TIME was back on the newsstands in Berlin last week for the first time since Nazi Germany banned us for what it considered keeps. That was in the ominous month of May, 1939, when believing that world war was close at hand, decided to review the events which had led up to it under a new department called Background for War.

The implications that the late Herr Goebbels presumably got out of that issue of TIME were no longer of strategic importance to last week's Berliners, who snatched up their quota (3,000 copies) in an hour. It was their first opportunity to buy an unofficial English language magazine in postwar Germany.

In view of that fact we were especially anxious to have the reaction of Berlin citizens to an uncensored publication presenting the viewpoint of the Western Democracies on world affairs. Our Berlin bureau chief, John Scott, and his staff asked a good many of them why they were buying TIME. Their replies covered the whole field of European reader reaction:

Some hoped "to hear more about the true political events in the world." Others wanted "to find out the Americans' attitude toward political events."

On the conflicting political and ideological battlegrounds of postwar Germany those are understandable desires.

Other Berliners, however, bought TIME "because it was the first foreign magazine we have had a chance to buy in years." And some just wanted "to check up on our English."

We had anticipated answers like these, but it was important to have them first hand. As you know, we have been supplying our Occupation forces in Germany with copies of TIME all along, but we could not sell to Germans under the provisions of the Trading With the Enemy Act. U.S. Occupation officers indicated that it would help them if Germans could get TIME, too. After negotiations with the U.S. War Department, which administers the Act, and with the State Department, the latter licensed us to do business in occupied Germany. Our license allows us to sell TIME to Germans provided we use the proceeds only for our own editorial and business expenditures in Germany.

That stipulation limits the number of copies we can rightly sell in Germany. We started off with 6,000 copies of our Atlantic Overseas Edition, which is printed in Paris for European distribution only and is identical with TIME's U.S. edition in all respects except advertising. Of these, 3,000 went to Greater Berlin, and another 3,000 to the Frankfurt, Heidelberg, Greater Hesse area. The price was two marks (about 80 U.S. cents) a copy.

The postwar hunger of 6,000 German citizens for a new foreign publication is normal enough. But it is an interesting fact that on the afternoon of the sale our Berlin office and the offices of our distributors were busy with visitors and telephoners asking whether they could subscribe to TIME. That seems to be proof enough of a widespread desire on the part of German civilians for American publications and for the American viewpoint on world affairs.

Cordially,

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