The flight to Berlin from Frankfurt aboard a DC-7 took just under an hour. Traveling with me were Scheuer, Frei, and a third man—the man with the heavy-framed glasses who had kidnapped me in Göttingen; his name was Hamer. A black Mercedes was waiting for us in front of the airport building at Tempelhof. As we drove away, Scheuer pointed out the monument to the Berlin airlift of 1948 that occupied the center of Eagle Square. Made of concrete and taller than the airport building itself, the monument was supposed to represent the three air corridors that were used to fly in supplies during the Soviet blockade. It looked more like the statue of a comic-book ghost, arms raised, leaning over to scare someone. And as I glanced back at the airport, I was rather more interested in the fate of the Nazi eagle that surmounted the center wall of the airport building. There could be no doubt about it: The eagle had been Americanized. Someone had painted its head white so that now it looked more like an American bald eagle.

We drove west, through the American sector, which was clean and prosperous-looking, with lots of plate-glass shop windows and garish new movie houses showing the latest Hollywood movies: Rear Window, On the Waterfront, and Dial M for Murder. Ihnestrasse, close to the university and the new Henry Ford Building, looked much the same as it had before the war. Lots of chestnut trees and well-kept gardens. The American flags were new, of course. There was a large one on the flagpole in front of the American Officers’ Club at Harnack House—formerly the guest quarters of the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Scheuer told me proudly that the club had a restaurant, a beauty parlor, a barbershop, and a newsstand and promised to take me there. But somehow I didn’t think the Kaiser would have approved: He was never very fond of Americans.