THE PEOPLE HUNGER
In view of all that has happened in Germany, it is small wonder that the people have been overtaken by extreme shortages of basic necessities, especially food. Months after the war had ended and the conquerors had assumed complete control of the German government and therefore responsibility for the German people and their future, the Bishop of Chichester, quoting a noted German pastor, said:
“Thousands of bodies are hanging in the trees in the woods around Berlin and nobody bothers to cut them down. Thousands of corpses are carried into the sea by the Oder and Elbe Rivers – one doesn’t notice it any longer. Thousands and thousands are starving in the highways. . . Children roam the highways alone, their parents shot, dead, lost.”[1]
A wireless to the New York Times in April, 1946, says:
“Like Russia’s half-wild vagabonds after World War I, Germany’s youth is on the road . . . because there was not enough to eat at home. Homeless, without papers or ration cards . . . these groups rob Germans and displaced persons. They are . . . wandering aimlessly, disillusioned, dissolute, diseased, and without guidance.”[2]
Despite conditions, the German people are putting up a brave struggle for existence. After a five-week tour of Europe, including Germany, Malcolm Muir, publisher of BUSINESS WEEK, told the Union League Club of Chicago:
“The Germans are making every effort to help themselves . . . It is not unusual to see a milk cow hitched to a plow, a woman leading the cow and a small boy guiding the plow.”[3]
What harvesting machinery remains is mostly small, old fashioned and run down, often useless for want of parts. Draught work is supplied by animals and men. Oxen are used where available, and a horse and cow hitched together are common. It is not unusual to see a wagon of straw moving along a road with one or two old men at the tongue and a flock of women and children pushing. One observer writes:
“The plight of the Germans is epitomized by scenes in the stubble fields, which are thoroughly gleaned by the owners. Villagers, old men, women and children, may be seen picking up one grain at a time from the ground to be carried home in a sack the size of a housewife’s shopping bag.”[4]
Crop yields have been reduced by the five year fertilizer famine, which continues and the fact, as mentioned before, that the soil for the most part has been worked for 1,000 to 2,000 years. Food reserves which were ample when the war ended were soon depleted, thanks in part to deliberate destruction by invading armies, and, in the case of the Russians and French, to armies of occupation living off the land. When we first invaded Normandy we were surprised by the large stores of food we found. It was the same elsewhere. Although his statement contrasted sharply with the current propaganda which had all Europe starving, Prof. Theodore Shultz of the University of Chicago, in November, 1943, had said that continental Europe that year had harvested good crops, that “farm production had been so well maintained despite the war that Europe will meet 90 to 95 per cent of her food requirements in the year after peace is declared.”[5] Although distribution was disrupted at the end of the war, aggregate food stocks were large. But under Allied management they were soon dissipated. The situation, worsened by the loss of the eastern “bread basket” and the large number of displaced persons and evacuees from the east, became critical and then catastrophic.
For six months our military govemment refused to supply any food from the outside to supplement the vanishing German stocks; however, the terrible consequences of this policy ultimately got under the tough hides of the occupation authorities to such an extent that by December they appealed to the U.S. Government to send sufficient food to prevent universal starvation. Relief was finally promised, and after many heartbreaking delays, a dribble arrived. The intensity of the famine through which Germany is passing can be guaged by comparing the German diet with our own and with what experiments prove to be the minimum to maintain life. An average slice of bread yields around 200 calories. The average American diet is 3,000 calories per person per day. To maintain weight and health, a lumberjack needs as much as 7,600 calories, an active woman at least 3,000.[6]
Herbert Hoover, famed for his work in famine relief, says that 2,200 calories “is a minimum in a nation for healthy human beings.”[7]
Various studies have been made to determine the effects of subnormal diets and the limits of starvation. The University of Minnesota conducted a test during the war in which a group of conscentious objectors voluntarily lived for several months on a daily diet of 1,650 calories. Within six months each man lost a fourth of his weight and experienced fainting spells, dizziness, and a feeling of always being cold. Their hearts shrank and some had to have two blankets even in summer. All lost three-fourths of their energy and work ability. “Each individual gradually tended to withdraw to himself, to shun social companionship . . . The main interest in life became the next meal.”[8] Northwestern University Medical School conducted a similar experiment with similar effects. A diet with protein and vitamin contents 40 per cent and 25 percent of normal, respectively, was tried with results which in the words of Dr. Andrew C. Ivy, “hold out a dismal prospect for the people of food-restricted countries.” He said little change was noted in the patients during the first month and a half; “after six weeks, however, they showed a slow, progressive deterioration in physical and mental health, accompanied by loss of endurance, skin lesions, leg pains, and mental slowness.” It was difficult to get the subjects back to normal: “the time of recovery was in no case less than a month.”[9]
In response to a question on the subject of minimum diets, the National Research Council states:
“The best evidence available to the Board would indicate that adult European males reduced to an intake on the average of 1,400 to 1,700 calories for a period of six months will suffer: 1) Reduction of capacity for work (endurance) to the point where only very light work can be performed effectively, moderate heavy work, and heavy work not at all. 2) Loss of power of mental concentration associated with apathy, depression, and a high level of irritability. 3) Increased susceptibility to infections and contagious diseases . . . The ability of a population to maintain or increase its own community production of food, not to speak of other goods, would be diminished. In the second place, there would be less hope of establishing acceptable community political organization. In the third place, a population subjected to such a low level of food supply might be expected to develop epidemics which might spread to other nations and consequently represent a hazard to the entire world.”[10]
These facts prove the excruciating character of the rations imposed upon the German populace by the conquerors. In the American zone where the level has been consistently higher than in other zones the base ration since V-E Day has ranged between a high of 1,550 to a low of 1,180 calories per person per diem. Here is the record: before November 11, 1945, 1,262 calories; from that date through the following March, 1,550 calories; from April 1, 1946, through most of the following May, 1,275 calories; from then on through most of the summer, 1,180 calories. In August, 1946, it was raised to 1,350 calories, and in the fall was restored to 1,550 calories where it was supposed to remain during the winter of 1946-47. Herbert Hoover in April, 1946, in commenting on the European situation in general called the 1,550 calorie level a “grim and dangerous base” and said: “At this level we believe most of the adults can come through the short period of four months until the next harvest. The children’s health will become suceptible to disease. Many of the children and aged will fall by the wayside.”[11] The consequences of keeping the base German rations at or below the 1,500 calorie level since V-E Day are not difficult to imagine. Although some of the German workers, such as farmers and miners, are allowed somewhat higher rations, the base ration applies to the great majority, including housewives and children. Such reports as the following made by an official of the food branch of the American Military Government should therefore cause no surprise.[12]
“The greatest famine catastrophe of recent centuries is upon us in central Europe. Our Government is letting down our military government in the food deliveries it promised, although what Generals Clay, Draper, and Hester asked for and were promised was the barest minimum for survival of the people. We will be forced to reduce the rations from 1,550 calories to 1,000 or less calories. “The few buds of democracy will be burned out in the agony of death of the aged, the women, and the children.
“The British and we are going on record as the ones who let the Germans starve. The Russians will release at the height of the famine substantial food stores they have locked up (300,000 to 400,000 tons of sugar, large quantities of potatoes). “Aside from the inhumanity involved, it is so criminally stupid to give such a performance of incredible fumbling before the eyes of the world. It makes all the many hard-working officers of the Office of Military Government, Food and Agricultural Branch, ashamed.
Karl Brandt
Berlin, Germany, March 18, 1946.”
The following is taken from a report prepared by the German Central Administration for Health, a German agency created by the Russian occupation authorities:
“The people hunger. They hold only the immediate present responsible for their condition. They are without the energy to trace the links of causes. They have even forgotten Hitler. Beyond the immediate present their power to reproduce even memory does not reach. There is growing as though by psychological compulsion, a mass hysteria, with a thousand different symptoms of drug addiction, drunkenness, perversities, sadism, murder and infantilism. . . The situation is reaching a generally psychopathological state, through chronic hunger. We are seeing aberrations such as were previously known only among stranded and starving sailors in lifeboats, or thirsting persons forgotten by caravans in desert sands. It is increasingly impossible to discover in the masses of the people opinions. They have only animal urges. “The explanation of this mass phenomenon, this mental and spiritual paralysis, is physical. They are emaciated to the bone. Their clothes hang loose on their bodies, the lower extremities are like the bones of a skeleton, their hands shake as though with palsy, the muscles of the arms are withered, the skin lies in folds, and is without elasticity, the joints spring out as though broken. “The weight of the women of average height and build has fallen way below 110 pounds. Often women of child-bearing age weigh no more than 65 pounds. The number of still-born children is approaching the number of those born alive, and an increasing proportion of these die in a few days. Even if they come into the world of normal weight, they start immediately to lose weight and die shortly. Very often the mothers cannot stand the loss of blood in childbirth and perish. Infant mortality has reached the horrifying height of 90 per cent.”[13]
The following dispatch from Wiesbaden, Germany, portrays the lot which has befallen the children:
“Those fat, round cheeked, chubby-legged German children so well known in picture and story – remember them? “They’re of another era. You do not see them now. “I sat with a mother, watching her eight-year-old daughter playing with a doll and carriage, her only playthings. Then she came to supper – hard brown bread, three slim slices of pressed sausage, a cup of coffee substitute. Her legs were tiny, the joints protruding. Her arms had no flesh. Her skin drawn taut across the bones, the eyes dark, deep-set and tired.
“‘She doesn’t look well,’ I said.
“‘Six years of war,’ the mother replied, in that quiet toneless manner so common here now. ‘She hasn’t had a chance. None of the children have. Her teeth are not good. She catches illness so easily. “‘She laughs and plays – yes; but soon she is tired. She never has known’ – and the mother’s eyes filled with tears – ‘what it is not to be hungry.’ “‘Was it this bad during the war?’ I asked.
“‘Not this bad,’ she replied, ‘but not good at all. And now I am told the bread ration is to be less. What are we to do; all of us? “‘For six years we suffered. We love our country. My husband was killed – his second war. My oldest son is a prisoner somewhere in France. My other boy lost a leg. That’s what the Nazis did for us. And now . . .’
“By this time she was weeping. I gave this little girl a Hershey bar and she wept – pure joy – as she held it. By this time I wasn’t feeling too chipper myself. . . But it gives you an idea.”[14]
Dr. Lawrence Meyer, Executive Secretary of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, after returning from Germany said on January 13, 1946:
“Germany literally swarms with children. Eight children per family is nothing extraordinary. Millions of these children must die before there is enough food. In Frankfurt at a children’s hospital there have been set aside 25 out of 100 children. These will be fed and kept alive. It is better to feed 25 enough to keep them alive and let 75 starve then to feed the 100 for a short while and let them all starve.”[15]
Dorothy Thompson reported:
“In Berlin, in August, 1945, out of 2,866 children born, 1,148 died, and it was summer, and the food more plentiful than now . . . From Vienna a reliable source reports that . . . infant mortality is approaching 100 per cent.”[16]
Edd Johnson of P.M., on October 3, 1945, wrote from Germany:
“The infant mortality rate is 16 times as high today as in 1943 . . . There is going to be a definite age group elimination. Most children under 10 and people over 60 cannot survive the coming winter.”[17]
A United States Press dispach from Berlin, February 8, 1946, reads:
“Official announcement that two German women bad been murdered and their flesh sold on a food black market aroused fear today that organized gangs of human butchers were at work here. Spokesmen for the criminal investigation department of the German police said only two cases of murder-for-flesh bad been established but that it was possible that butchers were operating on a much larger scale, killing their victims and peddling their flesh in local black markets.”[18]
Hal Foust wrote from Berlin, February 20, 1946:
“Germans are dying in masses, not so much from starvation alone as from illnesses aggravated by acute malnutrition.”[19]
A United Press dispatch from Hamburg, Germany, March 22, 1946, reads:
“33 workmen collapsed from hunger today – the first signs of starvation were apparent in this area – with hostility rising among the Hamburg working classes, and food riots continued in Hamburg for the fourth straight day.”[20]
Dorothy Thompson wrote:
“The children of Europe are starving. Six years of war, indescribable destruction, and the lunatic policies which have added to the disintegration inherited from the collapse of the Nazi regime have done their work. Germany, and with it Europe, is skidding into the abyss. “The facts are at last being revealed through what has amounted to a conspiracy of silence here . . . This war was fought by the West in the name of Christian civilization, the Four Freedoms, and the dignity of man against those who were perpetrating crimes against humanity. But policies which must inevitably result in the postwar extermination of tens of thousands of children are also “crimes against humanity.”[21]
General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower in November, 1945, solemnly warned that if our military victory is to have lasting significance, the United States and other nations must “assist the war devastated countries back on their feet” and added: “If this bitter situation is not to become so disastrous as to make me wonder if it was worthwhile to have taken up arms against the Nazis, we in the United States – which is truly the land of plenty as compared to Europe – must be prepared to discharge a heavy responsibility.”[22]
After giving Herbert Hoover, serving as Chairman of President Truman’s Famine Investigating Commission, a grim report of Germany’s food situation on April 13, 1946, Generals Joseph T. McNarney and Lucius Clay said in a formal statement:
“Political stabilty cannot develop under conditions which create political apathy. Political apathy can be overcome in a population which must devote its full effort to the daily search for food. Political stability in Germany is closely related to political stability in the rest of Europe. “German transport facilities are required to move relief supplies and exports across Europe. German workmen must be used to man available transport facilities. “German coal is vital to Europe. German potash, salt, lumber, spare parts, and other products are needed throughout Europe. Coal production in the Ruhr has declined substantially since the recent food cut. Without food Germany cannot produce coal. Without coal Germany cannot produce fertilizer and unless it produces fertilizer it cannot improve its food supply.”[23]
The statement went on to point out that the American zone even in normal times had been a deficit area with regard to food, requiring 2,000,000 tons of imports in 1943-44. It said that the German economic pump must be primed with food imports, because the American zone and other western areas cannot produce enough to sustain life even at starvation levels. Ten months after V-E Day, only 600,000 tons of food had been imported into our zone by AMG, or about one ounce per person per meal. Yet AMG officers asked GI’s to remind the Germans they owe America a debt of gratitude for feeding them.[24]
Evidence that the German Famine is Deliberate
Senator Homer E. Capehart of Indiana in an address before the United States Senate February 5, 1946, said in part:
“The fact can no longer be suppressed, namely, the fact that it has been and continues to be, the deliberate policy of a confidential and conspirational clique within the policy-making circes of this government to draw and quarter a nation now reduced to abject misery. “In this process this clique, like a pack of hyenas struggling over the bloody entrails of a corpse, and inspired by a sadistic and fanatical hatred, are determined to destroy the German nation and the German people, no matter what the consequences.
“At Potsdam the representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics solemnly signed the following declaration of principles and purposes: “‘It is not the intention of the Allies to destroy or enslave the German people.’
“Mr. President, the cynical and savage repudiation of these solemn declarations which has resulted in a major catastrophe, cannot be explained in terms of ignorance or incompetence. This repudiation, not only of the Potsdam Declaration, but also of every law of God and men, has been deliberately engineered with such a malevolent cunning, and with such diabolical skill, that the American people themselves have been caught in an international death trap.
“For nine months now this administration has been carrying on a deliberate policy of mass starvation without any distinction between the innocent and the helpless and the guilty alike. “The first issue has been and continues to be purely humanitarian. This vicious clique within this administration that has been responsible for the policies and practices which have made a madhouse of central Europe has not only betrayed our American principles, but they have betrayed the GI’s who have suffered and died, and they continue to betray the American GI’s who have to continue their dirty work for them.
“The second issue that is involved is the effect this tragedy in Germany has already had on the other European countries. Those who have been responsible for this deliberate destruction of the German state and this criminal mass starvation of the German people have been so zealous in their hatred that all other interests and concerns have been subordinated to this one obsession of revenge. In order to accomplish this it mattered not if the liberated countries in Europe suffered and starved. To this point this clique of conspirators have addressed themselves: ‘Germany is to be destroyed. What happens to other countries of Europe in the process is of secondary importance.'” These remarks were interspersed with a mass of supporting evidence.
There can be no question that there has been a deliberate attempt to keep the facts from the American public. Senator Eastland of Mississippi, for example, in a stirring address to the United States Senate December 3, 1945, exposing the chaotic conditions in Germany, told of the great difficulty he had encountered in gaining access to the official report on conditions in the Reich made by Calvin Hoover. He said the State Department at first refused to furnish him a copy of the report, but that through the intercession of a high official in the department he had been able to obtain it, but only “with the understanding and the promise received from me first that the information therein would be made available to the people of this country.”
Senator Eastland continued:
“There appears to be a conspiracy of silence to conceal from our people the true picture of conditions in Europe, to secrete from us the fact regarding conditions of the continent and information as to our policies toward the German people . . . Are the real facts withheld because our policies are so cruel that the American people would not endorse them? “What have we to hide, Mr. President? Why should these facts be withheld from the people of the United States? There cannot possibly be any valid reason for secrecy. Are we following a policy of vindictive hatred, a policy which would not be endorsed by the American people as a whole if they knew true conditions? “Mr. President, I should be less than honest if I did not state frankly that the picture is so much worse, so much more confused, than the American people suspect, that I do not know of any source that is capable of producing the complete factual account of the true situation into which our policies have taken the Ameriean people. The truth is that the nations of central, southern, and eastern Europe are adrift on a flood of anarchy and chaos.”[25]
Victor Gollancz, influential left-wing British publisher and pamphleteer, in his book “Leaving Them to Their Fate – the Ethics of Starvation,” after marshalling voluminous proof explains the starvation in these words:
“The plain fact is when Spring is in the English air we are starving the German people, and we are starving them not deliberately in the sense we prefer their death to our own inconvenience. “Others, including ourselves, are to keep or be given comforts while the Germans lack the bare necessities of existence. If it is a choice between discomfort for another and suffering for the German, the German must suffer; if between suffering for another and death for the German, the German must die.”
He describes the ample British diet and stocks of food while the Germans starveand says:
“Stocks of food and feeding stuffs in this country owned and controlled by the minister of food, exclusive of stocks on farms or held by secondary wholesalers and manufacturers, were estimated to total on the last day of March no less than 4,000,000 tons.”
He rejects the thesis that we should starve the Germans because they would have starved us had they won, on the ground that those who reason as the Nazis are no better than the Nazis. He could have added that starvation of children of an enemy country is to admit having enemy children. One leading daily thinks Mr. Gollancz fails to plumb the depths of the infamy: “On the contrary it [the starvation] is the product of foresight. It was deliberately planned at Yalta by Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, and the program in all its brutality was later confirmed by Truman, Attlee, and Stalin . . . The intent to starve the German people to death is being carried out with a remorselessness unknown in the western world since the Mongol conquest.”[26]
Ample food stocks nearer to Germany even than those in England existed while the Germans starved. On the same page of a newspaper in the autumn of 1945 two articles appeared under the following headlines:
(1) “WEST GERMANS FACE HARD FIGHT AGAINST FAMINE”
(2) “COME AND GET IT, DENMARK TELLS HUNGRY EUROPE”
The article under the latter reads:
“The exhausted Danish farming industry succeeded in increasing pigs to nearly two million, 60 per cent of the prewar stock, and last week 45,000 live cattle were offered to slaughtering, of which 32,000 had to be refused as the warehouses are filled to capacity and no shipping was available. “Denmark has, in vain, drawn the attention of Britain, the United States, and UNRRA to the facts, at the same time forwarding proposals, but no reply has been received so far. “The huge cold storage facilities in north Germany are not being utilized, and refrigerator ships are lying idle in north German harbors. At the same time slaughtering houses are forced to return live cattle to farmers, the cattle now consuming fodder that otherwise would be available to further increase production, as a result of the failure of distribution machinery. “Denmark would welcome it if public opinion would induce the united shipping pool, UNRRA and other concerned agencies to overcome difficulties and supply shipping essential to emptying ‘Europe’s bursting larder.'”[27]
An Associated Press dispatch from Copenhagen a month earlier had told the same story:
“While the rest of Europe hungers for meat, Denmark has 3,000 to 4,000 tons of surplus beef weekly which cannot be exported for lack of shipping space. Hoegsbro Holm, permanent secretary of the agricultural council of Denmark, said today that for the last six weeks farmers have had as many as 16,000 head of cattle ready for slaughter, but Denmark has been able to use and export only 10,000. Holm said, ‘We have been trying to get transport for at least two months but to date nothing is ready to take the meat.'”[28]
Another report, by Robert Conway of the New York News, written March 22, 1946, from Rome, under the headline: “FINDS EUROPEAN ‘SHORTAGES’ ARE EXAGGERATION reads:
“Coincident with the arrival of former President Hoover on his food mission, it is timely and vital that the American public should receive the simple facts regarding the grossly exaggerated talk of shortages in Europe. “England is not starving, although food is short. France is better off than England, and Italy is better off than France. The rich and the racketeers are eating sumptuously in London, Paris, and Rome, and the poor in Italy have rations equivalent to the diet enjoyed in 1937 at the peak of Mussolini’s prosperity era. “England is the only one of the three countries which is making an honest, serious effort to ration food and clothing and control prices. France is doing better than Italy, but the black market in Paris is flourishing in all lines of goods.
Italy is exploiting everything in a fantastic black market based on the contempt of the majority of the nation for the ignorance of Allied – chiefly American – officers of language, customs, and the traditional system of bartering and begging. “In addition, some officers are flagrantly cooperating in the various rackets.” “I found it possible to eat well and cheaply in London, Canterbury, and other English towns. I found a similar situation in Paris and its environs. Then I came to Italy which is a veritable land of plenty, although in all three countries black market restaurants supplied steaks, eggs, fruits and other delicacies at prices equivalent to those of restaurants in New York. “The task of ferreting out the truth of the food and economic situation is a difficult one, and unless a better and more experienced personnel is supplied for the purpose than is evident in the permanent allied administration here, a distorted and inadequate picture will be given to Mr. Hoover.”[29]
That the general European famine advertised by Washington is for the most part German, as reported by Senator Butler of Nebraska after a trip through 33 countries, is indicated by the fact that UNRRA has been used “to finance governments and not to feed the hungry.” UNRRA has in effect supported these governments, mostly satellites of the Soviet Union, by supplying them with billions of dollars worth of goods which they, in turn, have sold to those with the money to buy, thus bringing to themselves handsome revenues in lieu of taxes.[30] In Germany, where there is widespread hunger and poverty, UNRRA is specifically forbidden to function for the benefit of any but “displaced persons,” and then only by making requisitions against the starving Germans.[31] In August, 1946, Cyril Osborn, M.P., denounced the so-called relief agency of the United Nations as “the biggest racket in Europe.”
For another thing, no Central Red Cross has been permitted to function in the stricken Reich. And it is now a matter of history that the Washington administration for nearly a year hotly resisted all efforts to bring private relief to the Germans, and only permitted a miserable dribble when it finally did allow it, at the urgent request of AMG officials. It placed the limit at 2,000 tons a month, limiting packages to 11 pounds and 72 inches in girth, with shipping charges of 14 cents a pound.
Senator Albert W. Hawkes, of New Jersey had made a strong appeal to the President urging that private relief packages be permitted to prevent mass starvation of the German people. In his reply, dated December 21, 1945, President Truman professed that “there is as yet no possibility of making deliveries of individual packages in Germany,” because “the postal system and the communications and transportation systems of Germany are in the state of total collapse.” He then said:
“Our efforts have been directed particularly toward taking care of those who fought with us rather than against us – Norwegians, Belgians, the Dutch, the Greeks, the Poles, the French. Eventually the enemy countries will be given some attention. “While we have no desire to be unduly cruel to Germany, I cannot feel any great sympathy for those who caused the death of so many human beings by starvation, disease, and outright murder, in addition to all the destruction and death of war. Perhaps eventually a decent government can be established in Germany so that Germany can again take its place in the family of nations. I think that in the meantime no one should be called upon to pay for Germany’s misfortune except Germany itself. “Until the misfortunes of those whom Germany oppressed and tortured are oblivated [sic], it does not seem right to divert our efforts to Germany itself. I admit that there are, off course, many innocent people in Germany who had little to do with the Nazi terror. However, the administrative burden of trying to locate these people and treat them differently for the rest is one which is almost insuperable.” (emphasis added)[32]
This letter makes perfectly clear that we are deliberately discriminating against “the Germans,” that Mr. Truman expeeted to be at least a little cruel in his treatment of them, and that he had not the slightest consciousness of the German children, as such, and the agonies they must suffer, although they surely “had little to do with Nazi terror” and certainly could be as easily located as Nazis and war criminals. It is difficult, indeed, to see how those responsible for our policy can escape condemnation under the following principles laid down by General Eisenhower: “While I and my subordinates believe that stern justice should be meted out to war criminals by proper legal procedure, we would never condone inhuman or un-American practices upon the helpless, which is one of the crimes for which those war criminals must now stand trial.”[33]
Michael Foote, M.P., in discussing this question reminded the House of Commons that there is an older law than any promulgated at Potsdam for the protection of victims or our policy:
“But who shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”[34]
It later came out that Russian objection in the Control Council was at least partly responsible for our inability to send private relief packages to Germany. Four Senators, after being rebuffed at the White House in their request that the mails be opened to permit relief packages to Germany, learned that permission to do so must meet with unanimous consent of all four occupying powers and that the Soviet Union had opposed the idea. The four gave out this information in a statement which said in part:
“The American people should know once and for all that as a result of this government’s official policy they are being made the unwilling accomplices in the crime of mass starvation. How long must we expect Mr. Stalin to deny the American people the opportunity to express their native humanitarianism and desires?”[35]
Russia’s inhuman truculence was referred to indirectly by General McNarney in a letter to Senator Wiley (February 14, 1946). He explained:
“United States citizens have not been permitted to send individual gift supplies to German nationals, as the establishment of international postal service, while under study, is yet to be effected. “Once such agreement has been reached, the distribution of packages within the United States zone can be reasonably well met by the parcel post service which has now been reinstalled within Germany.” (emphasis added)[36]
In other words, the difficulty was a question of agreement, rather than lack of facilities.
In close harmony with Russia’s inhuman attitude, which had an ulterior purpose as part of a larger program, as we shall see, the “liberal” press has for the most part greeted with silence or derision all efforts to publicize the facts concerning German prostration and to bring relief to the suffering German masses. Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Connelly, and the late Sidney Hillman, backed by personages in AMG, upon visiting Germany professed to see no evidence of starvation or suffering beyond what they considered tolerable. The New Republic expressed its horror over the possibility that Senator Wherry, who had agitated for a Senate investigation of conditions in Europe, including Germany, might become more influential. In the New Republic’s own words, this was his crime: “His present efforts are devoted to getting more food for Germany and Austria.”
In commenting on the New Republic attitude and PM’s professed liberalism, William Henry Chamberlain, in his excellent article “The Crisis of Liberalism,” which was entered in the Congressional Record, says:
“So it becomes a crime, in the eyes of a liberal magazine, to try to ward off what is at best acute malnutrition, at worse starvation. As to PM, with its loudly professed code of humanitarian ethics, it gives a daily exhibition, in its attitude toward relief for central Europe, of nazism in reverse, of a positively sadistic desire to inflict maximum suffering on all Germans, irrespective of their responsibility for Nazi crimes.”[37]
“Liberals” have, however, indulged in some relief activities. Here is one case, as reported by correspondent Philip Warden:
“Washington, D.C., June 6 (1946) – The emergency food collection committee headed by Henry A. Wallace, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, and Herbert Lehman, has collected $323,000 in cash and is incurring an estimated $300,000 in administrative expenses, Chairman Wallace reported to the Senate Small Business’ Committee today. “Wallace listed among the ‘estimated cash requirements’ for the two month campaign which is expected to wind up by July 1, $75,000 in salaries, $45,000 in travel and subsistence claims, $115,000 for publicity, materials, and stationery, $28,000 for communications, and $20,000 in state and metropolitan organizational expenses.”[38]
Reference Notes:
[1] Congressional Record, Dec. 20, 1945, p. A-6130.
[2] Wireless to New York Times and Chicago Tribune, Frankfurt, Germany, April 13, 1946.
[3] The Chicago Sun, June 7, 1946, p. 29.
[4] Hal Foust, Berlin, Aug, 6, 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service.
[5] George Theim, Chicago Daily News Farm Editor, Chicago Daily News, Nov. 4, 1943.
[6] Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 10, 1945.
[7] Same as No. 6.
[8] Chicago Tribune Press Service, Washington, April 26, 1946.
[9] Chicago Daily News, April 12, 1946.
[10] Congressional Record, Jan. 29, 1946, p. 533.
[11] Associated Press, Washington, D.C., April 19, 1946.
[12] Congressional Record, March 29, 1946, pp. 2858-9.
[13] Congressional Record, March 29, 1946, p. 2865.
[14] Jack Bell, Wiesbaden, Germany, May 10, 1946, Chicago Daily News Foreign Service.
[15] American Economist, Feb. 1946, p. 6.
[16] Congressional Record, Dec. 4, 1945, p. 11562.
[17] Congressional Record, Dec. 4, 1945, p. 11553.
[18] United Press, Berlin, Feb. 8, 1946, The Chicago Daily News.
[19] Hal Foust, Berlin, Feb. 20, 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service.
[20] United Press, Hamburg, Germany, March 22, 1946.
[21] Congressional Record, Dec. 4, 1945, p. 1156l.
[22] Reported by Griffing Barcroft, Washington, Nov. 22, 1945, Chicago Sun Washington Bureau.
[23] John Thompson, Berlin, April 13, 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service.
[24] Associated Press, Berlin, June 22, 1946.
[25] Congressional Record, Dec. 4, 1945, p. 11552.
[26] Chicago Daily Tribune, May 8, 1946.
[27] Einar Christiansen, Chicago Tribune Press Service, Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 19, 1945, Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 20, 1945.
[28] Associated Press, Copenhagen, Denmark, Sept. 16, 1946.
[29] Robert Conway, Rome, March 22, 1946, wireless to New York News.
[30] Chicago Tribune Press Service, Washington D.C., Aug. 5, 1946.
[31] Edd Johnson, Frankfurt, Germany, The Chicago Sun for Nov. 19, 1945.
[32] Congressional Record, Jan. 29, 1946, pp. 530-l.
[33] Congressional Record, Jan. 29, 1946, p. 537.
[34] Congressional Record, Dec. 4, 1945, p. 11557.
[35] Chicago Daily Tribune, Washington, D.C., Jan. 8, 1946.
[36] William Moore, Washington, D.C., Chicago Tribune Press Service.
[37] Congressional Record, May 20, 1946, p. 2953.
[38] Philip Warden, Washington, D.C., June 6, 1946, Chicago Tribune Press Service
