Hamburg was a dying city when cragfaced Socialist Max Brauer returned in 1946. The mayor of Altona, a Hamburg suburb, he had fled Germany 13 years before, a jump ahead of the Storm Troopers, winding up in the U.S., where he became German expert for the American Federation of Labor.
Back in Hamburg on a job for the A.F.L., he decided to stay. "America does not need me," he said. "Germany does." He renounced his U.S. citizenship and was elected mayor of Hamburg. Mayor Brauer's task looked impossible: in three blockbusting nights, British bombers had leveled half the city; 300,000...
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