History
The first contingent of approximately 175 U.S. Army troops, led by Colonel Frank Howley, a Civil Affairs officer specializing in military government, entered the Berlin area (Babelsberg, near
Potsdam) on July 1, 1945. Their defined mission was to assess and occupy the sector expected to be assigned to the U.S. in the aftermath of the war. Colonel Howley’s book, Berlin Command, well documents his experience within the city and his personal and professional relationships with his contemporaries during those turbulent four years in the immediate aftermath of the war.
The city lay in ruins from the incessant Allied bombing campaigns and the brutal house-to-house fighting between the Soviets and the last-ditch German defenders, which left very little in the form of public services. Howley’s contingent set to work upon arrival in coalition with their Allied partners – the British, French, and Soviets, all of whom operated under the Allied Kommandatura arrangement agreed upon in earlier conferences, to bring order from chaos.
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