http://www.questia.com/popularSearches/ ... ermany.jsp
Thre is also some information at the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum
http://www.trumanlibrary.org
specifically regarding the Marshall Plan
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlesto ... rshall.htm
and the Berlin Airlift:
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlesto ... irlift.htm
plus Student Research Files on the following subjects:
President Truman at the Potsdam Conference, July 17-August 2, 1945.
United States Policy in Occupied Germany After World War II.
The Plight of Displaced Persons in Europe Following World War II.
US National Archives:
Records of the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany [USHCG]
(Record Group 466)
1944-55
2,425 cu. ft.
Link
There’s a good online document (here on the US Army’s "Center For Military History" site but also mirrored on "Global Security" site as well called
"THE U.S. ARMY IN THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY
1944-1946"
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/Occ-GY/
check out this url below, Chapter 16, for a discussion of the Axis troops in postwar era
http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/wwii/O ... h16.htm#b5
I also wanted to add the following excerpt to counter the notion common on this thread that the "victors wrote the history books"Food was the problem. Registered prisoners of war were entitled to 2,000 calories a day, and working prisoners, 2,900 calories. The disarmed enemy troops could be given the normal German consumer's ration; therefore, SHAEF had intended to transfer all German troops inside Germany to disarmed enemy status after the surrender, but the legality of this move was in doubt at least until after the Berlin Declaration was signed.62
According to the ECLIPSE plan, the disarmed enemy troops were to be fed, like the DPs, from German sources; but while the DPs were scattered in groups of thousands and could theoretically live off the local economies, the troops were concentrated, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands. On 16 May, Bradley cabled Eisenhower that the Wehrmacht stocks the Seventh Army had been using to feed its disarmed enemy troops would run out that day. In another four days
Seventh Army would have used up all it could get from civilian sources in its area. The other armies could not help because they were in much the same position. "These disarmed forces," he maintained, "will either have to be fed or released." He asked for immediate authority to discharge the disarmed enemy forces and for US Army or military government rations to feed them until the discharge could be completed.63
SHAEF could not authorize a "blanket release" of German forces, Eisenhower replied, because their discharge had to be "strictly controlled in order to prevent widespread disorder, or other conditions which military government agencies will be unable to cope with"; the release of the categories already approved (see below) would "tax the administrative machinery for a considerable time . . . . Until such time as indigenous resources can meet the needs," he concluded, 12th Army Group could use imported military government food for the disarmed forces. Preferably it should use the imported food for feeding the DPs, and the indigenous food could thus be saved for feeding the German troops.64 Imported food, however, was not a real solution either. Brig. Gen. Robert M. Littlejohn, Chief Quartermaster, Communications Zone, pointed out that there was a food shortage in the United States and in the theater. Including the prisoners of war, his ration strength was over 7 million, and he was having to reduce the rations of US officers and enlisted men by ten percent to meet it. Moreover, the War Department had made no provision for clothing and camp equipment for the prisoners. Littlejohn recommended "settling down to 500,000 in three months." 65
SHAEF issued three disbandment directives in May. Disbandment Directive No. 1 authorized the release of agricultural workers, coal miners, transportation workers, and others in key occupations. No. 2 authorized the discharge of women, and No. 3 of men over fifty years of age. Directive No. 4, put out in early June, released the Belgians, French, and Dutch who had served in the Wehrmacht to their governments.66
A G-1 inspection in early June revealed, however, that the attitude of the armies was "to discharge as many as possible as fast as possible without a great deal of attention to categoriesThe average rate for 12th Army Group was 30,000 a day; Third Army alone had released over a half million disarmed enemy troops by 8 June. The armies were working against time. Unless the British accepted the prisoners and troops due on their account or unless a large number were released, the rations, according to G-5 estimates, would run out within the month.67 ."
The discharge procedure was simple and generally similar to that devised by CCA of 12th Armored Division under Brig. Gen. Riley F. Ennis, which got the job of disbanding the 82,000 troops sent by the British with the horses from Austria. The separation center was an old cavalry school. The men lined up in the stable compound. On entering the building, they removed their shirts and raised their arms to be inspected for the SS blood-type tattoo. (SS men were held either as prisoners of war or, if they had enough rank, under automatic arrest.) After they were inspected, German doctors gave them superficial physical examinations and separated any who were obviously sick. Next, the men filled out counterintelligence questionnaires and were interviewed briefly to determine whether they were subject to automatic arrest or had technical skills of intelligence interest. Those who fell into neither category were given slips stamped with a "B" and could be discharged. Those with an "A" slip were put under automatic arrest when they reached the end of the line. With a "C" they were held as prisoners of war. The next step was to fill out the so-called P-4 form, on which the soldier was required to give his name, the names of his close relatives, and his place of residence. After completing the form, he turned his Soldbuch (pay book) over to a German clerk and received a discharge form and instructions on how to act. If he was going to a place in the Seventh Army area, he was also given half a loaf of black bread and about a pound of lard, his rations for the trip, and could leave the stable to wait for a truck to take him home. CCA had five truck companies working day and night hauling those discharged. If his destination was outside the army area, the soldier went to one of several small temporary camps to await transportation. Outside the center, CCA set up sixty guard posts to block all roads and paths leading in, less to keep those inside in than to keep others out. Upon learning of the center's existence, German soldiers who had deserted late in the war or had been captured and turned loose by US troops tried to infiltrate the center to get themselves officially discharged.68
On 29 June, SHAEF G-1 sanctioned what the armies were already doing and in Disbandment Directive No.5 authorized a general discharge of German nationals held as prisoners of war and disarmed enemy troops, excepting those in automatic arrest categories, SS men, war criminals, or residents of the Russian zone. The last group would have to be held until the Soviet authorities agreed to receive them.69
From then on, the separation centers ran at full tilt until the middle of August when the glut of prisoners seemed about to become a shortage. SHAEF had contracted in July to provide 1.3 million prisoners for labor in France and smaller numbers for Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg; and the US forces were using over half a million in Military Labor Service Units. For the next several months, the numbers on hand plus the contingents to be returned from the United States (370,000) and from Norway and Italy were just about enough to meet the commitments.70
After the summer's rush was over, the presence of prisoners of war threatened to become a permanent feature of the occupation. For the US forces, they were a useful source of labor as well as a willing one, since they were better fed than they would be on the outside;furthermore, no matter how many disbandment directives were published (the last, No. 26, was issued on 29 November 1945) , there seemed always to be thousands of ineligibles: the sick and disabled, war crimes suspects, SS men, who might be charged as members of a criminal organization, and members of the General Staff.
The future of the General Staff officers and generals was going to be substantially different from the one G-2 proposed for them, which in fact never went beyond the talking stage. In Washington, the War Department G-2 Historical Branch, later the Historical Division, War Department, and eventually the Office of the Chief of Military History, needed information on German operations for the war histories it was going to write.
Col. S. L. A. Marshall, chief of the Historical Division, ETOUSA, needed the same kind of information for his division's history of the European theater. In the spring and summer of 1945, however, German military records were only just being uncovered and war crimes and intelligence investigators would have first call on them for a long time. Interviews seemed to offer a useful substitute, and in July 1945, the Historical Branch, G-2, sent Dr. George W. Shuster, President of Hunter College, to Europe at the head of a mission charged with interviewing high-ranking Germans.
The transcripts of eighty interviews that Maj. Kenneth Hechler, a member of the mission, conducted with German officers held at ASHCAN SO impressed Colonel Marshall that he authorized Major Hechler to transfer some key German officers to a prisoner of war enclosure at Versailles, where the theater historians would have a better opportunity to interrogate them. After the theater historical activities were moved to Frankfurt in early 1946, the Historical Division, USFET, took over Disarmed Enemy Forces Enclosure 20 at Allendorf, Hesse.
The division assembled there all of the German generals and General Staff officers in US custody whose personnel records indicated that they would be able to provide information pertinent to the history of US campaigns in western Europe. Later, prisoners with knowledge of the Mediterranean theater and the German campaigns against the Soviet Union were also included. Under the former chief of the General Staff, Generaloberst a. D. Franz Halder, the officers were put to work writing studies for use in the Army historical program and in the training courses at service schools. After nearly all were released from prisoner of war status in July 1947,