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GRUESOME HARVEST The Costly Attempt To Exterminate The People of Germany By Ralph Franklin Keeling Territorial
Amputations Germany's living space, even in 1937, was small
for her heavy population and afforded important
natural resources only in the form of farm lands
and deposits of coal and potash. Her agricultural
lands have been overworked by intensive cultivation
for 1,000 to 2,000 years and her soil has been
starved for fertilizer during and since the recent
war. Even when plenty of fertilizer was available
and her territory was intact, Germany was never
able to produce more than 80 per cent of the food
and other farm products needed to meet her domestic
needs.[1] As her agricultural lands became overcrowded,
Germany had resorted to manufacturing. By importing
iron ore and exploiting her coal and potash
resources to the utmost, she had built up the
world's second largest steel and chemical
industries which, in turn, formed the "workshop of
Europe," raised the general European standard of
living, and provided direct or indirect support for
fully two thirds of her own population. On account of destruction by total warfare and
deliberate Allied policy, these industrial
resources are now largely wiped out. Without them,
over half of the German workers must resort to the
soil as their only other means of life. Under the
circumstances it is extremely doubtful that the
land, even if all held in 1937 were left intact,
could support the huge, now jobless, industrial
population on even the barest subsistence
level. Without waiting to see, Germany's conquerors
have ruthlessly stripped her of lands constituting
28 per cent of her living space, producing an even
higher proportion of her food, and containing two
of her three principal coal regions. To make
matters still worse, they are expelling into the
remaining Reich millions of Germans from the lost
provinces, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and
elsewhere; are coddling a large population of
"displaced persons" within stricken Germany; and,
in the case of the Russians and French, are
maintaining large armies of occupation which live
off the land. Both the "displaced persons" and
these occupation forces enjoy priority over the
Germans by being able to make requisitions against
them for whatever food and other items they need in
order to live in comparative ease and luxury. The
deplorable situation created by these actions ean
well be imagined. The Atlantic Charter had promised: In their Yalta statement, the Big Three reaffirm
their "faith in the principles of the Atlantic
Charter" and say they uphold "the right of all
people to choose the form of government under which
they live." Yet in the same pronouncement they
grant Russia the eastern half of Poland and as
compensation promise the Poles "substantial
accessions of territory" in eastern Germany - all
without regard to "the wishes of the peoples
concerned," - "freely expressed" or otherwise. Although Yalta prescribes that the exact amount
of such territory Poland is to receive must await
final adjudication at the peace conferenee, Russia
at Potsdam confronted her two western allies with a
territorial fait accompli. She had taken a
third of East Prussia as her own permanent
acquisition and had placed her Polish puppet in
possession of all other German territory east of
the Oder and Neisse Rivers. Even the drastic
Morgenthau Plan had called for ceding Poland only
the part of East Prussia not taken by Russia and
the Upper Silesian coal and industrial region. But
in addition to these areas, Poland had now
possessed herself of German Posen, nearly all of
Pomerania and Lower Silesia, and the eastern part
of Brandenburg - the best part of the Reich's
breadbasket. In urging her two allies to accept
these acquisitions as permanent, Russia argued that
so many German inhabitants had fled when the Red
armies invaded that to get the regions back into
production would require their incorporation into
the Russian and Polish economies along the lines
already drawn.[2] Russia's seizure of Koenigsberg and adjacent
East Prussian territory was accepted at Potsdam and
has since gone unopposed. Renamed Kaliningrad, the
former East Prussian capital has been developed
into a prized warm water port for the Soviet Union,
most of the German inhabitants have been ousted,
and the whole region has been thoroughly
Russified.[3] But concerning German lands held by Poland,
Potsdam decides that "the final delimitation of the
western frontier of Poland should await the peace
settlement"; however, it permits the territories to
be held meanwhile "under the administration of the
Polish state." Apparently looking upon this
arrangement as tantamount to de facto
recognition of her title to the regions, Poland has
proceeded to dispossess and drive out the millions
of German inhabitants, and to replace them with
Poles. Although Moscow had led Poland to believe that
she could keep the German provinces in question,
German Communists with Soviet backing early in 1946
started hinting to the Germans that all or part of
the lands might be returned and Poland herself
partitioned again between Russia and Germany, if
the Reich would accept communization and membership
in the Soviet Union. Marshall Zhukov himself had
made such a suggestion to German Communists in
April and in July Molotov at Paris had lent his
tacit support when, to the consternation of his
western allies, he came out boldly for a
territorially unified, centralized strong Reich. He
specifically opposed any territorial amputations in
the west and although silent on the subject,
permitted the inference that some or all of the
eastern territories might be returned. The coup
came as a discomforting surprise especially to
France and the United States, whose "tough peace"
programs which they had assumed met with hearty
Russian approval, called for severe amputations of
the Reich. It became plain that Russia approved the
programs only as long as her western friends would
put them forward and thereby permanently alienate
the German people. Finally realizing that we must meet the Russian
bid for German sympathy and support, Mr. Byrnes at
Stuttgart made it plain to the Germans that, while
the United States will continue to support Poland's
claim to some German territory, it does not
necessarily consider the western Polish frontier to
be permanently fixed at the Oder River. His object
was clearly to place the United States in a
position to match any offer the Russians might make
to return to the Germans all or part of their lost
eastern territory. Communist inspired Polish
reaction to the Byrnes statement was immediate and
bitter. The day after it was given crowds with
clenched fists waving milled about in front of the
Warsaw residence of the American Ambassador
shouting, "Down with the defenders of Germany!" A
spokesman of the Polish puppet government publicly
warned that Poland "will fight" if any attempt is
made to move her western frontier east of the Oder.
A little later Stalin declared that he considers
Poland's present frontiers permanent. With the
situation thus stalemated awaiting the peace
settlement, Poland remains in what may easily
become permanent possession of the disputed
areas. France, meanwhile, had waged a bitter fight to
deprive Germany of vital western areas. Insisting
that the Reich must be permanently weakened by
economic and political dismemberment, she demanded
that the Ruhr be detached and internationalized,
that the Rhineland be turned into an autonomous
state, and that she be allowed to annex the rich
Saar coal and industrial regions. Placing
settlement of these questions and her exorbitant
reparation claims above all bilateral agreements
and alliances, she attempted to force the issue by
blocking all Allied attempts to treat Germany as an
economic whole. Prior to the Molotov coup at Paris, France had
been supported in her territorial claims against
Germany by French Communists with Moscow backing.
But just as she was making her strongest appeal for
Allied approval of their severe plans for western
Germany, Molotov suddenly abandoned her and made
his unexpected bid for German territorial unity and
support. Rejecting outright the proposed
internationalization of the Ruhr and, by
implication, French annexation of the Saar, he
quoted from Stalin's speech of November 2, 1942, in
which he had said that it is "just as impossible to
destroy Germany as to destroy Russia." Opposing any
"alamode" plans to dismember or pastoralize the
Reich, or to turn it into a federation or
confederation of small states, as had been
proposed, he demanded four-power control and
administration of the Ruhr. Despite this stinging Russian rejection of
territorial changes in western Germany, the United
States, in exchange for a French promise to cease
blocking treatment of Germany as an economic whole,
promised to back French claims to the Saar which
France thereupon began to enlarge by annexing
adjoining areas. But at Stuttgart, Mr. Byrnes,
after repeating the promise to support the French
claim to the Saar, followed Mr. Molotov's example
and opposed detachment of the Ruhr and Rhineland.
His stand, supported by both Russia and Britain,
will undoubtedly force substantial moderation in
future French claims. Byrnes declared that apart from the Saar, and
the eastern territories to go to Russia and to
Poland as decided at the peace conference, "the
United States will not support any encroachment on
territory which is indisputably German or any
division of Germany which is not genuinely desired
by the people concerned. So far as the United
States is aware the people of the Ruhr and the
Rhineland desire to remain united with the rest of
Germany. And the United States will not oppose
their desire." With the exceptions noted, Mr. Byrnes, here with
telling effect, applied to Germany the principles
of the Atlantic Charter. There should be no
exceptions. If these principles apply to the
Ruhr and Rhineland, as they do, they apply with
equal force to the Saar and to German territories
east of the Oder-Neisse line. Such principles
cannot be used merely as convenient trumps in the
sordid game of power politics without convincing
the world, including the Germans, that our stand is
unprincipled, inherently contradictory, and
prejudiced, that in consequence they are being
unjustly deprived of territory vital to their very
existence. The Germans have long suffered from acute
overpopulation. In earlier years they sought relief
in colonies and heavy emigration, which
incidentally brought us the large German element in
our own population. Later, they resorted to
intensive industrialization. After World War I,
they were stripped of their colonies, emigration
was impeded by barriers such as immigration quotas,
and their homeland was reduced from 208,830 to
181,699 square miles. Following World War II,
emigration has been entirely prohibited, and all
the Germans in Europe are being jammed into a
homeland further slashed to only 133,000 square
miles. Although Germany's population is half as large
as our own, her territory in 1937 was only one
sixteenth as large as ours, or about equal to the
combined areas of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and
Pennsylvania. Since the present losses to Poland,
Russia, and France subtract an area as large as
Pennsylvania, they mean that the 70 million Germans
are being crammed into a territory no larger than
Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Imagine trying to force half the people of the
United States into these three states with their
cities, factories, railways, and, other production
facilities demolished! The forced exodus of Germans from the lost
German territories and elsewhere in eastem Europe
constitutes one of the blackest pages of history.
Potsdam gives its permission by saying that the
"transfer to Germany of German populations, or
elements thereof, remaining in Poland,
Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, will have to be
undertaken." However it adds that "any transfers
that take place should be effected in an orderly
and humane manner." Some 15 million people are victimized by this
decree: a half million from Hungary, nearly three
million from Czechoslovakia, and most of the rest
from the German territories taken by Russia and
Poland. Potsdam calls for annulment of all Nazi laws
which established discrimination on grounds of race
and declares: "No such discrimination, whether
legal, administrative or otherwise, shall be
tolerated." Yet these forced migrations of German
populations are predicated squarely on rank racial
discrimination. The people affected are mostly
wives and children of simple peasants, workers, and
artisans whose families have lived for centuries in
the homes from which they have now been ejected,
and whose only offense is their German blood. How
"orderly and humane" their banishment has been is
now a matter of record. Winston Churchill was not exaggerating when, in
referring to the expulsions some three months after
V-E Day, he informed the House of Commons: The conservative newletter, REVIEW OF WORLD
AFFAIRS, quotes as follows from a confidential
memorandum prepared by an eminent European
economist: Dr. Lawrence Meyer, executive secretary of the
Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, after a tour of
Germany stated: In describing the expulsions in Poland and
Czechoslovakia, Russian officers told Chicago Daily
News correspondents: Upon returning to his post as professor of
political science at the University of Michigan,
after serving 14 months as director of AMG's
regional government coordinating office, Dr. James
K. Pollock, in August, 1946, said most of the 2-1/4
million expellees from Hungary and Sudetenland are
old women and children. He said: An officer would call at the door of the victims
and order them to leave their home within a few
hours, permitting them to take along 30 to 100 lbs.
of luggage containing nothing of value which might
help them in making a new start elsewhere. The
property forcibly left behind would be confiscated
by the state. Any able-bodied men found would be
hustled off to slavery. The others would then start
their perilous hegira to overcrowded Germany wholly
without protection of law, subjected to every
conceivable abuse, including robbery, beatings,
rape and murder. A dispatch in December, 1945, paints a picture
of the plight of the exiles in the new Poland,
where hundreds of thousands had been ousted from
their homes and left to wander where they would.
Former German cities like Breslau are described as
almost depopulated of Germans, with Poles taking
their place. The dispatch goes on to say: An eye-witness report of the arrival in Berlin
of a train which had left Poland with exacly 1,000
refugees aboard reads: New York Daily News correspondent Donald
Mackenzie likewise reports from Berlin: Precedent for these inhuman expulsions was set
long before Potsdam in Romania where, according to
a diplomatic report from Bucharest, 520,000
Romanian citizens of German ancestry, men between
the ages of 17 and 45 and women between 18 and 30,
were rounded up like slaves and deported to Soviet
Russia. The document said "there were heart-rending
scenes and many preferred suicide to an unknown
fate in Soviet Russia."[11] The United States had made its own direct
contribution by ousting more than 16,000 people of
German extraction from Latin American countries,
obtaining permission to do so by pressure of
various kinds applied from Washington, extraditing
them without trial to this country, holding them
here in concentration camps incommunicado and still
without trial, and finally deporting them out of
this hemisphere where many of them have been
impressed into slavery by England and
France.[12] These wholesale expulsions of native populations
are as reprehensible as anything the Nazis are
accused of doing, and have caused deep resentment
among all classes of Germans. Had America kept her
skirts clean, and especially if she had denounced
them, as she should have done, German respect for
us would have soared. As matters stand, Germans
blame us almost as much as the Russians and Poles.
Our hands, too, are stained with the blood of
millions of innocent victims of this savage,
thoroughly un-American program. Apart from the moral aspects of the matter, the
dumping of all these millions of expropriated,
helpless, people into what remains of wrecked
Germany piles chaos upon chaos and helps convert
the entire German nation into one vast Belsen or
Buchenwald. Reference Notes: |