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The Red Cross and Merle Potter’s War
In mid 1943, Merle Potter
resigned from the Berger Amusement Company. He was not happy in the
position and was forty - nine years old. By the accepted standards,
he was too old for active duty service yet he somehow wanted to
contribute with the country at war. When Potter had attended the
Shattuck school, it was a strict, all male military prep school.
Doubtless, many of the instructors had seen service in the Civil War
and on the Great Plains fighting Indians and this had left an
impression. The 101 Best Stories had been dedicated to the Minnesota
Auxiliary of the American Legion and Potter had run promotional
events at downtown movie theaters aimed at WW I veterans. With two
sons already of active duty as ensigns in the Navy, Potter must have
considered himself very lucky when he applied and was accepted to a
position with the American Red Cross that could potentially lead to
an assignment on one of the distant fronts of the war. With no
medical experience and marginal executive ability, Potter departed
for six weeks of training. Perhaps they needed a publicist.
At just about this time, the Army was actively combing the rosters
of the Red Cross and similar organizations for potential officers
willing to be trained in civil affairs administration. Many of these
candidates were similar in age and background to Potter, in their
forties, university trained and well established in civilian careers
with a willingness to pull on Army boots. Merle A. Potter was
absolutely in the right place at the right time and was transferred
from the Red Cross into a highly modified Officer Candidate School
run in Pennsylvania. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as a
Captain and sent to England where the civil affairs teams were being
assembled and would receive further training. The next time we find
a specific Potter citation in the newspapers, the invasion of Europe
has already occurred, Potter is deep in France and as expected, is
putting on a show.
The Virginia Safford column in the 13 December 1944 Star reported
that Potter had written to Berger recalling his duties as a Special
Services officer. He was in France, not far from the German border
and had a host of duties running a soldier center at a bombed out
Luftwaffe base. He oversaw a Post Exchange, Army Post Office, barber
shop and mobile Recreation Center for the troops. In the off time,
he scoured local villages for under employed chefs who were not
adverse to cooking a special meal for the Captain. He concluded that
he was the impresario for a “ Warehouse Follies Show “ put on by the
troops. Safford concluded her column, “ High Living! “
A few months later, there was a burst of Potter activities in the
Minnesota papers. In a special report to the Minneapolis Sunday
Times dated 25 March 1945, Potter wrote a first hand account of
observing troops during the first rubber boat assault over the
Rhine. In part,
“ Suddenly the night’s stillness was pieced by the ratatatat of
small arms fire on the other side of the Rhine, and the show entered
a more sobering phase. Quickly came our retaliating fire, tracer
fire arched over the river seeking vulnerable targets. The enemy
came in with sprays of missiles from machine guns and then from
hills in back of us came thundering blows of our artillery blasting
and shredding the air. Now and again the din would subside for a few
minutes and then it would resume with renewed vigor. From that
window overlooking the river during one quiet interlude, I heard
doughboys voices shouting, ‘ come out of that house you dirty ……’
Another time I heard a German soldier scream from pain and then
become suddenly quite. “
The Potter article flood continued over the next few weeks. He had
been made Public Relations Officer of the XII Corps, part of
Patton’s Third Army, and was a member of Lieutenant General Manton
S. Eddy’s staff, with easy access to wire services to get the story
out. This was another stroke of extraordinary good luck. Potter and
Eddy had known each other as cadets at the Shattuck School thirty
years earlier.
Not affiliated with a home town paper, Potter sent his reports to
old friends back in Minneapolis who readily took them to print. He
wrote that he had escorted VIPs through the Corps area, run a
refugee camp for a few days, been harassed by German buzz bombs and
had come to admire the British troops he had met. Then this sobering
statement,
“ I find the German adults docile - not a spark of fight left in
them. But the young boys are vicious little demons, glare at you
from doorways, eyes filled with hated. The Germans have done as
effective job with the Hitler Jugend ( youth ) where training starts
when they are six. The world will be better off when they are dead.
“
An article printed on 23 May finds Potter reporting in from the
German - Czech border in the very last days of the war. He had come
across a steady steam of German atrocities, mass killings and the
results of forced marches of concentration camp victims denied food
or water. He summed up his brief dispatch,
“ following the burial service (of scores of Polish Jews found
roadside) I ordered every German present to march by the dead
bodies. I did not talk to any German who did not disclaim all
responsibility for the atrocities that took place in their midst. “
Two days later, a single paragraph ran in the papers noting that
Merle Potter, former movie critic and now Army public relations
officer can be seen in two news reels currently playing at various
Twin Cities theaters. On film, Potter is the officer grimly
directing the mass burials of victims at the Buchenwald
concentration camp.
Governor Potter, the Prince and the Cosmopolitan Club
With Europe finally at peace, Captain Potter and Lieutenant General
Eddy parted ways. Potter was posted to the job he had trained for in
England. The man who found little joy in running Max Burger’s
theaters found himself and his H level detachment, running a
Kurstadt with over fifteen thousand war wear Germans in the town or
immediate vicinity. Among his many concerns, the creation and
administration of an American zone in the town, refugee control,
issuing registration papers to all Germans over the age of eight,
enforcement of various Army of Occupation laws passed down from his
superiors, coordination with U.S. units that had occupied the old
German barracks and hotels throughout the Kur zone, reestablishing a
local German government and city services and last but not least,
insuring that the local Military Police unit was enforcing anti -
fraternization laws. To accomplish this, Potter was assisted by
three other officers and six enlisted men. Everyone had received
intensive training in the German language, nobody really spoke it.
The Military Government detachments varied in size and composition
depending on the amount of German territory they would take
responsibility for. An H level unit, second from the smallest in
size, was designed for a town or small city about the size of Bad
Kissingen. Sadly, Merle Potter left no first hand record of what
must have been tumultuous times but portions of the story can be
pieced together through various sources. Some detail is very sketchy
while other parts of the story are well detailed.
Considering the town was undamaged from the war, Bad Kissingen would
have been considered a plum assignment, there were roofs on all the
buildings and the water pipes did work. Whether General Eddy had
some influence with the assignment is unknown.
Supposedly, the Military Government Officer teams were to have known
their specific town - city or region assignment while training in
England. This part of the post war plan proved unworkable and in all
probability, Potter received his specific assignment as the war
ended. It is also unknown if Potter’s H team had accompanied him
while Potter was an acting PAO of XII Corps.
Whatever the specific circumstances, in the late Spring of 1945,
Captain Merle Potter and his team were assigned to take over the
administration of Bad Kissingen. All across Germany, dozens of teams
fanned out to similar assignments. Potter had received the specific
training for the assignment in England as the European Civil Affairs
Regiments were being built at the same time as the invasion forces
were assembled. Later to be known as Military Government Officers,
the detachments received some very basic military training and then
intensive language training and civil affairs instruction. The teams
were faced with re - establishing some level of civil services in
Germany, a nation by and large, bombed back to the 17th century.
Merle Potter took his position at center stage and was about to play
the greatest role of his life.
Frank McInerny’s Around the Town column from mid Summer 1945
reported that Potter was now the Military Governor in Bad Kissingen
and then,
“ Captain Merle Potter writes … that the krauts, particularly those
in the entertainment business, never miss an opportunity to belittle
the U.S. denazification program. He cites a bit of dialogue between
two stage comics. A well dressed man is sweeping the streets and
passerby shouts - Hey professor, how come you are sweeping the
streets? The reply - Ohh, I got fired as a professor because I was a
Nazi, now I am a street sweeper. The first man then answered - Well
I lost my job as a street sweeper because I too was a Nazi … what
shall I do now? “
Later that year, AP reported that Captain Potter, disgusted over the
constant anti American rumors that were being reported to his office
at the Rathaus ( city hall ), had ordered an investigation and
determined that one Fraulein Magdalene Schoel was the source of many
of these lies and had her proclaimed - The Official Gossip Monger of
Bad Kissingen. The German town fathers were called in to make this
official and the announcement was posted on bulletin boards across
town.
All was not fun and games for Potter and his peers across Germany.
The Army realized that it did not want a long term commitment in
direct oversight of German civil affairs. As fast as possible, local
control was to be handed off to qualified Germans as long as they
were not previously high ranking Nazis. In the summer, Potter had
worked to assemble a local board to oversee the day to day German
civil affairs of the town. The last German Burgermeister ( mayor )
from the Nazi period had killed himself at the end of the war.
Potter found a man he felt he could work with, a local dentist named
Alfons Foster but Foster had no desire for the job and apparently
the other prominent Germans in the pool that Potter found
acceptable, had similar feelings. Not at all happy with the
situation, another local Doctor, Franz Meinow, was found and he
agreed to take the job. A great image from the time finds Potter,
center stage, glaring down at the local German dignitaries who were
willing to run Bad Kissingen as the first meeting came to order.
The German book Vom Kohlenklau zur Chesterfield - From Coal Buckets
( slang for the German Wehrmacht helmet ) to Chesterfields ( the
American occupation Army cigarette of choice ) which provided much
of the source material for Potter in immediate post war Bad
Kissingen, noted that one of the other noteworthy early
accomplishments of the Americans was to get the theaters and movie
houses up and running. Movies were carefully pre screened to insure
that there were no pro Nazi or communist messages in the content.
Comedies were acceptable. Max Berger would finally have been proud.
Fraternization was a big issue from mid 1945 well into 1946. The
official policy was to limit the Army from contacts with local
Germans except as strictly required by day to day activities. At
this same time, the Army was organizing off duty tours, recreation
programs and cultural excursions for troopers throughout the
American zone. Americans soldiers were talking to German kids,
talking to German women and talking to German shopkeepers
everywhere. There seemed to be no sane, understandable standard and
for both senior officers and newly arrived post war occupation
troops, there were prosecutions and punishments if they were caught
in the muddle of German - American relations. GIs chasing German
woman was a particular problem and much of the anti - American
resentment that manifested itself in fights, muggings and vandalism
of Army equipment was traced back to German men who resented
American men.
This was an issue that Potter faced everyday as he looked out from
his corner office on the second floor of the Rathaus. His immediate
view was of the American zone, well ordered, secured by MPs, a few
Germans with work passes scuttling about. A few blocks away, just
out of sight, and in clear violation of the regulations, Germans and
Americans were interacting in every conceivable fashion.
How Merle Potter met Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia , the
grandson of the Kaiser is a mystery. Prince Louis had once been
third in line to the old German throne. When Germany lost World War
I and the monarchy was abolished as a form of political leadership,
the Prince and his older brother enjoyed the life of affluent
curiosities. Prince Louis did not pursue a career in the military as
had his older brother, but rather traveled extensively to include a
prolong stay in America in the 1920s. He came to know both Henry
Ford and at least briefly, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Louis returned
to Germany in 1933, when his older brother renounced any claim to
the ‘throne’ by marrying a commoner. During the war, Louis was
neither a Nazi or soldier. Apparently Louis was barred from the
military after his older brother was killed in France and he spent
the war years in the aviation industry.
Maybe Captain Potter was bored and needed someone to help pass the
time. Perhaps Louis, in 1946, was the most polished German to knock
on his door holding a bottle of champaign, two glasses and speaking
near perfect English. With the fraternization issue still an Army
concern, Potter and the Prince became fast friends. Clearly,
Potter’s opinion of Germans was beginning to change.
Merle A. Potter had been a few years earlier, the Commodore of a
local Minneapolis yacht club. In Bad Kissingen, with the Prince at
his side, he declared the opening of the Cosmopolitan Club, a place
for social interaction where Germans could learn democratic ideals
from their new American friends. The Prince suggested that his
driver also be included on the founders rooster and Potter,
unfamiliar with democracy taken to that extreme, initially said no.
In due course he relented, the driver was given a membership card
and the club opened.
The Office of Military Government - Bavaria - Potter’s immediate
superior headquarters and the Office of Military Government - Berlin
- the supreme headquarters, were very unhappy with Captain Merle A.
Potter. The fraternization issue was only just being unsorted and
the idea of a totally unauthorized social club involving former
members of the German aristocracy and American Army officers seemed
totally counter productive to their way of thinking. What was going
on in Bad Kissingen?!
Potter was called in on the carpet to explain his actions and his
superiors must have been dumbfounded when Potter claimed that a
social club to teach Germans democracy did not fly in the face of
fraternization regulations. Was this not just a classroom of another
form? Maybe it was the idea of the Prince and the liquor that
bothered everyone. Captain Potter was fired from the job in Bad
Kissingen, threatened with court martial and sent to a desk at the
larger command in Ansbach where he could be more closely supervised.
Potter would have none of this, and with an old sixth sense of how
publicity can be put to work, demanded that a military trial be
convened. He stated that he would readily admit to having given
local Germans used coffee grounds from the American mess back in Bad
Kissingen. The giving of any food, fresh or table scraps, to the
Germans had been strictly prohibited and Potter knew it. He figured
that the trial could be used to introduce the Cosmopolitan Club
ideals to the American people and that the innate sense of fairness
in America would never tolerate the Army regulation of burning any
excess military left - overs rather than giving them to Germans who
were subsisting on a 1400 calorie per day diet. Potter also called
in old friends from Minnesota to include Senator Albert Ball to
intervene on his behalf.
Office of Military Government - Berlin - sensed a scandal on the
verge of getting out of control and neither granted Potter his trial
or pursued further proceedings against him. At least for a few
months, Potter sat in Ansbach and continued to strongly advocate for
the Cosmopolitan Club and all that it represented.
One year later, things had changed; Captain Potter had simply been a
man well ahead of his time. By 1947, the U.S. Government was
advocating across a broad front for educational and social programs
throughout their zone of occupation designed to stress positive
German - American interaction including educational programs
encouraging western political and social ideals. The Amerika Haus
program was fully funded and staffed by the State Department to
include an outpost in Bad Kissingen. Fraternization regulations were
all but eliminated and programs to insure that German youth was in
school, at work and then receiving positive messages about American
democracy became one of the standing orders for occupation forces
then evolving into the U.S. Constabulary.
American units were encouraged to assist local orphanages, have
Christmas parties for younger children and run Summer camps for
older children and teens. It was a full court press and Captain
Merle A. Potter was summonsed from distant Ansbach to Berlin to join
the staff of General Lucius Clay. Potter’s mission - build German -
American social clubs across the country and do it fast!
Welcome to Berlin, Major Potter!
It must have been with an enormous sense of gratification, that
Merle Potter joined the special staff for German - American
relations in Berlin. While there, he met the woman who would become
his second wife, was promoted and set about building the framework
for social clubs wherever there was a significant American military
force present in a German city or town. What he started, soon
evolved into the Association of German - American Clubs. Potter also
became involved with fund raising based in the United States to
support local German recovery. Reminiscent of the 1939 Finnish
Relief campaign he had participated in back in Minneapolis, Potter
asked for assistance from all the old newspaper and radio hands in
the Twin Cities who remembered his name. Needless to say, Merle was
back in business.
Potter’s fund raising campaign coined the name Schornsteinfeger Klub
- Chimney Sweep Club - borrowing from the German tradition
recognizing good luck comes when one meets a chimney sweep. His
appeals were echoed through the upper Midwest as he asked that used
children’s clothing that still had value be sent to his office in
Berlin for redistribution. Anyone who contributed became a life
member in the Chimney Sweep Club. Donations poured in from across
the United States and particularly from the Wisconsin thru the
Dakotas region, an amazing transformation considering that only
three years earlier, Potter saw little value in anything German.
In Berlin, Major Potter coordinated German theater reviews and shows
with the proceeds going to the club account to purchase additional
clothing and raw materials for German club members to locally
manufacture toys for redistribution at Christmas. As destitute
former German POWs were released from the East, Schornsteinfeger
Klubs provided fresh clothing and other necessities. Coining the
secondary name “ International Organization of Persons of Good Will
“ at the height of the membership, the roster listed 16, 000 names
from over ten countries. To thank the American and British pilots
and aircrews spearheading the Berlin Airlift in 1948, the club
raised funds, purchased and presented 750 engraved cigarette
lighters.
By 1949, Merle Addison Potter was out of the Army and ill. In 1948,
Potter’s health had started to decline and it is a testimony to his
spirit that he remained as active as he was in Berlin with the
German - American social clubs and Chimney Sweep Club. There should
have been a second book and a victory lap allowing Merle to
celebrate his successes in Germany but this was not to be the case.
He left the Army, briefly stayed with a sister in Iowa and then
settled in a Los Angles suburb. His new wife, Edith, a German
national he had met in Berlin, had a career to pursue as an
instructor in the California university system. Merle suffered a
series of strokes that steadily diminished his abilities. In the
1950s he wrote an occasional column for the now defunct Valley Times
of North Hollywood. After a period of very poor health, Merle A.
Potter died in October, 1960 at the age of 66 years. He was buried
in a Los Angeles veteran’s cemetery and choose a government issue
marker.
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Prism Images of Merle A. Potter’s Legacy
Considering the hundreds of thousands of newspapers he helped sell
and the millions of readers he entertained with his columns, book,
promotions, and stunts, the Minnesota papers offered spare
obituaries. A few scant paragraphs and a thumbnail photograph to bid
Merle adieu.
The Federation of German - American Clubs directly evolved from the
Cosmopolitan Club, remains a part of the positive interaction
between U.S. forces and German civilians. Over thirty clubs still
exist even after the significant reductions of American military
forces. The Bad Kissingen club was merged with the Schweinfurt club
after the final American presence in the Kurstadt ended with the
closing of Daley Village. Still giving tours and cookies to G.I.s
the federation has greatly expanded its charter and now is extremely
proud of the many student exchanges and scholarship programs it
offers to both German and American teens.
In Germany, Potter is recalled on line and in print media by the
Association of German - American Clubs but to keep things current,
the distant past is collapsed to an image and a few lines. At a Bad
Kissingen history web site, Merle is on line, an image and caption
noting he was the first American Army Governor of the town and a
small reference to the Cosmopolitan Club.
Edith Potter remained very active in the German - American Clubs and
was teaching courses in German language and culture at Scripps
College in Los Angeles through the early 1990s.
In 1990, the Clubs held their annual reunion at Bad Kissingen to
celebrate over forty years of promoting German - American friendship
as focused through the U.S. Army in Germany. Edith Potter was one of
the significant guests and she spoke at length on how much the
organization had meant to her and her husband over the years. With
Merle Potter long gone, she was afforded the highest honor the
Kurstadt could afford a visitor. To honor the role that Merle A.
Potter had played in the post war period in Germany, his founding of
the Cosmopolitan Club, his willingness to fight for his ideals and
then hard work in Berlin and worldwide on behalf of the German
people, Edith Potter was invited to sign her name and greeting into
Bad Kissingen’s Golden Register, an honor dating back over two
hundred years. To a roster that includes, kings, queens, royalty and
significant statesmen from Bismark to Brandt to Adenaur, Edith
Potter added her name and that of Merle Addison Potter.
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You are in the Army now Mr. Potter. This image from 1944
shows Merle Potter ready to deploy to Europe as a civil
affairs officer.
--Dawes Potter |
Shoulder patch of the Civil Affairs Division, tasked with
re-organizing governments at all levels in Germany once the
shooting stopped.
--Stefanowicz |
The training for the men who would rule Germany in the first
months of peace continued in Britain. Here, a great
publicity still captures Potter, near front of boat with
helmet on, ready to deploy on to the beach with fellow
British and American Military Government Officers.
--Pubsource |
An image of the new identity papers local Germans were
required to carry. Potter’s signature appears in the lower
right corner of the document.
--B Nieland |
Captain Potter, complete with riding crop, lets these
Germans know who’s boss. The photo was probably intended for
his superiors in Berlin, the German immediately next to
Potter is his friend and co - founder of the Cosmopolitan
Club, Prince Louis Ferdinand.
--Stadtarchiv Bad Kissingen |
Captain Merle A. Potter, at work in Bad Kissingen.
--B Nieland |
The first meeting of the new Burgermeister and the local
civilian council that would lead Bad Kissingen through the
first months of the post war is called to order by Captain
Merle Potter.
--B Nieland |
A final image of Merle Potter, deep from the AP photo
archives. In late 1948, Potter posed with this carved
Schornsteinfeger prior to shipping to Governor Luther
Youngdahl in recognition of his support of the Minnesota
Chimney Sweep Clubs that had made significant contributions
to the post war German relief efforts. Seen also is award
winning Berlin sculptress Ruth Heiliger. The present
location of this raised - relief carving is unknown.
--AP |
This stylized figure of a German chimney sweep was the emblem of
the Schornsteinfeger Klub that collected clothing and funds
in both Germany and the United States to aid post war
recovery in Germany. |
Major Potter and Captain K. T. Salls both of the Office of
Military Government - Berlin and Herr Kurt Konietzko, head
of Der Tagesspiegel ( the Daily Mirror - Berlin newspaper)
Special Department, supervise the loading of gift parcels
collected through the Schornsteinfeger Klubs for
redistribution in Germany in 1948.
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Surrounded by dignitaries from Bad Kissingen and the
Federation of German - American Clubs, Ruth Potter signs her
name and the name of her husband, Merle A. Potter, into the
city Golden Register in 1990.
--German / American Clubs |
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