1

COMBAT TO OCCUPATION

The Army engineers attached to U.S. forces in Europe faced gargantuan tasks in 1945, and their work was rendered dramatically 

more complex by the extent of the destruction that Europe had 

suffered. During the last months of the war, retreating Germans 

had devastated northern France and Belgium from the coast of Normandy 

to the German border. In Holland, broken dikes allowed major sections of 

the land to flood. In Italy, traditional centers of the country’s economic 

strength, Milan and Turin, lay paralyzed. In Central Europe, business 

and residential communities had given way to barren landscapes, piles 

of debris, craters from bombs, stinking heaps of rubble, and ruins. 

Throughout Germany, a large portion of civilian housing was uninhabitable. Eighty-one percent of all lodging units in the U.S. zone were either 

destroyed or severely damaged. In Frankfurt, the city that the Americans 

chose for the headquarters of their postwar military command, only 

44,000 of 177,000 residences remained standing.1

Famine was a stark reality throughout Europe. The war had eroded 

the farm economy and had destroyed machinery, fertilizers, and seed; 

breeding livestock had been killed. After 1945 production of food grain in 

France was less than half what it had been before the war. Food rationing 

was absolutely necessary throughout Europe. An estimated 100 million 

Europeans existed at a level of 1,500 or fewer calories a day, a diet inadequate to support heavy work or sustain growing children. Even that level 

of nutrition proved impossible to maintain. In 1946 authorities in both the 

British and American zones of occupation in Germany had to cut rations 

to 1,000 calories a day, a level of consumption that the British commander 

in chief, Field Marshal Bernard Viscount Montgomery, described as equivalent to slow starvation.2 Clothing and shoes were as scarce as food; tools 

and domestic amenities were nonexistent.

Throughout much of Europe, the transportation system had ceased 

to operate. France’s stock of locomotives was at 35 percent of prewar 

numbers. In the American and British zones of Germany, 740 out of 958 

important bridges had been destroyed. The debris of war clogged inland 

waterways and ports, making them unusable.
8

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

The theater chief engineer in Europe, Maj. Gen. Cecil R. Moore, exercised staff responsibility for advising the American theater commander, 

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, on all engineering matters and for establishing the basic plans and policies for the Army engineers. In practice, 

Moore served as a part of the staff of Lt. Gen. John C. H. Lee, commander 

of the Communications Zone (COMZ), the European Theater’s rear area 

command.3 Headquartered first in England and then in Paris after its liberation, COMZ managed the flow of supplies and support services to the 

combat forces at the front and, after hostilities ended, to the occupation 

forces in the American sector of Germany.4

As it advanced, the U.S. Army set up ad hoc civil affairs units of 

military government in the German communities. Their main task was to 

ensure the security of the armed forces on the move. Without any viable 

indigenous government in place, the conquering troops assumed powers 

far beyond the conventional responsibility to maintain law and order. The 

Army inherited by default the responsibility to house and feed the population and to rebuild the German economic, social, and political structures 

needed to sustain civilized life in the postwar era.

During the final phase of the war, Moore’s office provided technical 

support to combat forces. Command of engineer units—officers and men—

remained in the hands of the field commanders in the combat zone, where 

the action was, or with COMZ section commanders in charge of the liberated areas. These commanders exercised considerable freedom in the field 

in the use of their engineer troops and resources.5 When the war ended, the 

War Destruction in Munich
9

Combat to Occupation

Army engineer organization at COMZ headquarters continued to provide 

technical support for all military operations within the European Theater. 

Command of engineer troops remained with the field commanders.

Organizing the Occupation

In the summer of 1945 the U.S. Army settled in Germany in the role of 

occupying power. On 5 June the commanders in chief of coalition forces 

in the European Theater met in Berlin and issued a joint statement on 

“Arrangements for Control of Germany.” The Soviet Union, Great Britain, 

the United States, and France declared that German centralized government had ceased to exist and that all governing authority rested with 

them. They divided Germany into four zones of occupation (see Map 1) 

and established the Allied Control Council in which the commanders of 

the four occupying armies acted for Germany as a whole. Decisions of the 

Allied Control Council had to be reached by unanimous consent. Within 

his own zone each commander exercised complete authority. Berlin was 

similarly divided into four sectors (see Map 2), with its own citywide 

administration, the Kommandatura, composed of the four sector commanders. Under the terms of the surrender, the Germans were to bear the total 

costs of the occupation.

The U.S. zone of occupation in Germany encompassed the southwestern states (Länder) of Bavaria, Württemberg-Baden, and Hesse; the northern ports of Bremen and Bremerhaven; and the southwestern sector of 

Destroyed Railway and Highway Bridge over the Rhine River in Cologne, 18 May 1945
Map 1

F R A N C E

S W I T Z E R L A N D 

D E N M A R K

N E T H E R L A N D S

B E L G I U M

L U X E M B O U R G

U N I T E D

K I N G D O M

Marne R

Meuse R

M osel R

Rhine R

Danube R

E

N

G

L I S

H

C

H

A

N

N

E

L

Seine R

Loire R

B R I T I S H

S O 

F

R

E

N

C

H

A M E R I C A 

FOU

JOINT

AMERICAN-BRITISH

Metz

Luxembourg

PARIS

BRUSSELS

AMSTERDAM

Cologne

Kaiserslautern

Hannover

Nuremberg

Mun

Stuttgart

Heidelberg

Frankfurt

Kassel

Erfurt

Bremerhaven

Hamburg

Mulhouse

Dijon

The Hague

GERMANY

ZONES OF OCCUPATION

August 1945

0

0 150 Miles

150 Kilometers

Zone Boundary
L I T H U A N I A

E A S T P R U S S I A

A U S T R I A

H U N G A R Y

P O L A N D

S W E D E N

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

Elbe R

Oder R

B A L T I C

S

E

A

Danube R

O V I E T

U N D E R

P O L I S H

A D M I N I S T R A T I O N

S O V I E T

N

UR-POWER OCCUPATION

Leipzig

nich

Stettin

BERLIN

Dresden

PRAGUE

WARSAW

Breslau

VIENNA

BUDAPEST

Pilsen
12

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

Berlin. The U.S. zone covered about 47,000 square miles, roughly the size 

of the state of Mississippi; it contained few industrial resources and only 

two major cities—Frankfurt and Munich. One-fourth of the land was arable, one-fourth was mountains and forest, and the remainder was pasture 

or swamp land. In July 1945 the zone contained about 19 million people, 

including many refugees from Eastern Europe.6

Austria presented an anomaly for the occupying powers. Annexed by 

the German Reich in 1938, it had fought the war as part of Nazi Germany. 

Upon defeat it was occupied and, like Germany, divided into four zones. 

Arguably, Austria was not a defeated enemy state but a victim of Nazi 

aggression. On the other hand, it was not a liberated state either. Its peculiar situation marked it for special treatment. After Germany’s surrender, 

the four occupying powers quickly turned political and economic authority over to the Austrians, who formed an indigenous central government 

in Vienna. All four powers retained a military presence both in Vienna—

wholly within the Soviet zone and divided like Berlin—and in their four 

zones. (Map 3) In June 1946, when the occupying powers recognized the 

Austrian government, the Allied military government—but not the fourpower occupation—ended.

Map 2

B R I T I S H

F R E N C H

S O V I E T

S O V I E T

A M E R I C A N

HQ

HQ

HQ

HQ

The area on the western edge of Berlin was transferred to

Soviet Occupation in 1945 in exchange for a part of the 

Gatow Airport transferred to British Occupation.

Potsdam

August 1945

OCCUPATION SECTORS

BERLIN 

0 5

Miles
Map 3

Danube R

Danube R

Mur R

B R I T I S H

F R E N C H

S O V I E T

A M E R I C A N

FOUR-POWER OCCUPATION

Augsburg

Bolzano

Landeck

Innsbruck

Kitzbühel

Salzburg

Bad Ischl

Linz

Regensburg

Krems

Waidhofen

VIENNA

Villach

Klagenfurt

Munich

Bruck

LIECHTENSTEIN

S W I T Z E R L A N D

I T A L Y

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

Y H U N G A R

Y U G O S L A V I A

G E R M A N Y

AUSTRIA

ZONES OF OCCUPATION

June 1945

0

75 0 Miles

75 Kilometers

Zone Boundary
14

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

Army Engineers in the U.S. Zone

On 1 July 1945, Eisenhower reorganized his forces in Europe and 

established a new command, United States Forces, European Theater 

(USFET), with its headquarters in the I. G. Farben Company building in 

Frankfurt.7 For a brief time Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary 

Force (SHAEF), the headquarters of the retiring wartime command, 

the European Theater of Operations, United States Army (ETOUSA), 

and its subordinate command, COMZ, all coexisted with USFET; by 1 

August SHAEF and ETOUSA had been inactivated. General Eisenhower 

left Europe on 11 November 1945; on 26 November General Joseph T. 

McNarney took command of USFET and the military government of 

Germany. The Army had begun to move support services provided by 

COMZ from France into occupied Germany. It redesignated the support 

command as the Theater Services Forces, European Theater (TSFET), with 

a main headquarters in Frankfurt and a rear headquarters in Paris. In 

Germany, American military personnel were dispersed over the entire 

U.S. zone, often in small, isolated units.8

As the U.S. Army shifted its headquarters staff to Frankfurt, a new 

center of engineer activities developed there. Over the summer General 

Lee, the commander of COMZ and its successor, TSFET, assigned key 

personnel to Frankfurt while maintaining logistical and redeployment 

activities at Headquarters (Rear) in Paris.9 Lee decided to divide his staff. 

He retained General Moore in Paris as theater chief engineer; but he sent 

Moore’s deputy, Col. John R. Hardin, and Moore’s chief of construction, 

Col. Paul D. Berrigan, to Frankfurt, where they worked under Lee’s chief 

of staff, Maj. Gen. Carter B. Magruder.10 The new structure perpetuated 

Moore’s dual role as technical adviser to both the theater commander and 

the commanding general of the Theater Services Forces; this duality existed until TSFET was inactivated in February 1946. By March 1946 all engineer planning and coordination functions were consolidated in Frankfurt 

as a part of Headquarters, USFET.11

In Germany and Austria, the U.S. Army engineers had a wide range 

of tasks. The occupying army units needed liquid fuels and petroleum 

products, so Army engineers continued to operate the pipelines, pumping stations, and storage facilities that they had constructed to support 

the conquest of Germany.12 To support the soldiers who remained in 

Europe, the Army engineers had to build and maintain barracks, hospitals, airfields, and the attendant infrastructure. For the Army to exercise its control over the population, transportation lines choked by the 

destruction of war had to be cleared. Roads, railways, canals, bridges, 

rivers, and ports all demanded attention from the engineers, as did mine 

fields and obstructions.13

In accomplishing their many tasks, the Army engineers operated 

under two related but separate command structures. Engineer troops 

remained under Army field commands and operated in support of the 

occupying army units dispersed throughout the American zones in both 
15

Combat to Occupation

Germany and Austria. The theater chief engineer, who served on the 

USFET general staff, supervised area engineer officers assigned to the 

military districts and subdivisions of the U.S. zones. These area engineers 

acted as field agents to execute operations prescribed by the theater chief 

engineer but remained under the authority of the local commander of the 

military district in which they served. The structure resembled the division and district structure maintained by the Corps of Engineers in the 

United States, except that it existed in what had been a combat theater 

where Army field commanders retained overriding authority. The Army 

engineers in the theater were commanded neither by the chief of engineers in Washington nor by the theater chief engineer. The theater chief 

engineer served under the authority of the commander of USFET, not the 

chief of engineers in Washington. The traditional primacy of combat field 

commanders carried over into the period of occupation in ways that complicated the theater chief engineer’s mission.14

The dual structure of command under which the engineers operated 

had a parallel in the two interdependent but separate missions faced by 

the occupying army—civil administration of Germany and military command of the occupying troops. As a means of separating civil administration from issues of troop command and other military concerns, the U.S. 

Army transferred administration of its occupied territory from the hands 

of the tactical commanders, who had directed the invasion, to the Office of 

Military Government United States (OMGUS). On 1 October 1945, OMGUS 

became the official executive authority for American military government 

in Germany. Headquartered in Berlin, OMGUS created local offices in the 

three German states in the U.S. zone. Essentially in place by the end of 1945, 

OMGUS retained its authority in Germany until 1949.15 OMGUS handled 

civil administration, whereas USFET and its successors exercised command 

authority over military affairs and over the troops organized into military 

districts and military posts throughout the U.S. zone.16

United States Forces, Austria (USFA), established headquarters for the 

American zone in Salzburg on 10 August 1945 but remained dependent 

upon USFET headquarters in Frankfurt for supply and administration. 

For matters concerning civil governance and political issues, USFA’s commander operated directly under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

in Washington.17 Once the postwar division of Austria was in place in 

1945, the U.S. Army planned to reduce its presence to a minimum within 

ninety days and to provide a military government that could support 

and encourage Austrian political and economic recovery. In keeping with 

these objectives, the USFA engineer’s tasks in 1945–1946 were to reduce 

and reorganize personnel, to dispose of excess property, and to conduct 

necessary rehabilitation and very limited construction using troop labor.18

By July 1947 USFA abandoned the practice of charging costs to Austria 

as a burden of the occupation. The USFA staff engineer’s office had contracting experience, so the commander designated the engineers to convert all real estate occupied by the Army to lease arrangements; to close 

rail service contracts; and to institute new systems for procurement, cost 
16

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

accounting, and budget preparation. During a single month of transition 

in 1947, the engineers managed a team of personnel from all services that 

transferred 2,000 properties being used by American personnel from requisition status to lease arrangements.19

The Office of the Theater Chief Engineer

As administration of the occupation became the dominant mission for 

the U.S. Army, the need for coordination and overall planning superseded 

the need for immediate decision and quick execution that had prevailed 

in the immediate aftermath of Germany’s surrender. To meet this change, 

the Army reorganized engineer resources. Throughout the balance of the 

1940s, the chief engineer in Europe and his staff acted as the headquarters 

instrument, if not always the master, of activity for the engineers.

Throughout 1945 and early 1946 the Office of the Chief Engineer, 

USFET, contained seven divisions: control, administration, intelligence, 

troops, supply, construction, and real estate.20 The theater chief engineer 

continued to support the Army’s military mission in Europe, including support to the Army Air Forces. He advised the theater commander 

concerning engineering needs, established basic engineer plans and policies, and supervised the engineer activities in the European Theater. His 

authority was limited in practice, however, by the structure of command 

in the theater. In 1945 USFET had nine subordinate commands: Third 

Army; Seventh Army; the Bremen Port Command; United States Forces, 

Austria; the Western and Continental Base Sections; the Berlin District; 

U.S. Air Forces in Europe; and the Office of Military Government United 

States. A general officer headed each of these commands, and an engineer 

officer served on each of the general staffs. This decentralized structure, 

coupled with the recent combat experiences in which field commanders 

operated with a great deal of autonomy, created difficulties for General 

Moore as he sought to plan, coordinate, and supervise overall engineer 

activities throughout the theater.21

By the end of 1945 OMGUS had taken over authority for construction 

related to waterways, railways, highways, and bridges. OMGUS turned to 

the Office of the Chief Engineer, USFET, only when it needed to supplement its own resources.22 Still, as the headquarters engineer for USFET, the 

theater chief engineer retained a full agenda. His office supervised acquisition of real estate, construction and maintenance of all military structures not otherwise assigned, establishment of building standards, and 

allocation of building materials among major commands. He reviewed all 

building projects. He was also in charge of maintaining the water supply 

and other utilities, as well as surveying and mapping. He ran the procurement system for the theater and was in charge of the disposition, storage, 

and security of supplies within the theater, including captured enemy 

materiel. Finally, he was responsible for fire fighting, camouflage, and 

the training of U.S. forces in Europe.23 This profile of activities remained 

essentially the same through the decade.24
17

Combat to Occupation

Most of the responsibilities of the Office of the Chief Engineer, USFET, 

involved planning, administration, and supervision. The office played 

a managerial and professional role in preparing architectural and engineering plans and in supervising their preparation by architect-engineer 

firms. Contractors, generally hired by subordinate levels of command 

under USFET, frequently executed construction and other tasks involving 

physical labor.25

To supplement the cadre of officers and professional specialists on the 

staffs of the Army engineers, the chief engineer’s office sought to train 

military personnel in engineering skills. After the liberation of France the 

Army established the Engineer Training Center (later called the Engineer 

School) in Epernay. In 1946 the Army moved the school to Butzbach, 

Germany (north of Frankfurt), and then in early 1947 to Murnau, near 

Oberammergau in southern Bavaria. The training suffered markedly 

from the demobilization of skilled personnel; the school needed qualified instructors, but requests for occupational specialists in engineering 

from the United States yielded disappointing results. The chief engineer 

described the new instructors arriving in 1946 as “18-, 19- and 20-year old 

boys with no instructional ability and practically no technical background 

other than that obtained during a six-week course in a given subject.”26

As the occupation lengthened, Moore and his successor sought to 

recover authority from the field and to consolidate it in the Office of the 

Chief Engineer at theater headquarters. They argued that a centralized 

staff could balance the competition between local, more parochial interests and the overall needs and responsibilities of the occupation forces. 

The change they sought came slowly. For most of the four-year period, 

central planning and coordination looked no more than one year ahead.27

Construction Personnel

Since the earliest days after the cross-Channel invasion, U.S. Army 

engineers faced labor shortages for any construction they undertook. The 

pool of civilian labor fell far short of the estimates made during planning 

for the rehabilitation of liberated and occupied areas. While still in France, 

General Moore’s office received War Department authorization to recruit 

civilian laborers and set up an organization to supervise them as separate mobile units, using engineer labor procurement offices to recruit the 

needed personnel. As local governments in France stabilized, they provided both the recruitment and payment of some civilian labor. In addition 

to the civilians, 2,228 French engineer troops were organized in May and 

June 1945 into construction companies to assist the U.S. Army construction units.28

Employing prisoners of war (PW) helped alleviate the labor shortage 

in liberated areas and in the zones of occupation. In May 1945 prisoners of 

war working for the U.S. military numbered 54,223, many of them supervised by engineer troops.29 Organized as 250-man companies, PW units 

relieved the shortage of troops for construction, depot operation, equip-
18

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

ment maintenance, and lumbering operations. These workers proved 

highly competent and eager to perform. Displaced persons also supplemented the labor pool that served the Army in 1945.30

The shortage of labor for the rehabilitation and construction programs 

remained a significant problem during the early years of the occupation.31

In July 1945 the U.S. Army employed about 625,000 prisoners of war, displaced persons, civilians from Allied and neutral countries, and German 

civilians (local nationals in the Army’s vocabulary), many of them supervised by engineer personnel.32 By the first quarter of 1946 these sources of 

labor were declining because Army policy within the theater mandated the 

rapid reduction of the use of prisoners of war and displaced persons were 

repatriating. For the first quarter of 1946 the average number of German 

prisoners of war working on construction or rehabilitation for the U.S. 

Army remained about 60,000, although the engineers released more than 

42,000 prisoners from labor service during this period. The German civilian 

labor force exceeded 25,000. By the third quarter of 1946 the PW labor force 

fell below 20,000; by February 1947 all PW labor had been eliminated.33

At the end of the war the military employed very few American civilians in Europe in either supervisory or professional positions; but as PW 

labor declined and military personnel left, the Army had to recruit civilians to supplement its workforce.34 Restrictions on employment of Germans 

made it extremely difficult to attract qualified personnel. To overcome 

that, and to encourage stability in the workforce, the chief engineer’s office 

recommended during the first year of the occupation that USFET provide 

more liberal allowances in clothing, food, and housing for German civilian 

employees working for the U.S. forces. While the number of prisoners of 

war dropped under 20,000 by the third quarter of 1946, the German civilian labor force rose to over 35,000, in part because the Army immediately 

rehired as many as 55 percent of the released prisoners as civilian workers.

The turnover of military personnel brought particularly negative consequences to financial record keeping where attention to detail and vigorous accuracy were crucial. Employees did not stay long enough to benefit 

from any training, and accurate record keeping suffered as a result. The 

Office of the Chief Engineer, USFET, promulgated training guidelines, but 

these had little prospect of bringing about improved accuracy until the 

employment situation stabilized.35

Professional personnel were hardest to find. Occasionally, an engineer officer leaving military service chose to stay in Europe as a civilian 

employee. But the chief engineer’s office could not depend for staffing 

only on military officers mustering out. To identify the positions where 

it needed civilian specialists and administrators, the office solicited personnel requests from the engineer offices of USFET’s subordinate commands. It then forwarded the list to the Office of the Chief of Engineers in 

Washington, which recruited personnel in the United States. The recruitment program began in 1946, and by late that year 156 American civilians 

had signed on to serve with the engineers in the European Theater. By the 

first quarter of 1947 the number had increased to 380.36
19

Combat to Occupation

On 1 July 1946, the civilian personnel serving the Army in Germany 

had numbered 375,466; one year later the figure had dropped to 278,479. 

By 1 July 1947, of all civilian employees of the U.S. Army in Europe, 71 

percent were Germans, 17.3 percent were displaced persons, 4.3 percent 

were Austrians, and 3.6 percent were U.S. citizens.

The share of this civilian workforce employed by the Office of the 

Chief Engineer, USFET, was small. By late 1947 the chief engineer’s office 

employed about 5,000 civilians of all nationalities—or under 2 percent of 

the 1 July total—working in its headquarters office and all its field agencies in the American zones in Germany and Austria.37

During this same period the availability of soldiers for engineer work 

continued to decline precipitously. In early 1946 the engineers could still 

muster over 45,000 troops for construction assignments, but by the final 

quarter of 1946 that number had fallen to 16,000. In the first quarter of 

1947 troops available averaged 6,700; only 2,200 were available in the last 

quarter. Germans still contributed the greatest numbers to the Army engineer workforce, but their numbers dropped from 33,764 (excluding prisoners of war) to 15,500 over the same period.38 To compensate for the losses, 

the Army organized displaced persons—third-country nationals—into 

labor service units, provided uniforms and equipment, and paid them in 

much the same manner as U.S. troops. The special labor service units continued to serve the American forces for decades.39

Priorities and Problems

After the German defeat the U.S. Army had to change the focus of 

its activities. For three years, Eisenhower observed in retrospect, the 

nation had mobilized all its energies “to push men and supply forward 

into the heart of Germany.” Suddenly, in May 1945, “the entire machinery ... had to be thrown into reverse.”40 Troops had to be pulled out of 

Europe and redeployed to the war against Japan or returned home to 

the United States. Units remaining in Europe had to shift their mission from combat to control and governance, to occupying and administering conquered enemy land. The troops needed to maintain law 

and order, disarm and demilitarize a population whom they feared 

might be belligerent, and organize the U.S. military government in the 

defeated states.41

In these circumstances the Army engineers faced three military 

imperatives. First, they had to handle redeployment of troops. Second, 

they had to open German ports on the North Sea to move supplies to 

the U.S. forces concentrated in southern Germany. A third mission arose 

out of necessity. Massive material destruction had brought civil society 

in Europe to near total collapse by the end of the war, and the U.S. Army 

engineers needed to marshal their personnel and equipment to revitalize 

national civilian infrastructures in both liberated and occupied countries. 

As theater chief engineer, General Moore in Frankfurt remained responsible for coordinating these engineering tasks.
20

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

Redeployment of Troops and Materiel

The greatest engineer effort in the first months after the war ended 

in Europe involved redeployment—reducing troop strength in Europe, 

shipping men and materiel to the Pacific, and readjusting the total combat 

force to allow the soldiers with the longest service in combat and with 

dependent children to return to the United States. Rotation home depended upon an elaborate point system that took into account length and 

nature of service. The War Department’s plan called for reducing troops 

in Europe from 3,071,000 in May 1945 to about 405,000 by June 1946. This 

meant shipping out more men each month than the maximum number 

that had arrived in any one month during the war. Fifteen percent of 

the troops to be redeployed, with their equipment, were destined for the 

Asiatic-Pacific Theater.42

Relocating 2.6 million men in one year—the War Department’s target 

number—was equivalent to moving the entire population of a city the size 

of Baltimore halfway around the globe. To accommodate transient troops, 

the engineers constructed holding camps near ports of embarkation to 

handle 250,000 people at a time. They also had to package and crate all the 

goods and equipment that accompanied the troops. Army engineers constructed camps at Rheims; near the French ports of Marseille, Le Havre, 

and Cherbourg; and near the Belgian port of Antwerp. Accommodations 

in these camps ranged from tents that provided a rudimentary bivouac 

level of shelter to more solid, wooden-sided tents designed for the winters 

of northern Europe.43

Constructing the camps and the packing crates necessary to move 

belongings and equipment required enormous quantities of lumber. In the 

spring of 1945 General Moore’s staff calculated an immediate and imperative need for about 95 million board feet. Much of this was available as 

sawn lumber in the U.S. zone in Germany. In June Moore’s engineers in 

Frankfurt began to set monthly production targets for the German forestry organizations that handled the logging and milling of lumber. Moore 

estimated that by July the Germans could produce about 35 million board 

feet a month. To move that much lumber by rail required about 350 railroad cars a day, straining the capacity of a rail system already worn down 

by the war. Moving anything by truck meant seeking help from field 

armies that had the very few trucks available; field commanders were disinclined to part with any of them.44

The availability of lumber for crating and packaging remained a major 

concern throughout the summer of 1945. Although the Army turned to 

Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia to supplement supplies, most of the lumber came from Germany. The German lumber that 

reached the engineers arrived unsorted and unclassified, making delivery of the proper stock to the appropriate locations much more difficult. 

When ordering boxes and crates, the engineers had to spread the contracts 

among small producers. The wide dispersion of these producers caused 

serious problems in the distribution of lumber, nails (also in short sup-
21

Combat to Occupation

ply), and hardware and complicated getting the finished products where 

needed. Despite the myriad of problems, supplies had become sufficiently 

regular by early autumn 1945 to keep up with the demand for shipping 

crates and boxes.45

The engineers had orders to prepare redeployment camp facilities for 

294,000 troops in the assembly area for debarkation. By 1 July, just seven 

weeks after the end of the war, they had constructed space for 287,125. 

By December 1945, as the flow of redeployment passed its peak, the engineers began to dismantle the camps, starting in France. This task continued until it was completed in October 1946.46

All this work had to be coordinated and accomplished even though 

the most experienced engineer personnel were simultaneously being 

redeployed. Within a week of the German surrender, General Moore 

began to see the severe impact on engineer units of the loss of key people. 

He complained that he would “lose 75 percent of our [engineer] troops in 

the Communications Zone within the first four months.” Years later he 

recalled, “[I] reorganized my units every damn week because my units 

were decimated as the best men got their points to go home.”47 Moore 

wanted authority to determine which engineer officers and units would 

be demobilized, but the command structure gave that authority to the 

field commanders in Europe, who implemented the rotation system.48

Securing a New Line of Communications and Supply

Ensuring a secure supply line to transport materiel to the troops figured prominently among the tasks facing the occupying forces. After the 

successful breakout from Normandy in 1944, most of the supplies needed 

by the U.S. Army had flowed across France. After liberation, France’s sensitivity concerning foreign military authority within its sovereign territory made this route unsuitable. The port of Bremerhaven became the port 

of entry and the northern end of a new line to bring supplies to the U.S. 

occupation forces in southern Germany.

To construct the new line of communications and supply, Army 

engineers had to clear the seaports and establish rail connections to the 

south. Clearing the Bremerhaven seaway began in April 1945, before the 

end of the war. The work included removing underwater mines from a 

point upstream (south) of Bremerhaven to the river port in Bremen, about 

thirty-five miles away. There the waterway also needed mine clearing and 

dredging. Fortunately, the rail yards in both port cities had suffered only 

light damage. On 28 June 1945, both Bremerhaven and Bremen opened 

and the first four American supply ships were unloaded. Preparations 

continued to ready the ports to receive forty ships within the next 

month.49

Theoretically, the military’s formal responsibility toward the civilian 

population was limited to only what was necessary to attain its military 

objectives and to prevent widespread disease.50 In reality, the devastation and paralysis in Germany made the Army totally responsible for the 
22

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

civilian population. When the war ended, the Army faced the prospect 

of housing and at least partially feeding 8 million people in Europe: U.S. 

troops and civilian personnel, recovered Allied military personnel, displaced persons in camps, and prisoners of war. More than 5 million of 

them were in the U.S. zones of occupation in Germany and Austria; U.S. 

troops made up 3 million.51 In addition, the Army commanded the only 

structure capable of providing general relief, with goods drawn largely 

from theater stocks, to the rest of the civilian population in need.52

The occupying armies had no choice but to address the pervasive 

chaos and despair of civilian society. Normal economic activity had 

totally broken down in the last days of the war. Most shops were empty. 

In postwar Germany, it was impossible to find such commodities as fabric, soap, electric light bulbs, or window glass on the open market. Only 

the black market functioned, and on it the common medium of exchange 

was American cigarettes, which soldiers had in abundant supply. About a 

third of the meager production in Germany found its way onto the black 

market. Trading in the black market was a court-martial offense, but few 

soldiers could resist it. A lieutenant who made his entire cigarette allowance available on the black market could pocket $12,000 in four months, 

the equivalent of well over $100,000 in current values.53

The Army engineers encountered situations in which only the black 

market offered the goods necessary to carry out military assignments. 

Because the domestic economy in the United States strained to meet the 

shift to peacetime production, the engineers faced severe restrictions on 

Power Station in Germany
23

Combat to Occupation

what they could requisition from home. On occasion Col. Robert Fleming, 

who served in the Construction Division in General Moore’s office from 

1945 to 1947, received calls from Col. Howard A. Morris, the district engineer in Frankfurt, saying that he had exhausted all possibilities for supply. 

Only the black market had the supplies that he needed to complete his 

mission. Fleming recalled that he would reply, “Okay, I’ll donate a carton 

of cigarettes.” Neither man faced a court-martial; indeed, both retired as 

general officers.54

Rebuilding the Infrastructure

Many of the underlying problems presented engineering challenges. 

Transportation had to be restored; industry had to be restarted; and basic 

utilities such as water, sewers, and electricity had to be made operational 

again.

In Le Havre, Cherbourg, Marseille, and other French cities and villages, 

the Army engineers repaired the mains that distributed water within the 

cities. In Le Mans, Cherbourg, Saint Quentin, Rheims, and the Belgian cities 

of Liège and Namur, they chlorinated the water systems as well as cleansing them. They restored 155 miles of power lines in the Normandy peninsula and another 21 miles of lines west of Aachen, Germany. Military personnel completed 65 to 85 percent of construction tasks in the first months after 

the Normandy landing, but prisoners of war and civilians also provided 

labor as the armies moved across France and into Germany.55

Mess Hall under Construction in Frankfurt, Germany, ca. 1945
24

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

Coal, the principal fuel for heating and power in Europe, was one 

of the resources essential for recovery. Even before hostilities ended, the 

engineers of the Advance Section (ADSEC) of COMZ received orders to 

take over the coalmines in the captured parts of Germany and to restore 

them to operation under U.S. military control to alleviate the critical shortage of coal. ADSEC engineers secured control of 177 mines in the RuhrCologne-Aachen area between 1 April and 15 May 1945 and immediately 

began to mine and ship coal.56

Restoration of the German mines by the ADSEC engineers illustrates 

the wide range of interlocking engineering problems created by the 

destruction of war. First, the coalmines needed electrical power to operate. 

To meet this need, the ADSEC engineers restored an 110,000-volt power 

grid for the Ruhr and a generating plant near Cologne. These systems 

provided more than adequate power for the mines, leaving a surplus for 

transmission elsewhere, including into Frankfurt.57

Second, the Army engineers had to find a labor force to work the 

coalmines. The Nazi regime had used slave labor to provide about 40 

percent of the wartime workforce in the mines. This labor source disappeared with the war’s end. To recruit mine workers, the engineers had to 

provide food, clothing, and shelter, all elements in markedly short supply 

in the spring of 1945. In the absence of a diet that would support strenuous labor, the mines were chronically understaffed and worker productivity was low. ADSEC engineers described the problem clearly: “In order 

to obtain large-scale production, working and living conditions must be 

made attractive to the miner.” The Army engineers wanted a diet of 3,500 

calories a day for miners to sustain production.58 If it had been approved 

(it was not), this diet would have given the miners three times the calories 

afforded to millions of other Europeans.

Third, the restoration of production and distribution of coal was hampered by the near paralysis of the rail, truck, and barge network. Had 

transportation been available to deliver essential supplies, such as timbers 

to shore up the mineshafts and galleries, effective production from the 

mines could have quadrupled in June 1945. In the Ruhr, where the level 

of production was about 5 percent of prewar quantities, that increase 

would have been dramatic! Even when newly reconstructed railroad lines 

became available, ADSEC engineers faced an “exceedingly acute” shortage 

of coal cars, which meant that coal could not move to the markets where it 

was needed.59

The Allies had to rebuild the transportation system that the war had 

disrupted and destroyed. Even as the troops advanced through Europe, 

engineers began to reconstruct railroad lines just behind the front. The 

Army repaired or rebuilt the equivalent of about 10,000 miles of singletrack lines between June 1944 and May 1945. Nearly all of these had been 

turned back to civilian control by the time Germany surrendered. In occupied areas, the military retained control of railways, and reconstruction 

continued in the U.S. zone after the surrender. In the Stuttgart-AugsburgMunich area, engineers started rebuilding the local electric rail system on 
25

Combat to Occupation

17 May, nine days after the German surrender. In less than two months 

trains were operating on the entire line. By January 1946, 96 percent of the 

rail lines in the American zone were operating again. German workers 

supplied most of the physical labor to rebuild and operate the railways. 

During the period immediately after American forces crossed the Rhine, 

the Germans were neither paid nor given food, but later the military government provided food for the laborers.60

Waterways constituted a vital part of the German transportation network. After the surrender, Army engineers assumed the tasks of clearing the Rhine for navigation and replacing the temporary bridges with 

more permanent structures.61 River clearing began in May 1945 under the 

direction of the Construction Section of the Office of the Theater Chief 

Engineer.62 Lt. Col. John Connally commanded the 1057th Engineer Port 

Construction and Repair Group that handled the actual work. To remove 

obstructions, engineers fabricated a floating crane mounted on a barge, 

providing a lift capacity of over 250 tons. By the end of June Connally’s 

crews had completely removed only one of the twenty-six major obstructions between Koblenz and Karlsruhe and had begun work on thirteen 

others. A month later they opened a navigational channel through seven 

of the fourteen demolished bridges; by September the task was completed.63 Connally’s unit also worked to reconstruct bridges on the Rhine and 

the Main Rivers with the same barge and crane, using German prisoners as laborers. As of 1 January 1946, responsibility for inland waterways 

In April 1945 engineers worked on an important railway bridge that linked 

Germany and Belgium.
26

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

in Germany passed from the Office of the Theater Chief Engineer to 

OMGUS. Army engineers completed work on the bridges across the Rhine 

and the Main in Mainz shortly thereafter.64

In the early months of the postwar era the Army engineers began the 

process of rebuilding Western Europe, especially defeated and devastated 

Germany. In the face of the pervasive destruction, economic collapse, hunger, and paralyzing despair that prevailed in 1945–1946, each engineering 

problem solved, each building rehabilitated, each roadway reconstructed 

or river cleared represented a major triumph. Beyond these discrete triumphs lay the larger task of supporting the U.S. Army in southwestern 

Germany for a duration that remained undefined.

The Soviets blockaded Berlin in 1948, which marked a significant 

change in the role of the U.S. forces in Germany. The supposedly provisional division of German territory took on a new character, one that 

reflected the tension growing between West and East in the Cold War 

conflict. The U.S. Army engineers stationed in Germany and throughout 

Europe adjusted their tasks and priorities accordingly.