Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who had been Oberbuergermeister of Cologne

Chapter 12 XII The Rhineland Campaign, 1945
Finding the city a wreck and over 70 percent destroyed was no longer a surprise, but the cellar life that had sprung up under the constant threat of air raids continued to astonish the Americans. The average citizen seemed to find spending his life underground entirely normal. A typical cellar contained bedding, a stove, a cabinet, and some decorations to give the place a homey touch. In the cellars, the inhabitants had even developed a brisk trade and social life. Many were hesitant about coming up into the daylight and facing the new risks of the occupation, but most were out in a few days scavenging among the ruins. The military government officers observed, as they had elsewhere, that the first reaction seemed to be to regard all unguarded property as free for the taking.

In the wake of battle: a German woman surveys the wreckage of her property.

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For E1H2 and its commander, Lt. Col. R. L. Hyles, the big problem was to rebuild the city administration under 12th Army Group's recent and rigid directive against employing Nazis and without letting a clique like the one in Aachen emerge.

The detachment had to do more of the work of running the city, handpicking the officials at all levels, not only at the top, and supervising those who did qualify since, if they were up to the new standard of political purity, the chances were their other qualifications were weak. Hyles' prize appointee was Dr. Konrad Adenauer, who had been Oberbuergermeister of Cologne from 1915 to 1933 when the Nazis forced him out. He had been in jail for several months after the 20 July 1944 attempt to assassinate Hitler and, after his release, was prohibited from returning to Cologne. To wait out what was left of the war, Adenauer had settled in Rhoendorf on the right hank of the Rhine five miles downstream from the Remagen bridge. In his seventieth year, he had done poorly at choosing a refuge from the war but brilliantly in setting the stage for a late political career. When the bridgehead front passed Rhoendorf, military government brought him to Cologne and reinstalled him as Oberbuergermeister, in secret for the first two months because his three sons were in the Wehrmacht.