Posted on 08/17/2004 1:41:52 PM PDT by knighthawk
KITZINGEN, Germany - Hans Seitz has sold engraved pewter plates and cuckoo clocks to U.S. soldiers for years. Now he fears some of his best customers may be going if two U.S. divisions pull out of Germany.
Seitz was one of many Germans — all the way up to Defense Minister Peter Struck — who expressed regret Tuesday at the prospect that the United States will withdraw a large share of its 70,000 troops from Germany under plans announced by President Bush.
"It would be bad. We would certainly miss them," Seitz, 70, said of the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division, some 2,600 of whom are stationed in this wine country town in northern Bavaria — and whose division is one of the two that may leave.
"All our contacts with soldiers are good, they're friendly to us and we're friendly to them," he said in the tiny shop now run by his son in the cobblestoned center of this town of 22,000. "Our relations have been close for many years."
Seitz is not alone. Across southern Germany, about two dozen towns and cities with major U.S. military bases face similar economic fears, though the Americans will leave only gradually.
Pulling the troops out would break up a close relationship dating back to the end of World War II. Germans still remember that Elvis Presley and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the top commander in the 1991 Gulf war, served here.
"I regret this very much," Struck said while visiting troops in northern Germany. "This is a serious loss for those regions."
Though most Germans and their government opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the differences with Washington have not changed the reliance of local communities on their military guests.
In Kitzingen, many regard them as part of their lives and are unsettled by talk of their leaving — especially the small-business owners who sell them goods, landlords who rent them apartments and city officials who get subsidies to help provide them services.
But it is about more than money. As a 12-year-old boy, Seitz befriended an American soldier who was rebuilding the town's airfield for U.S. use after the Third Reich's defeat, first going to watch the big construction machines and then serving as an orderly in return for hard-to-get sugar and chocolate.
In the 1980s, the soldier, Elwood D. Green of West Virginia, tracked him down through the mayor's office using his photo and only his first name, and the two families exchanged visits in the 1980s before Green died in 1994.
Asked if he believed Bush would pull out troops to punish Germany for its stand on Iraq, he said, "No, I can't believe that. It's the economic situation."
And there are the marriages — so many that Kitzingen spouses hold reunions in the United States. Deputy Mayor Franz Boehm attended the last one in Frankenmuth, Mich., in 2003.
On Monday, Bush cited the need for more agile forces as well as cost savings when he announced that up to 70,000 U.S. troops — and about 100,000 family members and civilian workers — would come home from Europe and Asia during the next decade.
"If there is a complete pullout, the way they are talking about, it would be a big economic and human problem," Boehm said in his office in the town's Rathaus, or city hall. "The Americans came in 1945 and they simply belong to the city."
The town nets $1.8 million from the regional government to cover services provided to the U.S. military, not counting what goes into retailers' tills and landlords' bank accounts.
In Kitzingen, home to the 1st Infantry's 4th Battalion and several support units, the deployment of most of the soldiers to Iraq already has dented the local economy.
Boehm says Germany is not being punished — it is just the end of the Cold War. Kitzingen, about 45 miles from the former East German border, is no longer on the front line between the West and Communism.
"It's a different situation," he said. "We used to be 50, 60, 70 kilometers from the Iron Curtain, and it's no longer there."
For U.S. soldiers, there are things to relish about Germany, too.
Army Staff Sgt. Allan Davis, 41, lives in nearby Giebelstadt, a picturesque town with old houses, and appreciates the wines for which the area is renowned.
"This whole area, it's wine," Davis said while lunching in the McDonald's next to U.S. military housing at the edge of Kitzingen. "I visited one of the wineries once — really nice."
Davis said he knows local stores will be hurting. Still, he believes it is time to bring some of that money home to towns in the United States.
"I think we need to be taking care of our home first before we take care of our neighbors," Davis said.
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
We're not there to prop up the local economy. And it's good we won't be there much longer.
The words "boo" and "hoo" come to mind...
But it is about more than money.
No it isn’t.
I'm totally in favor of this pullout and think Germany should bite it.
However, I'm sure a lot of these people in small communities have been supporting (and profiting from of course) our troops for decades. For them it is sad, really they're caught up in a changing world not bad blood between us. Got to have a little sympathy for them.
Boo and Hoo and waaaaaaaahhhhh.
Sixty years is way too long.
We aren't in the business of welfare. We are in the business of warfare.
Can you believe the nerve of these people? They DEMAND to know when the troops in Iraq are coming home, because we went in unilaterally, yet when we bring our troops in Germany home it's also 'unilateralism'.
"The Americans came in 1945 and they simply belong to the city."
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Nope, the US forces belong to the US not the city.
Bavaria is the Texas of Germany, lots different politics than the rest of Germany, and that part of Bavaria was even nicer. The locals said: "Mann muss dem Herr fuer alles danken, fuer Ober- und fuer Unterfranken" (One must thank the Lord for everything, for Upper and Lower Frankony).
It's not he fault of a lot of these people around the bases. They aren't the ones who have been so virilantly anti-American. However, they have been proping up those who are and it's time for them all to grow up.
Agree
I think it's great too. Makes sense AND they have all been morons. It's kind of like telling your surly teenager (ask me how I know ..) "Maybe you'd be better off living on your own (money)." They can have a little Reality Check.
I think it's great too. Makes sense AND they have all been morons. It's kind of like telling your surly teenager (ask me how I know ..) "Maybe you'd be better off living on your own (money)." They can have a little Reality Check.
KITZINGEN! That's where we had our regional championships for track and field when I was in high school in Germany! NO WAY!
No way what?
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