A. There are two ways: military occupation or deindustrialization of the Reich. It is plain that if Germany is allowed the least opportunity, she would rearm and attack with the same swift ferocity she has just displayed. There must be physical restraint to keep her from doing so. Military occupation is the obvious, traditional method, but it has serious drawbacks. It is expensive and tiring. Nevertheless if the Nazis are defeated in this war, it will be imperative to occupy Germany far more thoroughly than after the last war, if only to preserve order. There are some advocates of deliberately allowing Germany a period of disorder during which it could be hoped that the Germans would themselves exterminate a great number of Nazis. This would only render more formidable the task which already appears staggeringly difficult, to re-establish a state of law in the Reich, where since 1933, law as we know it, has been abolished. Whatever permanent system of controlling Germany is eventually adopted, the first step will have to be military occupation. Theoretically, military occupation could be continued indefinitely. Actually it never is continued long, because the occupying troops and their people at home grow tired of it. Even the French, who directly after the war were fanatically determined to secure their frontier by taking the Rhineland, and who did get in the Treaty of Versailles permission to occupy the Rhineland for fifteen years, even these prudent and wary French grew so tired of it that they evacuated the Rhineland three years ahead of time, in June 1930.
Six years later the Nazis moved in and constructed the Siegfried line along the very positions which had been occupied by the French troops. I know there were other reasons for the French to give up the Rhineland. The British had pressed them to appease the Germans. The Germans had agreed in the Young Plan to a new system of reparations and as reward received the Rhineland ahead of schedule. But the moment the last French troops left Germany the period of fulfillment of the war treaties came to an end, and Germany began the period of repudiation and revision which ended in this war and for France in her present national humiliation. Looking backward one can see that nothing should have moved the French to leave the Rhineland. That they did so is a classic example of how people grow so careless, lazy, forgetful and peace-minded that they become insensible to a threat to their very lives. That is the state of mind of America today.
Q. You mentioned a second possibility for physically retraining Germany and you used the word deindustrialization. What does that mean?
A. It is an ugly word but I know no other to describe the process of taking away a country’s factories and leaving it without industry. That of course would also leave it without the means of making war. This is what Germany plans to do to the rest of Europe, as we have seen. The civilized world would have every right to impose the same treatment on the inventor of the scheme. Briefly the plan would be to occupy Germany militarily; to disarm her rigorously; to dismantle all her factories capable of making instruments of war; to prohibit the import into Germany of raw materials which could be used for making such instruments; to confiscate and turn over to Allied ownership and operation all German mines producing iron or other metals; and to appoint a permanent Inter-allied Control Commission to supervise these restrictions. It would be necessary to forbid all manufacture or use of airplanes by Germans in Germany.
Q. How does this proposal fit in with the fourth paragraph of the eight-point Atlantic Charter which reads, “They will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.”
A. There is the difficulty. Adherence to this paragraph would prevent any such solution as deindustrialization, because there could be no economic prosperity for a deindustrialized Germany. The first effect of it would be a widespread return to the land, as Germans would have no manufactured articles for export, and hence nothing with which to buy abroad, and hence would be forced to grow all their own food. The population would decline, young folks would emigrate if any country would take them, and in general it would be a very unhappy period for the Herrenvolk. Apparently Roosevelt and Churchill have rejected this solution in favor of simple old-fashioned military occupation.
Q. They said nothing in their statement about militarily occupying Germany.
A. No, but they said plainly they intended to disarm the aggressor nations. You do not suppose you could disarm Germany without occupying her, do you? It ought to be possible to devise something more effective and novel than the thousand-year-old method of sending in troops. One suggestion is that all German officers (there may be around 500,000 of them) should be exiled to an island under perpetual guard where they could make their own living and end their lives in contemplation of their sins. The German Army would be abolished entirely; not as in 1919 reduced to 100,000 men who were to become the cadre of the present seven-million-man machine. For a decade or more the Allies would have to accept the responsibility of policing Germany. All military manuals and textbooks would be destroyed. Aviation of all kinds and the building of airplanes would likewise be forbidden. These measures would be for the purpose of demilitarizing the population, and it is possible that, deprived of military instructors or any means of military instruction, the plan might work, as least for a time.
In any plan dealing with postwar Germany it is important to avoid vindictiveness. Nothing should be done as a punishment of Germany’s crimes in the past; everything should be done to restrain her from crime in the future. How much better it would have been if there had been no reparations imposed upon Germany after the last war, but the Allies had kept their Military Control Commission permanently in Germany while Allied troops permanently occupied the Rhineland. There is no use, however, in hoping for any such permanent resolution on our part. We have only one hope of being able to restrain Germany for any considerable period, by the humane means which are the only ones open to us.
Q. What hope have we of being able to restrain Germany?