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Henry Morgenthau, The German Character
Five chapters from Morgenthau’s book, Germany is our Problem, here published with an introductory note by Ellopos. Emphasis, in bold or italic letters, by Ellopos. Complete book in print.
52 Pages
Page 16
2. The Chemical Group. These plants are the source of Germany's explosives, rubber, gasoline. They were so important a weapon that their development and operation were largely supervised by the Army, even before the advent of the Nazis. In removing all heavy chemical factories from the Reich, it would be necessary to deprive her of her position in international cartels in this field. The production of such items as pharmaceuticals might be permitted, as it can be carried on in small units which need not become a danger. However, the items permitted must be carefully selected, bearing in mind that a perfume factory, for example, can turn to the manufacture of poison gas without any conversion problem at all.
3. The Electrical Group. It is more than a coincidence that "power" has become a synonym for electricity. Of that kind of power Germany should be permitted to retain only so much as she needs for her household and reduced industrial needs. The tremendous loads that produced aluminum and magnesium would be unnecessary for her, since she would not be permitted to retain any machinery to make the light metals which can so easily be fabricated into planes. Nor would she be allowed plants for the manufacture of dynamos, turbines, communications devices or electronic equipment. Factories capable of producing electrical goods no more deadly than toasters, vacuum cleaners and hair curlers, would be left. In de-industrializing Germany, the factories taken from her would be rebuilt in other parts of Europe. They would constitute some reparation for damage done, but they would also help balance Europe better industrially so that the Continent need never again be overshadowed by the machine power of a single nation.
Devastated countries should have priority in claiming Germany's industrial equipment. Until the time of the Potsdam Conference delay was the chief danger. It was necessary to the success of the program that each country should have a limited time to dismantle and remove what it wanted from Germany. It is now equally important that any heavy industry remaining anywhere in the Reich shall be destroyed immediately. There have been transfers of industry quite as spectacular and as difficult as this. Germany herself moved a whole group of war industries from her western borders into Silesia and behind the Sudeten mountains in an effort to escape air raids. German war plants in Austria and Moravia operated with heavy machinery looted from France and Poland. Nor has the ability to move heavy industry over the landscape been a German monopoly. Russia took many plants apart in the face of advancing German armies and put them together again hundreds of miles away in places whose people had hardly known what a factory looked like. America has shipped whole factories overseas as Lend-Lease. China moved hundreds of establishments into the interior on the backs of men, women and children. Machinery can be moved or broken up for scrap; buildings can be demolished; workers can be sent to other jobs. But coal in the ground is not so easily disposed of.
Cf. H. Arendt: totalitarianism reduces men to impersonal natural forces * German philosophers in support of Nazism * Beethoven and Mauthausen * The Superior Race of Germans * Kalergi, European Spirit must Precede Europe's Political Unification * La Construction de l'Europe selon Jean Monnet * Plan Fouchet * Mitterrand and Kohl urge European Political Union * Il Manifesto di Ventotene
