In 1941 Grewenig relocated to Plauen when he was recruited to take charge at Vomag . Vomag was a manufacturer of industrial sewing machines which had reacted to the decline in Plauen 's textile business thirty years earlier by diversifying into trucks and buses . By 1941 it had switched to war production , becoming a major supplier of tanks to the military . Grewenig was mandated to improve efficiencies and expand production . The end of the war in May 1945 , found what was left of Germany divided into four occupation zones . Plauen had been heavily bombed , leaving it , according to one source , one of the most completely destroyed towns in Germany . The town found itself on the southern edge of the Soviet occupation zone ( after October 1949 the German Democratic Republic / East Germany ) . The Vomag plant had been approximately 40 % destroyed by bombing , but by February 1946 was nevertheless ready for a return to truck production on a limited scale . At this point , however , the military administration ordered the remains of the factory to be disassembled , crated up and shipped to the Soviet Union as part of a reparations package that had , at least in principal , been agreed between the victorious powers before the end of the war . Sources indicate that Grewenig remained in charge at the Vomag plant till 1947 . That year he crossed the ( at this stage still completely porous ) border separating the Soviet occupation zone from Bavaria , which had ended up in the US occupation zone ( after May 1949 the German Federal Republic / West Germany )
before the end of the war
Potsdam Conference
Hanns Grewenig