Word: pforzheim
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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What helped Lascoe most was the West's decision to give Germany a new, healthy currency. Shops were empty, factories at a standstill because farmers and businessmen refused to sell their products for worthless Reichsmarks. One day in June 1948, a convoy of army trucks pulled into Pforzheim, bringing stacks of crisp, new Deutsche marks. Pforzheimers queued all day to exchange their old money for new. The city was transformed. Farmers glutted the market with fruit and vegetables; shop windows filled with furniture, cosmetics and shoes...
Marshall Plan aid reinforced Pforzheim's gains: 400,000 marks for a new bridge; 600,000 marks to rebuild the gasworks. On Pforzheim's wastelands, hundreds of new buildings mushroomed...
...Lascoe's job to infuse the new prosperity with democratic ideals. There were free city council elections. As Oberbiirgermeister the councillors chose Johann Peter Brandenburg, 44, an anti-Nazi lawyer who shared Lascoe's enthusiasm. Lascoe wanted the council to meet town-meeting style; no Pforzheim municipal official had ever before exposed himself to public questioning. Brandenburg winced but obliged, and won the city's first elections...
German Allies. The airlift, Korea, and the arrival of 2,500 Iron Curtain refugees brought the cold war to Pforzheim. From on high came a new occupation policy: recruit the Germans as allies. "Our so-called war criminals must be released before we can join the West," objected an ex-Wehrmacht colonel. Lascoe got U.S. High Commissioner John J. McCloy to come down to Pforzheim to talk to the town's leaders at an informal buffet supper (one dish: corn on the cob). They still had misgivings...
Today the French-this time Algerian Spahis-are back in Pforzheim. They came not as occupiers but as part of the thin line of defense the West is building against Soviet aggression. "This is the first time in history," said a Pforzheimer quietly, "that the French have entered our country without ravaging...