GERMAN PLANT

Wanganui Chronicle, 3 October 1947, Page 5

GERMAN PLANT

DISMANTLING PLAN DRAWN UP Reed 7.15 p.m. London, Oct. 2. A joint list of the plant which is to be dismantled as reparations in the combined Anglo-American zones of Germany is expected to be issued this week. General Clay, United States Military Governor, at a Press conference in Berlin yesterday, said he estimated the value of such plant at £250,000,000. The dismantling programme, he said, was based on the level rot industry plan, and had been very carefully determined, so that there would be an integrated and self-sustaining industry in the two western zones. If Hie German people analysed the new level of industry left to them, they would find it would take them ail their efforts to get it going in the next five or six years, and that it promised them a reasonable standard of living. During these five or six years they would be getting substantial help from America and Britain—heli? without which they could not reach that level of industry at all. In any case, tiie value of "the plant to be taken would be less than the help provided by America and Britain in any one year of the occupation. He did not expect any organised refusal by the Germans to dismantle the plant. Deliberate sabotage of Allied policy in this way, should it occur, would "lessen the readiness of American and British people to pay for food for Germany." The Allied authorities, General Clay added, might decide to cut the food supply if there were any deliberate resistance by German labour to dismantling.