2

FROM OCCUPATION TO 

MUTUAL DEFENSE

Amid the dislocation of the immediate postwar period, the theater chief engineer, Maj. Gen. Cecil R. Moore, organized Army 

engineer services to meet the needs and priorities of the army of 

occupation in Germany. As he adjusted his engineer resources 

to support and sustain the civilian administration of German communities, Moore also had to remain responsive to the challenges that developed as the wartime alliance gave way to the tensions of the Cold War.

The army of occupation in Germany and Austria needed shelter for 

men and equipment; and the engineers had to locate—and then relocate, as new exigencies emerged—headquarters, housing, and real estate 

for both ground troops and aviation units, the latter organized in the 

Army Air Forces. After April 1946 an ever-increasing number of military 

dependents required a different kind of housing and support facilities. 

The German infrastructure and economy were in shambles. Competing 

demands for both material goods and labor, combined with the widespread physical destruction and social dislocation, created scarcities that 

disrupted normal markets and caused persistent problems for the chief 

engineer’s office in managing work and setting priorities. The engineers 

faced only one area of oversupply: Vast quantities of equipment and materiel shipped into the European Theater to support the war remained on 

hand. Disposing of this excess materiel became a major concern for the 

chief engineer’s office through the end of the decade.

Over the three years following Germany’s defeat, the entire atmosphere in Europe changed. In 1948–1949 the engineers had to cope with 

the possibility of an armed conflict when the Soviet Union cut off free 

access to Berlin. This confrontation over Berlin between the Soviet Union 

and the three Western occupying powers posed incredible challenges to 

the engineering ingenuity of the U.S. Army.

All these responsibilities coincided with the tasks that carried over 

from immediate postwar imperatives. At the same time they accentuated 

a new range of engineer activities that marked a transition from concern 
28

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

with occupying a defeated nation to developing a community of interest 

with a potential ally.

Engineer Activities in Occupied Germany

During the early years of the occupation the engineers pursued 

projects to secure and provide adequate housing, office, and operational facilities for the U.S. military—headquarters buildings, command 

schools, hospitals, depots, shops, special installations, bridges, railways, 

highways, utilities, and ports.1 The United States Forces, European 

Theater (USFET) Office of the Chief Engineer coordinated planning for 

these projects. When the occupation began, the U.S. military already 

held more than 50,000 real properties in occupied territory in Germany, 

Czechoslovakia, and Austria, including private houses, apartment buildings, hotels, schools, office buildings, factory buildings, warehouses and 

depots, retail stores, and barracks.2 The largest part of the engineers’ 

work went into rehabilitating buildings that the Army had confiscated 

or requisitioned. New construction accounted for only 1 percent of the 

work in the summer of 1946 and less than 5 percent in the next several 

years.3

Supporting the U.S. Army in Europe

After the war with Japan ended in August 1945, many soldiers—

frequently officers but also the small number of enlisted troops that 

were married—wanted to bring their families to the European Theater. 

Housing in Germany was in a deplorable state. Overcrowding in the U.S. 

zone created continued pressure to requisition more facilities, and the 

military government’s list of requisitioned properties grew during the 

first year of occupation. In Württemberg-Baden, for example, U.S. troops 

occupied 29,394 rooms in November 1945, 42,002 in December, and 43,361 

in January 1946.4

In spring 1946, Headquarters, USFET, decided to allow dependents 

into the theater. The Army began active planning for the change in 

September 1945, when USFET created a board to define “standards for 

accommodations in military communities.” In early October the planning board sent proposed standards to the theater’s major commands 

for review by the commanding generals, who were responsible for housing in their areas. In early December the major commands were directed 

to prepare plans for establishing and maintaining military communities. At the same time, the commanding general of the Theater Service 

Forces, European Theater, was directed to submit technical standards 

to Headquarters, USFET, “for all types of housing and installations, 

including recreational facilities.”5 General Moore proposed setting up 

an Engineer Planning Office “with German engineers, architects and 

draftsmen somewhere outside the Frankfurt enclave.”6 An office such 

as he described evolved within the chief engineer’s office in Frankfurt, 
29

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

where staff officers devised standards for housing and prepared a guide, 

translated into French and German, that both military communities and 

contractors could consult.7

Because inflation had disrupted normal pricing mechanisms, for several years after 1945 the Army measured the value of all work in hours 

of labor. During January 1946 the chief engineer’s office formulated a 

set of general estimates of the amount of work necessary in the theater 

over the next two years. The January 1946 projection called for 92 million 

worker-hours. Seventy-seven percent of the labor and almost 74 percent of 

the spending—but only 24 percent of the supplies—were allocated to the 

establishment of military communities. By late 1946 USFET had selected 

permanent locations for the military communities, which would include 

soldiers, dependents, and an array of service buildings to house commissaries, post exchanges, chapels, and administrative offices. As work on 

the facilities progressed, it accounted for 60 percent of the construction 

program and 47 percent of supplies, almost double the quantity projected 

earlier.8

During the first winter of the occupation the chief engineer’s office set 

out relatively simple rehabilitation plans to prepare facilities for soldiers. 

The American zone contained requisitioned and confiscated barracks 

or casernes that needed only minimal work to bring them to standards 

acceptable to the occupying army.9 Many of these casernes had been built 

before the First World War, and most had been damaged during the recent 

fighting. Still, even with no repair at all, these buildings offered more 

comfort than tents.

The engineers were allowed to rehabilitate barracks only to austere 

standards. The chief engineer’s office planned a first phase to repair facilities so that they would be “somewhat better than the wartime scales of 

accommodations.”10 As work progressed, the plan for rehabilitation foresaw improving accommodations to a level “somewhat less than is allowed 

in comparable posts ... within the continental United States.”11 No one at 

the time imagined that U.S. military personnel would use many of these 

facilities for more than forty years.

Accommodating dependents was more complicated than housing 

troops. Virtually all the apartments and private homes available for confiscation or requisition were in terrible condition as a result of neglect 

and damage during the war. Most facilities required extensive repair 

to be considered livable.12 The program for rehabilitating quarters for 

dependents ran into a delay when the War Department ruled that neither permanent nor temporary construction funds could be devoted to 

housing dependents. In the face of protests from the theater, the War 

Department reconsidered and subsequently ruled that only appropriated 

funds could not be used for dependent housing. Surplus materials and 

money from reparations could be used to repair or to construct housing 

for dependents. Further, in contrast to earlier regulations, materials absolutely essential but not obtainable in the theater could be purchased in the 

United States. The reinterpretation made it possible to proceed. German 
30

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

construction firms performed the work; German civilians, displaced persons, and prisoners of war supplied the labor; and costs and materials 

were charged to the Germans under the occupation budget.

Supporting the Air Forces

The U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) enjoyed the same measure of support 

from the theater chief engineer’s office as the field armies in Germany. 

The AAF had played a significant part in the war and needed appropriate facilities in occupied Germany. It chose as its command center the 

German airfield at Rhine-Main, seven miles southwest of Frankfurt. The 

U.S. troops had captured the field in April 1945 and put it at the disposal 

of an American fighter squadron for the last month of the war. Engineer 

battalions began rebuilding facilities at the airfield almost immediately. 

By midsummer the engineers had completed nearly all of the initial 

work, and by autumn Rhine-Main began operating as a major AAF base. 

Expansion of facilities continued over the next several years.13

The AAF formulated no construction plan for 1946, although U.S. forces retained control of over forty former German air bases and a few active 

bases in France and Britain. Even without major plans, the Office of the 

Chief Engineer, USFET, allocated over 12 million worker-hours of labor to 

AAF projects for the year—13 percent of its total two-year allocation. Fifty 

percent of the work scheduled for the AAF went into facilities at RhineMain, in part because it also opened for limited commercial use in May 

1946. Seven months later a large passenger terminal opened for general 

commercial traffic. The remaining 50 percent of the engineer workload 

for the AAF for 1946 went into projects for housing, facilities, and routine 

maintenance.14

Berlin’s main airport, Tempelhof, also became a locus of Army engineer activity immediately after the war ended. The airport’s design had 

been avant-garde when planned in the mid-1930s, and 80 percent of its 

facilities had been completed by the time construction was suspended in 

1943. Bombing and systematic destruction by the invading forces had left 

it nearly useless. When U.S. forces took control of Tempelhof in July 1945, 

the terminal and field were in shambles and needed immediate attention.

The 473d Air Service Group assessed the damage at Tempelhof and 

immediately set about reconstruction.15 Troops cleared away debris and 

restored utilities. The airfield’s one runway was sod, so the 862d Engineer 

Aviation Battalion began work on a new 6,000-foot runway. Over a base 

of crushed brick taken from the rubble of Berlin, the engineers poured a 

two-inch layer of concrete and then topped the concrete with pierced steel 

planks. When the airfield opened for military use, planes landed on the 

pierced plank runway and took off from the sod strip.16

By 1947 the Army engineers had begun work on other airfields 

in Frankfurt, Giebelstadt, and Munich and on AAF depots in Erding, 

Oberpfoffenhofen, and Roth. Work at Rhine-Main accounted for one-third 

of an estimated 51 million worker-hours that the engineers provided for 
31

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

the AAF in 1947.17 When the U.S. Air Force emerged in September 1947 

as an independent military service, decisions in Washington ordained 

that the Army engineers, not its own engineer component, provide support. The Army engineer units detailed to the Air Force were designated 

Special Category Army with Air Force units.18

Juggling Competing Demands

During the first three years of the occupation, construction supplies 

were never adequate and certain materials were always lacking, particularly electrical fixtures and switches, plumbing supplies, paint, and 

plaster.19 Because the engineers could not supply all essential projects, 

the chief engineer’s office contrived a special category of hot projects that 

received preferential distribution of supplies. The office’s list of hot projects, based on the staff’s judgment of relative importance and on information from construction officers in the field, changed from month to month. 

The definition of hot was, to be sure, unofficial, and frequently at variance 

with the judgment of the using services, each of which tended to consider 

its own projects the most important.20

One of the earliest hot projects was the creation of facilities at RhineMain Air Base for the USFET’s Air Transport Command (ATC) and the 

European Air Transport Service. The ATC began limited service from 

Rhine-Main in May 1946, but construction became more urgent later 

that year when the ATC received orders to relocate from Orly Field 

near Paris to Rhine-Main. The move had a ripple effect, pushing work 

at the neighboring Wiesbaden military community into the hot project 

category, because Wiesbaden became the new headquarters of the ATC. 

The only way to liberate space for the ATC at Wiesbaden was to move 

other units out of that city; each such move provoked another hot project. Similarly, construction in the Frankfurt area became a hot project by 

late 1946 when authorities chose the city as the administrative center for 

the merged British and American zones of occupation, renamed Bizonia. 

The overwhelming wartime devastation in Frankfurt put the city behind 

all other areas in the U.S. zone in providing dependent housing. As 

administrative services expanded, drawing ever more people to the city, 

securing adequate facilities for U.S. military personnel became increasingly difficult.

As a step toward resolving the situation, the chief engineer’s office 

created a liaison team to work with the city’s mayor to adjust space, labor, 

and supplies. Army engineers made supplies available from their stocks 

to speed the rehabilitation. The engineers concentrated labor in Frankfurt 

by transferring labor service companies—third-country nationals paid 

by the Army—from Stuttgart and Nuremberg and German workers from 

projects at Rhine-Main and in Griesheim.21 By 1 January 1947, military 

housing in Frankfurt had first demand on materials. In the first three 

months of 1947 work crews completed 106 housing units—far short of the 

7,000 additional units needed for civilians and officers.22
32

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

The designations of hot projects by the chief engineer’s office illustrate 

that even in late 1946 decisions concerning engineer issues were based on 

immediate need and amid shortages. Expedient solutions displaced coordination. With both operations and project approval decentralized, execution of a coherent construction program remained beyond the reach of the 

chief engineer’s office. As with nearly all construction, the real responsibility for the housing projects lay with the major subordinate commands; 

and they operated more or less independent of the efforts of the chief 

engineer to coordinate planning, procurement, and supply.

Examples abound of uncoordinated solutions to urgent problems. In 

the American military community in Bad Nauheim, north of Frankfurt, 

getting power to the residents superseded concerns about standardization. Direct current and alternating current served the same block of residence units, so the purchasing of appliances could not be standardized. 

Similarly, in the Höchst compound west of Frankfurt, some houses had 

110-volt circuits installed in one room and 220-volt circuits in another. 

When a power failure hit the compound in October 1946, some houses lost 

power while others did not. Some houses lost power on only one floor. 

Col. Robert Fleming, chief of construction in the chief engineer’s office, 

commented in a staff briefing that he “tried to explain to a friend of mine 

why only his second floor lights were out, but I don’t think he yet believes 

me.”23

The tension between the chief engineer’s vast responsibility and his 

very limited authority—he operated through only technical and not 

command channels—constituted a vexing administrative issue. U.S. 

military construction and procurement proceeded on an ad hoc basis, 

command by command, with disturbingly little attention to overall 

theater needs.24 For example, the Third Army’s plans to construct an 

ice rink with a roll-back roof in Garmisch received approval by the 

commander over the objections of the chief engineer’s staff, particularly Cols. Robert Fleming and Louis W. Prentiss, Sr., the deputy chief 

engineer in 1946. The engineer colonels in Third Army gloated publicly 

that they had humiliated their counterparts in Frankfurt. Their arrogance thoroughly angered Fleming. Five years later, he “settled some 

scores.” Fleming had become assistant chief of engineers for military 

operations, and Prentiss headed the Personnel Branch in the Office 

of the Chief of Engineers in Washington. As Fleming remembered, “I 

got General Prentiss to go along—and two careers got ended because 

the two men involved [had been] too stupid to realize that cooperation 

was an asset.”25

Fleming, too, had had problems with unreasonable projects. He had 

“hit the ceiling” upon learning that the engineers had received orders 

to provide the wife of the USFET commander in chief, General Joseph T. 

McNarney, with a cow barn so that she could have fresh milk daily. When 

he calmed down, he reasoned that “a cow barn was a small price to pay” 

for the good will of the four-star theater commander and let the project 

proceed. 26
33

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

Construction Costs

As the occupation continued, money to support the U.S. military presence in Germany became ever scarcer. After four years of war Americans 

were ill disposed to invest in any military needs at all, much less in new 

facilities to house the U.S. Army in Germany. At the end of the war in 

1945, military spending garnered 39.1 percent of the U.S. gross national 

product; by 1948 military spending had fallen to 3.7 percent.27 Politically 

imposed budget constraints meant that troop strength in Germany 

dropped steadily from 342,000 in July 1946, to 135,000 in July 1947, to just 

over 100,000 by the end of 1948. In this climate, resources available to the 

military, and to the Army engineers, declined drastically. In the first quarter of 1947 major and minor construction, already down sharply from wartime levels, required 10 million worker-hours; by the same quarter of 1948 

that figure was down to just under 6 million worker-hours. The reduced 

engineer budget for 1948 imposed “a drastic curtailment of expenditures” 

on both construction and other activities for the year.28

Budgetary concerns led commanders to make penny-wise but poundfoolish decisions. In mid-1946 the theater chief engineer’s office warned 

that the effort to hold down expenses in rehabilitating troop facilities was 

false economy. Commanders were incorporating “less desirable buildings requiring more labor and materials per unit” into their inventory.29

In late 1947 the engineers observed repeatedly that maintenance costs 

had increased because of the “serious deterioration of the facilities constructed during the last two years.”30 Indeed, funds “saved” from the budget through sparse rehabilitation went increasingly toward maintenance 

and repair. By 1 January 1948, maintenance consumed 90 percent of the 

total engineer labor, supplies, and funds. The early decisions during the 

occupation to build cheaply and for the short term haunted the Army for 

decades.31

Another factor increased the European Command’s (EUCOM) expenditures for maintenance: the decision to shift an ever-greater burden 

away from the German government. Because of the escalation of tensions 

between the United States and the Soviet Union, German public opinion 

became more important to American strategists. Accordingly, in 1947 the 

U.S. military began to reduce “as much as possible the financial, manpower, and production burden of the occupation upon the indigenous 

economy.”32 This policy reflected the changing relations between the U.S. 

Army and the German polity developing with the active encouragement 

of the Western Powers in their zones of occupation. As the military sought 

to detach itself from dependence on German payments, it had to assume 

more of the costs of maintenance and repair directly.

Dealing with Excess Materiel

The eminent nineteenth century British historian Thomas Macaulay 

described the essence of war as violence, but in modern times the essence 
34

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

of war has become logistics. In World War II the industrial and logistical 

system developed by the United States created the conditions for victory 

by pumping the materiel of war into the European Theater at a prodigious 

rate. By May 1945 over 5 million tons of war supplies were on hand in 

Europe. Solving the quandary presented by the volume of war materiel no 

longer needed became one of the most difficult and persistent problems 

that the Army engineers faced. Resolving the problem involved four years 

of intense effort.

Immediately after the victory, General Moore’s Office of the Theater 

Chief Engineer received the assignment to clear the liberated countries as 

rapidly as possible of the thousands of tons of war supplies that remained in 

depots behind the advancing combat troops. About 90 percent of the materiel was in depots in rear or intermediate areas (France and Belgium) rather 

than forward in Germany. Moore’s orders were to concentrate these supplies 

in Germany, where the army of occupation could draw upon them.33

The Army engineers began consolidating war supplies by constructing 

new depots and transferring materials to them. Before hostilities ended, 

the Army had established its forward engineer depot in an encampment 

formerly used by German military engineers near the town of Hanau in 

the Frankfurt area. Within months the engineers had added major supply depots in Fürth, Bremen, Mannheim, and Berlin in the U.S. zone in 

Germany and in Linz in Austria. Thirteen supply depots (1 in Britain, 5 in 

Belgium, and 7 in France) remained active throughout the Western Base 

Section.34 As American military involvement in the liberated countries of 

France, Belgium, and the Netherlands decreased, these supplies could be 

transferred to Germany.

The Hanau Depot

To prepare for the influx of materiel from the Western Base Section, 

particularly from France and Belgium in 1946, the chief engineer’s office 

began a substantial program to expand the depot in Hanau. The goal—to 

establish stabilized open storage, closed storage, shops, access roads, utilities, and railroad facilities—created a long catalog of projects: improve 

drainage; provide new latrines, a heating plant, a water system, and a 

supply of potable water for the depot; pave motor pool areas; and build 

rail spurs and related railroad facilities. The engineers also needed to 

build an electrical distribution system and additional warehouse space, 

winterize lubrication racks, put a fire prevention system in place, stabilize 

streets and open areas, and create hardstands for processing and parking vehicles. Cols. Paul D. Berrigan and Robert Fleming, successive heads 

of the Construction Division in the Office of the Theater Chief Engineer, 

supervised the Hanau project from Frankfurt.35

Not only did construction of new facilities fail to keep pace with the 

influx of goods from areas outside Germany, but the arrival of materiel often got in the way of construction. As an additional complication, 

requirements changed in the summer of 1946. Anticipating an increase 
35

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

in the number of displaced persons in the U.S. zone in Germany, officials 

ordered the materials to construct prefabricated huts for 40,000 persons 

from storage areas in Belgium and France. The officials set 1 September 

1946 as the target date for completing the transfer, without realizing that 

facilities for unloading and storage at the existing depots in Germany 

were inadequate to handle the volume of material involved.36

Management of the movement of excess war supplies broke down in 

part because redeployment removed trained engineer personnel. Lack of 

proper controls contributed to pilferage. The engineers did not have personnel in France or Belgium with sufficient experience to select the materials most adaptable to salvage and reuse. When a shipment of 20,000 tons 

of miscellaneous parts for prefabricated huts arrived in Hanau unlabeled 

and unsorted, Colonel Fleming observed that “it would have taken a battalion a year to sort them out” and build the huts.37

By 1 July 1946, inadequate facilities in Hanau left 1,800 railcars waiting to be unloaded. By late summer several hundred barges lined the 

Main River because the depot had insufficient personnel to unload them 

and insufficient facilities to store their cargo. To alleviate the backlog, the 

engineer’s office established temporary construction supply dumps in 

each of the seven major commands and opened a new engineer supply 

depot in Gelnhausen.38 By late 1946 the Hanau depot had become not only 

the storage point for all supplies from the Western Base Section but also 

the main depot for the U.S. zone of occupation in Germany.39 In March 

1947 all engineer supply depots in Germany were officially redesignated 

as subdepots of Hanau.40

Harsh weather during the winter of 1946–1947 brought more difficulties for the overburdened operators of the Hanau depot. To husband limited supplies in the face of the severe cold, they rationed electrical power 

and gasoline, substantially disrupting construction to expand the depot’s 

storage facilities. Pressure on the depot increased when the Mediterranean 

Theater was inactivated in early 1947 and 9,800 long tons of supplies 

moved from Italy to the U.S. zone in Germany. In April, May, and June an 

additional 6,940 long tons of supplies—cement, lumber, and materials for 

electrical and plumbing work—arrived from the Mediterranean Theater.41

Although the Army engineers employed German contractors, construction throughout 1947 at the depot in Hanau remained inadequate 

to accommodate the incoming supplies. In Giessen, the Army built 

500,000 square feet of new covered storage for a quartermaster depot. In 

Griesheim contractors rehabilitated and added to an I. G. Farben Company 

plant and buildings to adapt them as an ordnance depot. Projects at these 

sites included hardstands and rail, road, and other service connections, as 

well as warehouses. In spite of additional facilities, the depots still could 

not absorb all of the materiel arriving in Germany. By the summer of 1947 

the target date for gathering all engineer supplies at the depot in Hanau 

had been pushed back well into 1948.42

Although its facilities and its personnel were both overtaxed, the 

Hanau depot provided a central point of distribution for the amassed 
36

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

materiel. Designating a central distribution point enabled the chief engineer in Frankfurt to manage construction materials more effectively 

throughout the U.S. zone. In early 1947 the chief engineer’s office began 

issuing lists that specified the quantities of each item of reserve stocks 

in Hanau so that engineers and commanders in the communities would 

know what was available in the theater.43 At the same time, depots closed 

in the Western Base Section and supplies left France and Belgium for 

Hanau. Within Germany, as the movement of goods passed its peak, the 

engineer construction dumps in Kassel and Landsberg no longer had 

to provide overflow space; their stocks could be transferred to Hanau. 

By June stocks from Illesheim and Schwandorf were moved to Hanau 

and the facilities at Illesheim passed to the Ordnance Corps for use as a 

vehicle reserve park.44 By September the supply point in Stuttgart was 

empty and supplies from Berlin had also been transferred to Hanau. The 

last shipment from the Mediterranean Theater—3,000 tons—was en route 

from Italy. By March 1948 about 3,190 tons of engineer supplies remained 

to be moved from subdepots to Hanau. Six months later all command 

stocks had been removed from the other subdepots, which were then 

closed, leaving Hanau as the only engineer service depot in the U.S. zone 

in Germany.45

Construction of storage space continued in Hanau. The depot gained 

usable space when in 1948 the Army turned over tens of thousands of tons 

of supplies to a new semipublic German corporation under the program 

called Bulk Transfer of U.S. Army Property.46 As consolidation of supplies 

progressed and the inflow of goods lessened, the command of the Hanau 

depot began to gain control of the materiel in the warehouses. In the final 

quarter of 1948 the Hanau depot undertook an inventory of its entire stock 

of general engineer and spare parts. The chief engineer’s office considered 

this “the biggest step forward that has been made since the depot was 

activated.”47 In January 1949 the Hanau depot passed inspection with a 

rating of excellent, in sharp contrast to its unsatisfactory rating just eleven 

months earlier.48

Fleming remembered the situation at the Hanau depot as “the 

biggest single problem” that the engineers faced in the years immediately after the war. The evolution of the Hanau depot illustrates several aspects of the immediate postwar years. The engineers had to fulfill 

assignments with limited resources and insufficient time to plan. To 

some degree, these limitations led to mistakes, inefficiencies, waste, and 

confusion. In retrospect, Fleming called the hasty consolidation of supplies in Hanau “one of the best examples in our Army of wand-waving 

and wishful thinking.” Despite the problems, a substantial quantity of 

materiel was actually gathered and warehoused in Hanau, and a good 

percentage of it was salvaged and used. By early 1949 the engineers 

could claim some success in Hanau. That success came at personal cost. 

Fleming considered the whole process “a tragedy because several very 

fine officers trying to do a job were harassed to the point that their 

careers were ended.”49
37

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

Repair and Rebuild Program

The Repair and Rebuild program at the Hanau depot offers another 

example of engineer success. In 1947 the 485th Engineer Heavy Shop 

Company (later designated the 507th Engineer Shop Company) was 

attached to the depot. This unit’s mission was to repair and maintain 

mechanical equipment for the Army. Because the quantity of equipment 

needing work was more than the company could handle, the engineers 

turned to the German economy.

In 1947 the Hanau command awarded contracts to eleven German 

firms to repair U.S. military equipment. Arranging the contracts was 

not easy. German industrialists were reluctant to invest their capital, 

and German workers were reluctant to take payment for their labor 

in the worthless German Reichsmark. To overcome these obstacles, 

the depot put up the basic materials required for production out of its 

stocks and made special arrangements with Army agencies to provide 

the workers with one hot meal a day. With these inducements in place, 

three plants opened during the spring of 1947: a Daimler-Benz plant in 

Uhingen-Göppingen, where heavy cranes were rebuilt; the Kaeble plant 

in Backnang, which rebuilt tractors, rollers, and graders; and the FMA 

Porkorny plant in Frankfurt, which rebuilt air compressors. By July 1947 

eight more firms had joined the list of contractors for the Hanau depot’s 

rebuild program: Beinhorne Electrical Shop in Hanau, Sabel & Scheurer 

in Oberursel, Vulcan Diesel in Bremen, Karl Wolfe in Göppingen, another 

Daimler-Benz plant in Stuttgart, Alfred Teves in Frankfurt, Karl Schmitt 

in Fulda, and Fritz Leitz Machine Works in Oberkochen.

For almost a year these eleven plants could not keep up with the 

demand from U.S. military units for rebuilt equipment. By late 1948 the 

Repair and Rebuild program moved ahead of demand, and in the first 

quarter of 1949 it had made so much progress that a Heavy Equipment 

Storage Section had to be opened in Hanau to house and maintain the 

reconditioned equipment until it was requisitioned.50

H. Jace Greene, one of the civilian engineers recruited from the United 

States, became involved in the Repair and Rebuild program early in 

1947. He had arrived in Germany in October 1946 and had first served as 

the operations officer of the 333d Engineers in Rüsselsheim, outside of 

Frankfurt. The following February Greene was reassigned to Stuttgart to 

carry on the work of the 555th Engineers. This new assignment, to supervise reconstruction of five German factories as Army shops to recondition 

jeeps, trucks, and tractors, began what became a thirty-year career for 

Greene with the Army engineers in Germany.51

Over the winter of 1948–1949 the Army reduced the number of service contractors involved in the rebuild program. By that time tremendous quantities of heavy engineering equipment had been salvaged and 

repaired. In 1950 the rebuild plants produced an average of 200 major and 

150 minor items of equipment a day, from rebuilt earthmovers to chainsaws and water pumps for engines. By 1952 the program had produced 
38

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

substantial quantities of such items as tanks, trucks, weapons, jeeps, tractors, cranes, radio equipment, light and heavy construction machinery, 

smoke generators, flamethrowers, and household furniture. The cost of 

the program represented about 30 percent of the replacement value of 

the equipment reconditioned. The German economy benefited through 

increased employment and expanded industrial capacity, important factors in the early phases of Germany’s recovery.52

Reasserting Order and Discipline

A year after the occupation began it was clear that the rapid demobilization of the U.S. Army in Europe, coupled with difficult living conditions and frequent changes in command, had led to a decline in morale 

and discipline among the troops. The U.S. forces in Germany had degenerated into what one of the engineers called “almost an unruly mob” 

and had ceased to exist as an effective tactical fighting force.53 The U.S. 

Constabulary, formed early in 1946 to act as a mobile military police force 

for the U.S. zone, rated only 65 percent on a measure of combat readiness. 

The 1st Infantry Division, the other unit available in event of combat, 

rated just 20 percent.54

In August 1946 Lt. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner, commander of the 1st 

Infantry Division during the war, became chief of staff, USFET, with the 

assignment to reassert discipline and to restore the Army’s tactical readiness.55 By the time Huebner assumed his position in Frankfurt, the sense 

of urgency associated with combat had long since disappeared. The occupation force had assumed a “supervisory rather than operational” role, 

and the challenge had shifted to meeting the duties of the occupation 

with an ever-shrinking troop base and budget.56

At the center of military planning in Washington, the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff recommended and the president approved a reorganization that 

had two objectives. One goal was to reconfigure U.S. forces overseas to a 

structure attuned to peacetime and to the mission of the occupation, with 

a single commander responsible for the operations of all military services 

in each overseas command. A second goal was to unify the armed forces 

under a new Department of Defense (successor to the War and Navy 

Departments) that would command four separate services: the Army, a 

newly independent Air Force, the Navy, and the Marine Corps.57

In Europe, these reforms led to the elimination of the wartime designation “theater” and the reorganization of U.S. forces under the new 

European Command (EUCOM), established in Frankfurt on 15 March 

1947. On 15 November a separate Army command, the U.S. Ground and 

Service Forces, was created and then redesignated as the United States 

Army, Europe (USAREUR).58 General Lucius D. Clay assumed command 

of EUCOM while retaining his position as U.S. military governor in 

Berlin. Huebner remained in Frankfurt as deputy commander in chief for 

Europe and EUCOM’s chief of staff. In early 1948 EUCOM moved its headquarters from Frankfurt to Heidelberg. Clay operated from Berlin until 
39

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

15 May 1949, when he returned to the United States and retired. All of 

Clay’s successors as EUCOM commander in chief resided in Heidelberg.59

As a part of the reorganization in early 1947, the occupied areas of 

Germany and Austria were reorganized. The military districts were divided into military posts and subposts, which became logistical and administrative commands. Post commanders assumed responsibility for training 

and discipline. They also took over from the engineers the responsibility 

for supply. This became a more manageable task after the 1948 economic 

reforms in West Germany, which made procurement from the German 

economy more feasible. Within a year the military districts were eliminated and the sixteen military posts—nine in the German state (Land) of 

Bavaria and seven in the states of Württemberg-Baden and Hesse—became 

major subordinate commands under EUCOM.60 (See Map 4.)

Huebner quickly made his presence known to the engineers in 

Frankfurt. In an attempt to boost morale, someone had ordered the 

Frankfurt district engineer, Col. Howard A. Morris, to convert the rotunda of the I. G. Farben building—a beautifully balanced architectural 

blend of interior and exterior space separated by tremendous two-story 

curved glass windows—into a fully furnished Main Street–style soda 

fountain. The new attraction opened about two weeks before Huebner 

took command. When Huebner arrived, he closed it down immediately 

and began looking for those responsible. Fingers pointed to the engineers, 

so Huebner called in the chief of construction from the chief engineer’s 

office, Colonel Fleming. In truth, Fleming also found the project outrageous, and both he and Morris had unsuccessfully opposed the project as 

frivolous. At his meeting with Huebner, Fleming presented all the memoranda that he had written objecting to the project and orally protested 

against the soda fountain and similar projects, including the skating 

rink and the cow barn. After listening for a few minutes, Huebner asked 

Fleming whether he had other examples of such “unreasonable demands.” 

When Fleming said that he did, Huebner replied, “I want to see them.” 

From that day onward, the extravagant projects stopped.61

On 19 November 1946, Brig. Gen. Don. G. Shingler succeeded General 

Moore as theater chief engineer in Frankfurt. When EUCOM superseded 

USFET the following March, the label “theater” ceased to exist, and 

Shingler’s title was shortened to “chief engineer.” Over the next three 

years, as the changes Huebner initiated modified the character of the U.S. 

forces in Germany, Shingler led a similar effort to increase efficiency and 

discipline among the engineers.62

Engineer Management Efficiency

Huebner backed Shingler in asserting the authority of his office in 

all engineer matters. In late 1946 Shingler’s staff submitted to the USFET 

general staff a plan to concentrate all construction activities under the 

operational control of the theater chief engineer.63 The proposal became 

the basis for reforms in the management of engineer assets.
Map 4

Heidelberg

Darmstadt

Frankfurt

Munich

Augsburg

Bad Tölz

Garmisch

Regensburg

Stuttgart

Wiesbaden

Würzburg Bamberg

Nuremberg

Wetzlar

Fulda

Grafenwöhr

Rhine R

Elbe R

Erfurt

Kaiserslautern

Innsbruck

Dresden

Berlin

Hannover

Pilsen

Leipzig

F I R S T M I L I T A R Y D I S T R I C T

S E C O N D M I L I T A R Y

D I S T R I C T

E A S T G E R M A N Y

C Z E C H O S L O V A K I A

A U S T R I A S W I T Z E R L A N D

LIECHTENSTEIN

F R A N C E

WEST GERMANY

MILITARY DISTRICTS AND POSTS

U.S. ARMY ZONE OF OCCUPATION

1 August 1947

District Boundary (approximate)

Post Boundary (approximate)

Post Headquarters

0 50

0 50 100 Miles

100 Kilometers
41

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

After the reorganization in March 1947, EUCOM had seven major commands: the First and Second Military Districts; U.S. Air Forces, Europe; 

U.S. Forces, Austria; the Berlin Command (Office of Military Government 

United States); the Continental Base Section; and headquarters command 

(Frankfurt). EUCOM issued directives affirming that the commanding 

general of each major command retained responsibility for construction in 

his area. Simultaneously, these directives reemphasized the pivotal role of 

the chief engineer as the central planner for all construction, with authority to approve all major projects, that is, those involving more than 10,000 

worker-hours of labor and supervision.64

As a result of this mandate the chief engineer’s office reviewed 266 

projects in the first quarter of 1947. Of these, the office approved 200 but 

rejected 66, leading to a substantial decrease in the construction program, 

in some areas a drop of as much as 50 percent. In the following quarter 

the major commands seemed to get the message. The chief engineer’s 

office received only 84 projects to review; of these, they approved 54, 

rejected 2 outright, and returned 28 “for further study.” By the third quarter of 1947 the commands submitted only 79 projects, less than one-third 

of the number proposed at the beginning of the year. Of these, the chief 

engineer’s office turned back or deferred 40 percent. Many years later 

Col. Alan J. McCutchen, who succeeded Fleming as chief of construction, 

referred to this as the “prevention-of-construction phase” of engineering 

activity in Europe.65

The chief engineer’s office continued to strengthen its role. By the 

last quarter of 1948 the engineers at military posts within the major 

commands no longer had the discretion to budget for projects requiring 

5,000 or more worker-hours. Only projects “approved by Headquarters, 

EUCOM” received funding through the chief engineer’s office. In other 

words, the chief engineer’s office had the final word.66

Under Shingler’s leadership the chief engineer’s office developed other 

ways to manage engineer projects more efficiently. In the summer of 1947 

the staff set up a post engineer training team made up of people from the 

central office trained in real estate, solid fuels, construction and utilities, 

cost accounting, engineer supply, repair and maintenance of engineer 

equipment, and fire prevention. The First and Second Military Districts, 

under which the military posts were organized, each formed a district 

team that was trained by the team in the chief engineer’s office. The three 

teams worked simultaneously and completed visits to all sixteen military 

posts by the end of September.67

The renewed emphasis throughout EUCOM in 1947–1948 on military readiness, efficiency, and the elimination of unnecessary staff positions created a new activity for the engineers. The office began to engage 

German and third-country personnel to substitute for soldiers in nonmilitary duties. The Engineer School in Murnau assumed the task of preparing these local workers for new responsibilities; in May 1947 the school 

admitted the first German students to its training courses. Seven Germans 

graduated from training courses in June, and by September another 146 
42

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

German engineer specialists graduated. The school trained increasing 

numbers of local nationals in technical specialties through the 1940s.68

Tactical Readiness

General Huebner’s efforts to bring order and discipline to U.S. military forces in Europe stimulated other projects for the Army engineers. 

To address tactical readiness and troop training, Huebner made field 

exercises mandatory. He ordered elements of the 1st Infantry Division, 

still scattered in early 1947 throughout the entire U.S. zone, to assemble 

at a training area formerly used by the German army near Grafenwöhr, 

about twenty miles southeast of Bayreuth. Here he put company-size 

units through combat training. During 1947 and 1948 a total of about 1.5 

million worker-hours went into renovation and construction of training facilities at the Grafenwöhr summer training camp. Although tents 

served the troops as shelter in the field, engineers constructed more 

durable wooden huts for kitchen, sanitary, recreational, and administrative facilities. During late spring 1948, eight separate camps were constructed at Grafenwöhr, with access roads, latrines, water systems, lights, 

mess and headquarters facilities, and floors for the tents. Headquarters, 

26th Infantry, oversaw the preparations; and the Construction Branch of 

the chief engineer’s office provided materials and trained engineers as 

supervisors.69

The U.S. military has used training facilities in Grafenwöhr since their construction 

in the late 1940s. Members of the 43d Antiaircraft Battalion are training with the 

.30-caliber M2 carbine in Grafenwöhr in early 1956.
43

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

Huebner also ordered extensive rehabilitation for Vilseck Caserne, 

where the U.S. Constabulary was slated for special combat training under 

the plan to revitalize American ground forces. The caserne consisted of 

about 120 buildings damaged by war and three years of occupancy by 

displaced persons. Because Vilseck was isolated from other U.S. military 

installations, recreational facilities for soldiers received special attention.70

Other than Grafenwöhr and Vilseck, the U.S. zone contained very 

limited areas for military exercises. The U.S. Army had permission to use 

training facilities in the British and French zones, but this involved greater 

travel for the troops, so EUCOM sought more training space within its 

own zone. In 1949 the command obtained another small training area for 

regiment-size units in Wildflecken in northern Bavaria. Like Grafenwöhr, 

it lay very close to the German-Czech border.71

Administrative Reorganization

In the summer of 1946 the United States invited the three other occupying powers to merge economic administration of the zones of occupation 

in Germany. The French and the Soviet Union declined the invitation, but 

the British accepted. The new administrative authority, Bizonia, took formal shape on 1 January 1947. Later that year the two powers decided to 

consolidate the administrative offices of their combined zones in Frankfurt. 

To make room, the EUCOM headquarters staff and the staff of the chief 

engineer’s office moved to Heidelberg, a city spared from bombing during the war because of the historic and cultural associations it held for the 

British and Americans. To accommodate EUCOM, the U.S. Constabulary 

moved from Heidelberg to Stuttgart. EUCOM located its headquarters in 

Grossdeutschland Caserne, which in August 1948 was renamed Campbell 

Barracks. This sequence of moves began in February 1948 but was not completed until early 1949.72 Beginning in 1948 the Army engineers supervised 

military engineer activity in Europe from Heidelberg.

The movement of headquarters to Heidelberg demanded a major commitment of labor. The construction program to prepare the area involved 

widening roads, providing office space and a new command post, preparing hardstands for parking military vehicles and five new parking lots for 

passenger cars, and building a new quartermaster gas station and a new 

engineer supply point.73

Although largely undamaged by air attacks, Heidelberg had not 

escaped the effects of the shortages prevalent throughout Germany before 

and during the war. Many of the city’s buildings and homes suffered from 

years of neglect and the absence of such basics as paint, heating fuel, and 

utilities. The Army engineers had to carry out substantial rehabilitation on 

requisitioned property, which included over a thousand German homes 

and every hotel in Heidelberg, as well as military installations. Patton and 

Campbell Barracks were completely renovated, but the most intricate and 

delicate work went into the private homes that housed the general officers 

at EUCOM headquarters.
44

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

One of these facilities was the 72-room mansion of the Robert Bosch 

family on Schloßwolfsbrunnenweg. Sgt. Stanley Sikirica of the 252d 

Engineer Combat Battalion received orders to coordinate and supervise 

the carpentry, masonry, painting, and related work to repair the deterioration attributable to the lack of materials going back to the 1930s. “The 

wallpaper was terrible. Everything was falling down. The fresco work was 

breaking off the ceilings and deteriorating to the point [that] there was no 

adhesive, and everything was just mildewing ... and the floors—the parquet floors—were warped. The heating systems were out; there was no 

coal or coke to burn for years to heat these large mansions.”74

To restore the quarters as faithfully as possible to their original state 

of artistic beauty, the engineers engaged local people, including a fresco 

craftsman in Heidelberg. The parquet floors provided the greatest challenge. Finding wood to match the three tones in the original was difficult 

in an economy that had faced wood shortages for several years. But the 

engineers succeeded, and Sikirica recalled the work with pride. During 

the 1950s the Army returned the homes in Heidelberg to their German 

owners.75

The First Berlin Crisis

The work in Heidelberg took place as political tensions reached a 

public crescendo over Berlin. Shortly after the end of the war the United 

States and Britain moved to create autonomous German economic and 

political administrations within their zones. In January 1947 the two allies 

merged their zones and created Bizonia. The Marshall Plan followed in 

June. By 1948 France added its zone, and the Western allies prepared to 

introduce reforms for their unified zones—political autonomy for the 

German inhabitants, an economic reform program, and a revaluation of 

the German currency. All four powers recognized that economic fusion of 

the three Western zones would ultimately lead to a politically united West 

Germany.

For the Soviet Union, such a development seemed to contradict the 

results of its victory in battle. Economic recovery under an American-led 

capitalistic system threatened Soviet ideological and political control of 

both East Germany and Eastern Europe. In diplomatic meetings in early 

1948, the four powers failed to agree on how to deal with Germany. The 

Western Powers continued to prepare for the introduction of the new 

German currency, and the Soviet Union prepared to do what it could 

to make the West Germans pay dearly for their acceptance of Western 

patronage. Soviet leaders chose to squeeze Berlin.

On 20 June 1948, the Western Powers introduced the new Deutschmark 

(DM). Four days later the Soviet Union closed all access to Berlin by rail. 

Within six weeks Soviet military officials stopped all road and canal traffic and shut off electricity to the Western sectors. The 2.5 million inhabitants of West Berlin—formed from the sectors occupied by the United 

States, Britain, and France—were thereby cut off from the supplies they 
45

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

needed to survive. The Western allies viewed saving Berlin from slow 

starvation or from being swallowed up within the Soviet system as a test 

of their willingness to defend freedom. President Harry S. Truman was 

determined to see that Berlin survived.

General Clay favored confronting the Soviet armies on the ground by 

trying to force a convoy across the land routes to Berlin. Clay estimated 

that the city’s civilian population would need a minimum of 4,000 tons of 

supplies per day and that the allied military forces would need another 

500 tons a day. Without a convoy, all these supplies would have to reach 

the city by air. Clay expressed doubts that such a logistical feat could be 

sustained. Rather than force a confrontation on the ground, President 

Truman chose to order the supply of Berlin by air.

The Berlin Airlift began in late June 1948 as a short-term expedient to 

supply the allied forces. Within weeks it expanded into Operation Vittles, 

an unprecedented and much more demanding operation to supply the 

city’s entire civilian population. The airlift involved split-second timing 

as planes formed an “air bridge” between West Germany and Berlin, 

taking off and landing at all hours of the day in all kinds of weather. By 

December 1948 the airlift was delivering more than Clay’s projected minimum of 4,000 tons per day. During January and February average daily 

tonnage climbed to 5,500. At its peak in the spring of 1949, the air bridge 

to the city delivered 8,000 tons of supplies per day.76

The moorings of the allied air bridge lay firmly on the ground—on 

the airfields from which the planes took off and on which they landed. 

Maintaining airfields in Berlin and in the U.S. zone was the responsibility 

of the Army engineers. Engineer work for the Air Force had declined late 

in 1947 and in the first half of 1948, but it jumped sharply with the airlift. 

Between 1 July and 30 September the chief engineer’s office recorded 1.5 

million hours of work for the Air Force, of which 80 percent went into airfield construction in Berlin. Much of the remainder went into the air base 

at Rhine-Main—dubbed Rhine-Mud by those who worked there—the 

starting point for airlift flights.77

Work on the airfields in Berlin involved keeping the limited runways 

open despite the heavy pounding by a steady succession of planes packed 

to the maximum. It also meant increasing the number of runways available. When the blockade began, Tempelhof Airfield in the U.S. sector had 

only one runway suitable for landing cargo planes. It was evident within 

days that this runway could not stand up to repeated use by heavily loaded C–47 and C–54 class aircraft. The weak base constructed in 1945 from 

Berlin rubble gave way, the layer of concrete broke, and the hooks of the 

pierced-steel landing mats tore off, causing the metal mats to warp and 

bend. In response, teams of workers took up positions along the runway. 

Wherever a fault appeared, a team would rush onto the runway, lift the 

plank surface, fill the cavities with a sand-bitumen mixture, bend back the 

planks to their correct positions, and weld steel straps between them. The 

crews had only a few minutes between landings, so they used a lookout 

to call out to workers as the next plane began its approach. The emergency 
46

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

repairs on the runway went on around the clock and made continuous 

landings possible. The teams worked unceasingly until the first of the 

new runways was completed.78

In the first week of July 1948, Col. Reginald Whitaker, engineer officer at the Berlin Military Post, received orders to build a new runway in 

Tempelhof. On 8 July work began on an airstrip that was to be 5,500 feet 

long and 140 feet wide. Two months later, on 8 September, planes began 

landing on the new runway. A third runway in Tempelhof, started on 

23 August, opened in November.79

Even with the additional runways, the facilities in Tempelhof were 

not adequate to sustain the airlift. The airfield’s location among tall buildings made landings difficult and dangerous. The recommended approach 

angle for landing aircraft was one vertical unit for every forty horizontal 

units. The best angle that could be achieved in Tempelhof was one to sixteen! The glide angle was so sharp that as a safety measure engineers dug 

a trench at the end of the principal runway so that planes overshooting it 

would sheer off their landing gear and thus slow down enough to prevent 

them from crashing into the administrative buildings.80

In addition to the liability of the glide angle, the facilities could not 

accommodate the high volume of air traffic. Because Gatow Airfield in 

the British sector could not be expanded, the pressures of the blockade 

made a completely new airfield necessary. An engineer team identified an appropriate site in the Tegel area of the French sector, near rail 

facilities and unobstructed by tall structures. The French agreed to let the 

Americans build, staff, and maintain a field for the duration of the Berlin 

Blockade. General Clay approved the construction of the new airport on 

31 July 1948. Lt. Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, commander of the U.S. Air Force 

in Germany, set in motion plans to complete the new field by February 

1949. When Clay learned of LeMay’s projected date of completion, he sent 

a terse message: “I don’t accept the February 1949 estimate for Tegel. It is 

much too long.”81 LeMay pushed the opening date to December 1948.

Very little heavy machinery was available in the city, so the engineers 

applied labor-intensive methods. Clay, who had observed the value of 

hand labor during a visit to China in 1943, put out an appeal for civilian workers in Berlin. Thousands of Berliners, men and women in almost 

equal numbers, responded by volunteering to work on the runways for a 

nominal wage plus one hot meal a day. At the peak of the activity some 

17,000 people worked three shifts a day around the clock. Rather than laying a concrete base, because concrete was in short supply, the workers laid 

the equivalent of ten city blocks of crushed rubble and bricks left from 

the wartime destruction of Berlin. Between the start of work and the end 

of the year, German civilians put in almost 3 million worker-hours. The 

U.S. military managed this labor with 15 officers and 150 men assigned to 

Tegel.82

Even with the multitude that volunteered to work on the airfields, the 

engineers still needed heavy equipment for construction and to keep up 

with runway maintenance. The appropriate equipment was available in 
47

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

Germany, but it was scattered. A call went out to the U.S. zone to send 

available tractors, graders, rollers, scrapers, asphalt distributors, crushing and screening plants, and generators to the engineer supply depot in 

Hanau. The engineers in Hanau disassembled the equipment to prepare it 

for transport. To fit larger items into the aircraft, the engineers sometimes 

had to cut the frames, so thirty engineers flew to Berlin, set up a reassembly shop, and welded the equipment together again as it arrived.83

One of the men who learned to operate that equipment was Lt. 

Norman G. Delbridge, Jr., a twenty-year-old from Michigan who had 

enlisted in the Army in 1946 after one year of university engineering 

studies. Fresh out of Officer Candidate School, Delbridge commanded 

a shift of workers in Tempelhof. Sgt. Joe Debco, a crusty World War II 

veteran engineer on the crew, taught Delbridge how to operate each 

type of equipment that arrived in Berlin. In 1949 Delbridge left the city 

to accept an appointment to West Point, where he graduated in 1953. In 

1976 he returned as a brigadier general and commander of the U.S. Army 

Engineer Division, Europe.84

The heavy equipment—about forty pieces in all—arrived only after 

work began, but its impact on the pace of construction was dramatic. 

The second runway in Tegel, begun in March 1949 and completed after 

the blockade had been lifted, required fewer than 400 civilian workers to 

complete, in contrast to the 17,000 who worked round the clock on the first 

runways in Tempelhof.85

The engineers also shipped fire extinguishers, generators to light 

night operations, and tons of coal to Berlin during the blockade. Coal was 

sacked at the Rheinau Coal Storage Point, shipped by rail to Rhine-Main 

or to Wiesbaden air base, and then flown to Berlin. In late November 1948 

a shortage of sacks temporarily slowed delivery to 100 tons a day; but 

beginning on 1 December, when more coal sacks became available, the 

engineers managed to load and ship 254 tons of coal a day, seven days a 

week.86

In mid-May 1949 the Soviets abandoned the blockade and reopened 

Berlin to land traffic, but the allies continued the airlift until September 

1949 to build up stocks of goods. In fifteen months allied pilots made a 

total of 279,114 flights into the city carrying 2,323,257 tons of supplies, an 

average of one flight every two minutes and over 5,000 tons of supplies a 

day. Keeping West Berlin free cost the lives of 39 British and 31 American 

military personnel as well as 9 civilians.87

The Blockade and U.S. Forces in Austria

American military planners were acutely aware that Vienna, located 

within the Soviet zone of Austria, was as vulnerable to a blockade as 

Berlin.88 Under the circumstances, the commander of United States 

Forces, Austria (USFA), Lt. Gen. Geoffrey Keyes, concluded that he had to 

reduce the number of personnel in Vienna and relocate them in the area 

of Austria occupied by U.S. forces, specifically in Linz and Salzburg.89
48

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

Pulling people back from the exposed position would reduce the number 

of people that could be held hostage in Vienna.

General Keyes tapped the engineers of USFA to execute the relocation 

from Vienna. In January 1949 the Army recalled Col. Hubert S. Miller, 

USFA engineer from 1946 to 1948, and assigned him to administer the 

emergency program to create housing for troops and dependents. The 

engineer organization under Miller consisted of area engineers in Vienna, 

Linz, and Salzburg who reported directly to him. This centralized structure served until the creation of post engineers under post commanders 

in July 1951.90

Near Salzburg and Linz, USFA found old garrisons for the troops to 

renovate and occupy.91 Housing for dependents was much more difficult 

to find, but the Army identified the Bindermichl apartment complex 

just outside of Linz as one possibility. Its rehabilitation became an early 

example of the expanding role of the Army engineers in the changing 

atmosphere of Europe.

The Bindermichl complex had been built in 1941 by the Nazi steel 

conglomerate Reichswerke Hermann Göring to house the plant’s workers. Originally it consisted of sixty-five connected blocks, rather like a 

series of row houses. Each block formed a three-story unit with six small 

apartments, one on each side of the stairwell at every level. After the war 

the U.S. Army took over the sixty-one blocks that had survived intact 

and passed them to the International Refugee Organization for housing 

displaced persons. The complex quickly became a lively center for blackmarket trade. When tensions began to mount during the Cold War, the 

apartments were put at the disposal of the Army.92

In early 1949 Colonel Miller created a special position and appointed 

Maj. William L. Starnes of his engineer staff as administrator for the 

Bindermichl properties. Starnes hired an Austrian firm to design the renovations and to advise on technical details once the project got under way. 

Colonel Miller persuaded the chief of engineers in Washington, Lt. Gen. 

Lewis A. Pick, to send several experienced Corps of Engineers civilian 

employees to Austria. The men were flown to Austria early in the project 

and contributed substantially to its ultimate success.93

Austrian contractors, selected on the basis of sealed bids, were to do 

the renovation and construction. Because the buildings had been German 

property, they were under the trusteeship of the Austrian government 

as a “German external asset.” USFA removed them from trusteeship and 

established a German external asset fund of 9.72 million Austrian schillings (ATS) (about $971,899 at the official rate of exchange) to rehabilitate 

the apartments for American families. USFA also arranged to evacuate 

the displaced persons in phases, and Starnes put together a construction 

schedule to follow the pace at which apartments were vacated. The standard plan called for workers to break through the dividing wall behind 

the stairwell landing, thus joining the two apartments on each floor. 

(Figure 1) The resulting five-room apartment contained a living room/dining room combination, a large bedroom, a small bedroom, a kitchen, a 
49

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

storage room, a maid’s room, and two bathrooms. Six apartments were 

specially modified for senior officers to provide more space and central 

heating.

The apartments and grounds were in a deplorable condition when 

vacated by the displaced persons. Black marketers had removed plumbing 

fixtures, stoves, and anything sellable; floors had been ruined; doors and 

windows, including frames, were often missing; over half the windows 

that remained were without glass; and trash, dirt, broken bottles, feathers, 

old clothes, shoes, and spoiled food soiled many apartments. Courtyards 

and common areas were even more depressing. Drainage had broken 

down completely, so that rain and snow produced a sea of mud. Wooden 

shacks, variously used by the inhabitants as small stores, workshops, supply huts, churches, and night clubs, littered the once-open courtyards. All 

of this debris had to be removed before renovation could begin.

The bids for renovating of the first block, which consisted of four 

apartment units, were opened on 10 February 1949, and work began 

within days. From that point to the completion of the project, Starnes and 

a staff of five supervised a steady cycle of contracting and construction. 

Each week contracts were signed for another group of buildings and work 

Figure 1: Converted Apartment in the Bindermichl Complex 
50

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

was begun on them. The engineers applied experience gained in the first 

round of contract negotiations to subsequent rounds of bidding. The later 

contracts included interior parking areas, lawns, exterior sidewalks, fumigating the buildings before actual construction, built-in storage units for 

bedrooms and kitchens, and—through the USFA quartermaster—furniture for the finished apartments. The four apartments begun in February 

were completed two months later, and the first section of sixty-five apartments was finished in May.

By the middle of May 1949 all refugee residents had moved out and 

renovation of the rest of the apartments began at an intense pace. Indeed, 

the period from mid-May to early September became the busiest phase 

of the project. Cost-saving measures, combined with declining costs in 

the Austrian economy, meant that money stretched far enough to complete the project within budget. At one point, renovation was under way 

simultaneously in twenty-four blocks of apartments and two courtyards. 

The work involved about forty separate contractors. The American engineer supervisors relied heavily on Austrian engineers for inspections. 

Funds were dispensed at the rate of ATS 45,000 ($4,500 at the official rate 

of exchange) a day on construction and ATS 25,000 ($2,500 at the official 

rate) a day on furniture.

By the middle of July American families began moving into the available apartments at a rate of ten to fifteen a week, a pace that kept up with 

the construction crews’ progress. The arrival of families meant contending with children and pets that found construction sites irresistible attractions. Apartment managers organized a Repair and Maintenance Section 

for the complex consisting of seven men and one foreman. The janitorial 

staff, which had begun with just a few men as the initial apartments were 

completed and furnished, grew to fifty men under one superintendent.

By the end of the construction phase the Army engineers had renovated and furnished 182 apartments and created a post exchange. Most of the 

apartments were occupied immediately. The bulk of the work was over 

by 15 November 1949; another twenty-four apartments were renovated 

in subsequent months. The work in the complex included parking spaces 

for 150 automobiles, landscaping for 3 lawn areas in courtyards, 5,500 

square yards of sidewalk, and 10,000 square yards of concrete or asphalt 

road. The cost of the project by mid-November was just over ATS 10 million (about $1 million), with 90 percent coming from the German external 

asset account and the remainder from rent paid by families living in the 

complex. About 60 percent of the total spent was for rehabilitation and 

construction, with close to 30 percent devoted to apartment furnishings. 

The remaining money paid for landscaping and operating costs.

Even after the end of the Soviet blockade of Berlin, housing remained 

critically short for the U.S. Army in Austria. During 1949 and 1950 

Colonel Miller arranged to house troops in the Salzburg province in facilities taken over from the International Refugee Organization. On three 

sites—Saalfelden, Sankt Johann, and Riedenburg— ATS 12.5 million was 

expended from a special account set up for the purpose. In March 1950 
51

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

Miller arranged a program with the Austrian government that established 

the Housing Administration Trust account, a fund of ATS 130 million 

made available by the Austrian government and administered by Miller 

to construct new apartment houses. Over the next two years, contractors completed new apartments in Linz (68), Wels (38), Salzburg (272), 

Saalfelden (72), and Sankt Johann (16). The Austrian government put up 

the land and the money for these buildings but insisted that Austrian 

building codes be observed. The arrangement was a marked change 

from the era of occupation when the U.S. Army had been able to insist on 

American standards. Still, it was practical because, in return for its contributions, the Austrian federal government received title to the apartment 

units once the Americans no longer needed them.94

Standardizing Engineer Operations

The positive support in American public opinion for the airlift to preserve West Berlin did not prompt a reversal of the declining troop levels 

in Germany. Nor did the blockade change the mission and underlying 

activities of the engineers. Still, after four years of struggling to draw 

management of engineering activity into a central agency, the chief engineer’s office had developed a set of procedures to standardize its operations. One sign of the change was how they calculated work. Until the 

stabilization of the German currency, paying an hourly wage in the vastly 

devalued German Reichsmark or in occupation marks had been impossible. After the introduction of the Deutschmark in June 1948, projects 

had to budget in worker-hours rather than in the money value for labor. 

In April 1949, for the first time since the occupation began, the Army 

engineers drew up their budget and projected their contracts for maintenance and construction in Deutschmarks using the cost per hour of labor. 

The establishment of an efficient German domestic market for goods also 

allowed the engineers to abandon their practice of furnishing to the contractor much of the material necessary for a job and to discontinue providing hot meals as an inducement to attract labor. By 1949 the marketplace 

had begun to take over some of these functions, and the conduct of business within the German economy by the chief engineer’s office took on a 

semblance of standard practice.95

The German economy was by no means fully reconstructed, but recovery was clearly under way. In the German fiscal year beginning 1 April 

1949 (fiscal year 1950), all projects contracted out by the Army engineers 

could be approved on a total-cost basis. Competitive bidding by German 

contractors became the norm; and in establishing guidelines for contracts, 

the chief engineer’s office introduced such features as bonus-and-penalty 

clauses, leading to economies in construction and to earlier occupancy for 

the user.96

The chief engineer’s office also made its technical authority felt in 

other ways. Drawing on the talents of its professional staff of engineers, 

the office assisted the post engineers in the most effective use of money, 
52

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

labor, and supplies. For example, to enable post engineers to stretch the 

limited funds available for rehabilitation, the chief engineer’s office developed standard plans for several types of dependent housing units, a measure to help reduce unit costs.97

The European Command used the experience of the chief engineer’s 

office with techniques of financial management to enhance the engineer 

staff’s central role. In 1948 Shingler’s staff instituted cost-accounting procedures in engineer operations. In 1949 EUCOM extended the financial 

management system that Shingler’s staff had implemented to the entire 

command, allowing commanders to match expenses to accomplishment, 

whether funding came from appropriated dollars or from the German 

government as part of the occupation obligations. The chief engineer also 

sent out accountants from his office to audit the records maintained by 

the post engineers.98

The chief engineer’s office also extended its influence by providing 

assistance for facilities engineering. In the early years of the occupation, 

routine maintenance involving repair and utilities had been managed 

locally and executed by engineer units assigned to field commands (subsequently by the engineers of military districts). With the establishment 

and evolution of military posts in 1947 and 1948, post engineers took 

over the tasks related to maintenance, repair, and utilities.99 By 1949 the 

chief engineer’s office had refined its training program to help the local 

engineers establish a comprehensive maintenance program and allocated 

sufficient funds from their own budgets for regular maintenance and 

repair.100 The new program for 1949 emphasized preventive maintenance 

to reduce repair costs. The teams trained by the chief engineer’s office 

consisted of a carpenter, a plumber, and an electrician to inspect and 

repair each building on a three-to-four-month cycle. The program allowed 

the EUCOM Engineer Division to budget maintenance on a unit-cost 

basis—DM 0.186 per square foot per year for 1949.101 For the German fiscal 

year 1949, the total budget for engineer costs of the occupation amounted 

to about DM 430 million. Of this, about 50 percent went to repairs and 

utilities. Most of the remaining budget went to real estate activities, major 

rehabilitation, and custodial services.102

Other activities took a small percentage of the budget, but they illustrate the areas in which the chief engineer’s office established its position 

as manager and supporter of engineer activity throughout the European 

Command. For instance, starting in July 1948 the Office of the Chief 

Engineer in Heidelberg supported teams in each of the military posts 

to maintain the 5,500 pieces of engineer equipment in use throughout 

the command. These field maintenance teams, which included a master 

mechanic certified by EUCOM’s chief engineer, could turn to the chief 

engineer’s office for technical assistance. In addition, during 1949 the 

EUCOM Engineer School, supervised and staffed by the chief engineer’s 

office, trained 561 Americans and 502 Germans as operators, construction 

equipment mechanics, diesel mechanics, welders, and utility repairmen. 

This training gave necessary personnel resources to the local command-
53

From Occupation to Mutual Defense

ers, who were responsible for the maintenance of engineer equipment. 

To supplement the local maintenance installations, the Office of the Chief 

Engineer prepared and issued a manual on field maintenance of engineer 

equipment and provided a maintenance assistance team, composed of 

personnel from the Hanau Engineer Depot, that visited each military post 

to assist and advise.103

The chief engineer’s office found that from a strictly mechanical point 

of view, problems related to the maintenance of engineer equipment were 

minimal but other aspects of maintenance created difficulties. There 

was a critical shortage of spare parts, making timely repair difficult. The 

language barrier that divided American soldiers from the Germans and 

displaced Europeans who actually operated and repaired the equipment 

created misunderstandings and mistakes. German translations of instructions and schedules for maintenance services provided by the chief engineer’s office were only a partial solution. More equipment was available 

in the field than could be effectively maintained by the people at hand. 

Lastly, field shops often attempted repairs beyond their capabilities.104

The engineer staff attached to the headquarters of the U.S. armed forces in Europe had moved from England to France to Germany in 1945 and 

from Frankfurt to Heidelberg in 1948. The name changed slightly with the 

reorganization of command in Europe, but the office’s function remained 

the same. After 1945 the army of occupation progressively reduced its 

troop strength. Not even the blockade of Berlin interrupted the decline in 

German and U.S. military personnel at the Engineer School in Murnau, Germany, 

learned engineering skills such as surveying and building bridges with ferries.
54

Building for Peace: U.S. Army Engineers in Europe, 1945–1991

the number of American troops in Germany. In December 1949 the number of U.S. military personnel in Europe reached its lowest point—83,400 

soldiers—since the war. Few people realized as events unfolded that the 

commitment symbolized by the Berlin Airlift would become the dominant determinant of policy and would override in succeeding decades the 

American inclination toward military disengagement from Europe.

By the end of 1949 the mission of the U.S. Army in Europe had shifted 

dramatically. In early 1945 combat had driven all American military decisions. After Germany was defeated, military leaders concentrated on the 

peacetime occupation and the need to maintain order. As the decade 

ended, combat readiness and rapid response to outside challenges supplanted static occupation duties. With its West European allies, the United 

States prepared to meet possible aggression against Western Europe by 

the Soviet Union.105