THE GERMAN NEP

...It is true that the Occupation Statute reserves rights of interference in a formidably wide range of subjects...

...Germans can now enjoy Italian lemons and Dutch tomatoes...

...Thus, For the Jews the elections may mean the return of a nightmare they once thought had been exorcised by Allied arms but which is being reincarnated under those same arms...

...German foreign trade in 1946 was almost non-existent...

...Small Consolation may be derived from the outcome of the German elections...

...German officials now have more voice in making trade agreements...

...ALL THESE DIFFICULTIES should not obscure the fact that the stubborn German capacity for hard work and the national will to live, assisted by some helping hands from outside, have wrought an impressive improvement during the last year...

...This figure should be trebled before Germany can hope to maintain a fair standard of living without American aid...

...Barring a terrific economic setback, Western Germany is lost to the East...

...now exports have passed a billion dollars a year...

...we await some action from him, and not the kind which once lay in store For Wahrhaftig —the anti-et>mmunist American Military Government political analyst who was summarily dismissed on false charges of sympathy with communism, and who has just been cleared by the Army...

...True, expSrts of a billion dollars a year are quite inadequate for a country of West Germany's population and highly urbanized character...

...Noose-like, around your neck...

...Are Inescapably entwined...

...One further word, you men at arms Of every orbit nation...

...And the Soviet occupation authorities have ceased to beat the propaganda drums for German unity...

...And in the German, as in the Russian NEP period, one finds a good deal of crass inequality...

...Imports are much higher, because during the fiscal year 1948-49 (July 1-June 31) the Army spent $680 million in Germany and ECA appropriated an additional $514 million...

...But the increased exchange which has accrued from more than twenty trade agreements is alreadyyielding fruit, literally and figuratively...

...The Soviet Union has clearly lost ground...

...Along with the improvement in living conditions (improvement, to be sure, that started from an incredibly low level) there has been some progress in restoring self-government...

...and radio broadcasting is being turned back to German hands...

...We commend High Commissioner John J. McCloy for warning that his administration would not forget Dachau and Buchenwald...

...LOVE STORY A graduating class of Hungarian army political officers was told last night that the officers must link Hungary's army to the Soviet Union and Marshal Stalin with "unalterable bonds of love...

...And what about charges of the return to economic power of the old cartels...

...According to official estimates, the average German diet rose from 1,800 calories to 2,500 calories during the past twelve months...

...Does this, too, point up the trend noted above...

...The Rightists, which include many neo-Nazi elements, together polled about sixty per cent of the total vote, won 250 or more Bundestag seats (out of about 425), and will therefore run West Germany along strictly conservative if not reactionary lines...

...But there seems to be a reasonable prospect that these powers will be used sparingly...

...The SDP lost roughly five per cent of its former strength, and incalculable prestige, because it tried to outdo the chauvinists...

...German businessmen can sign contracts lor export and import deals with less supervision...

...Russian cities had not been bombed...

...We suppose it is some kind of tribute that 80 per cent of the 30,000,000 eligible West Germans were alert enough to vote in a government of their own, after living in the political wilderness for sixteen years, Too, the astounding defeat administered to the Communists reveals that when Soviet bayonets are not pointed at their backs Europeans don't readily fall for Stalinist "people's democracy...

...Every intelligent German with whom one talks places the refugees and the housing shortage first among the country's unsolved and almost insoluble social problems...

...There is little interference with the newspapers, at least in the American Zone...

...Another common feature of Russia and Germany is the number of people who have fled their homes and are camping out in crowded quarters, with much of their baggage still packed away in trunks and suitcases...

...It can only be won for the West if and when it is admitted to the European community on a basis of full political and economic equality...

...The very few Germans who have plenty of "D Marks"- -the new currency—in their pockets, can eat as well as they did before the war, and enjoy all the butter and whipped cream they want...

...Today one hears little of this talk...

...Side by side with expensive restaurants and shops, there is a great deal of stark, grim poverty, especially among Germans whose homes have been completely bombed out and among the many millions of refugees from the eastern provinces of Germany, the Sudetenland and southeastern Europe...

...s * * A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT for West Germany will come into existence this fall...

...Germany today is as different from the Germany of 1946 as Russia under the NEP was different from Russia under war communism...

...Russia had suffered not from foreign war and occupation, but from revolution and civil war...

...Some Germans were inclined to lend a hopeful and credulous ear to rumors that Russia would give back the German eastern provinces...

...This is the most emotional issue and the bitterest grievance of the Germans against the western powers at the present time...

...WANDERING ABOUT THE STREETS of this old capital of the Holy Roman Empire, breathing air laden with dust from a thousand ruins, looking at well-stacked shop windows and at the many little booths that have sprung up as if by magic since the currency reform, I felt a curious this-is-where-Icame-in sensation...

...Upon your graduation: The bonds of Stalin's love, you'll find...

...Curiously and tragically, this result was presaged only a few days before the voting by a flareup of anti-Semitism in Munich, birthplace of Nazism...

...While the constant stream of refugees from the Soviet to the western zones aggravates a desperate housing situation, it offers eloquent proof that Western Germany has surpassed the Soviet Zone in economic wellbeing...

...The airlift and the stand of the population in western Berlin have probably convinced Russia that it cannot hope to control a united Germany...

...The difference between the Germany I knew in 1946 and the Germany of 1949, is the difference between a country where most of the people were hungry and some were half-starved and a country where (with all the poverty) there is little sign of serious malnutrition...

...It required the loss of many months —and Wahrhaftig's value to our cause—before his "clearance" (always a doubtful honor to carry about) was finally obtained...

...Richard Armour...

...News item...

...One senses changes in the German attitude toward the occupation powers...

...Three years ago the contrast in living conditions between the Soviet and western zones was not as sharp as it now is...

...And when food is freely sold, it is safe to assume that people get a more attractive and varied diet than when they are restricted to a meager ration, with bread and potatoes as the staple items...

...The reasons for these social changes in the two countries are different...

...But the fierce nationalistic outbursts which characterized the campaigning of all parties, and the resultant overwhelming victory of the Right, makes one wonder how much Germans have really learned since 1933...

...But they had deteriorated so badly during the years of war communism that an enormous amount of patching, just what one finds in Germany today, was necessary...

...The British, whose discipline was sometimes favorably contrasted with the American by Germans in 1946, have now become intensely unpopular because of their insistence on dismantling of factories...

...If Germany's fate still rests with Social Democracy, the latter had better orient itself toward the future rather than the past...

...If you should closely check...

...No, the present picture of Germany offers no consolation for Jews, liberals, democrats, Or for Social Democrats who thought they could belabor the nationalist horse harder than the Rightists...

...I remembered my first impression of Moscow in 1922, when the NEP, or New Economic Policy, had replaced war communism...

...To take along, with good luck charms...