Montgomery in the Good War: Portrait of a Southern City, 1939-1946

10. The End of the War

10 The End ofthe War Enlisted air WACs prepare surgical bandages as volunteers for the Red Cross, summer of 1945. Courtesy ofthe Alabama Department ofArchives and History, Montgomery, Alabama. Montgomerians in the occupation forces perceptively described Europe at the war's end for readers at home. A writer who asked not to be identified wrote a letter to the Advertiser from Nuremberg, where "there's a continuous stream of refugees ... on the main streets. There are DPs [displaced persons], freed Allied prisoners , freed German soldiers, Krauts returning from the countryside where they fled from the bombings, U.S. soldiers, British and American officers, German medical officers.... No one smiles." It was, he 224 The End ofthe War said, "a lifeless place in spite ofthe crowds ofpeople and heavy traffic. . . . I passed a cemetery and church that had been plowed up by the bombs."! Major Haynes Thompson, an AAF public relations man and former Advertiser journalist, described Berlin: "It isn't laid waste, flat-like. It's just gutted. The buildings ... [are] hollow, floorless, charred." Touring the city, he thought ofthe "men who did the wrecking-the boys in the Forts and Libs and Lancasters ... , those who lived only to see the beginning of their work, not the end. Many of them were Alabamians I knew; some, perhaps, Montgomerians."2 Private First Class John Brown wrote home about his tour ofa concentration camp. "I saw corpses stacked like cordwood who had died from starvation and thousands ... who would soon die. Some of the people looked so much like the dead ones that it is hard to distinguish between the living and the dead." He saw "the crematorium where the Nazis burned the victims and ... the ashes ofhundreds.... I could go on and on telling about the torture devices, such as whipping posts. . . . Before the Americans came they had nothing to sleep on except wooden racks." If"all Americans could see what I have seen," he said, "they would realize why this fight of right against wrong had to be fought."3 The Advertiser of May 9 was quick to try to redirect the public's focus to the war with Japan, at the same time reemphasizing the wartime empathy for Russia: "Russia will have every right to slack offher phenomenal war efforts ... , but Britain and America have another rendezvous with death in the Pacific." Though the United States had "bloodily bought advanced bases from Guadalcanal to Okinawa" and "mopped up the Philippines," it had not yet met "the main armies of these suicidal fighters ... on soil that they must keep if they are to survive as a national force." The writer sagely warned against a "premature let-down" with the course "so far from being run."4 For over a year a "let-down" had been increasingly evident in the population. It had been widespread after the invasion of Normandy but had somewhat dissipated at the onset ofthe Bulge. Why had there been a general lessening, among Montgomerians and others on the The End ofthe War 225 home front, of the fervor that had been evident after Pearl Harbor? Perhaps it was because their courage and stamina had not been tested with a Battle of Britain, the threat of an eminent invasion, a blitz. In spite of motion pictures and newsreels, most people had difficulty imagining the ordeal of the Russians and the horrors of the battlefronts . After the turning of the tide against the Japanese in 1942, Americans had no doubts that they would win. By June 6,1944, they had grown impatient for total victory.s Rationing and shortages became harder to tolerate, as did regulations with regard to wages, prices, rents, and taxes. An editorial in the Advertiser for June 28 spoke of a "Dark Brown Market": "Extortionate prices being charged by certain dealers or hucksters for fish, fowl, fruits, and vegetables" were "flagrant violations" ofOPA ceilings that allowed "generous profits ... [on] commonplace items." The writer blamed individuals for "inept purchasing" and enforcement agencies for "deliberate winking."6 Many Montgomerians reacted angrily to an announcement from Washington that the United States was going to share its already short meat supply with Europeans on the verge ofstarvation in many warravaged areas. Local residents were not appeased by an editorial in the Advertiser noting that the average consumption of meat per person in the United States in 1944 exceeded that in Canada, where meat was not rationed. The...