THE OTHER GERMANY
The Other Germany THE evidence continues to multiply that there is "another Germany" in spite of the newest crop of revenge and dismemberment demands by the "hate cult." Some of the more violent...
...Estimated to cost $175,000,-000 annually, the program will have a dual purpose: raise the nutritional level of the national diet and provide a stable and expanding market for food products...
...George Aiken, Vermont Republican...
...Goebbels' yarn about the "Werewolves" which has terrorized some of the boys in the editorial offices, and found it little more than a myth...
...One episode turned up in the Kansas City Star...
...Preliminary reports say that the plan will guarantee city families that they will not find it necessary to spend more than 40 per cent of their income for an adequate diet...
...While Goebbels' radio and press spokesmen poured forth exhortations to the German Werewolf organizations 'behind the Allied lines,' run-of-the-mill German people breathed a sigh of relief at the arrival of American troops," he cabled...
...But who owns that money...
...Although the Federal Power Commission set the utility tax figure at 13.2 per cent a few years ago, we will accept, for the purpose of the argument, the power trust's own figure of 24 per cent...
...To condemn Nazi brutalitarianism for hideous crimes is one thing...
...It is nonsense, of course, to assume from such reports that we do not face a grave, perplexing problem in Germany— one that will require the greatest statesmanship we possess...
...The recent epidemic of atrocity stories, some of which are reported firmly grounded, makes the challenge all the greater and more imperative...
...But that is not the end of the story...
...Remembering the appalling number of young men rejected for military service because of physical disabilities directly traceable to malnutrition, Congress cannot afford to waste time in translating some such proposal into permanent legislation...
...The civilian population, no less than the Wehrmacht prisoners, is absolutely devoid of any spirit of resistance, and is even anxious to cooperate toward bringing hostilities to their final cessation...
...Thus, the Milwaukee Journal, which has a tizzy on its editorial page almost daily because some Americans are urging a policy of differentiating between the Nazis and the rest of the German people, featured a special dispatch in its news columns which contradicted, argument for argument, the bombastic tirades 8 pages away...
...There is the real comparison...
...But more important is the 40 per cent of gross revenues which the TVA netted on its power operations...
...A later message from the War Department and a letter from the flier informed the brother that Sergeant Crouch had bailed out over Germany, had contacted the German underground, and had been smuggled out, disguised as a peasant, into Belgium...
...Granting that, there are other facts here involved which the utilities never explain when they are making their patriotic comparisons...
...The power trust never points out that those payments exceed by $800,000 the former ad valorem taxes collected when the property was privately owned...
...to attempt to fasten the guilt on a whole people is not only a tragic retreat from reason but a fatal surrender to the very barbaric philosophy we have pledged ourselves to destroy...
...That money—every single penny of it—is owned by the people of the United States...
...Robert M. La Follette, Jr., and Sen...
...Stamp Out Malnutrition ACCORDING to reports from Washington the Department of Agriculture is ready to offer a food stamp plan to Congress which is aimed at wiping out malnutrition in America...
...But its general objectives are the same as the progressive program championed by Sen...
...Some of the more violent and hysterical editors, who are quick to smear every pleader for a just peace, seem not to read the factual news reports of their own trained war correspondents...
...Most in favor is the allegation that TVA is paying only 6 per cent of gross revenue in taxes while private utilities are averaging 24 per cent...
...TVA does pay 6 per cent of its gross power revenues to the local states and counties...
...That is the profit a private company would have taken from those operations...
...Obviously, this plan is much broader than the food stamp plan that operated during the depression...
...The Real TVA Tax Story AMONG the slanders being used by the power trust-newspaper-big business coalition in the current campaign to block a Missouri Valley Authority by attacking the Tennessee Valley Authority are the old claims that TVA is a tax dodger...
...In 1944 that amounted to $2,169,000...
...In 1944 this amounted to $14,116,000...
...Many of the details of the plan will have to be worked out, of course, and some of the features, such as limiting the plan to urban families exclusively, given serious consideration...
...L. S. R. Shapiro, correspondent with Marshal Montgomery's forces in Germany, wrote: "Thus far in our sweep across the north German plain we have found no evidence of any preparation for, or intention of, large scale guerrilla warfare by the Germans...
...Sergeant Melvin L. Grouch, writing his brother in Kansas City, reported this experience which the Star published: "Sergeant Crouch was reported missing after a raid over Germany on July 20...
...These reports, from war correspondents and soldiers on the scene, expose anew the fraudulent character of the hate cult editorials currently appearing in so many American newspapers...
...For one thing it would not be necessary for a family to be a recipient of relief to participate in it, thus opening it up to a vast number of low-income families...
...It can be used for any purpose Congress desires...
...And that $14,-116,000 is no mere 24 per cent of the gross revenue...
...But certainly unbridled hatred, a lust for revenge, and the mass indictment of a whole people are not the equipment of anything resembling statesmanship...
...It is 40 per cent of the gross revenue, going to the pocket of Uncle Sam...
...So by simply adding the 6 per cent paid to local units of government in the TVA area and the 40 per cent paid to the Federal Government, you get a total of 46 per cent of gross revenue going into the public funds as compared to the 24 per cent paid by the utilities...
...The Associated Press reported from deep inside Germany that in many areas American authorities are finding far greater cooperation than they had dared hope for, and that their job is made much easier because of "the German's respect for order, his cleanliness, and his devotion to his job...
...The $175,000,000 cost is cheap insurance against the shameful and costly conditions uncovered by the military in the drive to mobilize American manpower...
...The Chicago Sun's correspondent with the Third Army in Germany looked into Dr...
...THE press generally has found no space for authentic reports of German underground activity, but military authorities know that for months the underground in the Reich has been saving the lives of American and British fliers who have had to bail out over German territory...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 18
