POLICIES & PRINCIPLES: Winter of Discontent

When the statesmen gathered at Potsdam last July to settle the future of Germany, the sky was blue, the land was bright under a warm summer sun. Last week, powdery snow whirled down into Berlin’s pocked streets, and onto Berlin’s Grunewald, where the trees had been cut down for firewood and even the stumps were now being pulled out. Thousands of shivering, tired Germans lugged their bundles of wood to cold, bombed houses. Hospitals were crowded. Because the patients were undernourished, many died.

The living cursed the “Potsdam Peace.”

A Relative Matter. Yet Germany’s plight had been caused primarily not by the peace the world had imposed on Germany, but by the war Germany had imposed on the world. Not Germans alone, but most Europeans, were cold and hungry this postwar winter. Nevertheless, there was much talk that Germans would starve. The talk centered about three different (and often confused) living standards set up for Germany:

¶ The long-term standard, fixed by Potsdam—that Germans were not to live better than the average European. Some Americans who knew prewar Germany were shocked when they began to realize how great a drop that was. Germany (despite her self-advertised status as a “have-not” nation) had lived far better than other Continental nations. Even now Germans returning from Poland and The Netherlands told their countrymen that they had no cause to grumble.

¶The official U.S.-prescribed minimum level of German diet (estimated at 1,550 calories per German per day), calculated to be just high enough to prevent “disease and unrest.”

¶ The diet (estimated at 1,350 calories) that Germans were actually getting this month under the U.S. ration system. Through black markets and hoarding, many Germans were getting more. But as the winter wore on, many might be getting less.

Walls of Suspicion. It was difficult to maintain even the lowest of these levels, partly because four-power rule in Germany did not work. Though Potsdam had called for treatment of Germany as an economic unit, the four zones were still four separate states with virtually no trade between them.

At recent meetings of the Control Council, zonal government showed at its worst. Marshal Georgi Zhukov calmly declared that while he really trusted the British, he could not understand the presence in the British zone of entire German Wehrmacht units under German officers. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery retorted testily that Zhukov’s facts were inaccurate. The question was shelved, leaving a bad taste all around.

The Hard Choice. Meanwhile, food stocks were growing slimmer. From Washington came encouragement: the U.S. would send food to Germany. Moreover, Washington had come around to the view that the U.S. would have to pay its own occupation costs rather than charge them to the bankrupt Germans. The U.S. preferred to add enormously to its bill for World War II in order to achieve one of the war’s objectives: the permanent disarmament of Germany. Insistence on cash or goods from Germany would mean restoring her heavy industry and, with it, her war potential. Washington was willing to pay to avoid the hard choice between starving the Germans and rebuilding the Reich.