After the Reich (58 page)

A rare of the Little Fortress in Theresienstald with German prisonners. During the war the Kleine Festung had provided accommodation for the SS and was used for occasional executions of Crechs and Jews. Now the boot was on the other foot

Josef Schöner’s pictures of the ruins of Vienna. The State Opera House with the Jockey Club behind. The Jockey Club had taken a direct hit in the last weeks of the war. Hundreds of bodies lay in the cellars

The Cathedral or ‘Steffl’ denuded of its high-pitched roof. No one could say precisely who had started the fires: the Russians, the Germans or the Viennese themselves

The Graben shopping street. Life was returning to normal. Note the woman in her traditional
Dirndl
: Austrian dress proved you were not German. (
inset
) The Austrians had been liberated as the first victims of Hitler, but the Allies were not entirely convinced

The Allies had a duty to feed the vanquished Germans. This notice of 13 May 1945 sets out the rations for Berlin. Four ration cards were issued according to the recipient’s usefulness to society. Workers received twice as much as children. Later two more categories were invented including the sixth, hunger card. Needless to say, very little of this largesse was really available

Silesian children arriving in the British Zone in Germany after their ordeals. Many could not believe the benevolent treatment they received at the hands of the Western Allies

These Silesian children could look forward to a new life in West Germany

For others the misery was not yet over. The Allied rations did little to allay malnutrition. Here Victor Gollancz presents a powerful indictment of the British treatment of the Germans

Gollancz was particularly interested in the state of German children’s shoes

One of the more positive elements of the Occupation: Sir Robert Birley (here as headmaster of Eton). He felt that what the Germans needed was re-education, not denazification

The Allies leave a positive legacy. It was the British who revived production of Hitler’s ‘Kraft-durch-Freude’ car. The ‘Beetle’ was to be the ‘wheels of the Occupation’

Lord Pakenham, later Earl of Longford, the second British Minister for Germany and Austria, gets to grips with the problem

A rare moment of Anglo-Soviet cooperation:Marshal Koniev and General Sir Dick McCreery award the cups at a race meeting at the Freudenau in Vienna