B
0 0 K S
Ill
and all of Eastern Germany. The Allied doctors, on the other hand,
have not yet dissected the Ruhr nor amputated heavy industry in West–
ern Germany, but a balance has been reached through over-application
in the East and under-application in the West, making the treatment of
defeated Germany a real test, at least of the workability of those prin–
ciples common to the Big Three. And there can be no doubt that Mr.
Morgenthau's scheme is the basic Allied panacea for preventing another
German aggression by drastically reducing Germany's productive power
through dismemberment, de-industrialization and the imposition, for an
indefinite time, of a semi-colonial regime.
Thus our Utopia has undergone a real test. We do not need any
more abstract arguments. We can see the complete breakdown of Ger–
many, and the problems of "occupation" have reached a critical stage.
Not only are the German people in a state of indescribable misery–
which some regard as a just retribution-but the occupying armies them–
selves are now threatened with disease and demoralization. The result,
today, is a feverish search by the responsible leaders of the occupation
for some makeshift formula to prevent a complete catastrophe.
Three sessions of the House of Commons have violently protested
the "unnecessary cruelties" of the Eastern German evacuation, and
pointed to the German disease spreading all over Europe and across the
Channel. One finds Winston Churchill and Ernest Bevin, co-authors of
the Utopia, among those who are now worried by its effects. On Novem–
ber 15, Marshal Zhukov called an emergency conference of the "Beam–
ten" cabinet of his zone, wining and dining them, and solemnly promis–
ing the end of reprisals, removals, promising even the return of some of
the confiscated industry to enable the Germans to "work for Russian
reparations." This was a complete reversal of the original idea of not
having the Germans work for reparations. In Washington, orthodox
followers of the Morgenthau plan are constantly clashing over ways of
making the Potsdam decisions workable and thus saving the credit of the
American Army of occupation. And, the Big Three are now all urging
the immediate restoration of German economy, the loosening up of the
division into water-tight zones and the setting up of a central German
"Beamten" cabinet with enlarged responsibility.
The reason for all this is that the Morgenthau cure has turned out
not only to be fatal for the patient but extremely dangerous for doctors
and nurses. Six months after the defeat, production is down to the sub–
level of five percent of capacity, and for several years to come it is hardly
expected to be raised considerably, except in "Potemkin Village" presen–
tation. The German people are either living on the pitiful stocks on hand
or on relief, and are officially described as undernourished and disease–
ridden. They are lethargic troglodites in the vast slum which even after
years of bombing and tremendous losses was still, toward the end of
