September 7, 1947

Germany is the poorhouse of Europe. Conditions have not improved much although you can see a fair number of houses repaired, and more goods seem to be available than six months ago. This particularly applies to the Ruhr, where the miners get big extra rations and live comparatively well off now. But otherwise, all incentive for work has gone and people do not care anymore. They cannot buy anything with their marks, earn much more if they spend a day in blackmarketeering than a week at honest work. This lack of incentive applies as much to large industries as to the tram conductor. Taxes are too high and factories lose money because they can never replace goods they have to sell at fixed prices. Germany is heading for a a tough winter. The army of occupation is less popular than ever. One can notice it quite often by the attitude of the Germans who have changed from extreme servility a year ago to an underlying hostility and passive resistance now. It does not seem that the Germans are ready for democracy.

My work here is steady and we have several interesting cases including Krupp, IG Farben, and Einsatzgruppen case .

( my note- SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting. The units targeted Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories; including Gypsies, and Soviet political commissars. The Einsatzgruppen operated throughout the territory occupied by the German armed forces following the German invasions of Poland, in September 1939, and later, of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The Einsatzgruppen carried out operations ranging from the murder of a few people to operations which lasted over two or more days, such as the massacres at Babi Yar (33,771 killed in two days) and Rumbula (25,000 killed in two days). The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders of over 1,100,000 people, and they were the first Nazi organizations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organized policy.)
I occasionally find time to listen in on the other cases for short periods and find it amazing, inspite of everything one knows. Some of the defendants are very interesting people. I listened several times at the IG Farben and SS general trials. It seems incredible how harmless these SS generals appear. One could be an old professor and in fact he killed 150,000 Jews in a few months and has no guilty conscience whatsoever. My work with FIAT brought me in contact with mostly decent Germans, and one tends to forget what happened here for eight years. Nuernberg is a dreary bombed out city and one cannot do much in town.