Grandpa's detachment will ultimately be assigned to Giessen, a middling size university town. It was also a military headquarters and rail junction suffering heavy bomb damage. The planners believed that after Germany was conquered civil administration would have completely broken down and a lengthy occupation would be needed.
In actuality, civil administration survived surprisingly intact. By November and December 1945, the kreis detachments were being pulled out with liaisons being left in place. In January, 1946 local counsel elections were held with a heavy turnout.
With the Russians refusing to cooperate in organizing a unified German state and the pressing need for a bulwark against them, the German Federal Republic was organized in 1949.
It was surprising how quickly the Germans recovered from World War 2. Despite the layer of Nazi Party functionaries put on the civil government, there were still enough of the “old guard” civil employees that had not been Nazis to resume day to day operations. And the basic civil workers, the regular police officers, fire fighters, and other civil bureaucrats, were still there or able to return to their old civilian jobs after release from POW camps.
Of course, low ranking Nazis who were competent civil servants got a “blind eye” and stayed on their posts. One of the biggest issues with German “reconstruction” was determining who was a Nazi and who was a Nazi war criminal. And it was an issue at Nuremberg; how to convict the Nazis without indicting the entire German people?
Which gets to another issue for Nuremberg. One of the last pieces of the civil administration to come back was the judiciary. It had been gutted and Nazified more than most branches of government. In fact, it was difficult to find native German defense attorneys for the defendants at Nuremberg. The defendants had sent to the camps so many of the very people who would have wound up defending them against the allegation of crimes committed for sending people to the camps.
I love the ironies of history.