THE ATTACK AGAINST THE GERMAN CAPITAL

The sacking of Germany after her unconditional surrender will go down in history as one of the most monstrous acts of modern times. Its excess beggars description and its magnitude defies condemnation.

Allied armies that swept into Germany came with blood in their eyes and the conviction born of propaganda that the Germans had lost caste as members of the human race, were unworthy of protection afforded by human law and civilized institutions such as property rights and security of person. It was not thought of as looting, but simply as helping one’s self to property the Germans had forfeited by being German. Russian soldiers were particularly ravenous, their appetites for loot being restrained only by the limitation placed on their own rights to hold property. Things the individual Russian soldier could keep, such as wrist watches, they snatched on sight, even from the arms of Yankees. The serious looting by the Russians was conducted officially, systematically and thoroughly. Every house and apartment was entered, searched, and stripped of everything at once valuable and movable – jewelry, silverware, works of art, clothing, household appliances, money. Stores, shops, warehouses were ransacked. Farms were denuded of farm animals, machinery, seed reserves, fodder, wine and food stocks. Telephones were removed from residences, telephone and telegraph lines and equipment were dismantled. Automobiles, motor trucks, even fire engines, were seized. Everything not nailed down was hauled away.[l] For the German standard of living must be lowered to the average of Europe.

The Russian armies of occupation, kept equal in size to the combined occupation forces of the western powers, live off the land, paying for requisitions by paper occupation marks. Exorbitant occupation costs afford the Kremlin an effective device for milking the territory. Charges in the Soviet zone of Austria are several times greater, relatively, than those the Germans imposed on France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, and elsewhere.[2] This, despite Austria’s promised “liberated” status. All of the Allies have issued huge amounts of military currency which the Germans are forced to accept in “payment.” It is conservatively estimated that altogether they have pumped into the country between 15 billion and 20 billion occupation marks as against a normal currency circulation of between 7 and 9 billion.[3] This means that the four powers have obtained between 2 and 4 billion dollars worth of German property for the mere cost of printing money issued in payment. Just as there was a preponderance of American forces in the armies that struck against the west and south of Germany, so in these sectors was the preponderance of the looting American.

Chicago Daily News foreign correspondent William H. Stoneman, stationed with the U.S. 3rd Army, wrote in May, 1945, when Germany was surrendering: “I have been impressed by the careless manner in which the booty has been handled and the way in which great stocks of foodstuffs have been left to the reckless inroads of looters.”[4]

A few days later he cabled:

“Millions of dollars worth of rare things varying from intricate Zeiss lenses to butter and cheese and costly automobiles are being destroyed because the Army has not organized a system for the recovery of valuable enemy material.”Frontline troops are rough and ready about enemy property. They naturally take what they find if it looks interesting, and, because they are in the front lines, nobody says anything. “There are no M.P.s in the front lines. “But what front-line troops take is nothing compared to the damage caused by wanton vandalism of some of the following troops. “They seem to ruin everything, including the simplest personal belongings of the people in whose houses they are billeted. “Today, we have had two more examples of this business, which would bring tears to the eyes of anybody who has appreciation of material values. “First I found two boxcars loaded with magnificent Zeiss rangefinders for ack-ack guns, thousands of rare lenses, worth at rough estimate, perhaps $1,000,000. “Most of the things we saw there – many of them scattered about the tracks – were priceless, and thousands of dollars worth of stuff had been scattered as G.I.s combed boxcars for binoculars and other items which appeared easy to sell. Anybody with any knowledge of precision instruments would have cried his eyes out to see instruments worth $500 to $1,000 scattered around like so much junk. “Later I visited a warehouse which had been loaded with textiles and it was like a pigsty. “There still were thousands of yards of printed cotton goods and artificial woolen goods lying around, but much more bad been looted by somebody or other.”[5]

In one case looting resulted in arrests and trials. A WAC Captain and a Colonel were arrested in America and tried in Frankfurt, Germany, for taking $1,500,000 worth of jewels, mostly of the House of Hesse, from a castle owned by Princess Margaret of Hesse, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Defense attorneys at the trials made clear the extent of looting which had been done and the philosophy behind it. An on the scene account reads as follows: “The princess scored heavily against the defense contention that the owners of the jewels were just a bunch of Nazis whose loss was a misfortune of war which should not be singled out for prosecution from among hundreds of thousands of thefts from Germans by the American army personnel.”[6] (emphasis added) It is, indeed, unlikely that the case would have gone to trial had the owners lacked such imposing connections. It is well known that we took from German museums some 200 art masterpieces with the intention of keeping them. Public opinion was so outraged that President Truman found it expedient to promise their return; yet no one was prosecuted or even arrested. American Provost Marshall Lt. Col. Gerald F. Beane, whose duty it is to deal with crimes committed by our soldiers, in an official report released in Berlin late in 1945 on the nature and extent of criminality in our army of occupation stated that larceny and robbery are the crimes most frequently committed by our soldiers. A leading daily comments:

“As to the crimes against property, the explanation is fairly obvious. No effective steps were taken to discourage looting by the invading armies during the war. Officers and men alike committed this crime and for much the most part went unpunished. It was tolerated under some such euphemism as souvenir collecting. The habit of stealing, once formed, is difficult to break. The fault, of course, lies with the high command which permitted the abuse. Col. Beane’s pronouncement suggests that the army is tardily seeking to correct its error.”[7]

Most of this type of looting died out during the first year of occupation; after that the methods became more subtle and indirect. Late in July, 1946, GI’s were called to task for “sleeper purchases” of German properties which could be bought at the time for almost nothing, but which may some day have great value.[8] Full advantage has been taken of the currency chaos. In September, 1946, military authorities, to kill American profiteering in the black markets and illegal acquisition of foreign exchange, issued a new scrip currency, to replace all “foreign and allied military currencies in financial transactions throughout United States army installations.”[9] And if official Russian accusations can be given credence, American officials have stolen equipment from plants in our zone earmarked for shipment to Russia on reparations account and sold it to foreign countries for their personal profit.[10] However, the type of looting just discussed, although it has run in value into hundreds of millions of dollars and robbed the German people of comforts and necessities they have sorely needed during the dreadful days through which they are having to pass, is but petty larceny as compared to the gigantic program of industrial sacking authorized at Potsdam.

Economic Cannibalism –

Potsdam decrees that future German production shall be so limited by the Allied Control Council that the average German standard of living will not exceed the average of the standards of living of other European countries, exclusive of Britain and Russia, and that “productive capacity not needed for permitted production” shall be taken by the conquerors as plunder or destroyed. The prostrated German economy must be drawn and quartered and its flesh fed to other economies, a project which has aptly been called “economic cannibalism.” Potsdam piously recites, as a mere observation, not a mandate, that the program “should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist without external assistance.” At the same time it admits that remaining resources are disastrously inadequate, for it says that the war and defeat “have destroyed German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable.” Still, it proceeds to lay down a reparations program to destroy or remove a large part of the scanty remaining production facilities.

After much wrangling and horse trading, the Control Council in March, 1946, reached its decisions fixing the future levels of production both for Germany as a whole and for individual industries in accordance with Potsdam’s stipulations. As a top limit, but by no means a guaranteed minimum, Germany’s output under these orders may reach by 1949, but not surpass, the level to which it plunged at the bottom of the great depression of 1932, just before the Nazis were voted into power, when a third of the German workers were unemployed. . . In carrying out the Potsdam mandate calling for the “elimination or control of all German industry that could be used for military production” and emphasis on “the development of agriculture and peaceful domestic industries,” many ordinarily peaceful industries are entirely prohibited. These include shipbuilding, manufacture and operation of airplanes, ball and taper roller bearings, nearly all types of heavy machine tools, heavy materials, aluminum, magnesium, beryllium, vanadium, radioactive materials, hydrogen peroxide, and synthetic oil, gasoline and ammonia. Exports and imports are rigidly controlled and drastically restricted. Payments for necessary imports are given first call on proceeds from exports. Imports are confined mostly to a small amount of food and nitrates for fertilizer; exports are limited largely to coal, potash, and lumber. Foreign trade in the ordinary sense has been impossible, however, and will remain so, as long as the mark is given no value in terms of other currencies. Future production of a large number of domestic industries is drastically restricted. Electrical engineering is cut in half; mechanical engineering by twothirds. Synthetic textiles are sharply curtailed. Over-all chemical production is reduced to 45 per cent of the old level. Steel production may not surpass 5,800,000 ingot tons a year, against the former 54,000,000 ton capacity.[11] Britain had argued that such a level would turn the Reich into an economic desert and had fought for a 7,500,000 ton level. Since Russia had held out for a much lower figure, however, the 5,800,000 ton ceiling was reached as a compromise. All during the negotiations Russia had fought for extremely low production ceilings. She had even asked for a sharp reduction in permitted food imports, to reduce the volume of necessary exports, and thus to free more industrial booty in which she was to share. When a little later shipment of reparations to her from the western zones was halted, she suddenly reversed her stand, however, and asked for higher ceilings. Molotov specifically demanded higher coal production and said, “The Reich must be permitted more steel, greater industry and foreign trade.”

Mr. Byrnes at Stuttgart stubbornly defended the agreed production ceilings and insisted the program would permit some betterment in the German standard of living if the German people would work and save hard enough. Apart from generating bitter despair through closing the door to any hope of achieving prosperity, the ceilings have had little practical significance, because actual German output has remained far below the permitted levels. Our military authorities have asserted that it will require years for German recovery to reach the ceilings which have been set. The current effect of the program has been largely confined to repression of power to produce thorough destruction and removal of productive capacity and other measures, such as the banning of scientific research. German science, upon which German industry depended heavily, has been dealt a lethal blow, partly by direct prohibitions and partly by the operations of the denazification decrees which automatically ended the careers of the great majority of German scientists, at least within the Reich. Potsdam has ordered control of “all German public or private scientific bodies, research and experimental institutions, laboratories, etc., connected with economic activities.” In harmony with this decree, German science has been suppressed by orders from the Control Council.

Research (in Germany) by scientists who had been Nazis or had contributed to the development of German weapons, secret or otherwise, has been banned. Others, and they are very few, are forbidden to probe into a long list of specific, comprehensive subjects, 10 general categories of chemicals, and anything of military value or nature. Pure or theoretical science – explorations into the basic laws of nature and the like – may be conducted by the few eligibles, but only under military government surveillance. In other words, German science has been destroyed, and with it German ability to compete commercially with the war victors.

German scientists, as a matter of fact, have become a highly esteemed form of war plunder. Russia, the first to recognize their value, was unable to hide her anxiety and frantic efforts to grab as many as she could. Britain, France, and the United States were not slow in following her example, entering the competition with marked success. We even managed to kidnap a large number from the western Russian zone when we retired to let the Russians take over. At first our interest was confined to experts who had been working on war developments, especially atomic fission and secret weapons. Others in our zone, including numbers who had fled before the Red armies, were held in jail. We changed this wasteful policy, however, after Dr. Roger Adams, head of the chemistry department of the University of Illinois and scientific adviser to the deputy governor of AMG, declared it unwise to confine ourselves only to war industry scientists, since many of those languishing in prison would prove equally valuable to us for other purposes if we chose to use them. In consequence we have now at our disposal hundreds of ex-German scientists who no doubt constitute one of our most profitable acquisitions taken from the fallen Reich. Perhaps they should be counted as reparation. In addition we have sent into Germany teams of experts to scour the country and search out all German patents, designs, and secret processes, privately owned, or otherwise.

According to Assistant Secretary of State Willliam L. Clayton, in testimony before a U.S. Senate committee in June 1945: “We intend to secure the full disclosure of an existing German technology and invention for the benefit of the United Nations. . . This Government and other governments with which Germany has been at war have reduced to their control inventions and designs both patented and unpatented which were owned and controlled by German nationals at the time of the outbreak of war . . . It is probable that no steps will be taken by either the legislative or executive branch of this government which would have the effect of returning such rights to the former German owners.”

Mr. Morgenthau called for the industrial sacking of Germany by proposing that, instead of repeating the mistake made after the last war by demanding “reparations in the form of future payments and deliveries,” requiring production and sale of exports, this time “reparations shall be effected by the transfer of existing resources and territories, e.g. . . . by transfer of German territory and German private rights in industrial property situated in such territory to invaded countries. . .; by the removal and distribution among devastated countries of industrial plants and equipment . . .; by forced German labor outside Germany; and by confiscation of all German assets of any character whatsoever outside of Germany.” (emphasis added) These proposals to trample on the sanctity of private German property could hardly fail to meet with wholehearted approval in the Politburo.

In effecting the program no pretense is made that the owners of confiscated private property will be compensated now or later by either the Allies or the German government, for the latter, if it is ever established, will no doubt be so weak that such compensation would be beyond its financial capacity. Yet the Hague convention in Article 46 in the section dealing with “Military Authority Over the Territory of the Hostile State” says: “Private property cannot be confiscated.” Article 53 underscores the point by saying that any private property taken during an occupation “must be restored and compensation fixed when peace is made.” In view of the present deadly, worldwide assault against the institution of private property, those who pretend to be its defenders should insist upon adherence to these provisions of international law. Flagrant Big Four violations not only create the injustices the laws were established to prevent but incriminate the victors of World War II for the very actions for which they so strongly and justly condemned Hitler. One can readily understand why Socialistic Soviet Russia would violate private property rights in occupied countries, but the same cannot be said of the United States.

Russia at Yalta took the lead in demanding that German reparations be set at 20 billion dollars, half of which was to go to herself. President Roosevelt, engrossed as he was in his “great design,” gambling that Russian suspicions of the western capitalistic powers could be allayed by giving Stalin everything he wanted, and more, agreed to support the demand. Prime Minister Churchill, however, pointed out the obvious fact that if Germany was to be so weakened by deindustrialization that she could not pay reparations from current production and if reparation was to be limited to plant and equipment discarded by deindustrialization, there could be no justification for Russia’s position. The deindustrialization program would automatically limit the amount of reparation to the amount to plant and equipment not ruined by war, less whatever amount would be left to the Germans. For the sake of harmony, however, the 20 billion dollar figure was accepted “as a basis for discussion.”

At Potsdam Russia was apportioned the lion’s share of the reparation. She was to receive all from her own zone, plus 25 per cent from the other zones. Of the latter, two-fifths was to go to Russia outright and three-fifths was to be given to her “in exchange for an equivalent value of food, coal, potash, zinc, timber, day products, petroleum products, and such other commodities as may be agreed upon,” presumably to be taken from her zone. President Truman said of the arrangement: “It is a means of maintaining a balanced economy in Germany and providing the usual exchange of goods between the eastern part and the western.” In other words, one section of German economy must give up to Russia 15 per cent of the flesh to be stripped from its bones in order to receive sustenance from another section – a most remarkable form of economic cannibalism. The value of Germany’s bombed and battered plant and equipment remaining at the end of the war has been officially estimated at between 5 and 10 billion dollars, of which 45 per cent was located in the Russian zone where Russia was given a free hand. Under the “level of industry plan” 40 per cent of this was to be available for removal as reparation or destroyed. Total reparation, therefore, could not be more than 2 to 4 billions, and if Russia were to adhere to the general plan in her zone her total share from all Germany could not exceed 2.4 billion dollars.

At first Russia went along amicably with the program and, according to some reports, apparently took far less than the 40 per cent allowable from her own zone. In March, 1946, the head of the local Thuringian government told correspondents permitted to visit there on a conducted tour that Russia has dismantled less than 100 out of Thuringia’s 5,200 industries.[12] A later report had it that out of 6,272 industries in the province only 310 had been dismantled, of which 80 had been able to get under way again. Neither gave the relative size of the establishments seized. If the plants taken were of average size, they constituted only 2 to 5 per cent of the total. Early in the summer of 1946 the United States estimated that actual removals from the Russian zone amounted to between 500 and 750 million dollars, exclusive of war booty, restitution for destroyed or stolen Russian goods, or occupation costs.[13] This was still less than the allowance. Considering how thoroughly she stripped such regions as Manchuria and northern Iran before evacuating her troops, her early restraint in her German zone, if true, would suggest an ulterior motive. What this motive might be is indicated by the fact, also according to reports, that over 90 per cent of the plants in her zone were in operation, with from 80 to 100 per cent of their output going to Russia as occupation costs or reparation. For example, at one plant with an output of 20 million razors, the German market was to receive 3 million; the rest was to go to the Soviet Union. Persistent rumors, moreover, told of large German munitions plants operating day and night in the zone producing munitions and implements of war for the Soviet Union. Meanwhile reparations shipments from the western zones had gotten under way in April. The first shipment was six shiploads carrying the physical assets of the Deschimag shipyard, Germany’s largest, valued at $4,800,000. Soon to follow were 20 carloads of machinery and tools valued at $5,000,000, representing half of the assets of the country’s largest ball bearing plant. Other early shipments included the Gendorf unit of the Anorgana Chemical works, valued at $10,000,000 and the vast Daimler-Benz underground aircraft engine plant near Oberingheim.

By May, according to Reparations Commissioner Edwin W. Pauley, the U.S. zone had earmarked 144 plants for removal to Russia, of which 35 or 40 were actually shipped, before we suddenly halted further shipments on the ground that we must do so to protect the economic interests of our zone until interzonal economic unity had been achieved, in harmony with Potsdam. Shortly before this, however, the western powers had failed to get the Russians to agree on how much inspection a four power commission would be allowed to do in all four zones, including the Russian. The idea has originated in the Paris conference of Foreign Ministers to allay interzonal suspicions and to give each occupying power a clearcut picture of disarmament in other zones. Britain has hinted that she wanted to check rumors that munitions were being turned out in the Russian zone; Russia had retorted with the direct accusation that Britain had not disbanded large units of the captured German army and wanted to investigate. Whatever the reasons, we stopped further shipments of reparations from our zone. And then the storm broke loose. Russia apparently reversed her whole attitude toward Germany. In June at Paris Molotov declared it ridiculous to try to destroy Germany, called for a strong, centralized and economically balanced Reich with the Ruhr and Saar attached, specifically asked for higher steel and coal production levels than those Russia had previously agreed upon, saying, “The Reich must be permitted more steel, greater industry and foreign trade,” and added, “The Soviet Government insists that reparations from Germany to the amount of ten billion dollars be exacted without fail.” His object was clear: Russia now wanted a Germany able and required to pay large reparations so heavy that socialization would become mandatory, with “Anschluss” with the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics to follow.

Meanwhile, Russia was stripping her zone to the bone, implying that it was necessary to do so to guarantee a continued flow of reparations to the Soviet Union. Many of Germany’s greatest producers of civilian goods were dismantled and shipped eastward. Among them were the two largest shoe factories (Lingel and Tack); the largest sugar refineries in the great beet-sugar region; the largest grain processing mills in Europe, at Barby near Magdeburg; the great Bemberg Silk Mills, famous before the war for their hosiery and lingerie, and the Zeiss Optical Works at Jena. All secondary rail lines were torn up and all electric locomotives removed from the zone. But many of the confiscated plants were left in Germany where they could be operated by Germans for Russia’s benefit. She installed Russian or Communist foremen and placed Russians or Communists on the Boards of Directors. In this fashion she acquired complete ownership and control of 200 of Germany’s key industries comprising the zone’s real economic wealth and employing 1,300,000 workers – a third of the zone’s working population. Examples of the industries seized are all of the I.G. Farben Industrie plants in Saxony, including the famous Leuna chemical factories at Merseburg, Bitterfeld, and Wollin; the Reich’s only important copper works, the Mansfield Co., in Saxony; the machine works of Krupp Gruson at Magdeburg; the Brabag Brown Coal and Gasoline Co., near Gera in Thuringia; the Polysius machine works at Dessau; and many of the most important iron ore plants, machine tool factories, coal mine companies, potash mines, and electrical plants.

America, which from the beginning had been the most zealous in carrying out deindustrialization in its own zone, made no protest to Russia until it was learned that two establishments owned by American concerns, the United Shoe Machinery Co. and the Corn Products Refining Co., had been among those seized. We then offered the suggestion that Allied owned property should be exempted from seizure and added the pious thought that plants producing civilian goods should be kept in Germany. Our note went unanswered. It is known, however, that Russia has invented numerous excuses to give her seizures apparent legality, among them being the contention that plants with international backing are abandoned property and that the owners, most of whom have fled or been liquidated, were war profiteers. Since Britain had come forward with a scheme to nationalize the Ruhr and other industries in her zone, potentially worth billions of dollars, in a manner that would place title to much of it in her own hands as “custodian” without one cent of compensation to the former owners, she had lost all moral ground on which to base a protest against the Russian action. Nor could the French object, in view of their avaricious, vengeful treatment of their own zone, where looting has been just as thorough as in the Russian, but far less intelligent; where, for example, they demand most of the crops to be harvested and at the same time requisition draft animals in July just when most needed to help gather the harvest.

Although America went about the business of dismantling and dynamiting German plants with more fervor than was at first exhibited in any other zone, our motive was quite different from the motives of our allies. Russia is anxious to get as much loot as possible from Germany and yet to make it produce abundantly for Russia to help make her new five year plan successful, and ultimately to absorb the Reich into the Soviet Union. France is ravenous for loot, has been anxious to destroy Germany forever and to annex as much of her territory as possible. Britain has found uses for large amounts of German booty, wants to get rid of Germany as a trade competitor, while retaining her as a market for British goods. The United States has no use for German plant and equipment as booty, and has often said so. We consider our own abundant production equipment superior. Apart from one or two special cases, our primary interest in German assets has been in those located outside Germany, to eliminate German competition in world trade. We are willing to permit the German people to subsist on their own little plot of land, if they can, but we are determined that they never again shall engage in foreign commerce on an important scale. In partnership with Britain we have carried out a systematic campaign to root out all German contacts and assets located abroad and have put our own traders in their place. Known as the “replacement program,” the campaign is closely related to the “safehaven” program which calls for the forcible elimination of all accumulations of German capital abroad.

The following extracts from testimony by assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton before the “Kilgore Committee” of the U.S. Senate, June 25, 1945, tell the story: “LATIN AMERICA” “The government soon determined that German enterprises could not be permitted to survive . . . in this hemisphere. The replacement program was accordingly evolved as a means of bringing about the elimination of German enterprises and of German interests. “The businesses of any persons who were acting against the political and economic independence or security of the American republics ‘shall be the object of forced transfer or total liquidation.'” German economic and political penetration in this hemisphere has, for the most part, been dealt a blow from which it will probably not recover . . .” “THE SAFEHAVEN PROGRAM” “The replacement and safehaven programs are both based upon the common knowledge that totalitarin Germany was able to marshall the ostensible private interests of German nationals abroad for the purpose of waging economic war.” – “The safehaven program concerns itself with denying to Germany” among other things “the German capital investments already located abroad when the war began.” – “The financial and corporate interests of German nationals located outside of Germany have either been seized or will be subject to seizure.” (Mr. Clayton also advocated that Germans with brains and skills, including citizens of Latin American countries of German extraction who had publicly expressed any sympathy for the German cause, should be extradited and sent to Germany.) Accordingly, we have confiscated nearly a billion dollars of property in this country believed by our Justice Department to be owned by Germans, although held in the name of citizens of neutral countries such as Sweden and Switzerland. Attorney General Clark says the Justice Department contends these holdings now belong to the United States Government.

The external operation of the program has been illustrated by our forcing Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and other countries to hand over their German owned assets. Sweden, for example, held German wealth valued at 104 million dollars. At the same time we held 200 million dollars of Swedish assets which we had “blocked,” that is, cut off from Swedish control during the war. We used these blocked funds as a club to compel Sweden to turn the assets over to us. After long negotiations, she finally did deliver 77 million dollars worth of the German resources and we in turn unblocked the 200 million dollars in Swedish funds in America. After obtaining the funds we confiscated them and divided the loot with Britain and France. We were able to obtain half of the 200 to 250 million dollars worth of German assets held in Switzerland and pried loose over 100 million dollars worth of German assets from Spain. We have used and are using every weapon and pressure at our command to root out and confiscate German assets all over the world, and in the process, as Mr. Clayton testified, have dealt a death blow to German foreign trade.

That we officially recognize that the program will also destroy Germany and exterminate the German people was made perfectly clear by Mr. Clayton in his testimony before the Kilgore Committee. Dr. Schimmel, chief investigator, had inquired of the Under-Secretary of State if it were not true that the Germans had made their successful penetration of South American trade for the purpose of acquiring superior information facilities. Mr. Clayton replied: “With the Germans it was not a matter of information, it was largely a matter of necessity. I mean they had to have foreign trade, they had to export in order to live. The country has, as you know, very little natural resources. The only natural resources of any consequence that they have are coal and potash, and they had to export manufactured goods in order to acquire the raw materials that they needed in their economic life, in their industry, and foreign trade was an absolute necessity for the Germans. “(emphasis added) Taking their foreign trade away from them, and making it impossible for them to export manufactured goods, the program advocated by Mr. Clayton and embodied in the Potsdam agreements, was tantamount, therefore, to pronouncing the death sentence on the German people.

Reference Notes:

[1] Henry Wales, Berlin, April 8, 1947, Chicago Tribune Press Service.

[2] Lee Hills, Vienna, Austria, July 20, 1946, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service.

[3] Edward P. Morgan, Berlin, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service. Cf. also Edd Johnson, Berlin, April 29, 1946, Chicago Sun Foreign Service.

[4] William H. Stoneman, with U.S. 3rd Army, May 4, 1945, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service.

[5] William H. Stoneman, with U.S. 3rd Army, May 8, 1945, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service.

[6] Hal Foust, Frankfurt, Germany, Aug. 26, 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service.

[7] Chicago Sunday Tribune, Nov. 18, 1945, p. 22.

[8] Associated Press, New York, July 24, 1946, Chicago Daily News.

[9] United Press, Berlin, Sept. 25, 1946.

[10] United Press, Moscow, Aug. 2, 1946, Chicago Daily News.

[11] Allen Haden, Washington, Nov. 14, 1944, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service.

[12] Edd Johnson, Berlin, Mar. 28, 1946, Chicago Sun Foreign Service.

[13] James P. Warburg, The Chicago Sun, Aug. 5, 1946, p. 10.

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