11/26/45

I am living in Hoechst now. My life is very comfortable and work is quite interesting. I spent last week at the Herman Goering Works in Brunswork. I now have all Krupp's research files here and believe I can learn a lot by reading through all the material. Hoechst is one of the biggest centers for US civilians of all kinds. Part of the town has been requisitioned which means the owners were forced to move out, and then we moved in. Our billets are well heated, we are allowed to use gas and electricity as much as we want, and our food is excellent. We all have been inoculated against the flu and live a strange life inside and outside Germany at the same time. We live in a compound behind barbed wires, and the Germans are not allowed to enter that part of town, except the women who keep the houses clean. Time and again one has to see destroyed towns, and all the pictures and movies can't give you the right impression of  how horrible the destruction really is. One sees people expelled from the East, starving and looking like prisoners of concentration camps, without any belongings. One wonders how human beings can exist in and under the ruins of big blocks of houses. It is hardly imaginable the attitude of the average Bavarian to the refugees from East. There is, what seems to be, an almost constant running to the police and denouncing one's neighbors. The Germans are all very sorry about their fate, but few regret that they started the war, only that they lost it. Sometimes when you go into a small town or village, it looks like peace and happiness. The contrast between cities and the country was never as big as now. Farmers have plenty of food, and the cities are starving. Lack of transportation prevents goods from reaching the larger towns and cities.

The compound he lived in:

Two of the destroyed bridges: