POLICY IN GERMANY

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 March 1946, Page 4

POLICY IN GERMANY

UNIFIED ECONOMIC CONTROL SOUGHT BRITAIN’S DIFFICULTIES LONDON, March 19. “Germany’s leaders promised that if they went down they would leave a trail of desolation. They have been successful,” said Mr. John Hynd, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in the House of Commons. The British team there was facing a responsibility never contemplated, he said, but from all the evidence they had done very well. The division of the country into zones made the problem, more difficult. It was part of Britain’s purpose so to improve the situation that Germany could be administered as a single economic unit. Full implementation of the Potsdam decisions could not be achieved’ by Britain unilaterally. The wisest and most obvious method was mutual discussion and to search for common agreement on all occasions. Dealing with the speed of de-Nazi-fication, Mr. Hynd said that many thousands! had been displaced, but 100 per cent, of the long-term Nazis were not yet eradicated. It was difficult simply to remove all who happened to be Nazis, irrespective of the effect. The administration had been able to develop the publication of political newspapers and had followed a policy of allowing trade unions to form themselves.

The whole programme to make Germany incapable of future aggression was being applied hesitantly and half-heartedly because some of the people concerned did not want a weak Germany, in spite of the experience of two world wars, said Mr. Henry Morgenthau, the former United States Secretary of the Treasury, in a speech at Philadelphia. He added that Allied agreement on policy towards Germany was essential to a settlement of other European problems. Failure to achieve agreement would lay the foundation for renewed German aggression and future war, because the old pattern of European power politics would become solidly entrenched. Confusion and . let-down characterised American [policy, in Germany. Much of it was deliberately created in spite of the agreement by Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. [ Churchill at Quebec to reorient German economic life away from heavy war-making industry towards agriculture and light industry. Mr. Stalin had accepted that policy at Yalta and the details were written out at Potsdam. Mr. Morgenthau said that as far as he knew it was still the United States Government’s policy.