THE "GERMAN PROBLEM"
101
Europe must be based on similarly federated structures in the consti–
tuent states.
Equally universal though not equally new are the demands of a
social and economic nature. All want a change in the economic system,
control of wealth, nationalization and public ownership of basic
resources and rnajor industries. Here again, the French have some
ideas of their own.
As
Saillant put it, they do not want "a :rehash of
some socialist or other kind of program," for they are mainly con–
cerned with "the defense of that human dignity for which the men
of the Resistance fought and sacrificed." The danger of an
etatism
envahissant
they hope to avert by giving the workers and the technical
personnel of each factory a stake in the results of production and the
consumers a decisive voice in the management.
It was necessary to sketch at least this general programmatic
framework because only in its terms does the answer to the "German
problem" make sense. Qonspicuous by its absence is Vansittartism of
any kind. A French officer, one of those who with the help of the
German underground escape daily from the Nazi prisoner-camps,
draws a distinction in this respect between prisoners and the people
at home, who hate the Germans more than they do. "Our hatred, the
violent hatred of the prisoners, is aimed at the collaborationists, the
profiteers and their like, at all who have helped the enemy-and
there are three milliom of us. . . . "
The Polish socialist paper
Freedom
has warned against the yearn–
ing for revenge because this "can easily change into the desire to
dominate other nations, and thus, after the defeat of Nazism, its very
methods and ideas would again triumph." Very similar statements
have been made .by the movements of all other countries. This fear
of falling into some kind of racism after the defeat of its German
variety motivates the general renunciation of the idea of dismembering
Germany. In this as in many other questions the disagreement
between the underground movements and the. Governments-in-exile
is nearly complete. Thus de Gaulle claimed the annexation of the
Rhineland while still in exile, only to reverse his position a few weeks
later when, upon entering Paris after its liberation, he stated that all
that France wanted was an active share in the occupation of the
Rhineland.
However, the Dutch, the Poles, the Norwegiam and the French
stand as one behind the program of nationa!_izing German heavy
industry, liquidating the Junkers and industrialists as social classes,
complete disarmament and control of industrial output. Some look
forward to the establishment of a German federal administration. The
