In some cases the GIs mistreated the civilian population, and they engaged in widespread looting, especially of wine, jewellery, and Nazi memorabilia. Combat veterans insist that the worst of this was carried out by replacements who had arrived too late to see any action. Overall, it is a simple fact to state that the American and British occupying armies, in comparison to other conquering armies in World War II, acted correctly and honourably.
So the Germans in areas occupied by the Americans were lucky, and they knew it. Thus the theme of German-American relations in the first week of April, 1945, was harmony.
CORPORAL ROGER Foehringer was in the 106th Division and had been captured along with four buddies. On Easter Sunday their guards began marching them east, to flee the oncoming American army. Foehringer and his men dropped out of the line, hid in a wood, and thus escaped. They started moving west. Near the village of Versbach someone shot at them. They ran. Up on a hill they saw two elderly gentlemen waving their arms, motioning for the GIs to come their way. They did. The Germans showed them a cave and indicated they should stay put. They spent the night. They could hear and see the German army heading east.
In the morning, Foehringer related, “two young boys came into the cave and brought with them black bread, lard and ersatz coffee. Hot!!! We couldn’t communicate with them, but they let us know we should stay put. Late in the afternoon of the 6th, the boys came running up to the cave yelling, ‘Die Amerikaner kommen! Die Amerikaner kommen!’ So we and the boys raced down the hill towards Versbach. The whole little village was surrounding a jeep in the centre of the square and on top of the hood of the jeep was an American sergeant waving a .45 around in the air.”
The sergeant was a mechanic with a tank destroyer outfit from the rear who had got to drinking and decided he was going to the front to see what it was like. So he stole a jeep and took off. He had no idea where he was and hoped Foehringer did. For his part, Foehringer wanted to thank those who had helped him. “Every jeep in the world had a foot locker with all kinds of stuff,” he remembered. “Candy bars, rations, bandages and medical supplies. So we opened the foot locker and threw everything to the people.” Then all five GIs scrambled onto the jeep. “There wasn’t much to us,” Foehringer explained. “I was down to 100 pounds, so were the others. So we were only about 500 pounds.”
The sergeant drove west, towards Wtirzburg. Foehringer saw “burning German half tracks, tanks, trucks, dead soldiers lying alongside the road, but no sign of troops.” Near Wurzburg they came into the lines of the 42nd Division, safe and sound.
Thirty years later Foehringer, with his family, returned to Versbach. He had never gotten the names of the boys who helped him, but through inquiry he got the names of two brothers of about the right age. He went to one brother’s home and was greeted by the frau, who took one look and yelled back at her husband, “Mem Gott, it’s the American!” He came running. The two men recognized each other immediately and embraced. The other brother was summoned. The families celebrated. Foehringer hosted a grand dinner at the local restaurant.
ON EASTER Sunday, Twenty-first Army Group and Twelfth Army Group linked up near Paderborn, completing the encirclement of the Ruhr. Some 400,000 German soldiers were trapped, while Eisenhower was free to send his armies wherever he chose.
Montgomery wanted to drive on to Berlin. Hodges wanted Berlin, as did Simpson, Patton, and Churchill. But Bradley didn’t and neither did Eisenhower. Partly their reason was political. At the Yalta conference the Big Three had agreed to divide Germany into zones of occupation, and Berlin into sectors. If Simpson’s Ninth or Hodges’s First Army fought its way on to Berlin, they would be taking territory that would have to be turned over to the Soviet occupation forces. Eisenhower asked Bradley for an estimate on the cost of taking the city. About 100,000 casualties, Bradley replied, “a pretty stiff price to pay for a prestige objective, especially when we’ve got to fall back and let the other fellow take over.”