The President's Economic Mission to Germany and Austria

Hoover toured what was to become West Germany in Reich Marshall Hermann Göring's old train coach and produced several reports sharply critical of US occupation policy.

[1] Hoover proposed a changed economic occupation policy in his reports, if nothing else but for the sake of sparing the American taxpayers the burden of supporting Central Europe indefinitely.

Edwin W. Pauley, who had been industrial and commercial adviser to the Potsdam Conference and until 1947 President Truman's representative to the Allied Reparations Commission, expressed his strong dislike for the report.

Pauley stated that to follow Hoover's recommendations would entail a "major reversal" of US policy and warned about future German domination of Europe.

The US public was relieved by the sharp critique and debunking of Professor Herbert Hoover's suggestion that the Potsdam policy be more leniently interpreted and German economy partly reconstructed.

The hunger-winter of 1947, thousands protest against the disastrous food situation in Krefeld (March 31, 1947). The sign translated says, "We want coal - We want bread."
Report No. 1: German Agriculture and Food Requirements