Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [192]
As the coal mines functioned at but a fraction of capacity, and the means to transport it collapsed, manufacturing all but stopped.
The land failed to respond because of a lack of fertilizer and there were few seeds.
Housing remained the worst of any civilized nation and the cold brought all normal functions to a standstill.
The terror was compounded when seven million Germans were expelled from Hungary, Poland, East Prussia, and Czechoslovakia and poured into the American and British zones.
Hansen had observed the dwindling of the American Army. He inherited a force so thin it would not be able to meet a direct military challenge.
There was confusion among the Americans on what to do with Germany.
A harsh line wanted to reduce Germany to an agrarian economy. Hansen knew this plan would never work. Germany had a land area of less than the state of California and ten times the population with almost no natural wealth. In her best days, Germany had never been self-sustaining in the raising of food. Germany had to manufacture and trade to survive. This was an absolute economic law. The plan to reduce her to a vast farm would have invited mass starvation and sown the seeds of another war.
A second plan was to chop Germany into small territories and have each neighbor annex a piece. However, none of these units by themselves were sustaining and would create a burden on the annexing country which would be also compelled to take a hostile German minority. This plan could only foster a German “unification” dream.
Hansen had to take the unpopular view that Germany had to manufacture and trade. Moreover, the occupation zones had to be reunified, for the country could respond only as a single economic unit. The American Zone had pretty Bavarian scenery, but no ports or great industry; neither could the British or Russian zones survive by themselves.
Yet, Hansen inherited a situation where each of the four occupation zones was cut off from the other with little exchange of product, ideas, or population.
On the Supreme German Council, the French position broke Western unity. General Ives de Lys argued out of fear of Germany; the French wanted economic domination of the Saar and Internationalization of the Ruhr.
The Ruhr represented Germany’s chief asset. Without it Germany could never establish a trade balance. Such a French plan would have continued the British and American zones as liabilities, costing billions to sustain.
The French wanted a permanent four-power army on the Rhine, but Hansen would have no part of Soviet troops beyond the Elbe.
General de Lys continued to operate on the contention that business could be done with the Soviet Union and the French did not want to offend them.
Marshal Alexei Popov bogged down the Supreme German Council on the basic issue of operating Germany as a single economic unit with free trade between zones governed by a common policy. He deceitfully paid lip service to unity, but in fact sealed the Russian Zone from any contact with the West.
Every attempt to establish four-power administrations over trade and industry was blocked by Popov as the Russians continued to strip their zone and reshape it in the image of a Soviet puppet.
Reports filtered back to Hansen that thousands of German prisoners with technical skills had been detained in the Soviet Union. Russia’s grand plan for her zone was much the same as what Hitler intended to do with Poland, reduce it to serfdom and set it up as a buffer.
Popov aided the elaborate Communist scheme by holding Germany down, draining off reparations from current production, and keeping her from re-establishing a trade balance.
All this brought joblessness, hunger, and all the other breeding grounds of Communism.
The key issue at the Supreme German Council was a four-power agreement on German steel production. Popov wanted a figure large enough to deliver reparations, but small enough