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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 26
Export subsidies achieved the identical purpose. Part of a special tax placed on all German industries was used to subsidize exporters, who could then undersell any local manufacturer in Europe in his own market. The German could either drive competitors out of business or force them into agreements to restrict their output. In either case, European industry in general was stunted in its natural growth. But the really big thing was the international cartel, through which the power of other nations to defend themselves was weakened. The United States was not immune. Because Germans could force even United States aluminum, optical goods and chemical giants to restrict their volume, territories, prices and new products, the German Army felt itself able to make its bid for world conquest.
Powerful as we are, the Germans succeeded in imposing upon us, through the medium of our own international industrialists, restrictions on the production of vital war materials. Before we could get rid of the deadening effect of the German control in our own back yard, we had lost months at a stage of the war when seconds were costing lives. For those were the months when the Japanese were sweeping to the shores of Australia, the months when the Germans drove to Stalingrad, the months in which Rommel pushed his desert armies almost to Alexandria. Germans dominated the cartels and used them for war, not because they were wiser or stronger or wealthier but because they concentrated on building for aggression. German members, who virtually had their government as a silentsenior partner, were mainly bent on carrying out that government's aggressive policies. Other nationalities joined the cartels for strictly business reasons. The German was linked with his government in a campaign of economic conquest. The American, at the other extreme, was frequently defying his government and in any case concerned solely with the cartel as a means of making money or consolidating industrial power. Therefore the German had a clear field for deploying industry as an auxiliary of the Army. Their colleagues in other countries were usually satisfied with profits, freedom from competition at home and at most a share of foreign markets on a comfortably arranged basis to keep prices up.
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
