Allied Control Of Germany

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25365, 12 December 1947, Page 6

Allied Control Of Germany

Although official interpretations must be awaited, it is encouraging that Mr Kenneth Royall’s reading of the tentative American-British agreement for the future control of the joint zones of Germany has ndt gone unchallenged. The United States Secretary of the Army, it was reported yesterday, had told the Senate Appropriations Committee that the United States would in future have “ a controlling voice in “the economic and financial poli- “ cies” of the joint zones. This seemed to suggest that the United States had driven a hard political bargain when agreeing to take over from the beginning of 1948 all Britain’s dollar commitments in Germany, amounting to more than 200,000,000 dollars. This appeared the more likely because of American dislike of the British Government’s plans to nationalise the major industries in the British zone of occupation. . Abandoning these plans would unquestionably be a grievous setback to the cause of democracy in Germany. The great industries were formerly in the hands of magnates who, in Mr Bevin’s words, “were closely allied with the Ger- “ man military machine, who “financed Hitler, and who in two “ wars were part and parcel of “ Germany’s aggressive policy ”. Clearly the Ruhr could not be handed back to the Krupps and Thyssens; and public ownership was the only alternative. Most important of all, the plan met what the “ Economist ” described as “ the “overriding need to make contact “ with leaders in Germany who “ wish to work actively for the economic and political reconstruction “of their country, who are willing “to co-operate in an industrial “task which must be largely on “ socialist lines The Americans, who hold to their own system with a fanaticism that can tolerate compromise abroad no more readily than at home, could not be expected to take a lead in working out a programme of socialisation for German industries, even if they had to admit its necessity. The demoralised and exhausted German people to-day have little interest in political ideas and principles. It may be reawakened with economic revival; and it will then be important that both economic and political thinking in Germany should be led as far as possible away from the system associated with Nazism.