Death of a Nation
Page 74
Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Allied Control Council for Germany further advised the Prime Minister and the Cabinet:
It is most important at this formative stage to start shaping the German economy in the way which will best assist our own economic plans and will run the least risk of developing into an unnecessarily awkward competitor… Let us see that Germany exports to us the things we need and to others, the things which we do not mind their getting from Germany.(21)
Britain dismantled and closed the Blohm and Voss shipyards in Hamburg, and the Krupp steelworks in Essen, allowing British companies to take valuable plant machinery and patent formulas from rival German companies, and even going as far as destroying swathes of the German fishing fleet that lay within their zone.(23) Limitations on the German economy were maintained and plants continued to be dismantled until 1949, by which stage the Germans had gained a very clear picture of British objectives within their zone of occupation. When the UK’s Public Relations branch carried out a survey asking Germans what they thought was the main objective of the British occupation, the answer they received was, ‘To ruin the German economy.’(24)
France’s policy was simply to end Germany as a nation, and to squeeze everything they could out of their zone of occupation. Proportionately they managed to extort more out of their zone than even the Russians did from theirs. In the name of ‘reparations’ they made off with everything from livestock to industrial plants and machinery, and any and all art treasures. Of the four occupying powers, France was the only one to formally charge the Germans for the ‘privilege’ of being occupied, and to this end extorted 735 million dollars out of her zone, mostly in cash. By the end of their occupation the French had made a handsome profit out of their zone, somewhere in the region of 2,000 million dollars. They held on to the rich industrial region of the Saarland and continued to milk that until 1957.cclxxxi (25)
Ralph F. Keeling, neatly summed up US policy on Germany’s economic future, stating:
We are willing to permit the German people to subsist on their own little plot of land, if they can, but we are determined that they never again shall engage in foreign commerce on an important scale. In partnership with Britain we have carried out a systematic campaign to root out all German contacts and assets located abroad and have put our own traders in their place.cclxxxii (26)
To that effect, the US launched two programmes known as the ‘Replacement’ and the ‘Safe Haven’ programmes. Testimony given by Assistant Secretary of State, William L. Clayton, before the Kilgore Committee of the US Senate on 25th June 1945, underscored the thinking at the time. Clayton said, ‘The government soon determined that German enterprises could not be permitted to survive… in this hemisphere. The replacement program was accordingly evolved as a means of bringing about the elimination of German enterprises and of German interests… German economic and political penetration in this hemisphere has, for the most part, been dealt a blow from which it will probably not recover…’ Regarding the Safe Haven programme, he added, ‘The financial and corporate interests of German nationals located outside Germany have either been seized or will be subject to seizure.’ He also went on to advocate that any Germans with ‘brains and skills’, useful to the US, should be seized and extradited no matter whether they were in or outside Germany.(27)
At the time, the Justice Department estimated that the US had seized nearly a billion dollars in property held by German citizens or their associates in the US: a tidy haul. The US also forced neutral countries to hand over their German assets, and even used blackmail on Sweden, by blocking 200 million dollars worth of Swedish assets in Allied hands until she handed over the German wealth she held at the time, which was valued at 104 million dollars. Switzerland was relieved of 250 million dollars, and Spain of a further 100 million dollars’ worth of German assets, in a similar fashion. Clayton went on to say:
They (the Germans) had to have foreign trade; they had to export in order to live. The country had, as you know, very little in natural resources. The only natural resources of any consequence that they have are coal and potash, and they had to export manufactured goods in order to acquire the raw materials that they needed in their economic life, for their industry and foreign trade; (this) was an absolute necessity for the Germans’ (survival).(28)
So consequences of deindustrialisation were well known to its chief architects; it was to be more than simply an economic death sentence for Germany.
THE HUNGER WINTERS OF 1945–48
In the spring of 1945, General Lucius Clay, Deputy to General Dwight Eisenhower, stated, ‘I feel the Germans should suffer from hunger and cold, as I believe such suffering is necessary to make them realise the consequences of a war which they caused.’ Patricia Meehan states, ‘Germany, devastated by war and incapable of feeding, clothing or housing her population, simply had no living standards at all.’ And The Manchester Guardian argued at the time that it was naïve to imagine that forcing a low standard of living upon all Germans would somehow guarantee against the revival of nationalism, stating that, ‘If anything but political catastrophe comes out of this it will be a miracle.’(1) Hunger is debilitating and it dramatically weakens the ability of the body’s immune system to defend itself. Factoring in cold and lack of shelter, it was clear millions would suffer and die of the consequences, as much victims of Nazi Germany’s hubris as they were of a combination of the vindictiveness and ineptitude of Allied occupation policies. Furthermore, these victims have never been counted as victims of war.cclxxxiii
At the end of the war 50 per cent of the housing stock in Germany’s cities lay destroyed. Germany’s industrial production was down to 10 per cent of what it had been in 1936. Germany’s former eastern territories, which had been hived off to Poland and Russia, had before the war produced 30 per cent of Germany’s wheat and potato crop and in summer 1945 the harvest of the Allied-occupied western zones of Germany produced just 46 per cent of the crop that it had produced in 1938. The Allies were however not focused on the looming humanitarian crisis, they had other priorities; as partly highlighted in the previous chapter they were focused on the four ‘D’s — Denazification, Demilitarisation, Democratisation and Dismantlement of German heavy industry. The Soviets were busy stripping 50 per cent of the industrial plant out of their zone along with half the railway tracks. German coal was exported for revenue earnings by the Allies to support their occupation costs. But as the winter approached a deadly combination loomed with power stations either dismantled or lacking the coal to produce electricity to heat homes and combined with chronic food shortages to create a humanitarian catastrophe of truly epic proportions.(2)
In the summer of 1945, German civilians were receiving an average of 1,200 calories per day in the Anglo-American Zones of occupation, whilst non-German Displaced Persons in Germany were receiving rations of nearly double that, of 2,300 calories per day, largely through food imports and assistance from the Red Cross, both of which were strictly prohibited to German civilians under Directive JCS 1067.cclxxxiv Ration cards were issued by the Allies, with each having their own rating system for who got what. The Soviets had a five-tier system which ranged from ration card one which gave the most rations to workers, academics and artists whilst ration card five, known as the ‘death card’, was handed out to pensioners, housewives and Nazis. Pensioners in the western zones were also singled out as a low priority, the pensioner ration card there also being dubbed the ‘death card’. But the intricacies of the Allies’ ration card systems were largely an irrelevance in the first two years after the war as just because you had a ration card did not mean that you would receive any rations. The ration cards were only worth something if there was food to be had, which all too often there was not. The Allies also made matters worse by operating a system whereby you could often only get ration cards in the place where you were registered, which forced people to return to the largely uninhabitable and bombed-out cities, precisely the places they had fled not
only to avoid the bombing but because food was more freely available in the countryside.(5)
By the autumn of 1945, it was becoming clear that a humanitarian disaster was looming. British Cabinet records from October show members of the government were told that German adult mortality rates had risen four-fold, and child mortality rates ten-fold, from pre-war levels.(4) In the same month, Lucius Clay, now beginning to realise the consequences of the ill-conceived plans the Allies had made to collectively punish all German civilians, stated:
Undoubtedly a large number of refugees have already died of starvation, exposure and disease… The death rate in many places has increased several fold, and infant mortality is approaching sixty-five per cent in many places. By the spring of 1946, German observers expect that epidemics and malnutrition will claim two and a half to three million victims.(6)
Child mortality rates were now reaching truly catastrophic levels. An American observer wrote, ‘In Berlin, in August 1945, out of 2,866 children born, 1,148 died, and it was summer, and the food more plentiful than now…’ On 3rd October 1945 another wrote, ‘The infant mortality rate is sixteen times as high today as in 1943… There is going to be definite age group elimination. Most children under 10 and people over 60 cannot survive the coming winter.’ When winter came, Dr Lawrence Meyer of the Lutheran Church in Missouri, writing on 13th January 1946, stated, ‘In Frankfort, at a children’s hospital, there have been set aside twenty-five out of one hundred children. These will be fed and kept alive. It is better to feed twenty-five enough to keep them alive and let seventy-five starve than to feed the hundred for a short while and let them all starve.’(7) On 20th February 1946, Hal Foust wrote from Berlin, ‘Germans are dying in masses, not so much from starvation alone as from illnesses aggravated by acute malnutrition.’ The German medical authorities in the Russian zone prepared a report for their masters that stated, ‘The people hunger… The number of stillborn children is approaching the number of those born alive, and an increasing portion of these die in a few days… Very often their mothers cannot stand the loss of blood during childbirth and perish. Infant mortality has reached a horrifying height of ninety per cent.’(8)
The situation was no better in Austria,cclxxxv where the Americans were struggling to give the population 1,550 calories per day, the British were struggling to match that, and the French said they had no means of feeding their zone at all. In Vienna, in May 1945, they were receiving as little as 833 calories per day. Austria was also struggling with its own refugee crisis with three-quarters of a million refugees being chased across her borders from Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and from as far afield as Romania.(9)
By April 1946, the renowned aid and famine relief specialist and former US President Herbert Hoover commented that the 1,550 calorie target level in Germany was ‘a grim and dangerous base’.cclxxxvi In 1947, the American political adviser to General Lucius Clay in Germany, Robert Murphy, wrote, ‘Owing to the high death rate in Germany it is estimated the population will shrink by two million in the next two to three years.’ And Clay recounted that were it not for the black market a further 10 per cent of the German population would have starved.(10)
Theft had become not only normality, it had become a necessity to survive. It was even sanctioned by the Catholic Church in the form of the Archbishop of Cologne, Joseph Cardinal Frings, who urged his flock not to take more than they needed for their own personal survival. A new word thereby entered the German vocabulary, fringsen, in other words it was acceptable to steal what you needed to keep yourself and your family alive. Theft became part of a day-today and hand-to-mouth existence, with Germans stealing food and heating fuel and things to barter with on the black market from the ruins, from former Nazi stockpiles, from the Allies and from one another; not least from farmers when they were not willing to barter goods for food. To illustrate the moral realignment that was taking place to ensure one’s own personal survival you only need to look at what average earnings could buy you in April 1946 when the average income was 300 Reichsmarks a month. At this point in time on the black market it cost 200 Reichsmarks to buy a pound of ham, 240–250 Reichsmarks to buy one pound of butter, 400 Reichsmarks for a single ampoule of insulin, 750 Reichsmarks for a pair of shoes and an astronomical 1,000 Reichsmarks for a suit.(12)
The situation continued to deteriorate through the winter of 1946–47 with rations plummeting in all of Germany’s major cities. At the start of 1947 the average calorie intake per day shrank to 770 in Hamburg, 740 in Hanover and a miserly 720 in Essen.(13) Thousands were recorded as dying in Berlin from December to February. Those who had diabetes, who needed special diets, medicines or who contracted TB stood little chance of survival. Infections spread rapidly in sub zero temperatures as low as minus 25 degrees centigrade when there was regularly no power for twelve hours a day and on some occasions for as little as two hours a day. Pipes froze and the dead could not be buried due to the fact the ground was frozen solid. People could not heat their homes adequately, let alone have the luxury of heating water to wash. A lice epidemic enveloped the country spreading disease further among an already much weakened population. Germany had returned to the Middle Ages; to conditions in which there was no heating, water, electricity or medicines and those who admitted themselves to those hospitals that were still open often got worse for the lack of resources available to its doctors and nurses and in rooms filled with the sick and dying. Rumours began to abound that the Allies had agreed among themselves to keep the entire German population on concentration camp rations for three years as a punishment for the war and the Holocaust.
Many Germans termed 1947 as the eighth year of the war and in March, in the key industrial region of the Ruhr, the miners who extracted Germany’s all-important coal reserves went on strike after the the British authorities reduced the meat ration from 1,000 to 600 grams and the daily calorie intake fell to 700 calories per day; a certain short-term death ration for those involved in heavy manual labour.(14)
In desperate straits, German women turned to the only people in Germany who had food: the Allied soldiers. It is estimated that as many as half a million German women in Berlin alone — a sixth of the population of the city — were reduced to prostitution as the only means to feed their families and stay alive. Added to which millions of Germany’s young men were dead or languishing in POW camps. In the age range of 20–30 the ratio of women to men in Germany was 160:100 and more critically 25 per cent of German children were now being raised by single mothers. While mini-skirts and tight tops didn’t make their first appearance in the USA until the early 1960s, they were being worn much earlier by starving German women to attract the attention of young GIs, Squaddies and even the Ivans across the occupation zones.(12) In another aspect of a general moral realignment there was an explosion of prostitution, including child prostitution, which went hand-in-hand with a dramatic rise in sexually transmitted diseases. Those children who had been orphaned, who were left with no role models, no work, little or no rations, were forced into petty crime or criminal gangs to fight for their own survival.(15)
The summer of 1947 did not bring the expected relief many had hoped for, as a freezing cold winter, which had seen the Baltic sea freeze solid for up to 35 kilometres from the shore, was followed by a bone dry summer, which produced the worst harvest in over 100 years. The calorie intake in some cities was now recorded to have fallen as low as 600 per day by August 1947.(16) Added to this the value of the Reichsmark had completely collapsed and the economy was reduced to a pre-monied society in which people now only bartered and traded in goods.
Could more have been done in war-torn Europe, with all the destruction and dislocation that came with war to avert so much civilian suffering? Yes, it most certainly could. The Allied occupation directives did not allow Germany to trade, refused her imports of vital materials like fertilisers, and banned the German Red Cross and international aid agencies from sending food aid to starving German civilians.cclxxxvii The German fishi
ng fleet was needlessly destroyed or confined to port, and millions of farmers from Silesia and the Sudetenland were expelled from their homelands, leaving these rich agricultural areas depopulated and their crops often rotting in the fields. Countries that had not been devastated by war, who wanted to trade and help, were prevented from doing so. The Danish government repeatedly petitioned the US, Britain and the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) regarding her potential to export foodstuffs — especially pork and beef — to Germany, but received no response, or offer of assistance to do so. The UNRRA was ‘specifically forbidden to function for the benefit of any but displaced persons and then only by making requisitions against starving Germans.’(17) The Allies imposed strict controls over German coal and steel production, and refused to allow Germany to trade with other European nations, desperate for coal and steel; this directly led to enforced starvation for millions of German civilians. Italy and the Netherlands were prohibited from selling their vegetables to their main market, Germany, with the result that the Dutch had to destroy much of their crop. Germans living close to the Dutch border began to smuggle what little they had over the border to barter for food on the black market to survive. Other nations, such as Norway, were willing to trade fish and fish oil; Sweden offered large amounts of animal fats, and Turkey wanted to supply nuts. The Allies maintained their refusal to allow the Germans to trade, with inevitable consequences.(15) Right up to the Berlin Airlift starting in June 1948, lack of food, shelter and medical supplies caused stratospheric death rates in Berlin hospitals and in cities across Germany.(19) By late 1948, infant mortality rates were still double those of other nations in Western Europe.(20)