CHAPTER FIVE: BERLIN 1946-1948
In August 1946, Cecil was transferred to Berlin. As he recalled:

I began to find a house for us all to live in; dependents began to come to Berlin. There I was attached to OMGUS, the Office of Military Government United States. I no longer had to operate an Information Center; I was in charge of the central office and communicated with the Länder (states) which had a certain autonomy: Wiesbaden, that ran the center at Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, and Berlin. . . .

Our first house was a bit old and crummy, but we liked to be together again!

Edith later wrote:

The last days of August, he met us and brought us to Frankfurt. Meanwhile he had been transferred to Berlin. When the other bachelors who had shared with him his bachelor quarters at 14 Hundinger Str., Zehlendorf [a neighborhood in Berlin] left, he was given permission to keep the house, and thus we were finally able to come to Berlin. We arrived there around the 1st of Sept.

The City and Its People
Before 1945, Berlin had been a great city with numerous government offices, stores, and apartment complexes, and a major center of industry. When Cecil and Edith arrived, its buildings lay in ruins and its factories destroyed by the bombing and by the Russians artillery. Historian Douglas Botting describes the causes of the devastation:

The British and Americans had dropped 75,000 tons of high explosive on the city and over a million Russians had blasted their way through it from every direction. Before the war there had been 1,600,000 homes, apartments and hotel rooms, now there were only 400,000 left intact––for a population that still numbered in the region of 3,000,000 and was increasing by 25,000 to 30,000 a day as refugees continued to tramp in on the westward flight from the Russians (Douglas Botting, From the Ruins of the Reich: Germany 1945-1949 (New York: Crown, 1985), p 128).

In December 1946, a year and a half after the German surrender, Edith described Berlin in a letter to Cecil's mother and sister:

I cannot get used to the desolation of those miles of bombed houses all throughout this enormous city. Where we live it is comparatively not so bad, many houses are still standing, although practically none have been left untouched. But as one advances toward the center of the city, there is almost nothing but ruins. Can you picture in your mind NYC completely wiped out from the Bowery up to 59th St including all the Avenues east and west? And all the residence sections, the Bronx, Brooklyn etc. 3/4 gone? Yet millions of people still live here, crowded together or in cellars. Plays, operas, concerts are very numerous, given in partly demolished buildings. The school situation is desperate: 75 children to a teacher, 58 average teacher's age, one textbook for 6 children etc. And in January 1947, during a particularly bitter cold winter, Edith wrote: And then this great misery, so aggravated by the cold. In all the German houses, the water, if the meter is not turned off, is frozen in the pipes, because, as you can imagine, there is no central heating. Imagine what hygiene that produces! And since so much housing has been destroyed, and as the houses that remained relatively undamaged have been largely requisitioned by the occupation authorities, entire families live in one room, and many in cellars or among the ruins. . . .

Two children (brother & sister) with baskets picking up pieces of coal fallen on sidewalk & under truck which was delivering coal to house next door. Happy to have filled their basket.

Well dressed gentleman picking up coal lying on sidewalk near our house. Women pulling carts w. potatoes or firewood & carrying knapsack on back with firewood.

The crowds in S-Bahn [commuter rail] or U-Bahn [subway] at all hours of the day. The complaining women (I'm hungry too!) The children crying for being crowded and pushed.

A month later, Edith described the city to her Belgian friend Denise:

First of all, these ruins everywhere, around us, this indescribable destruction of an enormous metropolis. Of the main arteries, churches, monuments, there is almost nothing left. Imagine Paris without the Champs Élysées, without the Grands Boulevards, Notre- Dame, the Madeleine, the Louvre, all the department stores, the large cafés, everything destroyed, disappeared, and the city itself with three-quarters of the residential houses wiped out. Where we live, in Dahlem, which is on the outskirts, the destruction is much less great, but despite this there is not a single house that has not been affected and many are in ruins. There is not a house in Berlin that does not have cardboard or boards for windows. Even here at home our interior windows are fitted with cardboard — and the Americans have, as you might imagine, the best houses.

Nine months later, she wrote to her mother:

The situation here is no better than last year. In Berlin at least they hardly rebuild, they don't clear the ruins either. They pile the bricks into regular piles, they put the rusted and twisted scrap metal that comes from demolished houses (pipes, radiators, etc.) into more or less symmetrical piles, and that's it.

Yet the situation in the Soviet Zone was ominous in a different way:

In the American Zone we are told that conditions are catastrophic in the Russian sector and that nobody wants to go back into it. Meantime, correspondents report better conditions on the Russian side. Thousands have been repatriated. From gossip originating in the Russian Zone, we learn that things are catastrophic in the American Zone. What is true?

1. The Russians are moving machinery out of Germany fast.
2. Industrial production is getting on its feet faster in the Russian Zone.
3. "Most" of the industrial production is being carted off to the Soviet Union.
4. People are having to put up with a lot of totalitarianism including being told to join the Party to hold cultural jobs.
5. Private transport means are very scarce in the Russian and French Zones.
6. Little Nazi Party members are being herded into the Socialist Unity Party which has taken the place of the Communist Party in the Russian Zone. People with bourgeois-liberal tendencies are persona non grata.
7. Slogans, name calling and clichés characterize the mental mold into which German thought under Russian domination runs.

The Food Crisis in Berlin
Making things much worse was the shortage of food that we saw in the last chapter. In 1945, the Red Army cut Berlin off from the food-producing regions of eastern Germany. Not until July was the rail line to the west repaired; even then, food shortages in western Germany left little for Berlin.

In response to the shortage, the Allies imposed rationing. Douglas Botting writes: "In July the daily civilian ration was 800 calories––a ration scale which could not sustain life and was indeed worse than that of Nazi concentration camps." There were five levels of ration cards. Cards for those who did heavy manual labor varied from 1,700 to 2,500 calories a day. The unemployed and housewives––over a million people––were entitled to 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day; theirs were called "Death Cards." In comparison, Nazis held in internment camps pending investigation received 2,200 calories a day, civilians in Britain got 2,800 calories, and American G.I.s––the best fed people in all of Europe––got 4,200 calories a day.

Faced with a lack of food obtained from official channels, Berliners improvised wherever they could. They scoured the parks for acorns and dandelions; some even ate grass. According to Botting, "They sowed vegetables over every inch of their gardens and allotments. The women slept with the Occupation soldiers in return for candy, chocolate and cigarettes. . ." (Botting, 130-36)

Edith wrote:

"So many women of the better classes do house cleaning in order to have a little more black bread, a few more potatoes." And especially, they bartered for food. As Edith wrote to her mother in September 1947:

People live on the black market and by barter. Everywhere there are posters offering this in exchange for that. For example:

"Silver mechanical pencil to exchange for 100 gr. of coffee"
"Fountain pen . . . for 125 gr. of coffee"'
"So many kilos of potatoes for so much bread."
"A bottle of vinegar for sewing thread."
"If you bring me the skins of six rabbits I will make you an elegant felt hat for a man or a lady."
And wedding offers abound:
"Distinguished lady, cultured, good appearance etc etc. . . looking for a gentleman etc. . . . owning a butcher store, grocery store or restaurant business."
"Young gentleman etc. . . looking for lady with a farm (or restaurant) or food store. . . with a view to marriage."
And so by the hundreds.
Edith's Attitude Toward Germans

When Edith arrived in 1946, she met some Berliners she had known in her student days. On December 14, she wrote to Cecil's mother and Lucy:

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of seeing again an old friend of mine. She was the librarian of the Institute for Foreigners here in Berlin where I studied 16 yrs ago, and she is now the Librarian at the American University here. A short time ago I also saw again Dr. Kartzke who was head of that Institute and whom I greatly liked & admired. He has often been in the past in the US and he teaches American Lit at the Univ. of Berlin. . .

Overall, however, she found the people very changed, as she wrote in January 1947:

Although I came here to Berlin with more of an open mind than most people, having lived here in pre-Nazi days, I find myself liking the Germans less and less as the days go by. Here are some of the reasons: people from whom you would least expect it beg and steal shamelessly. They are lackadaisical in their work. No matter where you go, or whatever you want done, it takes weeks. Any small dressmaker you go to asks from 4 to 5 weeks. The big houses take 3 months for a dress! They claim they can't find good workers. The workers prefer to deal in black market than to work at regular wages fixed by the labor office and on which they have to pay high taxes.

You cannot buy anything but should you take some cigarettes out of your pocket, magically things appear out of nowhere. Cigarettes are the real money. They are used as tips everywhere. Without them you get nothing done.

The Germans I have come in contact with complain bitterly (and of course they are right) of all they have suffered esp. from the Russians when they first came in. But they haven't the slightest notion of what they, the Germans, did to other nations when they invaded them. As John Scott told us one evening: A German woman complained to him that the Russians took away from her the fur coat that her husband had sent her from Norway!

They are very obsequious to the Americans, of course, and very mean toward each other. I have seen numerous examples of it.

The dishonesty, the laziness, these changes in the character of the people seem to me more of a tragedy than the ravaged cities. The widespread demoralization not only here but in other countries as well is one of the most terrible consequences of the war. The Black Market which is in essence an illegal hence a dishonest form of trade has become so entrenched that it has received almost official blessing. It taints the conquerors as well as the conquered.

On January 23, 1947, she wrote to her friend Denise:

As you see, our life is a stark contrast to that of the Germans. But if I can't help but pity them on the one hand, I have even less sympathy for them than I had when I first arrived here. So many of them are so obsequious to us and so cruel to their own; and such beggars and such thieves. They have to be constantly monitored, and there are so many burglaries. It is true that hunger pushes them there, but still. And they complain so much (and they are right because they suffered a lot here during that terrible bombing and during the Russian occupation, and they still suffer a lot) but they don't seem to have the slightest idea that other nations suffered too — and through their fault.

On June 22, Edith wrote to Cecil's mother and sister Lucy:

The Germans have a lot to learn about growing and saving food. For instance, they never eat beet tops or turnip tops. In Switzerland, . . . every inch of soil is used intelligently so that everyone will have enough to eat. During the war, people with lawns were "compelled" to grow vegetables instead. But not the Germans! They must have their lawns and flowers. It's so much easier to let the Americans feed them. The amount of begging here is terrific. They are quite shameless about it. Mothers send their children out to beg "en mass."

Edith was not moved by reports of hunger among Germans. As she wrote to Cecil's mother and sister in July 1947:

The Germans are scared stiff that the Americans will pull out of Berlin and the Russians take over the whole city –– which is of course foolishness. They fear and hate the Russians as the people in the Middle Ages feared the devil. But it never occurs to them that they, the Germans, invaded Russia before the Russians invaded their country, and that they, the Germans, burned and robbed and massacred and destroyed wantonly and mercilessly. What the Russians are taking from them in the guise of reparations will never compensate for all that they have lost.

The Germans here get 500 grammes of bread a day (which is a little more than a lb). The French only get 200 grammes. Even the French here in Berlin as occupying army conquerors, only get 250 grs a day. I know for I have a friend in the French sector of Berlin and she and her family are actually hungry. Yet the Germans will never listen nor believe that there is hunger and want elsewhere. Only they are worthy of pity!

On November 14, 1947, she wrote to her mother The food situation here for Germans is precarious. But it will be better in a few weeks when the new shipments from the US arrive. They are a caterwauling people. They complain and whine and beg all the time. And when we tell them that it has been very cold this winter in other countries too, not just here, or when we tell them that the misery is great in other countries too - in France, for example, they are short of bread –– 200 gr. per day, while here a man receives 500 gr., they turn a deaf ear or pretend not to understand.

And they are far from working as hard as they should to clean up their ruins (they seem to take a perverse pleasure in preserving them to make people feel sorry for them) or to cultivate every piece of garden as the Swiss do. I will never forget the Swiss for that. On the main street in the prettiest holiday resorts like Weggis for example in front of the biggest hotels — everywhere vegetable gardens, even in front of the church, even in cemeteries, along the railway tracks everywhere, but not here!!

Americans in Berlin
For Americans in Berlin, the contrast with the Germans could not have been greater. Upon arriving in Berlin in the summer of 1946, Edith's first task had been to find housing in a city where almost all houses had been destroyed. In June 1947, she looked back on the preceding year:

If you were to ask me what were my strongest impressions about life in Berlin, I would say the long hard bitter winter, and my everlasting house hunting. From the beginning we were told that we would get a better house, that this one was only temporarily assigned to us –– and from then on it has been nothing but promises and postponement. Had they not promised us another, I would somehow have gotten settled in this one. From month to month the Billeting Office changes its tactics. Since April 1st they gave me addresses & let us look at house after house day after day, only to tell me each time that they had given them to someone else. Only day before yesterday, after I wrote them a desperate letter, did they explain to me why I couldn't have any of the houses they had let me look at!

Not only were Cecil and Edith promised housing, they were also told that they would have servants; as Cecil wrote to his mother in August 1946:

Edith and I are going to have a couple of servants, and the only way to keep them happy is to provide them with some of the better things in life, which is everything in the way of clothes, cloth, food. The gratuities mean more than the salaries over here.

In October 1946, Cecil wrote to Edith's family in America:

Edith only has to help with the children and to do the shopping. She has a cook, a housekeeper, and a woman to sew and wash clothes.

Having servants brought its own challenges, however, as Edith wrote to Cecil's mother and Lucy in December 1946:

I have gotten rid of one of my three servants – thank Heavens! Three women in my kitchen was more than I could stand!! And the two who are left and who were here before did not like the third one and neither did I. Now I am my own cook again and I can watch my groceries!

And a month later, when Cecil had gone on a trip with Cedric, she wrote:

Daniel and I have this big 9 room house to ourselves. Two of these rooms we are not using, but still we have to pay $15 a month rent for each. Rent is our big expense here, $105 a month, but it includes fuel and gas, electr. & water. also two servants!! I have already fired two who were robbing my pantry shelves. They were "ladies." They and others work for Americans for what they can get out of them by one means or another. My new cook & laundress who has always been a servant is, I believe, really honest. She knows, from past experience, that she has to be.

Cecil later remembered the houses the family lived in:

The people who helped in the kitchen and took care of the garbage and furnace were an old couple that owned the house. They lived across the street. It is significant that in the French sector of Berlin the house owners moved up into the upper floor of the house and lived with the French family that belonged to the military, the occupiers. They were all European and understood how to make out with each other, but the Americans routed the Germans out of the houses altogether, to avoid friction and to show our power! When spring came we moved to a much nicer & bigger house near a park, and a huge tree shaded the house, so I asked the Army engineers to cut it down and cart it away! The owner of the house raised a big stink; she loved that huge shady tree! But I prevailed and down it came. The sunlight that poured into the house was so pleasant that the woman came over to say that she was glad the tree was taken away!!!

The house the family ended up in was in Dahlem, a suburb of Berlin. In Edith's words: Where we live there is ‘comparatively' little destruction and with all the gardens and flowers, what destruction there is is not so obtrusive. Grass and flowers grow among the rubble, vines bloom on shattered walls.

In a letter to Denise Dierickx in January 1947, Edith wrote about the life of an American family in Berlin in 1946-47:

I'll tell you a little about how we live here. We have a nine-room house, very comfortable, well heated. The furnishings are ugly, but we lack nothing, which is not the case for many other requisitioned houses. Omgus [Office of Military Government, United States] provides us with two servants, a housekeeper and a cook. We don't even have to feed them, because they receive their rations. My housekeeper is the former owner of the house where I live, an old woman of sixty-five years. She and her husband live in a room opposite, and she comes to clean my house every day and she eats in her ex-kitchen. Her husband, who was previously a fairly senior employee in one of the ministries, takes care of the heating and gardening in season. And it is because they were not members of the Nazi party that they were able to obtain this job with the advantages it entails: a fixed salary paid by the German economy (as reparations), workers' ration cards plus an extra meal at the German People's Kitchen, and in addition the possibility of spending the day in a well-heated house (those of the Germans are freezing) and of receiving a little of this or of that to eat and, above all, those precious cigarettes. Woe to those who were formerly members of the party: they cannot be employed by Omgus, the men can do only heavy work, clearing or other labor, and they have only their rations.

In contrast, we can eat whenever we want to at the Officers' Mess, or at home. We get our supplies from the "Commissary" where we get everything, but not always, only from time to time. So sometimes we have to make do with onion powder or dehydrated potatoes, and when we find cabbage or celery we pounce on it, we live almost only on canned goods, especially fruits and vegetables. But we have eggs, butter and fresh milk imported from Denmark, and a lot of refrigerated meat, sometimes of one species, sometimes of another.

Omgus is like a small village where you constantly meet the same faces. At the Mess, at the Post Office, at the Commissary (even the general's wife does her own shopping because German servants are not admitted there and for good reason), at the Club. . . . It's at this club that we go to drink, American style, or to dance. We end up knowing who is the mistress of that one and the lover of Mrs. So-and-so. It's just like in the colonies, I imagine, where the whites form an island in the middle of the native population. . . .

We have buses (Americans on the lower level, Germans on the upper level or behind, like the Negroes in the southern USA). . . . But there are so many wonderful concerts, and so many interesting things at the theater, and the two Operas, all so cheap for us, with reserved seats for allied personnel, that we go out a lot.

Cecil also recalled the corruption that Americans, and their dollars, triggered: The amount and extent of corruption is hard to imagine. For instance, we could change German money into our official scrip, money printed up for the Armed Forces. This latter money was good at post offices to buy money orders in dollars to send to the US. A carton of cigarettes was bringing a thousand marks on the black market, and the mark was worth 25 US cents! So all a person had to do was sell goods from the commissary and PX [Post Exchange or general store] on the black market (there were only mild warnings agains the practice) and send $250 to the US. I have heard that in Berlin alone the amount of money thus salted down in the US exceeded two hundred million dollars.

Then, to prevent some people from converting thousands and thousands of marks into dollars, we were issued currency-exchange books. But a person was allowed to lose his book and claim that he had as much as 700 dollars of dollar-value listed in it –– then he could exchange that much bang, bang!! I have even seen men sheepishly ask Colonel Hill for a new book with $700 in it!

Cecil wrote to his mother in July 1946:

The Americans are spoiled, many are having good times in military vehicles, all are overfed, they drink too much and most of them want to go home. On the whole, however, the Americans are a happy healthy bunch.

And in December 1946, he told her:

There is nothing wrong with this work or with living in Berlin, so we may stay here for years and years.

While Cecil was happy with the family's situation, Edith was chafing at the restrictions. In June 1947, she wrote to her mother:

With us it's always the same thing. You cannot leave Berlin without written permission which takes 3 to 4 days to obtain, and which you are only granted when you have a special reason to travel –– either for work, or if you are undertaking a real trip abroad, say if we want to go to France, etc.

But as for leaving Berlin for the weekend or even for a Sunday, there is no question of it. In winter, we didn't want to, but now we would like to go for a walk in the countryside – but nothing doing: All around Berlin is the Russian zone, and the Russians don't let people go walking around their zone just like that.

Then, even if you wanted to go to another city, say Munich or any other, you not only have to obtain authorization, but you have to know an American family there who is willing to put you up because 1) it is forbidden to go to German hotels (if there are any that are not completely bombed), 2) the only American hotel that there is in each city is for those who travel "on duty orders" for their work.

So, on Sunday we go to Wannsee, and then again to Wannsee and then again to Wannsee. It's a big lake 20 km from our house by bus with a beach. But Sunday 8 days ago it was so hot, (the hottest Sunday in May in 100 years) the beach was like Coney Island. There are boats and canoes, but you have to queue for an hour or more to get them.

Fortunately where we live there is a lot of greenery. Each house has its garden. I'm impatiently waiting for someone to give us a new house (I'm still house-hunting) so I can plant some lettuce and tomatoes in a new garden. As the owner of the house, the husband of our old housekeeper, is the caretaker-gardener, he has naturally cultivated his garden for himself.

Edith had received a letter from her sister Renée asking about traveling to Europe to visit her. This was her response:

Your coming to Berlin – I think this is out of the question, because only "dependents," that is to say women and children, are admitted, or in certain cases the mothers of men if they are "dependent," i.e. live off their son's money. And even for "dependents" it's quite a story as you know. They come at the expense of the Government, in Govt boats, have to wait their turn etc. And they come to join and live with their husbands or sons – no one comes here to visit – as far as I know. . . .

As we live under a military regime, no one moves freely here. Germans cannot travel freely within their own country. They cannot move from one zone to another – not even from one sector of Berlin to another. If they are in the Russian zone, they stay there, etc. And for the Allies it is hardly easier. Everyone stays in their zone. And since Berlin is in the Russian zone, we cannot leave it – even to take a Sunday excursion to the suburbs – without risking being arrested by the Russians. To leave Berlin, you need travel orders indicating the exact location of your stay – and it takes several days to obtain these papers.

France: no one can go and live in France at the moment. The only Americans who go there from here are with these "Special Service Tours" or "American Express Tours" organized exclusively for the Occupation Army and their "dependents". Maximum 8 days, all arrangements made from here – American cuisine at the "Soldiers' Mess" at the Ambassador Hotel in Paris where the Americans eat in a separate dining room and have the ugliest rooms. These "tours" are not expensive: with sightseeing trips by bus, the fare Berlin-Paris and return costs around $90 for the week. Maybe even less. . . . But if you want to travel independently, then it costs an arm and a leg. . . .

Switzerland: However expensive it may be, . . . the prices are less astronomical than in France. . . .
Belgium: It seems that there too, even more than in Switzerland, we can get everything we want now. But it is certainly not cheaper than in Switzerland. The same goes for Denmark, Holland, Czechoslovakia. . . .
If you have your heart set on seeing France again, it would be wiser to wait until next year. . . . But if you want to come this year, knowing Switzerland, I can only recommend it to you. It's the most beautiful country in the world, with the most honest people – God what a difference with those German thieves! – the hardest working, kindest people there are.

The Barter Mart
The Americans could not get all they wanted from the military PX [Post Exchange] or Commissary [supermarket], or had goods shipped over by friends or relatives in the United States. Although ordinary German businesses had collapsed, illicit trades between Germans and Americans soon cropped up. As Cecil recalled:

To bring such exchanges under supervision, the military administration founded what they called the Barter Mart. . . . Mrs. Lucius Clay, wife of the commanding general of OMGUS when we were there, in an effort to stop the black market in coffee and cigarettes, instituted what I would call an artificial black market. What a big deal that was!!! This is the way it worked: Americans in civilian jobs or the military would write to their folks or business connections in the US and get them to send coffee, chocolate, and tobacco to them via the APO –– the US mails. These items they would then take to the "Barter Mart" as it was called and get tickets to indicate their value for items on sale, put there by Germans. We got some coffee and such and went to the B.M. & picked out rugs, beautiful Persian rugs, all still in the family. . . . I got a fur coat, a winter coat lined with beaver fur on the inside, dark wool outside, and a collar.

In one room, Americans could exchange coffee, cigarettes, and other products that the Germans desired for points, while in another room, Germans who had things to sell could exchange them for points that they could use to purchase the American goods. In January 1947, Edith explained the system to her friend Denise Dierickx:

I apologize for not sending you a Christmas card. Our PX did not have any, and we were forbidden to buy them in German stores. As they lack everything, we are not allowed to buy from them, except for a few rare things. Most transactions between Americans and Germans take place at the Barter Mart, through barter. For cigarettes - but only those imported from the USA - or for food also imported from the USA, but not purchased at the PX, one can obtain beautiful Saxon porcelain, silverware, furs, etc., luxury items which the Germans fortunate enough to still have them gradually get rid of in exchange for American cigarettes –– which are the real currency here –– and with which they can buy a little more bread, a little fat, a piece of meat. Cigarettes have become the universal means of tipping. A whole package creates miracles. . . .

I hear from everyone that Brussels is happy and prosperous, but tell me, can one, as a foreigner, buy clothes or fabric there without ration coupons? And how are the prices compared to those in Switzerland, for example? I will soon need to renew my wardrobe a little, and Paris is out of the question because of the fantastic prices. . . . I wonder how things are in Brussels, from this point of view.

In March of that year, Cecil wrote to his family in Kansas:

For purposes of buying an electric train at the Barter Market here in Berlin, we need some coffee. I don't want to burden any of you folks, but if you can still buy those famous Overseas Containers that hold about six pounds of coffee at a time, it would be very nice to have several pounds of green coffee with which to get Barter points. . . . This has real economic advantage. If the coffee, for instance, costs twenty cents a pound delivered here in Berlin, then a Barter point is worth a penny, a new typewriter is worth $3.34. It is all a question of getting the coffee. I'll enclose a note to each of you for a six pound package and let the hundred dollars I sent to mother cover the dollar or so cost to each of you.

We got a few nice pieces of table silver already. I want to get typewriters for the boys while I can, a new vacuum cleaner, and a silver fox fur piece for Doucou [Edith]. In his memoirs, Cecil recalled:

During the occupation of Germany we all traded cigarettes for items on the German Economy. Edith and I had coffee shipped from the US to use on the "Mrs. Clay Black Market" where Edith bought silver and rugs and I got a fur-lined overcoat for my time in retirement!

Elsewhere he wrote:

About the black market: Edith had her eye on a grand piano. I think it must have cost two thousand marks, and the marks were "good" by then. It took quite a few cigarettes (my ration and Edith's), coffee, butter, etc., to pay for it, but we got it and that was our last great drive down the black market road. . . . It was a beautiful and perfect-sounding piano, and Edith got a bit of joy playing it when no one was in the house.

The grand piano in question had belonged to Walter Gieseking, the foremost pianist in Germany, who was blacklisted in the immediate postwar period, but cleared by January 1947 by the American military government.

The Furtwängler-Menuhin Concert

Ruins and hungry people were only part of what Cecil and Edith saw in Berlin. In September 1947, Cecil wrote to his mother : "But in one respect the Germans haven't changed. They have retained their love for music and for good theater. There are concerts galore and many great plays." And Edith wrote to her sister Renée:

And even next Sunday there is a concert conducted by Furtwängler with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist which Germans are not allowed to attend. On the other hand, two days later, the same concert will be given by them which Americans are prohibited from attending. Wilhelm Furtwängler was one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century and principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1922 to 1945. During the Nazi period, he helped Jewish musicians escape Germany, he publicly denounced the Nazis' antisemitism, he refused to give the Hitler salute, and he gave all his fees for concerts outside Germany to German emigrants. Heinrich Himmler wanted to send him to concentration camp, but Joseph Goebbels protected him for propaganda reasons.

In 1947, he invited the British violinist Yehudi Menuhin, a Jew, to perform before the Berlin Philharmonic as a gesture of German-Jewish reconciliation. It may or may not have achieved that goal, but it failed to achieve German-American reconciliation, since that concert had to be given twice, once for Germans and two days later for Americans.

The Turning Point: 1948
By January 1948, the food situation seems to have eased, at least in Cecil's opinion, as he wrote to his mother: "Very, very few Germans suffer from malnourishment. Nothing like Paris during the war, or Tennessee mountains 1783-1883!"

For three years after the defeat, the German economy had stalled:

Then there was the regular plunder of any stores still offering anything worth buying. You see, merchants and manufacturers early started to store away what they produced . . . . and there was little for sale in the stores till the new Deutsche Mark replaced the Reichsmark in 1948 –– then the stores were full of goodies!

On June 18, the British and American military governments in Germany announced the creation of a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, tied to the dollar. The Soviet Union, which had until then considered itself one of the four Allied powers, realized that the western allies were intent on reviving the German economy against its wishes and without its participation. It reacted by stopping all road, rail, and barge traffic between Berlin and western Germany. To rescue the city, the western allies responded by bringing in food, coal, and other essential items by airplanes. The Berlin Airlift marked the beginning of the Cold War.

By then, however, the Headricks were no longer in Berlin, for Cecil had been transferred to Stuttgart in April.