“HARD PEACE” PLANS

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24571, 21 May 1945, Page 5

“HARD PEACE” PLANS

U.S. OFFICIAL’S STATEMENT

Bare Subsistence For Germany

REPARATIONS QUESTION

(Rec. 7.30 pan.) NEW YORK, May 19. "Germany will be so completely deindustrialised that reparations will be payable only in the form of labour or natural resources.” This statement was made by Mr Ewln Pauley, who will represent the United States on the German ' Reparations Commission, when interviewed by the New York "Her-ald-Tribune.” Mr Pauley indicated that his view of Germany’s future closely resembled the “hard peace” plans attributed to the Secretary of the Treasury (Mr Henry Morgenthau). This favoured not only the destruction of German heavy industry, but also the removal to Allied or liberated nations of any purely civiliah industries capable of supplying more than the German people’s absolute minimum needs. Germany should also redistribute to liberated peoples all remaining food and goods stolen from Europe in the last five years, leaving only enough to maintain a bare level of subsistence. Mr Pauley said Germans, who had been living on the fat of Europe, would face an extensive shrinkage of their bloated waistlines in the months ahead. He said every effort should be made to force the German people to feed and clothe themselves and then

hand over to the liberated peoples any surplus produced. Approximately 50,000 “useless” Nazi prisoners of war in the United States will be shipped to Germany this summer, but the remaining 290,000, who are filling useful jobs, will be retained as long as it suits America’s convenience, says the Washington correspondent of the “New York Times.”. Those being returned include officers, who, under the Geneva Convention, cannot be required to do labour unless they volunteer, rabid Nazis who cannot be trusted, and the sick or insane. These three categories will be returned as soon as shipping space is available. Of the working prisoners remaining in America, approximately 85,000 are doing agricultural work, 55,000 have been allocated to industry, and 150,000 are. doing jobs for the Army and Navy.

PRIVATIONS OF GERMANS

MANY REPORTED TO BE STARVING

(Rec. 7.30 p.m.) LONDON, May 19. Mr Mikoyan, Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade, reported after a visit to Russian-occupied Germany, that the Russian Command was taking humanitarian measures to mitigate the “privations and sufferings of the peaceful population of Germany," says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The correspondent says the people of Berlin; Dresden, and other big German cities are reported to be. starving. Many dropped dead from exhaustion. Crowds swarm round Red Army kitchens.

■The Russians have established a larger food ration for residents of Berlin and Dresden than the Germans received from .Germans, _ and have permitted the resumption of free trade and profit on the open market. •