AFTER VICTORY-EUROPE'S DEATH AGONY?
Villard, Oswald Garrison
After Victory—Europe's Death Agony? By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD WHATEVER the future holds in store for us, every decent human being under heaven must be grateful that the use of wholesale murder to...
...the beneficiaries of the insured may whistle for their money as most of those did who were in similar circumstances in the 1920's...
...One major, one lieutenant, and one warrant officer are trying to administer 200 square miles with a population of 200,000, including 63 towns and villages and four displaced-persons centers with 5,000 persons in each center...
...He cannot, of course, offer them tractors or animals or tools or seed...
...Representatives of England, Canada, and the United States have just stated that "either the United Nations must find the answers to the food problem or millions of persons will meet disillusionment and disappointment following in the wake of victory...
...As for government bonds, they are worthless...
...The Assistant Secretary of War, Mr...
...An effort is being made by the Ninth Army to train men for this purpose, but they are to be given only a 2 weeks' course of instruction...
...The road to salvation does not lead through rivers of blood...
...How many Germans are to be turned over to Russia for forced labor there...
...So America must gird itself to give all the food that can possibly be spared, for the burden will fall upon us...
...only one insurance company survived the last war and the inflation and that one has undoubtedly gone on the rocks this time...
...Almost every bank is wiped out...
...By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD WHATEVER the future holds in store for us, every decent human being under heaven must be grateful that the use of wholesale murder to achieve a new order in Europe is now at an end, and must pray that similar news will soon come from the Pacific...
...Furthermore, a chaotic and hungry Europe is not fertile ground in which stable, democratic, and friendly governments can be reared...
...Yes, the situation is just as serious as that and so grave that it is of the utmost importance that even in this moment of national rejoicing, when the parents of our men at the front are on their knees giving thanks for this respite from their agony, it be kept steadily before the American people lest they forget it, lest the demand for additional sacrifices should find them totally unprepared to make them...
...Then there is the chaotic condition of the manpower of the land, plus the seven millions of slave laborers and military prisoners...
...The tax-gathering machinery, what is left of it, will seek to squeeze blood out of rubble...
...the owners of stocks and bonds must dig them out from under tons of rubble—if they can...
...To have this finished transcends everything else, for, whatever may be the superficial belief that by arms and violence this guilty earth can be purged of its sins, history teaches that no paradise, no Kingdom of Heaven on earth, can be established in any such way...
...26 that food stocks in the sectors captured by the Allies which he visited will be exhausted in from 30 to 60 days...
...The British general who completed the capture of the Ruhr district has notified the Germans that 2,000,000 within that district will die of starvation in the next few months if they do not exert themselves to the uttermost to replant their ravaged fields...
...And so it goes...
...There is the gravest problem of all...
...The owners of homes have no redress...
...Never since the Middle Ages have women and children, as well as unarmed men, the aged, the sick, the miserable everywhere, been so brutally and ruthlessly destroyed...
...the holders of mortgages have no security left...
...Bradley's headquarters in Germany reports that AMG simply does not have the manpower or qualified, trained personnel to govern Germany...
...It has been worst of all in Holland...
...What will become of the millions of Russians now pouring, not all toward the East but some toward the West...
...the organization of city governments is failing...
...there is complete economic stagnation in many localities, and there are mass arrests and deportation...
...No other nation but ours can do this...
...How many of the 368,000 German prisoners we have will be kept by us, and how many by England and France...
...These they must conjure up themselves...
...From Russian-occupied Poland also come alarming reports: "There is chaos and a complete lack of plan...
...Challenge To America And behind it all is the spectre of the coming Communism...
...Like all the problems set forth above this affec-ts not merely Germany, but all of Europe...
...As for Italy, the danger of a terrible upheaval is perhaps greatest of all there...
...Thus, a dispatch from Gen...
...I hope that no reader will accuse me of having printed the above facts in order to create sympathy for the Germans...
...Today, in the hour of victory, we are confronted with the question whether the death agony of Europe can be «stopped even by the German surrender, whether there will be any survival of the democratic processes . where they previously existed...
...I am always in favor of aiding miserable human beings whatever their Virtues and sins, but that is not the purpose of this article...
...Economy Is Destroyed Look at what the German situation is: We are occupying a country with its urban life completely shattered, its factories destroyed, its homes in a number of cities 90 per cent obliterated, their local transportation lines out of business, even their electric light systems gutted, every normal civic process at an end and all government officials under grave suspicion, or expelled, or dead...
...Almost no news comes out of the Balkans because of the Russian blackout, and what does leak out is all of the same purport—dire misery, lack of food and clothing, lack of housing, destroyed cities and towns, hopelessness and complete dejection...
...The survivors of perhaps 12,000,000 men enlisted in the war forces must seek now to find civilian jobs when the entire industrial machinery is prostrate or destroyed...
...Everywhere in Germany, he said, he saw "complete destruction" and "dissolution of society— complete collapse of the social and political economy...
...Every one who has a spark of humanity left in his soul must feel that the ending of the horrible slaughter of human beings for five and one-half years is beyond price...
...An American military government officer, just returned, declares that the most trying experience he had was facing freed Russians, some of whom actually begged on their knees not to be returned to Russia...
...England will cooperate, but we alone have the resources and the financial strength to prevent all of Europe from becoming an absolute chaos, with people tearing themselves to pieces in their efforts to get food and keep alive...
...Food...
...McCloy, who has just returned from the battlefront, declared Apr...
...We alone can prevent what we are witnessing from becoming the death agony of all Europe...
...We must supply the working teams that are now waiting to feed and build up the starved Dutch and to aid in every way those Hollanders who, occupying one-sixth of Holland, have been robbed of their land by the wicked flooding of their country by the Nazis...
...Quite aside from the war in Asia, the aftermath of victory in Germany and the occupied countries will make greater demands upon our resources, upon our statesmanship, upon our ability to adjust ourselves to and to overcome difficulties greater than we have ever before encountered...
...As Judge Samuel Rosenman has just reported to President Truman, after his trip to Europe by order of President Roosevelt: "United States economy would be deeply affected unless northwest Europe again resumes its place in the international exchange of goods and services...
...On top of all this there will be the division of all Germany into 4 parts, governed by different forces, with different ideals and different aims, with Austria being torn loose to be set up again as a separate entity—this time, apparently, under Russian domination...
...Will they be paid enough to support their families or will they get as little as Nazi Germany paid its victims...
...It is, I repeat, only to call public attention to the fact that we are facing the greatest of difficulties in all Europe, that we are lacking in ships to transport the food to Europe, and the organization to distribute it and to manage the territories we have taken over, and that this is a vital problem for the welfare of the United States as well as Europe...
Vol. 9 • May 1945 • No. 20
