Green letters

-4-

these went along another street and we only saw them at a distance. The rest of the parade was at least semi-civilian, though the pervasive sense of a people organized into a chain of little fighting units existed for us. There were thousands in "sport clubs", youth organizations, "factory fighting groups", all carrying colorful flags, posters, pictures of party heroes, etc. - all marching in front of the review stand in step. (By this time we had managed to slip with a small crowd of people thru a gap in police restraining lines, and stood in good positions at one corner of the square itself, a fine view of the proceedings).

About 10:30 we (Dr. Tarshus (George's Econ. prof. ), Dr. Whittaker, Dr. and Mrs. Zoerner, Laurie Hutton and I) worked our way through the crowds back to the train to go over to the west side rally, just across the border between east and west Berlin in the gigantic Platz der Republic. This is a huge open space about 1/4 to 1/2 mile each way; there were an estimated 750,000 people there, to hear three speeches by west German and Berlin officials. To get any feeling for the magnitude of the occasion just try to imagine that many people assembled in one place- Big Game is 100,000, and this made that tiny. I was held up briefly to take pictures and it was an endless sea of faces in every direction. But the tone here was quite different from that of parade and spectacle in east Berlin. People were coming and going in steady streams at the edge of the crowd, but there was a large central area where the people stood still, watched and listened. The spirit was generally serious, thoughtful, people listening attentively, clapping at some points. It was quiet and serious the whole time as though the people appreciated the gravity of the situation and the importance of their position as an outpost of the free world. The speeches themselves were generally anti-Communist ("We wil not surrender our freedom" variety).

As the west rally broke up (it lasted only 1 1/2 hours)we went back to the east sector and caught the last hour of the parade there (which lasted five hours)- which aws closed by thirty units of polikspolizer (people's police) 100 men in each unit. Thus it closed on the same militaristic note on which it began.

We spent the rest of this afternoon again looking around a couple of book stores- and with the help of Laurie's Russian visa- I was able to buy a beautiful book on Van Gogh which I had been refused on 5 previous tries. Cost $2.25- worth $18 in the USA. I have bought several others by now including two big works by Marx and Engels and Lenin (30 c each for 500 pages) and four longplay classical records. With the exchange of east marls being over 4-1 in west Berlin (this is illegal to the east Germans) the prices are ridiculously low!

Tonight I am staying home, partly because I am tired amd my feet are all walked out! But also I have to prepare a short talk for a meeting tomorrow morning in which we try to pull together our experiences and observations here in Berlin. So I have some reading and thinking to do. Maybe if my observations end up being organized enough I will write them down and send them on to you- for there is surely much to be learned and understood about Berlin and the US and every little knowledge helps.

Tomorrow is then our last day of sightseeing- we leave after dinner for the burg, arriving about 1:30 AM.

Customs Form 3431 Treasury Department August 1958

NOTICE TO IMPORTER OF SHIPMENT HELD FOR INVOICE BUREAU OF CUSTOMS

IN REPLY REFER TO 8080 RME

Port of San Francisco, Calif. Date May 20, 1960

Mr. David Green 633 W. Terrace Fresno, Calif.

A mail shipment consisting of 1 packages containing projector addressed to you by George Green, Hamburg, Germany has been delivered to this office for customs clearance without an invoice. We regret that customs clearance must be delayed, but without an invoice we are unable to determine the proper amount of duties or taxes due on this shipment. As soon as you furnish the invoice, we will process your shipment promptly. Please return this notice with the invoice.

We will be able to give you better service on future shipments if you will follow these suggestions:

1. When placing an order with a concern in a foreign country, always request that an invoice in English accompany the merchandise when it is shipped.

2. If the shipment will consist of more than one parcel, ask the foreign shipper to mark each parcel plainly and conspicuously, near the address label, with the parcel number and the total number of parcels in the shipment. Also, it would help to expedite delivery if a copy of the invoice is placed inside each parcel or is put into an envelope securely attached to the outside of each parcel. (For shipments of 4 parcels or less, this should not be a burden on the shipper.) It frequently happens that all packages of a shipment do not arrive at the same time. If we have an invoice for the packages received, it generally would not be necessary to hold these packages until the remainder of the shipment arrives. It is important, of course, to have the shipper state the contents and value of each parcel on each copy of the invoice.

3. If you know the United States tariff paragraph number and the rate of duty applicable to the merchandise at the time you place an order, ask the foreign shipper to show this information on the invoice.

We will be glad to furnish any other information you may desire to help expedite customs clearance of your mail importations. Please address your request -and return this form - to:

Do not call in person. Parcel will be delivered by mail.

U.S. CUSTOMS MAIL DIVISION RINCON ANNEX POST OFFICE MISSION AT SUTART STREETS SAN FRANCISCO 19, CALIFORNIA

(Put any remarks on other side of this form)

Customs Form 3431 Treasury Department August 1958

NOTICE TO IMPORTER OF SHIPMENT HELD FOR INVOICE

Port of San Francisco, Calif.

Date May 20, 1960

Mr. David Green

633 W. Terrace

Fresno, Calif.

A mail shipment consisting of 1 packages containing projector adressed to you by George Green, Hamburg, Germany has been delivered to this office for customs clearance without an invoice. We regret that customs clearance must be delayed, but without an invoice we are unable to determine the proper amount of duties or taxes due on this shipment. As soom as you furnish the invoice, we will process your shipment promptly. Please return this notice with the invoice.

We will be able to give you better service on future shipments if you will follow these suggestions:

1. When placing an order with a concern in a foreign country, always request that an invoice in English accompany the merchandise when it is shipped.

2. If the shipment will consist of more than one parcel as the foreign shipper to mark each parcel plainly and conspicuosly, near the address label, with the parcel number and the total number of parcels in the shipment. Also, it would help to expedite delivery if a copy of the invoice is placed inside each parcel or is put into an envelope securely attached to the outside of each parcel. (For shipments of 4 parcels or less, this should not be a burden on the shipper.) It frequently happens that all packages of a shipment do not arrive at the same time. If we have an invoice for the packages received, it generally would not be necessary to hold these packages until the remainder of the shipment arrives. It is important, of course, to have the shipper state the contents and value of each parcel on each copy of the invoice.

3. If you know the United States tarriff paragraph number an the rate of duty applicable to the merchandise at the time you place an order, as the foreign shipper to show this information on the invoice.

We will be glad to furnish any other information you may desire to help expedite customs clearance of your mail importations. Please address your request -and return this form - to:

U.S. CUSTOMS MAIL DIVISION RINCON ANNEX POST OFFICE MISSION AT STUART STREETS SAN FRANCISCO 19, CALIFORNIA

(Put any remarks on other side of this form)

Do not call in person. Parcel will be delivered by mail.

6.30.60

Dear Folks,

Yesterday I spoke for several hours with the mayor of Beutelsbach, Herr Plessing, and his wife. Our discussion turned among other things to the war, and to current political attitudes, and was in addition a chance for me to think out several impressions that I have picked up as to American misconceptions about Germany. I'm going to set these thoughts down in disjointed fashion, so that I may have a record of them, and you may share in the insights of my experience here.

#1 - It is as many of us surely realize, simply impossible for Americans who have not seen it to imagine the destructive power of a war. Even being here and seeing what ruins remain (not very many!) we cannot visualize a city 90% bombed out. And even less could we understand the way this damage was experienced by the people, how they lived during the war. Frau Plessing described to me one very minor incident - the bombing of her small village just outside Stuttgart. In a matter of minutes there fell on this village of 2000 people 980 firebombs and 190 explosive bombs! In her house 9 firebombs hit simultaneously - they were very lucky though, and saved all but one bedroom. Many of the houses were built of straw - of 89 of these, 2 remained standing! This in perhaps 15 minutes, mostly with small fire bombs - I myself cannot imagine what it must have been in the big cities where the effort was concentrated and repeated.

She also described living under air raid conditions - going 3 or 4 times in a night - on the run, with a suitcase of the most important clothes - to the shelter, there to stand perhaps for hours - silent (to conserve air) and motionless against the wall. This perhaps until 4 AM then at 6 every day catch a train to Stuttgart (which might also be stopped for an air raid alert), without having eaten, to put in a long days work. Back again at night to have sleep broken again by the sirens.

#2 A second thing many Americans have trouble understanding is - How coud Hitler af become so powerful, and how could the people have permitted such actions and ideas as he carried out. I surely don't claim to have the answers to this, but some factors do loom out as important - in the early 30's there were in Germany millions of unemployed (as in America) and such a time is receptive to radical proposals (draw analogy to the necessary dramatic proposals of Roosevelt in the early New Deal). Hitler took several strong actions to mobilize resources - building autobahns, etc. took thousands into the army to give them purpose and activity again, and money to send home to pump into the sagging economy, and too Germans were often caught up in the appeal of a "New Germany", a glorious fatherland, etc - a sort of nationalism which has touched many countries in the last 100 years.

As time progressed however another factor came forth which we Americans almost always forget, I think. Hitler's regime soon became an internal dictatorshop - with supression of news, immediate police retaliation (away to a work camp) for giving aid to a Jew or speaking against the govt., etc. It is on this reign of fear that most of Hitler atrocities are built, and not on the nationalism or enthusiasm of the people (though these made his power possible)! Frau Plessing tells of having given food, clothes to Jews, as much to get them to leave the shop as to help them. Fear was a very important reality and it effectively

destroyed resistance.

#3 Post war conditions here were almost as severe as those of the war itself. Thousands of people poured in from bombed out cities or from lands controlled by the Russians, poured into the small villages like Beutelsbach where bomb damage was not severe. But Beutelsbach was already overcrowded by people who had come from Stuttgart early in the war, and where could a town of 2000 find room for 30 people every day (who came in truckloads or an hour's notice)? There was housing commission which, with police aid, made people give up rooms to new arrivals, until several families would be sleeping together, often on the floor. There were no clothes, very little to eat, and there were no goods in the store to be bought. Three stoves would come from Waiblingen as aid gifts, and 50 families would beg to have them. One very dramatic incident marks a turning point for these people - the Marshall plan gave (on April 29, 1946 and every German knows the date by heart) to every man, woman and child in Germany a gift of DM40 ($10). This money acted apparently as a catalyst for the recovery of the economy and soon goods became available and the long road to recovery and rebuilding began.

#4 One very important factor in understanding political life in modern Europe is the realization that present national boundaries are very recent. We think of America as a young nation - but most of Europe (Italy and Germany being particularly important!) is younger. Thus this area of Baden-Württemberg was a kingdom (several small ones actually) even after World War I. Many people here are far more Schwäbisch (the folk culture of the area) than they are "German", and many remember in their own lives the whole history of the modern state of Germany. Consequently local areas are very important and some of the lack of deep interest which observers see in German national politics.

#5 One of first observation here was that Germans rarely talk politics, show no particulart sign of interest in political matters. Naturally this was disturbing, because it would seem to be just such disinterest that made Hitler possible. I raised the question with the mayor, and he provided a somewhat different picture. First of all, as a matter of information - virtually every home in Beutelsbach takes a daily newspaper, many two; every family also has a radio, and this often runs a good part of the day. A fact that will probably shock you, as it did me - Beutelsbach (population 3100) there are 180-200 television sets!, virtually all bought in the last 2-3 years! As to the political significance of this: the mayor says that people read the paper carefully, thoroughly, and that they get a large amount of news on radio or T.V. He says that all citizens - "peasant" farmers included - are well informed on political matters - how well I don't know, but he himself certainly is. So apparently people are interested and informed about political matters - why then so little talk and activity? One important answer is that many people don't