MUNICH DURING AND AFTER THE ALLIED AIR WAR, 1939 TO 1948 By Thomas J. Arnold

269 Pages·2012·2.07 MB·English

by  Tom Arnold

A CITY AMPUTATED, A COMMUNITY REGENERATED:
MUNICH DURING AND AFTER
THE ALLIED AIR WAR, 1939 TO 1948

By

Thomas J. Arnold

Submitted to the graduate degree program in History
and the Graduate Faculty in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

_________________________________

Chairperson Dr. Karl Brooks

_________________________________

Dr. Donald Worster

_________________________________

Dr. Nathan Wood

_________________________________

Dr. Roberta Pergher

_________________________________

Dr. Frank Baron

Date Defended: April 11, 2012
The Dissertation Committee for Thomas J. Arnold
certifies that this is the approved version
of the following dissertation:

A CITY AMPUTATED, A COMMUNITY REGENERATED:
MUNICH DURING AND AFTER
THE ALLIED AIR WAR, 1939 TO 1948

_________________________________

Chairperson Dr. Karl Brooks

Date Approved: April 11, 2012

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Abstract

Cities do not exist in isolation. They sum up a complex web of connections
between people and natural resources, knit together by transport systems. Cities are
also connected to other cities, regions, and countries. Like an organism cut off from
its food, a city amputated from its vital connections to natural resources--food and
fuel--can suffer and even die. This study argues these connections and the transport
system that bind them together make a city work. Warfare, especially strategic
bombing, disrupts these connections, having huge impacts on citizens’ lives.
Urbanites are forced to confront their dependence on natural resources and
vulnerability to natural forces such as weather. The subject of this study, Munich,
experienced these changes both during and after WWII. Between 1939 and 1948, the
city descended from thriving cultural metropole to isolated, burned-out wreck, then
slowly rallied to become a city on the mend. This study analyzes how wartime
bombing and postwar occupation policies damaged and often completely severed
Munich’s connections to coal, electricity, and food. It uses eyewitness accounts and
memoirs to analyze the impacts of these changes in peoples’ lives. It combines the
ideas and insights of military, urban, and environmental history. By analyzing war’s
strike against a city’s connections, we better appreciate warfare’s place in the
perennial relationship linking humans to nature.

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Acknowledgements

In pursuing this study, I have had the pleasure of making my own connections
to invaluable sources and people. Without them I could not have completed this
project. They provided inspiration, information, or consolation, sometimes all three.
For inspiration and information, the list of people to thank is long. I received
invaluable assistance from the talented faculty at the University of Kansas. I could not
have done this without my excellent dissertation committee. I owe a debt of gratitude
to my adviser, Karl Brooks, who stayed with me even after taking a job off campus
and leaned on me when necessary. I have been privileged to access Donald Worster’s
years of wisdom and good humor. Nathan Wood nurtured my teaching skills and
interest in urban history. Roberta Pergher and Frank Baron offered valuable feedback
and shared their knowledge of German history. I would also like to thank Bill Tsutsui
and Ted Wilson for helping me to see that military and environmental history could
be combined.
For information, I have benefited from the efforts of the staffs of the Munich
City Archive, U.S. National Archives, Library of Congress, the National Archives of
the UK, and the Royal Air Force Museum. I extend a special “Danke Schön” to the
faculty and staff of the University of Erlangen, my base of research in Germany. Dr.
Werner Bätzing helped me narrow the focus of my work. Dr. Andreas Weber gave
me a priceless opportunity by introducing me to his parents, Franz and Harriet Weber,
whom I interviewed for this project. Through Dr. Weber I also met and interviewed
Theo Rosendorfer and Helmut Dotterweich. I thank all four of them for sharing their
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stories with me. I would also like to thank Frank Uekötter and the staff of the
Deutsches Museum in Munich for offering help and a place to stay.
For inspiration and consolation I offer heartfelt thanks to my family,
especially my Dad, Jim Arnold, who passed on his love of history to me. He and his
wife Sheryl have unceasingly supported my decision to leave sunny San Diego,
California for the wild and windy plains of Kansas. Her daughters, Lauren and
Melanie Bullock, have cheered me on and cheered me up when things got tough. Her
mother, Thyra Fellows, who passed away last year at the age of 101, was always
interested in my work and inspired me to keep going. My brother Jim and his wife
Whitney have provided me with loving support through countless gourmet home-
cooked meals and time with their menagerie of pets. My nieces Claire and Julia have
made me laugh and reminded me why I became an educator. I could not have done
this without the inspiration of my former supervisor at the City of San Diego, Linda
Giannelli Pratt. She convinced me to follow my heart, leaving a steady, well-paying
job for the madcap uncertainty of academic life.
Finally I want to thank all of the friends, too numerous to list, who have
supported me in this effort. You read my work, listened to me, offered advice and let
me play with your dogs. Most of all you helped me persevere and inspired me to
move forward. Thanks.

v
Dedication

To
Claire and Julia

I finished my “book”!

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Table of Contents

Abstract iii

Acknowledgements iv

Dedication vi

List of Abbreviations viii

List of Tables and Illustrations ix

Chapter 1 1
Cities, War, and Connections to Natural Resources

Chapter 2 28
Breaking the Connections: Interwar Bombing Theory
and Urban Environmental History

Chapter 3 60
Munich: the “Middle City”

Chapter 4 82
Munich Under Attack

Chapter 5 112
Occupation Year One: Starting Over

Chapter 6 152
Occupation Year Two: Cold and Hunger

Chapter 7 191
Occupation Year Three: From Despair to Hope

Conclusion 238

Bibliography 250

vi i
List of Abbreviations

US Military

MG: Military Government

MGO: Military Government Officer. Commander of a local MG

OMGBY: Office of Military Government, Bavaria. Commanded all US Forces in
Bavaria

OMGUS: Office of Military Government, US. Commanded all US Forces in
Germany

Newspapers

MNN: Münchner Neueste Nachrichten

MS: Münchener Stadtanzeiger

SZ: Süddeutsche Zeitung

VB: Völkischer Beobachter

vi ii
List of Tables and Illustrations

Table 1: Coal Imports to Munich in 1940 65

Figure 1: Map: Munich’s Connections to Coal Before the War 66

Figure 2: “Kohlenklau” from VB December 20, 1942 90
Figure 3: Newspaper Clipping: “Save Gas and Electricity!” 91

Figure 4: Newspaper Clipping: “Save Water-It saves electricity and coal!” 96
Figure 5: Cartoon: “Der Stammfahrer” 128
Figure 6: Cartoon: “Where are we going, Uncle?” 236

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Chapter 1

Cities, War, and
Connections to Natural Resources

On June 28, 1948, a train arrived in Munich from Italy. It carried no famous
leaders or returning exiles. Its forty boxcars contained neither new currency nor
recovered artworks, just tomatoes and plums. Its arrival, nothing special in 1939, was
much anticipated and highly symbolic in 1948. These fruits, so scarce in the first
postwar years, were the first delivery of food to Munich paid for by the Marshall
Plan. Future Plan trains brought money, materials, and fuel to a city that had suffered
much over the past nine years. During the war bombs shattered and burned Munich.
After the war a record cold winter froze the city, and a serious drought desiccated it.
The train was both a tangible means of reconnecting Munich with the rest of Europe
and symbol of hope for the future. It was one small fiber in the new connection
between Munich and American food, fuel, and financial resources. American grain
would replace the grain that no longer came from Germany’s Soviet-occupied eastern
provinces. American coal would ease Munich’s dependence on coal from the Ruhr.
These distant coal and food resources forged just two of the many connections
to natural resources, both foreign and domestic, that Munich needed to function.
Connections to natural resources for cities like Munich explained why an ordinary
event, the arrival of a train, became extraordinary in a city that was a major rail hub.
Connections were vital, indeed indispensable, because Munich, like other cities, did
not exist in isolation. Munich summed up a complex web of connections between
itself and other cities, regions, and countries. Railroads and other transport arteries--
1