History
Ramstein Air Base is an example of international collaboration: designed by French engineers, constructed by some Germans but with imported help from workers of Italy, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey (there were very few German men to work on construction projects after World War II) and operated by Americans. The area was nothing more than a swamp that had to be built up by two meters (six feet) in height level over the whole area. A train line was laid out from Einsiedlerhof-Kaiserslautern in a yoke shape around to the current base and back down to the Landstuhl spur in 1948 by agreement of the U.S. and French Occupational Forces. Trainload after trainload of earth was moved over the line and spread over the base current area to raise it to its current level. The trains ran 24/7 for over a year. Once the ground was level, building construction could be begin. A project designed and undertaken by the French Army and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from 1949 to 1952. Two bases were laid out. Landstuhl Air Base on the south side and Ramstein Air Station (station, no airstrip) on the north. From 1948 to the opening of the bases in 1953 it was the largest one spot construction site in Europe employing over 270,000 Europeans at one time.
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“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)