By May 1945 the Soviet and US leaders had already agreed postwar zones of occupation whereby Saxony and Thuringia would be administered as part of the Soviet occupation zone . However , with the Soviets focusing their military attention on Berlin , it was actually members of the US 97th Infantry Division who liberated Willi Bleicher in the frontier region between Germany and Czechoslovakia . He managed to escape from a prisoner of war detention camp near Eger and return , first to Buchenwald , where he recovered his identity papers , and then to Stuttgart over several stages , one of which involved " jumping " a train . The journey provided his first chance to witness with his own eyes the devastation which the Nazis had left behind them . He reached Stuttgart in June 1945 . The city was destroyed , with many of its inhabitants having escaped into the surrounding countryside . Approximately five million cubic meters of rubble covered the streets and squares . However , the psychological devastation was harder to bear than the physical destruction , and not just in Stuttgart
already agreed
Yalta Conference
Willi Bleicher