|
GRUESOME HARVEST The Costly Attempt To Exterminate The People of Germany By Ralph Franklin Keeling At Yalta in the Crimea, Messrs. Churchill,
Roosevelt, and Stalin met to decide the fate of
Europe and in their joint statement solemnly
declared: Again at Potsdam, the representatives of the Big
Three met and in their joint Declaration, signed by
Messrs. Stalin, Truman, and Attlee, officially
proclaimed: Despite these and other assurances, the Potsdam
decisions, as we at first interpreted them, meant
throwing the German people on their own, with
outside assistance prohibited, after the necessary
means for their survival had been destroyed. This
could have but one result: to blot out Germany and
the German people. The life of every nation is supported by three
main pillars: land (all natural resources),
labor (both brawn and brains), and
capital (plants and equipment). Break down
any one of these and the nation is plunged into
catastrophe. We have been guilty of pulling down all three in
Germany. The war started the process by destroying the
flower of German manpower, shattering cities,
factories, railroads, and impoverishing the soil by
a five year cessation of fertilizer production. And
an equally oppressive war has been waged against
the German people since their unconditional
surrender. The supporting power of the land has
been undermined by vital territorial losses
followed by overcrowding caused by the influx of
millions of Germans expelled into the shrunken
Reich from the lost areas and from Czechoslovakia,
and Poland. Industrial capital resources have been
further diminished by loss of all production
facilities in the territories taken by the
conquerors and by a gigantic program of sacking
politely known as "deindustrialization" and
"reparations in kind." The working force had been
decimated by the enslavement of millions, the
throwing of other millions out of posts of
responsibility through "denazification," and
weakened by undernourishment which causes workmen
to fall at their posts of duty. Even the German
race itself has been attacked by a program of mass
violation of Germany's unconditionally surrendered
motherhood. In consequence, Germany lies prostrate and her
people famish. After they began to die en masse, it
was finally decided that the importation of some
food would be necessary - unfortunately barely
enough to keep the great masses of people in the
twilight zone between life and death. Their agonies
and despair have been perpetuated at the maximum of
human capacity. The following pages portray what TIME magazine
has aptly called "history's most terrifying peace",
a peace which fully explains why many Germans are
ready to turn to communism, or worse. For,
strangely, our modern age which brought us the atom
bomb has also given birth to nations which at the
expense of their allies are able to derive profit
from the production of human suffering. |