes, these were probably great masterpieces and
wrapped them in his bedroll for safekeeping. Unfortunately, he soon lost them
in a crap game and was able to send home only what he described as a "huge"
tapestry.
Generally, it was not the first line soldiers who accumulated the jewelry,
cameras, pictures, etc. since they were unable to load themselves down with
baggage and were much more concerned about keeping alive than about getting
rich. But in many combat units, men would make directly for the banks in
towns where they were fighting to blow the safes and load up on German marks.
As the war progressed, pillage became better organized and more efficient.
GIs and officers had extensive training in the blackmarket, too, during the
war. We had heard of the general who was sent home for selling a whole
trainload of supplies on the French blackmarket. Everybody knew that the
drivers of gas trucks were making hundreds of thousands of francs disposing
of tankloads, which, of course, had been destined for the front. Hundreds of
men paid all their expenses on leaves in Paris by selling cigarettes and
exchanging American currency they had had sent from home. In Brussels there
was a street where one could buy any item of GI clothing in all sizes for a
good blackmarket price. In many Belgium villages, practically every
inhabitant is wearing some item of our Army clothing bought from drivers of
quartermaster convoys. And in Luxembourg, the inhabitants of one area had a
unique opportunity to stock up on American supplies when a quartermaster
officer declared his depot destroyed and sold the contents after the building
had been slight damaged by a V-bomb.
All of this was good business and we earned the reputation all over Western
Europe of being enterprising commercants as well as courageous soldiers. But
after the war, with no more soldiering to take up our time, we were able to
go into trade operations on a big business scale. Mess officers sold food and
the men complained of short and unvaried rations. Ration dumps sold liquor,
and units went without drinks. Gas dumps sold gasoline. Quartermaster
officers sold clothing. There wasn't much else to do "might as well make a
little extra cash." The occupation developed into a vast bonanza.
Although everybody sold something, some GIs knew how to do this sort of thing
more imaginatively than others. The bartender at a detachment I frequently
visited sold coal brought on mess trucks from Belgium, bought a cognac
factory employing about 20 Germans and then peddled his product to all nearby
units. He made a fortune. Other GIs bought houses, farms, stores, small
factories and put them in the names of their fraeuleins.
The GIs did very well in the Zone proper. [* ] But it was the dream of every
real BOT to go on leave, on pass, on orders or even AWOL (absent without
leave) to Berlin, where a man could get rich quick, and many men did. The
early comers, of course, had the advantage. They sold cigarettes at $200 a
carton to the Germans. A tremendous traffic in watches developed with a
stream of timepieces from Switzerland and from the States being imported to
the market. Some GIs in Berlin acted as brokers for buddies in the Zone, who
solicited watches from fellows unable to go to the blackmarket town
personally.[ * The American-controlled area in Germany consists of three
provinces in Southern Germany and one of the four sectors of Berlin. To go to
Berlin from the Zone it is necessary to traverse a large area of the Russian
Zone.]
Every device and excuse was used to get to Berlin, Mecca of the blackmarket.
At a Wiesbaden detachment the courier dispatcher sold the privilege of
driving the courier vehicle to Berlin for $200 and $300 a trip two trips a
week netted him up to $600. But the drivers ran no risk. They loaded up with
cigarettes from all their buddies (at least $150 a carton), butter ($50 a
pound) and coffee ($30 a pound) from the mess, candy ($5 for a nickel bar),
soap ($5 a bar) and watches and assorted items of clothing.
By the time I first arrived in Berlin in March, 1946, blackmarket had become
socially acceptable, a topic of conversation even at Military Government HQ,
where at the dinner table people discussed prices of china, silk, jewelry,
obje'ts d'art, etc., all in terms of the accepted mode of exchange,
cigarettes. Many people were having cigarettes mailed to them regularly and
were accumulating all kinds of luxury goods. As a result of this huge
importation, the cigarette exchange fluctuated from $180 a carton as low as
$110 (at which times people would be very annoyed), dropping especially when
a truckload arrived from the Zone or the PX train was robbed of its supply
(as did happen).
In Berlin particularly fashionable blackmarketers frequented the sleek night
clubs where for $100 one could obtain a meal with all the gourmet delicacies,
prepared by the finest chefs in Berlin, of food from American Army mess
stores. Champagne was imported from France, oysters from the North Sea,
whipped cream from Denmark on U. S. Army vehicles, ordinarily and sold at
fantastic prices. At one of these swanky hangouts, some friends of mine met a
GI who insisted upon treating all the guests to drinks at $20 and $30 apiece.
It turned out that he was part owner of the club, a man with all the
international connections needed to assure the importation of fancy foods and
wines and with such excellent German profiteer contacts that he had even been
able to install a new tile bathroom in the club (and that in a country where
plumbing was unobtainable and new construction practically unthinkable). When
my friends were ready to leave, the GI entrepreneur offered to drive them
home. He had his own German car and his own private chauffeur. And where did
this fantastic character live? Oh, he had bought his own hotel and was living
there.
That, of course, was blackmarketing a la mode. But even the most moral and
conscientious people broke down and little by little became involved. One
friend of mine obtained orders to go to Paris to buy a jeep sooner than she
had anticipated and she was short $300 in cash. She weakened in the crisis
and sold 3 cartons of cigarettes. Her vehicle cost her $150 in cash and 3
cartons of cigarettes, or a total of $155 instead of $450.
It was bad enough that everyone, almost without exception, was engaged in
private deals absorbing their spare time. But what was even worse was that
this corruption had seeped into the operation of the occupation units, too.
If a detachment wanted to have a vehicle repaired, a bottle of cognac would
ensure that it was done quickly. A quartermaster officer could obtain extra
rations if he could throw a pair of paratrooper boots into the deal. Even an
unregistered automobile could be obtained for personal use with the proper
bribe.
And within units themselves, efficiency dropped. During the war when our
Psychological Warfare detachment moved to follow the advance of the front, we
never missed more than a couple of days with our daily intelligence report.
But when our information Control HQ moved from Bad Homburg to Berlin in the
spring of 1946 under peacetime conditions, we had to skip two weeks of our
daily bulletin and three issues of our weekly intelligence report. Because
everyone was involved with his deals, there was no one to pack files and
office equipment. One fellow had to find an apartment for his fraeulein.
Another had to run to Bavaria to pick up a leather valise he had bought for a
couple of cartons of cigarettes. Someone else had to run off to Strasbourg to
sell clothes to obtain francs for some blackmarket currency transaction he
was engaging in. Another had to pack his thirty crates of Czech cut glass he
intended to sell at a fabulous profit in Berlin. And when we finally arrived
in Berlin, everyone was out making blackmarket contacts to dispose of his
cigarettes and looking for good buys. So "busy"' did our office become that
Germans were coming into our building all during the day with cameras,
binoculors[sic], pieces of jewelry to sell and exchange. Finally, our boss
had to forbid any transactions and conversations about transactions during
business hours.
We were not as "efficient" as some units where one man devoted full time to
the blackmarket for the common benefit. In our office, as in many of the
others, people took time off in the afternoon to go "shopping", to wrap
packages and go to the post office. Blackmarketing had become the chief
activity of' the occupation.
So ineffectual were the attempts at controlling the blackmarket that people
laughingly insisted that the brass themselves were making too much money to
want to stop it. In October, 1945, after the blackmarket had already
developed into a business with a huge turnover, the currency control book was
introduced. Fortunately for the BTOs, however, the Stars and Stripes had
published sufficient warning about the book to enable GIs and officers to
send home all their extra cash before the books came out. In Berlin lines
formed outside the post office at 3 and 4 in the morning of GIs waiting to
send home money orders. Several thousand dollars apiece was hardly
exceptional. "Profits" amounting to a hundred thousand dollars were not rare,
either.
Surely the brass were not so naive as to believe that a control book listing
pay, official expenditures above $10 and amounts sent home in money orders
was going to restrict our enterprising troops and American civilian
employees. Some people "lost" their books, obtained duplicates and than[sic]
had two from which money orders could be deducted. Others bought money orders
from people who had less money than was listed on their books at $125 for a
$100 order. Others made deals with GIs at the post offices and had no
deductions made for amounts they sent home. More sophisticated BTOs bought
goods like jewels and stamps that could easily be converted into cash at home.
"It became accepted in the most respectable circles that everyone would send
home his entire salary and use his blackmarket profits to cover his daily
expenses. The crisis did not arise until people were about to be redeployed.
One either had too much cash like a group of GIs who burned piles of 100 mark
bills (810 apiece) at the staging area in Bremen or one had to sell clothing
and food quickly to make up any "deficit" on his book. It was considered
"most unfortunate" not to "fill" one's book with blackmarket sales before
going home.
In a second impotent attempt at curbing the corruption, the Army issued
skrip, valid only for American personnel. This, too, failed. About six months
after the skrip had come out, a friend of mine wrote from Berlin (November,
1946): "I see from the stateside (occupation jargon for US) newspapers and
magazines that the blackmarket is supposed to have decreased or disappeared
as a result of the introduction of skrip. I would never have known that over
here where the commerce in cigarettes exceeds anything we have ever had. I
must admit that I am not above joining everybody else in receiving cigarettes
from home. That's what is known as being a practical idealist, I guess." * [*
An AP dispatch in the New York Times on December 30, 1946, reported that "an
exchanges was suggested to General Clay last week by a special Military
Government committee. These investigators reported that trading of American
cigarettes 'is injuring the German economy, endangering the morals of
American personnel and taking products from the Germans without offering a
fair return.' " The article continued that General Clay hesistated[sic] to
recommend examination of parcels from America to eliminate importation of
cigarettes because such an inspection would entail a prohibition which
"experience has shown doesn't work too well with Americans."embargo against
the importation of any smokes except those sold under ration in the Army's
post]
Busy with the blackmarket, vying for good buys, GIs were distracted from the
aims and from the developments in the occupation. Many MG people, too,
preoccupied with their "operations" were failing in their occupation
responsibilities. But neither the delights of fraternization nor the
attractions of the blackmarket "take" sufficed to beguile our men into liking
Germany. There was a gnawing nostalgia to get back home.
Even before the war was actually over, men were wondering "When do we go
home? It can't be too soon for me." After VE day there was a lot of joking
about it; fellows were kidding each other. "When do you think you're going
home, Joe?... Why, you just got over here. They're going to keep good men
like you, fella, it's the rest of us no-goods that are going home." But as
the let-down began to irritate fellows, the inactivity and the uselessness,
men became impatient. The Stars and Stripes was publishing conflicting
reports, building hopes and then warning of delays. Fellows became disgusted
and resentful. "Why don't they do something right for a change?"
Contradictory Stars and Stripes headlines like the following led' to
widespread demoralization.
May 17: "15,500 in ETO * with scores above 85 will leave by June [*European
Theatre of Operations]
1. The quota, will be increased substantially next month..."
May 21: "SHAEF silent on story more will stay here"
May 23: "Army to triple shift of troops to US in June"
June 5: "Speedy release of Nazi PWs envied by GIs"
June 12: "153 ETO over-85ers at Ft. Dix find more of that Army delay"
June 15: "It's a 30 day trip from ETO to civvies via point system"
October 14: "70's put off sailing lists, USFET ** trying to ship, all 80's
out by November 10th" [**United States Forces European Theatre]
October 17: "Army hopes 1 out of every 5 GIs in Europe will volunteer"
October 19: "Want more GIs out. 'Points or no Points' House Appropriations
Comm."
Impatient, disgusted with unkept promises and angry, thousands of troops
demonstrated in Frankfurt and Marseilles, demanding immediate action and an
end to equivocation.
MG personnel had not expected to be redeployed along with the former combat
troops because their work required a certain continuity. But as soon as word
was out that they would be redeployed with the other men in the theatre,
they, too, became agitated. Their impatience and developing demoralization
resulted in a serious decline in military government efficiency and that
during the first six or eight months of the occupation! More and more
responsibility was shifted to the fraeulein secretaries and to German civil
officials. Supervision decreased especially in the rural areas, where the
Nazis became bold again. Some detachments, like one county MG unit north of
Frankfurt with which I had dealings, practically stopped operations and
business and government activity in the towns under its control almost ceased.
To counter the critical depletion of the MG staffs, which was resulting in
further overloading of the remaining officers, a campaign for the
reenlistment and transfer of non-MG officers was initiated. These
inexperienced men were frequently thrown into positions without previous
instruction after the original MG officers had already been redeployed. New
men arriving in detachments where everyone was talking "going home" and "let
the Germans take care of themselves" did not start off with good morale,
either. In June, 1945, however, in a unique display of efficiency, the War
Department instituted the civilianization program by which Army personnel
ready for redeployment were enabled to retain their jobs or obtain new MG
positions as civilians paid on a civil service scale. Many fellows really
wanted to remain in Germany to finish their occupation jobs and were
enthusiastic about staying without having to put up with anymore Army
"chicken" (red tape). But this program, too, was bungled. Fellows delayed
their redeployment for one month, two months, sometimes three months, waiting
for their civilianization papers to come through and then went home in
disgust. Few men were as conscientious as my friend Sam, an excellent
intelligence man, who delayed his redeployment from August, 1945 until
February, 1946, when his papers finally came through.[*] [*Of course, many
men wanted to remain on account of their fraeuleins, on account of
blackmarket operations, or on account of the security and comparatively good
salaries offered overseas.]
The civilianization program was further disorganized by the failure to set
regular wage scales during the first six months.
Fellows with glib tongues would go to Frankfurt and talk themselves into
fancy salaries, while other men with far more important positions would be
offered much less. In our office, we lost our best enlisted men when they
rejected the small salaries proposed by the civilian employment office. Later
we had to replace them with less experienced people who received the very
salaries our original men had been demanding.
In Information Control there had been many civilian experts, in charge of
radio, films, music, theatre, publications and the press, who had been
transferred at the end of the war from Psychological Warfare. These men were
interested in their work, were often among the most capable men in their
fields. But over a period of nine months or more, the State Department simply
ignored the stream of cables sent by Brig. Gen. Robert McClure, the
commanding officer, requesting increases of salaries conforming to the
general occupation scale. In addition, the Army imposed all kinds of red
tape, (as only the Army knows how to do) and humiliating meaningless
distinctions between civilian and military personnel separate messes,
inferior train accommodations, inferior billets, ridiculous, detailed dress
requirements, etc. One by one we lost our original staff, the people who had
accumulated invaluable experience from before the end of the war, through the
initial introduction of US-controlled information media and the first
developments of the independent German democratic press, radio, theatre and
publications. That was typical "occupation!"'
What had happened to the pro-Roosevelt MG forces? Surrounded by demoralized
occupation troops and MG colleagues, distracted, too, by fraternization,
increasingly involved in blackmarket operations like all other Americans,
discouraged by the cynical betrayal of the original aims of the occupation,
they, too, became impatient to return home and joined the stampede. If they
had deliberately been campaigning to send the combat men and the anti-fascist
(soon to become a suspect word) MG men home to replace them with
unimaginative, unquestioning civil service people who had not experienced the
great inspiration of the war and had not shared in the ambitions and plans
for a hopeful future in Germany the State and War Departments could not
have done a better job.
"We don't belong here anymore," we began to say in October and November, 1945
those of us who had been through the whole development. It was true.
Washington bureaucracy was taking over and a new philosophy and spirit was in
the ascendency.
The New Order
"It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new
economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over
government itself... As a result the average man once more confronts the
problem that faced the Minute Man."
--From a[d]dress to Democratic National Convention, June 27, 1936.
"What are we here for, anyhow?"
"And just what is MG doing to fix up Germany?"
Those were the two questions I heard from the GIs I met during the three
weeks I was a guest lecturer at the Army Orientation Staff School at Hoechst
(near Frankfurt) in the spring of 1946. It was difficult to give a
satisfactory answer to the first question to the young GIs who had just come
over as replacements because they knew so little about fascism and the whole
history of German national aggression. Any answer to the second question was
received with shrugging of shoulders and good-natured, incredulous smiles.
The Army considered MG a boondoogle and that opinion had been passed down
even a year after the end of the war to these green GIs.
The young fellows in their late 'teens, the new replacements,. found life
especially hard in Germany. I saw them walking the streets aimlessly or
standing around at street corners at night just waiting... It was hard
stationed in a foreign land among former enemies they were supposed to hate
or like according to orders from above, among people speaking a strange
language and resenting their presence, nothing in the evening but the movies,
the Red Cross for a cup of coffee and some donuts, writing a letter, then to
bed every night the same. In the dull country towns, once you'd walked the
main street, "you'd had it." And in the cities the dark avenues among the
ruins, the people fighting for a cigarette you dropped, a child begging for a
piece of candy outside the PX, a whore stopping you the young replacement
completely unprepared for the debauchery, the corruption and the
demoralization no wonder if a fraeulein were friendly or a family invited
him, the GI was anxious to please, to agree.
No wonder, either, if the fellows got hold of a couple of bottles of
"cognac," they got drunk. And no wonder, if they decided to have some fun and
pushed a guy off the sidewalk and said: " Look where you're going, you damn'
kraut." And more than likely, they'd beat up the German and maybe take his
watch. In January, 1946, when one of our fellows went on a trip in civilian
clothes to study German attitudes, he escaped having his car and watch taken
from him and being beaten by GIs only by showing his Army identification in
time. In Marburg, the professors at the university protested that it was
unsafe to walk the streets at night. All over the Zone there were assaults
and robberies by drunken troops. Finally in May, 1946, General McNarney, the
Supreme Commander, declared: "Discipline in various places and under various
commands in the theatre has decreased to such an extend that the good
reputation of our troops is generally discredited." Two months later, in
July, General Harmon, commander of the American Constabulary, announced in a
statement to the German population: "The Constabulary considers its task the
protection of the unarmed German citizenry against any assaults by American
Army personnel... against whom the German police is helpless. The
Constabulary recognizes that the American Army personnel is responsible for
some regrettable actions and that Germans fearful of repercussions, have
failed to report these incidents to responsible officials. The Constabulary
therefore accepts the duty to take measures to maintain the discipline of our
troops."
As usual, the Army answer to poor discipline was "dress, drill and salute" or
to decrease further the size of the occupation force. These measures, of
course, failed to treat the basic causes of the demoralization of the troops.
The two questions the GIs were asking at the Orientation School provided the
reasons for the breakdown in morale in the Army. Had they felt they were
serving a purpose in Germany and our occupation was accomplishing its
original objectives, the GIs would not have been so discouraged. But what
they needed first of all was an understanding of fascism in order to know how
to deal with the Germans and to appreciate the purpose of the occupation.
Then they should have been shown clearly what measures we were taking to
eradicate fascism and to prevent its resurgence instead of being fed merely
with a lot of fancy words, which they rightfully mistrusted, about
"reedecution for democracy" and the introduction of the "American way." The
result would have been they would have considered themselves participants in
an important historical experience that directly affected their own future.
Even the combat troops, who had experienced the cruelty and barbarism of
fascism at first hand, had little understanding of how fascism had arisen and
who were its supporters. With people at the head of the occupation
unsophisticated about the development and manifestations of fascism or simply
disinterested in it, it was not surprising that our ordinary GIs were so
lacking in orientation on this basic subject.
And it became increasingly difficult for fellows to learn about our job in
Germany. After the war, the Stars and Stripes, always our best orientation
medium with its stirring editorials for allied unity, on the necessity for a
total defeat of the Nazis and against American chauvinism, seriously
deteriorated. There was a new emphasis on scandal, frequent anti-Soviet
innuendo and a departure from its former clear political orientation. Fellows
were repeating rumors about changes in the Stars and Stripes personnel and
about new directives from above against too much anti-fascism. "What's the
poison in the Stars and Stripes today?" we used to say in the fall of 1945,
as we bought our copy before going into the mess for lunch. At the table we
would fume at the new suspicion and sensationalism in the paper and talk
about writing letters protesting the change of policy.
The bright light in the occupation gloom was the Army orientation program
conducted by the Information and Education Division at Hoechst. This division
published bulletins on important questions concerning the occupation,
disseminated useful educational, films, trained discussion leaders and
carried on what theoretically was a comprehensive orientation program to
combat the influence of the fraeuleins and to make the troops
well-indoctrinated bearers of democracy. Unfortunately, however, the brasshat
regular Army officers didn't believe in such frills. One young fellow in one
of the orientation classes at the school complained: "In the 'Carnival' (the
GI term for the Constabulary), they don't believe in any orientation and if I
went back and suggested more discussion periods, I'd catch it." Although they
obeyed orders and established orientation hours in their units, many
detachment commanders sabotaged the prog[r]am by openly expressing their
opposition or lack of concern and by appointing incapable, uninterested mess
and PX (post-exchange canteen) officers to do the orientation work "in their
spare time."
And at home, as part of the frantic rush to eliminate the remnants of the
Roosevelt program, the House Military Affairs Committee in the fall of 1946
began to discuss killing the orientation program by reducing the
appropriation of the division. The committee did not like the use of
"communistic" literature like the Benedict-Weltfish Races of Mankind
pamphlet, which exploded American racist theories, or the frank discussion of
occupation aims and of international affairs, almost the only counteraction
we provided against the Nazi propaganda to which our young, unsophisticated
troops were constantly exposed. In the school, lecturers and discussion
leaders learned to be "more careful", avoided certain controversial issues
and disappointed the GI students with noncommittal responses to "doubtful"
questions. The orientation program became too weak to have any considerable
effect against the breakdown of morale.
Back in our offices at Bad Homburg, we read the reports from all over the
Zone of the broken discipline and demoralization of our fellows. "If the
Luxembourgers wanted to now", we would joke sarcastically, "they could cross
the border with their army and drive us into the sea."
But the GIs were not the only asking: "What are we here for and just what is
MG doing to fix up Germany?" People in occupation positions, men directly
involved in the development and execution of our policy, were equally
confused and disillusioned. At the beginning of 1946, in fact, General Clay
was forced to order an end to all destructive criticism in MG offices. The
disillusionment was so great that we were all becoming cynical about our
jobs. Wherever you went, fellows were shrugging their shoulders or laughing
as though it were an immense joke according to how deeply they felt about
the collapse in morale. There certainly was nothing dynamic about our
occupation. Reconstruction was bogged down. Denazification. was in a muddle.
Reeducation was successful only on paper. We seemed helpless before the
problem of unemployment. The blackmarket was rampant. Industry was not
reviving.' Cavilling against the Russians and the other allies was becoming
fashionable all over the Zone.
What was so bad was that we not only appeared inefficient and bureaucratic,
but we were apparently also without any direction. By the end of 1945,
neither we nor the Germans had any clear conception what our policy was. When
we asked a German editor of one of the licensed newspapers whether he thought
our American-published German newspaper was successfully explaining American
policy, he replied that he could not judge because he had never been able to
make out what our policy was. As early as August, 1945, only 3 months after
the end of the war, many confused Americans were condemning the Potsdam
Agreement of the Big Powers as an American capitulation to the Soviets.
Anti-Nazi Germans in Munich assured me also that the Russians must have been
chiefly responsible for the document. Neither these Americans nor these
Germans realized that the Potsdam Declaration was actually nothing more than
an international ratification of our Roosevelt policy differing not at all
in its provisions from our own established directives. It was in conformity
with the Eisenhower Declaration of September, 1944, the recommendations of
the Enemy Branch of the Foreign Economics Administration, which had made a
study of German economy at the request of President Roosevelt, and with the
famous JCS 1067 book of policy, which had aimed at implementing and
coordinating the programs of the State, War and Treasury Departments and the
Foreign Economic Administration for the demilitarization and democratization
of Germany. The actual practice in many MG divisions and detachments had
become so far removed from our original policy that we ourselves no longer
knew what our official policy was.
In Information Control we did not realize that the muddling inconsistency and
discouraging uncertainty at the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946 was
only transitory. There was another policy, a substitute for the
Roosevelt-Potsdam policy, evolving. The development was taking place in the
important MG divisions concerned with the German economy and it was not being
publicized. In the last analysis these MG divisions could determine
themselves the basic policy for the whole occupation. Their job was crucial
and decisive. Although frequently ignorant of the meaning and workings of
fascism. Americans recognize that "to crush German imperialism permanently
and thus permit a peaceful and democratic Germany to arise, the structure and
control of German industry must be so altered that it cannot serve again the
purposes of war." Americans agree that that job is "as fundamental as
military occupation and political change."* [ * The quotations are from
Cartels and National Security, a report of the Senate Subcommittee on War
Mobilization, November 13, 1944, U. S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D. C., 1944, pg. 8]
The GIs understood the responsibility of the MG men dealing with the German
economy. In the bullsessions during the last months of the war, many fellows
were saying: "What d'ya mean there's goin' to be no more war? Ins't that what
they said last time? Don't let anybody kid ya, it's goin' to be the same way
this time, a lot of nice talk, but the big fellows get together. They're the
ones that decide these things anyhow." These GIs were afraid of a repetition
of the big business deals, like those after the first World War, which might
result again in the rehabilitation of German industry and the revival of the
German war potential.
Back home long before the war was over, political leaders like Assistant
Attorney General Thurman Arnold were warning that a "small group of American
business... still think of the war as a temporary recess from
business-as-usual with a strong Germany. They expect to begin the game all
over again."** In 1944 and 1945, men testifying before the Kilgore Senatorial
Subcommittee on War Mobilization repeated these warnings. Henry H. Fowler,
the director of the Enemy Branch of the Foreign Economic Administration,
declared in his testimony in June, 1945: "Almost daily there are newspaper
reports that American members of the Allied Military Government are met in
each factory by handpicked men, frequently engineers, speaking English and
often prepared with credentials to prove acquaintance with reputable citizens
of the United States... Their arrangements with cor-porations in the United
Nations have been suspended, but they are seeking and will continue to seek
to revive and extend them." *
[** Speech before the Illinois Bar Association, June 3, 1942, quoted from The
Plot Against the Peace, Sayers and Kahn, Dial Press, New York, 1945, pg. 31.]
[* Elimiration of German Resources for War, hearings before a Subcommittee on
Military Affairs, United States Senate, 79th Congress, Part 3, U. S.
Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1945.]
Well, was it not natural that American and British businessmen would seek to
eliminate German competition, buy up German enterprises cheap and take over
German markets and business connections? What the ordinary BTOs did with
watches, jewelry, stamps, leather goods and liquor, they could do with whole
factories, whole industries and whole cartels. Unlike the GIs with their
petty "operations", however, the large corporations and banking houses in
America were also concerned about their investments and holdings in Germany
General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil of New Jersey, I. T. & T.,
Ford, etc. They were going to do their utmost to regain, secure and extend
them. In addition, large American enterprises had financial and trade
arrangements and patent agreements with German cartels that became effective
again now that the war was over. Many American and British businessmen and
industrialists were thus openly opposed to the Potsdam provisions for
reparations, destruction of war plants and limitation of German production.
In our detachment we had complained about all the British "observers" who
flooded our Zone right after VE day, visiting German business leaders and
arranging for the reestablishment of trade as soon as it was practicable. But
when British businessmen are here, can the Americans be far behind? We had
heard of instances of high level American fraternization with outstanding
German industrialists. Many of our MG officers". businessmen themselves,
stood in awe of the magnates of the international cartels. Furthermore, had
we not appointed to high positions in Aachen, Frankfurt, Munich and
elsewhere, Germans with close connections with German business and industry?
Had not General Eisenhower chosen men who had previous dealings with German
business and industry for high positions in MG's Economics Division? Brig.
Gen. William H. Draper, the head of the division, had formerly been
associated with Dillon Read & Co., a firm which had participated in floating
loans for Germany after World War I. Among his colleagues were men who had
been affiliated with Republic Steel, General Motors and other large American
industrial and banking institutions.
The first indication to outsiders of the kind of policy these men were
developing came when one of Draper's assistants, a Professor Calvin Hoover,
published a report in the fall of 1945, urging the maintenance of German
heavy industry production until a "satisfactory" living standard was assured
for the nation. Henry Fowler of the Foreign Economics Administration had
warned of this possible rationalization against destroying the German war
potential in his testimony before the Kilgore Committee back in June, 1945:
"Germany is going to go through a period of difficulty no matter what we do.
Let us not make the mistake of considering that to be the security measures
we propose when, in reality, it is directly the result of Germany's
aggression
Hence, our program for preventing German aggression should not be
postponed, deferred or modulated because of the confusion of its results with
the results of the war itself."*[ op. cit., pg. 188]
Less than a year later, Russell Nixon, former Acting Head of the Division of
Investigation of Cartels and External Assets, told the Kilgore Committee that
exactly what Fowler had warned against had happened. "I recall one of the
officials," Nixon declared, "I think on Murphy's staff, asking me one day,
'How could Germany manage to live without the Siemens Corporation?' That was
their general orientation."** [**Elimination of German Resources far War,
Part II, February 1946, pg. 1572.]
Senator Harley M. Kilgore himself exposed the hypocritical pro-German
sympathies of the MG authorities who supported the Calvin Hoover policy by
pointing out that "the concern of some of our officials with this problem (of
the minimum standard of living) is the more curious in that Germany's
standard today is higher than that of most of the countries she ravaged." *
[*Elimination of German Resources for War, Part II pg. 1603.]
Although we made studies of all facets of German life in our Information
Control Intelligence Section, we were never informed of the developments in
the MG plans for the German economy. We knew nothing of the struggle of Gen.
Draper and his associates in the Economics Division against Col. Bernstein
and Mr. Nixon in the Cartel Investigation Division and Mr. Dodge in the
Finance Division. The latter officials attempted to carry out our basic
directives and those of the Potsdam Declaration. The Economics Division
people sought to modify or ignore them. "These deficiencies between action
and policy," Russel Nixon explained to the Kilgore Committee, "developed from
the fundamental fact that the officials responsible for the program did not
support the directives to destroy Germany's war industry potential. Their
energies and imagination have been expended in the direction of finding
excuses for inaction and devices for evasion of orders." * * [** idem, pg.
1538]
In his testimony Nixon related at length how the mammoth I. G. cartel, an
enterprise with connections all over the world, intimately connected with the
Nazi government and complete involved in the program of German aggression a
powerful force against world peace and security was being preserved in the
American Zone. "In a sense there is a Farben restitu-tion program going on
rather than a restitution to the occu-pied and victimized nations," he
declared.*** Quoting an MG report of December 17, 1945, for which he had been
partially responsible, Nixon told the committee: "Our investigation disclosed
that of a total of 55 I. G. manufacturing plants in the United States Zone, 2
were destroyed and 3 had been de-clared available for reparations." * In
evidence of the probable collusion between German heads of the cartel and
American businessmen in the occupation, Nixon cited a letter by Max Ilgner,
one of the key officials in I. G. Farben and an organizer of its
international spy service, written in May, 1944 to two of his associates in
the Farben Central Finance Department, in which he predicted that the
American authorities would eventually permit resumption of I. G. operations
and stressed the need for keeping the Farben organization intact in
expectation of this development. At least one occupation official, Nixon
pointed out, a Carl Peters, an associate of an American affiliate of I. G.
Farben, had been discovered holding business conferences with leading German
I. G. Farben officials. Some of these Farben chiefs, according to Nixon, were
still in their positions months after the end of the war. It was no wonder
that the stocks of I. G. Farben had risen 21 points since VE day: "The people
of Germany," Nixon said, "rea[l]ly knew what was happening... They know that
Farben was not being broken up." **
[***idem, pg. 1564]
[*idem, pg. 1535]
[**idem, pg. 1568]
The results of the anti-Roosevelt economic policy were apparent immediately.
Our officials sabotaged the reparations program, failing to fill our quotas
and constantly procrastinating. Finally, in May, 1946, General Clay announced
the termination of all reparations deliveries pending the economic
unification of Germany. Siding with the British, our officials sabotaged the
establishment of a Four Power decartellization law although this law was in
complete harmony with our own early directives. This anti-Potsdam approach
alienated the Russians and to some extent, the French. It was the beginning
of the breakdown of Four Power cooperation in Germany.
But the economic prize in Germany was the Ruhr. The British held that and
were determined to utilize it completely for themselves. Our Zone was of very
secondary importance industrially and our MG businessmen were determined to
share in the spoils of the Ruhr. Beginning at the end of 1945, high
occupation officials were discussing the possibility of the economic
amalgamation of the Anglo-American Zones "in the event that a complete
economic unification is not achieved." Harrassed by the sabotage of Party
members and worse reactionaries than we had in high positions in our Zone,
the British were forced to appeal to us to help feed their Zone. That was our
bargaining point. Part of our plan for the unification of the two Zones
called for the investment of British and American capital to help put German
industry on its feet. It sounded a lot like what happened after the last war.
By the end of 1945, the weakened Roosevelt forces were hardly able to muster
any opposition to the new policy in the defense of Potsdam and of our
original objectives. Every sphere of the occupation was affected by the new
philosophy our political preferences, our political and economic
appointments, our attitude toward the trade unions, toward the universities,
our approach to denazification, etc. The developments from Aachen through
Munich, the stifling of the anti-Nazi movement and the support of the
unreliable "conservatives" could 'now be seen in a new perspective. It was no
longer a question of "mistakes" or of sheer incompetence what happened now
all seemed purposeful. As in the entire American foreign policy, in the
occupation policy in Germany, there had been a steady struggle to undermine
our victory. This struggle had apparently been successful.
The change in the grand policy manifested itself directly in the attitudes of
our occupation personnel. At first our troops had been examples of dynamic
democracy. Even the vicious Nazis were startled by our "strange" army, where
enlisted men spoke their minds to their officers, nobody snapped to attention
like an automaton, where men were allowed to play baseball and take
afternoons off instead of having to polish boots and run errands for
officers. The anti-Nazis were pleased with this army of civilians. We were a
model for the other Germans. Fellows used to talk about showing the Germans
how the Americans do things the democratic way. But as the occupation
changed, the Army changed. It became a police force preserving order with few
idealistic objectives. Anti-Nazis began to complain that our men were
disinterested in the occupation, corrupt, undisciplined and dangerous.
In the occupation divisions the change was equally apparent. By the end of
1945, most of the fellows who had determined to carry out the President's
policies had returned home. Those of them who remained were demoralized. An
occupation concerned with the rehabilitation of German industry required
industrial and financial experts and some officials -to maintain general
supervision of the population; confirmed anti-fascism was no longer a
prerequisite and was sometimes even "superfluous." And what happened almost
imperceptibly at first and then undeniably as the anti-fascist orientation
-of the occupation disappeared and the business purpose of the occupation
became predominant was that we became an "India Service" poobah Sahibs -,
masters of a conquered people, rulers of an occupied colonial state. Little
people from the States haughtily ordered German mayors and governors to
appear before them, delivered speeches on democracy, received homage and
presents. They were ever conscious of their "superiority" to the "natives."
And what if the troops of the occupying power were ill-disciplined? What if
they did rape and steal and beat people up we were the conquerors. Just too
damn' bad for the Germans.
Like India Service personnel, in the midst of ruins and near-starvation, we
lived well. We requisitioned the best houses, whole buildings for individual
small detachments of families, while the "natives" lived three and four to a
room. While the 49 natives" had to live on potatoes and cabbage on 1200
calories a day we wined and dined as we had never done at home, managing to
get along on 4,000 calories. There was a full breakfast at 8:30, snack bar at
10:30, lunch at 12:30, snack bar at 4:00, dinner at 6:30, the bar at 8:00,
snack bar again at 10:00. These rations were supplemented, of course, by a
daily candy bar from the PX.
Evenings we went to the bar and drank scotch and rum and champagne and talked
shop India service colonels. Every evening Saturdays we had dances or
private parties and got drunk and had sex. What was there to do?
We were the conquerors. Like conquerors, we affected fancy uniforms and fancy
leather boots, made to order for cigarettes, though our Quartermaster stores
were stocked with all varieties of the finest clothing in the world. Rich
from ourtribute, with our cigarettes we enjoyed the leathergoods of
Offenbach, the silver ornaments of Stuttgart, the finest china of Dresden.
For bars of candy we had our women, the most beautiful women in Germany we
had at our price.
And there were servants to minister to our every need to do our laundry, to
prepare our meals, to act as bartenders, to serve us breakfast in our rooms,
to change our razor blades every morning. And for a few packs of cigarettes,
we had music with our meals.
And on the streets before the opera, groups of Germans gathered, ready to
fight each other for our cigarette butts. Officers and American civilians
would laugh among themselves at the fawning of the Hausfrau, when they gave
her a couple of bars of candy for her children evil-tasting nickel candy
Americans used only for trading or tips, anyway.
The stultifying atmosphere of much drinking, much sex, where we treated all
Germans as "krauts" the colonial India atmosphere was not an atmosphere
inspiring healthy, dynamic leadership toward democratic regeneration. It was~
demoralizing to those of us who had experienced the war and the victory in
Germany. No, we didn't belong in the occupation anywhere. We had not come to
develop an area for the, investment of American and British capital. That had
not been among our original objectives. No GI had thought of fighting for
that purpose.
pps. 95-124
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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