Veronica Town

Wherever G.I.s were stationed the story was the same. They had money, the Germans needed it; prices soared and the black market and prostitutes flourished. But when the Berlin airlift brought 8,000 U.S. pilots and enlisted airmen to former Luftwaffe airfields in the neighborhood of the quiet old town of Celle (pop. 33,000), the city council was deeply shocked by changes in Celle's way of life.

A picturebook town with medieval houses and a ducal castle, Celle is about 20 miles from Hannover. It had kept its traditions even through the Third Reich. With the coming of the airlift, Celle's burghers found themselves thrust into an atmosphere of sex and schnapps. From all over Germany eager opportunists rushed to Celle to help make the G.I.s happy. Jazz bands filled the town with boogie-woogie. A hundred new bars opened up. Taxi drivers came from as far away as Hamburg to work in Celle. They took meters off, charged $5 to nearby Fassberg airport, where the Air Force men worked. Black marketeers wandered the nighttime streets mumbling: "Whaddaya got, Joe?"

By train, by bus, by bicycle and by thumb, more than 2,000 trollops came to Celle. The girls increased the shortage of space until the staid people of Celle, swept along on the tide of vice and opportunism, began renting rooms for the night only. The price depended on the G.I.s' alcoholic state--it was usually 20 marks ($5), but in at least one case it was as high as 250. Some mothers even sent their children into the streets to lure the G.I.s home: "Nice warm Stube with big bed, Joe." Among themselves, the burghers began to call their rented rooms Kuckuckquartiere (cuckoo quarters). Celle was beginning to be known elsewhere in Germany as "Veronica Town."*

The city council warned: "Who favors this disgraceful business will fall into disdain. The council will expose to public judgment all those who persist in these immoral actions." Most of Celle's citizens paid no attention.

When the airlift ended and the Americans left, the council cracked down, summoned to court some 200 of the people who had rented rooms to frauleins. Only 50 were actually sentenced, to four weeks in jail at the most. At last the Bonn government set all offenders free by amnesty. Last week a Bonn official explained that it was impossible to single out "individual crimes for something of which a whole town is guilty. The sleeping dog may be a bad one, but we've got to let it lie."

* Veronica was a fraulein in an occupation Stars and Stripes cartoon by Don Sheppard. Parodying the initials VD, Sheppard called the girl "Veronica Danke schon." More than one-third of the Celle Veronicas had VD.

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