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Show 760 The National Geographic Magazine U. S. Army Signal Corps. Official As Power Fails, a GI Tractor Turns a French Locomotive Built in Wartime 1917 To speed the drive to Berlin, the United States shipped some 1,500 locomotives and 20,000 freight cars to the Continent. Patriots salvaged about 450 French locomotives from the retreating Germans. Weak from hunger, liberated railway gangs emerged from hiding. Working beside Allied crews, they drew K rations. civilians to ensure security. The other is the business of setting up a minimum government structure and selecting Germans to run it. The latter task is especially essential if we are not to spend all our manpower as governors, rather than in winning the war and proceeding with the disarmament of the German Armies. Security, in an enemy country pledged to continue the fight underground, is a broad word. It means security from guerrilla assault on our troops, security for our supplies and information, and requires the immediate arrest of all individuals known to be or suspected of being potentially dangerous. Stringent Methods for Security The measures taken are stringent. Curfews are imposed which belie the word, civilians being allowed on the streets as little as an hour a day by some wary tactical commanders. Soldiers search out "bad actors" and put them "behind wire" as civilian internees or, as is often the case where jails are blown down, place them under house arrest. Ordinances posted on entry by military government detachments call for the immediate surrender of weapons in civilian hands. In response we collect barrels of arms, ranging from sporting Mausers, capable of killing a deer or a man, and sabers carried against the French in the days of Bismarck to World War I Lugers and fancy Nazi daggers. Review the legislation adopted by the military government on occupation and you learn the details of the initial Allied policy toward Germany. The Nazi Party is dissolved, German laws carrying Nazi principles are suspended, "cruel and excessive punishments" are prohibited, German courts are closed or, where they are of Nazi origin, dissolved, Allied military currency is made legal tender, foreign exchange transactions by Germans are blocked, |