MITTEL-EUROPA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 31 March 1938, Page 4

MITTEL-EUROPA

Foreign Affairs

WHAT AUSTRIA MEANS TO GERMANY

KEY TO DANUBIAN RICHES

THE ECONOMIC FRONT It must not be forgotten that Germany’s bombers and mechanised formations represent only one aspect of her national safety. A far more immediate struggle is being fought on the economic front, for Germany stands for complete self-sufficiency, as well as for PanGermanism.

She is now in the second year strong hand of Goering, and by i aspect of economic life, she is tryi foreign supplies of raw materials in

This ambitious scheme (writes Pro fessor S. H. Roberts in the “Sydney Herald”) is absolutely impossible of fulfilment within the existing boundaries of Germany. Germany cannot feed herself; she cannot provide 32 of the 34 raw materials which are essential to a modern nation; and. despite her large measure of success in making artificial wool, rubber, and petrol, she cannot find adequate substitutes. In other words, she must get raw materials from abroad. To do this in time of peace she must have supplies of foreign exchange, and, impoverished as she is, she can only secure these by the profits of foreign trade. But, in these days of tariffs and currency restrictions, markets abroad are in most cases closer to her. and, despite her slightly improved trade figures of last year, there is no indication of any permanent improvement. Now Goering simply must succeed in his Four-Year-Plan. Nazi racial doctrines may be postponed, but the regime has pledged itself to make Germany a self-contained and prosperous economic fortress. A failure could not be concealed from the man in the street. Hit* lerism must solve the economic problem or perish. But, if it cannot be solved in Germany, however efficient German industrialists and chemists may be, there must be resort to outside countries. DANUBIAN LANDS Here economic considerations link on to the needs of racialism. There is only one possible economic outlet for Germany from the geographical point of view, and that is central Europe. The Danubian lands will provide the food, the raw materials, and the markets which are essential if the economic plan of Goering and Funk is to come to fruition. In time of peace, the profits from central Europe would enable Germany to buy the few outstanding metals from abroad; and, in time of war, central Europe would allow her to stand out against the world, as she was enabled to do during the Great War. German control of the Danube and Rumania was our greatest enemy in the last war; without such control Germany would have been throttled much earlier.

In the last few years, Dr. Schacht has been constantly urging the necessity of winning over central Europe. State-aided German combines have secured much power in Rumania and Hungary, while Yugoslavia and Greece, egged on by the desire to unlock capital owing to them and tied up in Germany, have been tempted by the insidious arguments of Schacht to make large-scale agreements to take German manufactures in exchange for their primary products. During the course of this fight for “tied markets,” Schacht flew hither and thither like a national bagman, and even ranged as far afield as Angora and Ispahan. Up to the moment he has failed, because of national resentment against Germany’s efforts to secure economic mortgages on the future of various small countries. THE GOLDEN KEY But events are playing into Germany’s hands. The central European States had hoped for much from the economic clauses of the Rome Pact of 1934, which were aimed against the growing move to economic self-suffi-ciency, but Italy’s immersion in her new imperialism left them standed, and all of them, except Czechoslovakia, sank into a mire of hopeless economic depression. Even when the price of primary products recovered they had no markets. Rumanian wheat was rotting in Transylvanian fields while the Czechs were importing grain from the Argentine. The position was absurd. The Germans are putting an end to all this. Isolating Czechoslovakia by an economic sanitary cordon, they will use their control of Austria to win back the central European lands. Austria in herself will provide no more than a market of 6.000,000 people and a few manufactures. She does not grow

of her Four-Year Plan. Under the j means of a regimentation of every j ing to make herself independent of i the next thirty months. enough food even for her own people.! The Austrians depend on exporting. the kind of manufactures in which the Germans excel, so that unless Goering I succeeds in building up an economic Mittel-Europa. the Austrians are likely to share Germany’s food shortage and at the same time lose some of their markets for manufactures. But Austria is no more than the key with which to open the Danube basin. Hungary, next door, is a vast granary and is also one of the worlds leading suppliers of that bauxite for which German aluminium manufacturers are crying out. Yugoslavia, with only 15,000,000 people, produces half as much wheat as Germany and has enormous deposits of chrome, cop- j per, antimony, manganese and again the fundamental bauxite. RUMANIAN OIL Rumania, where the various Fascist bodies are once more lying in wait to seize the Government, is an even more luscious titbit and has been prominently before the eyes of Germany ever since Mackensen’s campaigns. She produces more wheat than Yugoslavia and 5,000,000 tons of maize in addition. Moreover her oil wells gush from Buzau to Prahova. and, even with the present restrictions, pour out over 8,000,000 tons of crude oil every year. If this oil were reserved for Germany we would hear no more of Leuna substitutes or expensive Bergius processes of getting oil from coal. German scientists also say that if the undeveloped deposits of Rumania are handed over to them they could extract from them all • the iron ore they now import from Sweden and elsewhere. Is it any wonder, then, that the offices of the huge German combine, the A.E.G.. have become one of The dominating forces in Rumania’s economic life 7

Omitting the enormous manufacturing wealtn of Czechoslovakia for the moment, it can be seen that the other central European countries can provide a market of over 60,000,000 people (that is, the size of Germany herself), unlimited agricultural supplies, and sufficient metals and oil to make Germany self-sufficient. German experts say that, apart from cotton, they can now survive if they can get 11 commodities. One of these (rubber) they can make, nine of the others can come from the undeveloped deposits of Yugoslavia and Rumania, and the evelenth can be made from Rumanian raw materials. HEART OF PLAN Exaggerated though this may be, it at least means that central Europe would give Germany a fighting chance with her Four-Year-Plan. Granting German capacities to exploit hitherto undeveloped fields it follows that the Danubian resources are to Goering’s plan what the heart is to the human body. If the present uneconomic search for substitutes can be’ sloughed in favour of a perfectly sound development of central Europe, Germany would retrieve the economic health she has now lost. For her, Mittel-Europa means economic prosperity in peace time, and national safety in war time, quite apart from wider imperialistic conceptions.

Germany to-day is falling behind more and more in her efforts to feed herself; her foreign markets are stationary and are dependent on the whims of outsiders; and she is ruining herself seeking substitutes for many materials which exist in her own, landlocked sphere of Danubian influence. An economic push from the new Austrian base would change all this; and we must remember that the Danubian States themselves may favour some such development. Economically they must fall into the orbit of either Germany or Italy. They believe that the crazed imperialism of the Roman Caesar has betrayed them, and it is no longer their militant minorities alone who turn to Hitler as a saviour. Joint political and economic pressure would suffice to make up their minds, and we may bo certain that Vienna is to be no sluggish outpost.