“There is complete economic, social and political collapse going on in Central Europe,” McCloy wrote, “the extent of which is unparalleled in history unless one goes back to the collapse of the Roman Empire, and even that may not have been as great an economic upheaval . . . One of the chief elements of disorder is the immense number of previously enslaved people who will be running around loose, as well as Germans who have been made homeless by the devastation of [the Allies’] victory.”
