AXIS TO ALLIES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5602, 7 April 1943, Page 2

AXIS TO ALLIES

FRENCH INDUSTRIALISTS AND POLITICIANS

CHANGING THEIR ALLEGIANCE

(By

Egon Kaskeline)

French industrialists and politicians, arriving in Portugal and North Africa, give evidence of an increasing effort on the part of certain influential French elements to switch their allegiance over from the Axis to the Allies.

Many of French industrial leaders, especially in heavy industry in the electro technical and chemical trade, have been collaborationists so far but' they are understood to feel now that their deal with the Nazis has been entirely to their disadvantage. They are hoping that a timely change of sides will help them to escape retribution from the French -people and to keep their grip on economic life iij metropolitan France and in the French empire.

Only a small, though influential, minority of French businessmen has so feared a social revolution as actually to want republican France to be defeated by Hitler. Yet those who, after military collapse, fell victim to Nazi blandishments and to their own greed for power and profits were far more numerous.

These elements were delighted when Vichy destroyed the French trade unions and handed over to them the businessmen—direction of French economic affairs. They accepted leadership in the “Committees for Industrial Organisation,” in which medium and small enterprises were subjected to supervision by big trusts. Even Marshal Petain was obliged to admit publicly that many committee-leaders abused their influence to obtain personal advantages. GERMAN OFFERS ACCEPTED German offers of economic collaboration were gladly accepted by many industrialists. It is, however, fair to state the fulfilment of German orders was the only way to keep French plants going. German agencies of the War Economic Board controlled and distributed French raw materials. French industrialists had played an important role in the European industrial cartels before the war. and their relations with German industrialists had been particularly friendly. Many French, therefore, were not too reluctant to accept German participation in French business enterprise.

French business believed that collaboration with the Germans would not only extend to the French market, but that in the framework of a “New European Order” they would actually participate in German exploitation of eastern and south-eastern Europe. Yet these far-reaching hopes of Franco-German economic co-domina-tion of the European Continent were soon to be deceived. During the year 1941 the Nazis- forced French industrialists and bankers to sell all their foreign investments to German institutions. Germany in this way purchased French interests in the mines of Bor (Jugoslavia), in the Skoda Works (Czechoslovakia), in the Polish mines of Dombrova and Sosnivitch, and in the steel works of Huta-Ban-kova. The Nazis put pressure on the de Wendel trust (heavy industry) to hand over 25,000 shares of the Suez Canal Company. . If the Germans soon made it clear that they did not want French big business as associates in the exploitation of conquered Europe, they also acted as if they were aiming at eliminating French industrial leadership, even in France. Not only was French industrial property in Alsace-Lorraine confiscated without indemnity but m

the mixed councils of French concerns the German representatives did not behave as collaborators but as masters. Since Laval’s return to power, Vichy under German pressure beoan to carry out a policy of centralisation,” closing down moLs than 10,000 French industrial plants. Although it was mostly the small and medium-sized industrialists who were thus forced out of business, French big business resented shipment to Germany of any of its skilled workers and an important part of its modern mechanical equipment. DISILLUSIONMENT Another disadvantage of Franco- . German industrial collaboration was the extension of British and American bombing raids to conquered France. According to information published by the “Statist” of London, damage done through R.A.F. bombing of the Paris tank workes of Renault was as high as 400,000,000 francs, and that in Creuzot, damage to the Schneider armament works was almost similar. During the period May 7 to May 21, 1942, French dockyards suered damage to the extent of 300,000,000 francs by air attacks. To-day, the Nazis are dealing more and more harshly with French industry. They probably have never intended to carry out the promises gjven the French industrialists. Hitler’s blue-print of France foresaw the eventual deindustrialisation of the country. Yet if the Nazis always had their own intdfrpretation of “FrancoGerman economic collaboration,” today, they are actually unable to keep French industrial plants working. If the Nazis withhold raw materials from French plants, they do not always want them to quit business. They need scarce material for their own factories or they may be unable to overcome transportation difficulties. French industry, of course, lost much of its initial appeal for the Nazis since industrial installations were regularly attacked by Anglo-American bombers. But if. for instance, the Germans fail to deliver artificial fibre to the newly created French rayon trust, thus causing the closing down of many factories, modernised by German' technicians, then disintegration of European transportation facilities tends to become the decesive factor. GROWING DISSATISFACTION Dissatisfaction with the working of Franco-German economic collaboration had long been widespread in French business circles, but Anglo-American occupation of North Africa sounded the alarm for many industrial- leaders. They now believe that Hitler will lose and they are anxious not to be left out in the cold. Several French industrialists, moreover, are directly interested in North Africa, to which, after the French defeat, they transferred nart of their funds. During the two last vears, new business companies, branch establishments of French metropolitan societies, were created and several new factories built in North Africa. Yet Allied statesmen are well aware that dealing with France’s leading business collaborationists is likely to jeopardise pro-Allied sympathies among the French, who already are critical of the continuation of Vichy administration in North Africa. Curbing the influence of the big trusts is not only an aim of French Socialists and Communist groups but even of those French men who want to preserve free enterprise in post-war France.