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French Socialist Party has declared that this program "must be put
into effect with the closest fraternal collaboration of German demo–
crats"; and all programs conclude with the admonition that to deliver
"seventy million people in the heart of Europe to economic misery"
(Norwegians) is to vitiate the ultimate aim of "receiving Germany
into the community of European nations and a planned European
economy" (Dutch).
To think in terms of the European underground is to realize
that the much-debated alternatives of a soft or hard peace for Ger–
many have little bearing on the problem of her future sovereignty.
Thus th.e Dutch contend that "the problem of equality of rights
would not be a matter of restoring sovereign rights to the defeated
state but of granting it a limited influence within the European
Council or Federation." The French, planning for a period when
the non-European armies of occupation will have left the continent
and when they would again be faced by issues. of strictly European
reference, have warned that "essential restrictions on German sover–
eignty can be envisaged without difficulty only if all the states' likewise
accept significant limitations on their own sovereignty."
Long before the Morgenthau plan became known the under–
ground movements rejected any such idea of destroying German
industry. The rejection is so general that it becomes superfluous to
quote special sources. The reasons are obvious: there is an over–
whelming and altogether justified fear that half of Europe would
starve if German industry ceased to function.
Instead of destroying this industry what is proposed is control
of it, not so much by any particular country or people as by a Euro–
pean advisory council which together with German representatives
would assume the responsibility of its management for the purpose
of stimulating production and directing distribution. Most remarkable
among the economic plans for the European use of German industry
is the French program which was tentatively discussed before the
liberation. This program calls for the combining in one single eco–
nomic system, without changing national borderlines, the industrial
regions of western Germany, the Ruhr, the Saar, the Rhineland and
Westphalia with the industrial regions of eastern France and Belgium.
But this willingness to come to terms with a future Germany
is not to be explained merely by calculations of economic welfare
or even by the natural feeling that no matter what the Allied Govern–
ments may decide the Germans will stay in Europe for good. It is also
necessary to take into account the fact that the European Resistance
has in many instances fought side by side with German anti-fascists
