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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 27
The word "cartel" is used rather indiscriminately, often merely as a term of abuse. Strictly speaking, it is an organization by which producers in a given line combine to carry out a common policy of production, prices or sales. It is frequently meant to apply only to an arrangement by which producers restrict their output. In either case, the members retain individual identity although the cartel sets production quotas and prices, divides exclusive territories and sometimes even operates branch plants and sales offices for all members jointly.
For the most part, cartel agreements are illegal in the United States. In Germany they are not only legal but since 1933 compulsory in many instances. They have been rigidly controlled and supervised, as was all business, by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, so the government really directs their policies. Between the world wars, some two or three thousand cartels were organized in Germany. More than one hundred operated on an international scale. These are the ones that carried on Germany's prewar economic hostilities.
The extent of their operations can be seen from a Treasury compilation of German subsidiaries and affiliates in just six countries—Turkey, Argentina and the European neutrals Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. The list, mostly firms controlled by German cartels, contains 750 names. Just how Germany's economic aggression against the people of the United States was carried on has been brought to light in this war. Much of it has been discovered by the Treasury Department through our taking over such German outfits in this country as General Aniline & Film and Bosch Magneto. We found that no matter where the heart of the cartel octopus was—in Germany or England or Holland or the United States— the result was the same. The tentacles reached out into all countries, squeezing the natural, beneficial growth of industry and commerce, crushing the independent manufacturer, the small trader, the truly competitive businesses which are the life of commercial and industrial progress.
The German domination of cartels was a menace and worse in more ways than one, but nowhere as much as in keeping other countries from a natural, healthy industrial growth. Germans did it by restrictive agreements within the cartels, by selling at a loss to prevent a new competitor from getting started, by control of patents— often the patents of Americans—and by simple boycott. The result was always a swollen German, and a shrunken world, industry.
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
