Tag Archives: germany

Evil Results of Potsdam

Dorothy Thompson

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/July 2o, 1946

Looking through my files I find that I have published since January 1944 more than a dozen columns predicting the results of the German policies that culminated in June 1945 in the Potsdam declaration.

These predictions included the warning that the radical truncation of Germany in the east would create an appalling food crisis and end in our sacrificing to support and feed our late enemies; that a deindustrialization program atop forced evacuation of millions of destitute Germans from detached areas into the Reich would erase reparations; that consent to wholesale removals of industrial machinery would bring widespread unemployment; and that the division of Germany into four zones under armies responsible only to their own governments and interests would tend to the permanent partition of Europe and the exacerbation of every difference between the Allies themselves.

Now Mr Byrnes, though he reiterates his loyalty to Potsdam, must in fact see that the policies, especially in view of the arbitrary interpretations of them by the USSR, mean the economic disintegration of Europe as well as Germany and a frightful charge on American taxpayers.

Well, I still cannot understand why anyone expected other results. For if there were a scrap of imagination, an iota of intellect, a modicum of historical perspective, a shred of democratic principle or even a whiff of morality operating at Potsdam it never was indicated.

Today even the few mitigating —and in the rest of the context impossible and insincere—directives of Potsdam are being subjected to conflicting interpretations by the various Allies.

“Agreement,” says the Potsdam declaration “has been reached at this conference on the political and economic principles of a coordinated Allied policy toward Germany.”

Bunk. There was not a single “principle” enunciated in the whole declaration which consisted merely of arbitrary directives.

“It is not the intention . . . to destroy or enslave the German people” but to “give them the opportunity to prepare for the eventual reconstruction of their life on a democratic and peaceful basis.” To this end “all democratic political parties with rights of assembly and political discussion shall be allowed throughout Germany.” (Ask the Social Democrats in the Russian zone about the application of this “principle.”)

“For the time being” (what is the meaning of “time being”?) “no central German government shall be established . . . but certain essential German administrative departments . . . shall be established in the fields of finance, transport, communications, foreign trade and industry.” (This is what Mr. Byrnes is demanding a year later.)

“During the period of occupation, Germany shall be treated as a single economic unit and to this end common policies shall be established in regard to mining, industrial production, agriculture, forestry, wages, prices, rationing imports and exports, currency, banking, central taxation and customs, reparations and removal of industrial war potential, transportation and communications.”

To date there is no “common” policy regarding any of these categories. Mr. Byrnes wants the power to create an agency to plan a policy, but Molotov says no.

The reparations “principles” were sui generis, respecting no system of accountancy and making no differentiations between private property and state responsibility. The USSR was permitted to remove from her zone whatever capital equipment she chose, guided only by the principle that she leave enough to enable the German people to “live without external assistance.” What is the meaning of “to live—”? Does it include newborn babies whose chances in some areas are about one in nine? And where is the economic “expert” who could accurately gauge the social effects of cutting huge chunks out of a highly integrated economy, an organic living thing that can bleed to death by only partial dismemberment?

Then the western Allies promised delivery to the USSR 15 per cent of such capital equipment “as is unnecessary for the German peace economy” against payments from the Russian zone of food, coal, potash, etc. and 10 per cent, with the same unassessable restriction against no compensation whatever. Most of the eastern food and coal isn’t even in the Russian zone; it was given outright to Poland. The Russians now say they still want $10,000,000,000 without any evidence that it is collectible even within the Potsdam terms. Reparations also were to be collected against German “external assets.” Russia now interprets as such assets properties seized by Hitler’s gang when it overran Europe—including the property of Jews! This of course means the ruin of “liberated” Austria

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German People Don’t Like Pograms

Dorothy Thompson

Daily Oklahoman/February 22, 1939

MR. GEORGE RUBLEE is to be congratulated for having used his patience, intelligence and common sense to secure from the Germans the greatest concessions that they have yet given in the matter of their Jewish citizens and the emigration of those citizens.

To what extent the German willingness to listen to a measure of reason is due to the reaction abroad and to what extent it is due to the internal reaction it is not possible for this column to gauge.

Certainly the world’s indignation was not without effect. The late Count Brockdorf-Rantzau, for many years German ambassador in Russia, used to say of the bolsheviks, “Parvenus are sensitive.” But tribute also must be paid to the German people.

I say. as one who has known Germany intimately for years and who has lived there, that the whole German people were shocked and appalled bv the events in November. Letters have come to me, smuggled out of Germany from friends and from strangers there, begging me to tell the world that these actions were not initiated by the German people nor did they have their support.

This dooes not mean, however, that one can count on any reversal of the fundamental German policy. One can certainly not count on the reversal as long as the anti-Semitism, which is their chief stock in trade in fomenting a world counter revolution against democracy, is working so well as it is.

One must consider. rather, that any relaxation of outright persecution to the point of extermination may be really a sort of nazi policy, which, when it was initiated in Russia, was hailed as a definite turn toward moderation—a mistake which was paid for by the whole world and especially by those poor Russians who were encouraged by the policy to reopen enterprises only to be very soon “liquidated” by expropriation and even by murder.

It would be a disservice to the world if governments halt in their efforts to speed an alleviation of this problem.

It is difficult to estimate to what extent the program arrived at by Mr. Rublee and the German government can be made workable, but this column takes some pride in the fact that its basic idea was first launched in a little book which I wrote last summer with the aid of experts.

The proposals which I made in “Refugees: Anarchy or Organization?” did not seem to me ideal. Nothing is ideal except a complete reversal of the policy whereby a nation can deprive its own citizens of their legal rights and throw them out as a charge upon the rest of the world.

But inside existing realities and with a view to saving the lives of innocent and useful people it seems possible, given a modicum of common sense, greatly to improve emigration facilities.

Written months in advance of the November pogrom, the book predicted that the refugee problem would become one of mass emigration, that it would demand German co-operation and that it ought to be financed to the greatest possible extent with the Jewish capital existing inside Gcrmany.

We also suggested that in view of the exchange restrictions which the German government has been forced into making by its own policy the emigrants should be allowed to take out capital goods, even locomotives—in other words, the material needed for constructive colonization.

It is argued against this plan that it assists German exports. It also prevents wholesale suicides. It is an enormous advantage to the emigrants that instead of being permitted to take out a minute fraction or none of their goods in money they can take out a large proportion of it in capital goods, in wealth which can be used to produce wealth abroad.

Precisely in this way the “Havaara” has been able to bring out of Germany more than 45,000 persons since 1933 and help build up Palestine.

At any rate, it is easy io tell people inside a fortress to die for a principle rather than accept compromise. It will be our mistake if we regard the compromise as a solution.

There arc things in the German proposal that are revolting for instance, the declaration that Germany intends to let elderly Jews live quietly and without persecution “unless something extraordinary occurs such as an attempt upon the life of a nazi leader by a Jew.”

If one wants to make perfectly clear what this means let us translate it to the American scene. I wonder what the Germany government would have thought if the American government had threatened to expropriate, persecute and imprison every German in the United States because a German kidnapped and murdered the child of an American hero!

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