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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 31
German cartelists prevented the growth of French dye industries and blocked the establishment of a French synthetic oil industry. French industrialists were permitted to make money, but their country was fatally weakened both in the useful crafts of peace and the grim necessities of war.
Through all this growth of German power—achieved because the German government joined the German cartelists in an unequal economic battle against foreign industries—there grew up a legend that Germany was a huge and essential and irreplaceable market for the raw materials of Europe. Yet the figures show she was even less of a factor as a buyer than as a supplier. Almost no one in Europe will miss her heavy industries as a market.
The year 1937 marked Germany's biggest purchases of industrial raw materials and semi-manufactures since the peak of the 1929 boom. The enormous iron and steel, metallurgical, electrical and chemical industries, among them, bought from all Europe a grand total of $160,000,000 worth. This is less than the total of raw materials and semi-manufactures imported that year by a single United States industry—automobiles. Nor were these German purchases a matter of life and death for any single country.
Sweden was tops— $50,000,000 of the $160,000,000 total. Eight other European countries shared in it to the extent of more than $5,000,000 each. Eleven others had a small, sometimes a negligible portion. Nearly half of the $160,000,000 was in iron ore. There can be little doubt that a properly balanced European distribution of industry would easily absorb this iron and more, as well as all the other items formerly sold to Germany. Some will be used at home in new industries and to improve local standards of living. Others will be purchased by European countries which are permitted to develop or expand their industries according to the dictates of free competition.
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
