Plan Eclipse

Eleven months after his forces invaded western Europe, Supreme Commander Eisenhower informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "Our mission is completed." Then Eisenhower began his next mission: the execution of "Plan Eclipse."

Plan Eclipse was the code name for the occupation and rule of the U.S.'s part of postwar Germany. As announced last week by the War Department, the plan had been worked out in close collaboration with the British. Their own plans, as yet unannounced in detail, probably were similar in method and approach.

The Three Ps. Plan Eclipse has three main functions--political, punitive and propagandists. It was designed for the first, interim phase of complete military government, and then for the gradual transition to some form of civilian government under Allied supervision.

Twelve administrative sections will oversee every phase of German life. A transport section will supervise all traffic systems, and (with the Navy) handle port and coastal operations. (Although occupying an inland zone, the U.S. forces will have access to the North Sea port of Bremen.) The political section, presumably to be under the State Department's Robert Murphy, will direct both foreign and domestic affairs. Food, agriculture and forestry, price control and rationing, public works and utilities, internal and foreign trade, industrial conversion and liquidation will be under a huge economics section. Brigadier General ("Wild Bill") Donovan's Office of Strategic Services probably will staff the intelligence section, in general charge of the deNazification program.

Other sections will deal with reparations, communications, the vast problems of repatriation. OWI's Psychological Warfare Division, under Brigadier General Robert McClure, will dissolve the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, institute an Allied control of internal information as rigid as anything ever dreamed up by the Nazis. For Allied newsmen in Germany, censorship will be relaxed but by no means abandoned (see PRESS). Plan Eclipse provides a public relations section with all the wartime paraphernalia of censorship, accreditation, communiques.

The Ruler. As the U.S. member of the Central Allied Control Commission, General Eisenhower will be the No. 1 U.S. official in Germany, at least until the military phase is over. Those under him will include:

P: Lieut. General Leonard T. Gerow, commander of the Fifteenth Army. Up to this week General Gerow's occupation army consisted mostly of himself and a headquarters staff. The Fifteenth will be fleshed out gradually from units already in Europe or to be sent there. Estimated "permanent" strength of the occupation force: 400,000.

P: Major General Lucius D. Clay, recently assigned to General Eisenhower as his principal administrative assistant (Time, April 9).

P: Major General John Deane, former chief of the American military mission to Moscow, whose knowledge of Russia and the Russians will be at a premium in occupied Germany.

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