HITLERISM UNDER ALLIED COLORS
Fischer, Louis
Hitlerism Under Allied Colors By LOUIS FISCHER THE American occupation of Japan is working out much more successfully than the American-British-Russian-French occupation of Germany. In Japan, one...
...Observe Europe and Asia, observe the British, the Dutch, the French, the Russians, the Americans, the Argentinians, the Spaniards, the Chinese...
...Nobody knows what to do to solve the world's ills...
...First, what shall we do about ourselves...
...THE new Byrnes policy is for the American zone and will probably be recommended to the other powers at the Moscow conference of the Big Three foreign ministers now in session...
...Unless we rise above the normal, natural, animal passion of revenge our culture will be lost...
...It establishes the principle that the occupying power bears a responsibility for the health of the defeated people...
...Some will be born tomorrow morning...
...Industrial monopolies are being disrupted, the prestige of the nobility is being undermined, political parties are springing to life, and, ultimately, the emperor may be deposed...
...11,1945, Secretary of State Byrnes went still further and, in effect, scrapped the so-called Morgen-thau Plan which was approved by the late President Roosevelt and adopted, in the main, by the Big Three Potsdam Conference last August...
...THE situation in Germany, on the other hand, is desperate for the conquerors and the vanquished...
...Seven months after the end of the war in Europe, Germany is spinning in political chaos...
...1, 1946, to import food into Germany so as to raise the daily food ration for Germans from its present 1345 calories to 1550 calories...
...In Germany, each of the four powers is master in its own zone but in no other...
...Someone has to stop the disintegration of our civilization...
...The Allies are at odds...
...Already the Byrnes statement has had a bad press in France because it assumes that the Ruhr and the Rhineland will not be separated from Germany as de Gaulle has insistently demanded...
...Mac Arthur Has been able to bring about many healthy economic, social, and political reforms in Japan at no cost in blood and with little friction...
...But some are guiltless...
...Then what...
...But we are not hanged...
...In these circumstances, the treatment we mete out to Germans is a test of our own morality and intelligence...
...MacArthur is probably himself surprised at the smoothness with which these far-reaching changes are proceeding...
...No one will then prevent Germany from attaining a similar standard...
...We must break the vicious circle of an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye...
...Is the cure to blow up a few more German factories or enslave a few more million German working-men ? Hitler is not dead if his spirit lives in those who spent more than five years to defeat him...
...Germany will be encouraged to mine maximum quantities of coal both for use by the Nazi-devastated areas of Europe and for the rehabilitation of her own economy...
...The problem is not how we are to treat Germans but how we are to live our lives...
...Germany is sick...
...Starvation and diseases are spreading...
...Ask Negroes, Persians, Indians...
...THIS will be called unrealistic, idealistic, Christian, and soft...
...Our own American, British, French, and Russian boys...
...There are Germans, and many have committed crimes that cry to heaven...
...SOMETHING is happening to our civilization...
...The division of foreign political authority in Germany and the suppression of native political authority in that country result from the way in which the military defeat of Hitler was consummated...
...We walk about direction-less with the black hood on our heads...
...He has now instituted a land reform...
...Germany has no central government and the provincial and local authorities are responsible to foreign military officers in their regions...
...The new policy enunciated by Secretary Byrnes foresees the retention and reactivisation of all German industrial units except armament factories and plants earmarked for dismantling and transfer to reparations-receiving countries...
...America's action has human and political significance...
...In any case, the question is not whether Germans deserve decency...
...they are innocent...
...Germany will be permitted to export in order to be able to pay for imports...
...Germany, finally, will be allowed to set up administrative agencies which, in time, will take the place of the foreign military governments...
...There is much discussion of a third world war so soon after the second...
...It will kill their souls and push us further down towards the abyss...
...The Nazis fought to the end against the four countries who finally conquered them...
...Most of his American critics are silenced and waiting for the moment, which of course may yet come, when he fumbles or stumbles...
...Well, we have been "realistic," "practical," "pagan" and "stern" for decades...
...Hitler was born because he had allies outside of as well as in Germany...
...In Japan, one power dominates...
...MacAr-thur's one-nation domination of Japan via the Emperor stems from the fact that Japan was beaten chiefly by American armed might without an actual invasion of the Japanese homeland...
...Barbarism is lowering itself over us like a hood over a man to be hanged...
...Byrnes cannot undo a lot of damage done to Germany and therefore to Europe by the wartime Big Three conferences...
...It will save us...
...But he has taken a-step-in the direction of decency...
...Today, in practice, there is no such thing as "Germany...
...The Byrnes document optimistically takes for granted that the "European standard of living in 1948 will approximate the average standard of living over the period 1930-38...
...Hitler will not be dead until foreign Hitlerites-there are many under many flags—cease to cripple men's minds and shape governments' policies...
...What shall we do about Germany...
...Whether the other three occupying nations are in a position to do likewise is not known...
...it could obviously not be launched by Germany or Japan...
...Similarly, Gen...
...Japan has a Japanese federal government to which the provincial and local authorities are responsible...
...It may be argued, it has been argued by some Americans, that Germany does not deserve decency...
...Has it worked ? Where are we today ? Brutality employed against Germans today may be applied tomorrow by Americans against Americans, and is already being applied in many parts of the world by governments which call themselves "civilized," or "Christian," or "western...
...Morgenthau wanted Germany reduced to a pastoral, agricultural nation...
...We need decency...
...On Dec...
...He is arresting many war criminals who present themselves peacefully to their jailers as soon as they see the published orders...
...Ask the Indonesians...
...We could gas a few million Germans as they gassed millions of Jews, Poles, and Russians...
...In view of this situation, the American Government has decided, beginning Jan...
...so is the world...
...Who will gas or shoot those Germans ? Who will plan their starvation...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 52
