GERMANY AND JAPAN: A CONTRAST IN POLICIES
Germany And Japan: A Contrast In Policies SOVIET RUSSIA'S demand for Four Power control of Japan, formally renewed last week by Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov, should be answered with a clear,...
...And naturally enough, it is producing the opposite result of what is happening in Germany, as reported by Gen...
...Taking stock of our six-months "achievement" in Germany, Johnson reports: 1. We have failed to eliminate Nazis from positions of power and authority over other Germans...
...Economically, too, the Allied system—if it can be called that—has produced an "absurd" situation, we are informed...
...Karl Renner, placed in power by the Soviets, as describing the position he had been placed in by the Allies as that "of a man in a rowing skiff with four elephants as passengers...
...The elephants don't even seem to know where they want to go next...
...Of course it hasn't converted imperial Japan into a democratic, peace-loving nation overnight, but it has launched us—and the Japanese—along a course that holds incalculable hope for the future...
...Dwight Eisenhower's recent reports...
...5. "We have failed to reward adequately the few Germans who earned the right to our consideration by opposing Hitlerism or to care adequately for the many who suffered from Hitlerism...
...The situation in Austria, the only other country where Four Power rule is in force, is not unlike that in Germany—on a smaller scale...
...THIS is Four Power Control in action...
...French, 50,000—a total of 950,000 troops, or one man for every three adult male Austrians...
...Americans, 200,-000...
...The division of Germany into four military compartments, each ruled by a separate army and exposed to a different ideology has, for the present, gutted the hope of recovery and wrecked the aspirations of the anti-Nazi Germans for a democratic revival...
...The presence of this enormous occupation force in helpless Austria has not hastened the process of deNazification...
...A Reuters dispatch to the Christian Science Monitor quoted Chancellor Dr...
...The interlocking directorate of imperialists, militarists, and monopolists that has ruled Japan with an iron, arrogant hand has been smashed...
...Each of the four zones is being reconstructed—insofar as one can use this idealist form—in autarchic isolation...
...6. "We have failed to differentiate between the sheep and the goats among the displaced persons of the Allied countries...
...If we value their respect—regardless of what they may say for public consumption—we will never yield on so basic a question of principle...
...THIS report, buttressed by thousands of words of factual data and appearing in newspapers which were original supporters of the policy on paper, is a damning indictment not only of the folly of Four Power occupation of a conquered country, but also of the basic philosophy of revenge and dismemberment and of the fallacious theory that you can build democracy by letting a people fester on fear, hunger, frustration, and bitterness...
...With no inter-zone wrangling or economic com-partmentalization to impede progress, the Allied command has taken decisive steps to democratize the schools, the press, the radio, the movies, and the political life of Japan...
...Eisenhower, the GI's, and the press...
...THIS is the pattern of our policy in Japan...
...Germany And Japan: A Contrast In Policies SOVIET RUSSIA'S demand for Four Power control of Japan, formally renewed last week by Foreign Commissar V. M. Molotov, should be answered with a clear, complete, and unequivocal NO by the United States and the other Allied nations associated with us in the present management of Japan under Gen...
...Eisenhower or the recent dispatches of trained correspondents can escape the conclusion that the Allied policy in Germany has been a total failure...
...The great majority want to pull out and go home—the sooner the better...
...The Progressive has often quoted in recent months careful reports in such liberal British journals as the New Statesman and Nation, the London Tribune, and the Manchester Guardian exposing the fantastic harvest of hate we are reaping from our program of planned prostration of a whole people...
...RECENTLY the Marshall Field newspapers in this country—the Chicago Sun and New York's PM, which had been early adherents of the Morgenthau-Vansittart doctrine of total revenge and total dismemberment—published a remarkably courageous series of articles by Edd Johnson showing how this very policy, of Four Power control, vengeance, and destructive occupation was not only wrecking incipient movements toward democracy in Germany, but was making embittered cynics of our own GI's...
...British, 100,000...
...Quite the reverse is true, in fact...
...And they are ashamed and disgusted by the failures of the four military governments...
...The Russians are shrewd, tough, and able operators...
...The American soldiers who are occupying and governing the U. S. zones in Germany believe overwhelmingly we are making a failure of the job," said Johnson...
...In a significant statement last week ordering the break-up of Japan's ruling families and cartel system, Gen...
...It seems incredible that anyone in his right mind would want to, wipe out the program of orderly progress toward the beginnings of democracy in Japan under unified Allied control, and substitute for it the Four Power control system in Germany which has made a cruel shambles of that area and brought it to the verge of starvation, disease epi-d amies, rebellion, and violence—to borrow from Gen...
...They are sick of Germany, sick of the Army...
...4. "We have failed to cultivate the democratic forces existing in Germany...
...The great financial and industrial families—the Zaibatsu—have been handed their death sentence as economic overlords...
...Douglas MacArthur...
...This is the Morgenthau-Vansittart plan as it works in practice—as reported by its erstwhile friends...
...Compare this with what has happened in Japan under the unified Allied administration of Gen...
...Formation of responsible political parties has been discouraged and the organization of labor unions has been obstructed...
...Who can say that Renner's four elephants are not real...
...3. We have failed to start a comprehensive program of re-educating children in democratic, anti-Nazi, and anti-militarist ways...
...MacArthur set basic Allied policy by decreeing that all combines must be smashed so as to permit "wider distribution of income and ownership of the means of production and trade in Japan and to aid the Japanese economic development along peaceful, democratic lines...
...The dispatch pointed out that "today the 6,000,-000 population of Austria is in the hands of an occupation army computed roughly as follows: "Russians, 600,000 men...
...The same correspondent reports that the process of weeding out Nazis and re-educating Austria "has been slowed up if anything" by this Four Power occupation...
...To surrender now to the Soviet demand for Four Power control would be criminal folly and the most cowardly sort of appeasement...
...While Japanese war criminals, militarists, and economic dynasties are being systematically removed from seats of power, the rest of the people of Japan are being given every opportunity to build the first foundations of a democratic society...
...7. "We have failed to tell either the Germans or our own fellows what kind of Germany we want them to rebuild...
...2. "We have failed to gain the respect of German adults, either for the United States or for the ideals we say we represent...
...You needn't take our word for it...
...Allied policy in Japan has been the reverse—in terms of administration and in terms of basic philosophy—of Allied policy in Germany...
...The economic planning of the country's future has, of course, been dictated by the peculiarities of occupation...
...No one who reads the grim reports of Gen...
...MacArthur...
...Even Comrade Molotov, who is no slouch as a fault-finder, had no criticism of our policy in Japan, but rather contented himself with demanding that the present unified control be replaced by the Four Power system without presenting any reasons...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 46
