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 ii 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. iii 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 iv 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”! vi 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 vii 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 viii 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 ix 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 roads, rivers, airways--connected Munich’s human population to the vital natural resources that keep them fed, clothed and sheltered. Munich’s resources, even those located far from the city, kept its occupants safe, warm and protected from the effects of weather and other natural forces. Like an organism that suffers, cut off from its food supply, so does a city wither, when war cuts its precious connections to food, fuel, and power. In Munich, Allied strategic bombing, in particular between 1943 and 1945, followed by the actions of the American occupiers after April 1945, amputated and then regenerated its connections to natural resources, other cities, and other countries. Destruction and renewal significantly shaped the lives of Munich’s people. Especially influential was coal, which came mostly from outside Bavaria. Coal made everyday life in the city possible. It provided heat, electricity, gas, and fuel for cooking. After the war, nearly severed from its coal, the city had to rebuild this indispensable connection or find new ones to survive. This study argues that connections between humans and natural resources, embodied in the transport system that bound them together, make a city work. By analyzing war’s strike against a city’s connections, we better appreciate warfare’s place in the perennial relationship linking humans to nature.