By May 1945 the Soviet and US leaders had already agreed postwar zones of occupation whereby Saxony and Thuringia would be administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone. However, with the Soviets focusing their military attention on Berlin, it was actually members of the US 97th Infantry Division who liberated Willi Bleicher in the frontier region between Germany and Czechoslovakia. He managed to escape from a prisoner of war detention camp near Eger and return, first to Buchenwald, where he recovered his identity papers, and then to Stuttgart over several stages, one of which involved "jumping" a train. The journey provided his first chance to witness with his own eyes the devastation which the Nazis had left behind them. He reached Stuttgart in June 1945. The city was destroyed, with many of its inhabitants having escaped into the surrounding countryside. Approximately five million cubic meters of rubble covered the streets and squares. However, the psychological devastation was harder to bear than the physical destruction, and not just in Stuttgart.