Deborah Cole

You see the Stars and Stripes everywhere.

Every shop sort of, you know, everything's advertised in English and in German, for those of you who remember that.

uh wayne's world we went to shell wings um chicken party time excellent yeah yeah yeah i i knew i had found the right place to find americans and germans and um and so you know it's it's a community that has very much opened its arms to to its americans and tried to make them as feel as home as possible

So one of the people I spoke to who is particularly interesting, his name is Karl, and he was born in Poland, but he's lived in Germany since he was 12.

And so he, as the manager of this Schwing's location I visited, said that it would be absolutely devastating.

He said that a lot of people are drawn to this, you know, fairly small town, Landstuhl, because they want the American feeling.

And there are and have been a lot of business opportunities, a lot of jobs that are stabilized, that are supported by the American military presence.

In fact, they are completely dependent on it.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, you know, the Americans kept the Germans from being starved into submission by the Soviet Union.

And so there was an enormous amount of gratitude linked to that.

Then, of course, the Marshall Plan, which pumped billions over the years into rebuilding Germany.

not only economically, but also welcoming it back into the community of nations, West Germany, after the Nazi period that was anything but a given.

But I think then, you know, we get to the heart of the issue here that the Germans saw it as the right thing to do, not only in terms of rebuilding Europe, but also in their own interest in the context of the Cold War.

And that

interest that the United States has by having this military presence here is still very much the case.

That hasn't changed.

So there are about 36,000 soldiers here, and that is a little bit more than half of the U.S.

troops in all of Europe.

But then along with that, you have civilian support staff and, as I mentioned, the families.