American Airpower Comes of Age

PARIS AND GERMANY
71. Copies of Lt Gen Karl Koller and Dr. Albert Speer, German Minister
of Production, statements/interviews are in Henry H. Arnold Papers, Library
of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C., hereinafter cited as AP.
72. This discussion dealt with the possible use of the atomic bomb against
Japan, Stimson assessing it from the “standpoint of strategy” implementation
and targets. Arnold emphasized his earlier recommendations, made with Marshall
and Stimson on 18 July, that General Spaatz, who was in the Pacific and
would be directing US operations from Guam, should make the actual selection
of targets and coordinate with Maj Gen Leslie R. Groves, USA, CG, Manhattan
Engineer District, which developed the weapon. Col Jack Stone’s mission
is mentioned briefly in Arnold, Global Mission, 589. No copy of Arnold’s
later recommendations has been found in AP. Earlier in the day, Stimson had
met with Churchill and Lord Cherwell. The British Prime Minister indicated
that Truman, on receiving a copy of Gen Groves’s report on the successful 16
July test explosion, was “pepped up.” He commented further that as a result
the president “stood up to the Russians in a most emphatic and decisive manner.”
See Diary (microfilm) of Henry L. Stimson, 21 July 1945, Sterling Library,
Yale University, New Haven, Conn., excerpt also printed in FRUS Postdam, vol.
2, 225; Arnold, Global Mission, 589; Herbert Feis, Between War and Peace: The
Potsdam Conference (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960),
176–77; and Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, vol. 5, 704–25.
73. Maj Gen Oliver P. Echols, now chief Internal Affairs and Communications
Division, US Occupation Forces Germany.
74. See note 57 above on the FW 190 underground assembly line.
75. Maj Gen Deane continued to head the US Military Mission to Russia;
Maj Gen Floyd L. “Parksie” Parks, USA, CG, US Occupation Forces, Berlin,
was in charge of United States arrangements for the conference.
76. Arnold proved amazingly prescient. The disparity in the economic
health, including their GNP, respective standards of living, et cetera,
between East Germany and West Germany was dramatic in the postwar
period. East Germany, created from the Soviet occupation zone in 1949, was
far outstripped by West Germany, which was created in the same year by
the merging of the occupation zones of France, Great Britain, and the United
States. Assimilating the diverse standards of living in the former Russiandominated
East Germany with West Germany following the unification of
both sectors in 1992 remains a problem for the Germans at this writing.
77. Silesia, in eastern Europe, is highly industrialized. Containing large
coal deposits and mines, it is located along both banks of the Oder river
north of the Sudeten mountains. Overrun by the Soviets in the winter of
1944, it was under their control at this time. Much of prewar Silesia was
incorporated into the new Polish boundaries as confirmed at this conference.
The coal-rich and also highly industrialized Saar, in what became West
Germany, is bounded on the south and west by France, by Luxemburg on
the northwest, and by the Rhineland-Palatinate in the northeast. Allied
troops had gained complete control of the area in early 1945 and it was in
the zone of occupation allocated to France.
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