The Wilmington morning star., 1947-11-27
Bars To German Peace
Rv WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLAlN


The meeting of the American, Soviet
British and French foreign MINISTER'S IN
London. devoted to the problem OF the Ger
man and Austrian peace treatleS, propdoly
represents the last hope and ratner t.9 .9l-
lorn hope of reaching an agreed. settle
-,an+ There is. of course, little difficulty
| in imposing upon defeated and wrecked
Germanv anv treaty on which the vlctors
are in accord. The real difficulty has been
to conclude pace treaty among tne VIC
tors themselves, more especladiS lay and ued"thn The
the Soviet Union, on one SIDE, ana h the
fIoi+ed IN States and Great Britain, on the
other.
The last meeting of Foreign Minister'S
hold in Moscow last spring, ended IN com,
plete deadlock The United States refused
to accept the Soviet demands tor ten r pll-
lion dollars worth of reparations from Ger
MANY and for ownership OF large part
of the Austrian industries and natural re,
sources. The first of these demands would
have meant further heavy burdens 1or lne
American taxpayer, because Germany
could only satisfy Soviet demands on tns
scale suggested by Molotov it 1T received
substantial financial aid from the United
States. The second demand would have re-
duced Austria to helpless dependence on
the Soviet Union.
Failure to agree on reparations frustrat,,
ed suggestions for all-around WlthdraWal
of occupation troops from Austria a step
some time. There was also disagreement
over the new eastern frontier of Germany.
The Soviet Union insisted on the perma-
nence of the present German-Polish front
ier, which runs along the line OF the Ooer
and Western Neisse rivers and assigns
about one-fourth of Germanys arabic land
to Poland The United States Government,
committed by the Yalta Agreement to the
immoral principle of compromising Poland
at Germany's expense for territory. an
nexed from Poland by the Soviet Union,
wished to make the territorial amputatlon
less drastic, so that Germany might pos
sess more home food resources.
LAST TRY FOR AGREEMENT
There have been strong advance lndlca-
tions that this London meeting Will be the
last attempt to reach an agreement with
the Soviet Union on the basis OF treating
Germany as political and economic unit.
Certainly the case against prolonglng the
present unhappy state of affairs in Germa-
nv is overwhelming. A united Germany
would be desirable.
But failing Russian acceptance of the
conditions that would make unity possible,
there should be bold, decisive attempt to
transform the three western zones OF Ger
many from their present status as beg
CARED subcolonial dependencies into self
supporting state. Such state might make
the difference between the success and the
failure of the Marshall Plan. And. II the
|
rise in living standards it could easily
become the nucleus of attraction for that
eastern part of Germany which faces a
pretty bleak future as an exploited colony
of the Soviet Union.
The struggle with Germany was almost
Immediately followed by a struggle for
Germany. Unfortunately some American
officials both in Washington and in the
Military Government, were slow in waking
up to this important political fact. BY inept
destructive policies they contributed to the
success of the great ambitious design
which Stain inherited from Lenin: the in
clusion of Germany in vast Soviet en-
pire that would stretch from the Atlantic
to the Pacific.
BUT BLUNDERS PERSIST
| This situation has been rectified TO some
extent as the irresistible logic of events
convinced Amrican administrators that
self-supporting Germany was both politi-
cally and economically desirable. Yet
grave blunders are still being made, as
the decision to dismantle 682 German
plants just when Germany and Europe
need maximum production, would indicate:
The Russians in Germany have enjoyed
the advantage of knowing what they wanted
and going about achieving their ends con-
sstently and ruthlessly. While education
has been largely paralyzed by negative
measures in the American zone, lndoctrl-
nation with communism is in full blast in
the Soviet zone. The Russians have re-
warded friends and punished enemies; the
Germans have not been able to reckon with
certainty that the western powers would
do either. They have built up in their zone
subservient political organization, the
SED, Communist dominated trade unions
and the usual totalitarian set-up OF tightly
controlled womens, youth and other organl-
cations. They have appeled to German
nationalist and revolutionary feeling by de-
nunciations of "Anglo-American capitalist
imperialism"
| Yet there is little reason to believe that,
| if the German enjoyed complete freedom
of choice, they would vote for the totali-
tartan East against the liberal West.
fairly reliable barometer is the illegal
flight, every month, of thousands of Ger
mans from the Soviet one into the west
ern zones. This is a one-Way movement
RUSSIAN TERROR
The Russians have been stunped by
dilemma for which they found no solution.
Their need for capital goods and manu-
factures has led them to plunder and strip
their zone on scale without parallel in
the Allied zones. And, while American and
British administration is far from immune
to criticism, terror has prevailed in the
Russian zone far more than in the West.
Moreover, the Soviet Union has inflicted
far and away the gravest blow on German
national unity and economic Wellbeing by
imposing the Oder-Neisse frontier line. In
the face of this hard fact G e m
communist propaganda apOut RUSSIA as the
friend of German national unity cannot be
very convincing. Every uprotted refugee
from Silesia and East Prussia every Ger
man war prisoner who returns a physical
wreck from Russia is an eloquent, if silent
witness against the Soviet attempt to win
Germany for it's orbit.
In view of these circumstances, the pros
poets of welding Western Germany into
West European political and economic bloc
are reasonably favorable, notwithstanding
some of the negative occupation perform
Iances of the last years. A spectacular last
roin11te switch of Soviet nalic,1 das;aaaI