EUROPE: Awful Blackout

The era of blood and tears and anger had ended. Sooner than any other people who had felt German bombs, Britons felt pity for the defeated enemy. Last week a united House of Commons protested hotly against the continuation of Germany’s misery—and against the chaos into which a destitute Germany would drag Europe.

“Shame! Shame!” There was passionate talk of starving German children, of unnecessarily cruel treatment, of the “greatest catastrophe the human race ever experienced.” Cried Labor’s Michael Foot: “We are protesting against the wanton and deliberate creation of a new sore [in Europe].” Charged Independent Sir Arthur Salter: “If . . . millions during this winter freeze and starve, this will not have been the inevitable consequences of [war].” The implication was that Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia were deliberately creating chaos in Germany. One M.P. accused the U.S. of the same “lunatic policy.”

Some suggested that Britain send food from her own scarce stocks to Germany. A lone dissenter, thinking of Germany’s hungry neighbors, said that he did not care “two rows of pins” what happened to German men, women & children. Tories and Laborites alike shouted: “Shame! Shame!”

Then Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin hulked to his feet. Said he: “I wish there were similar parliaments . . . and free and unfettered discussion of this problem in other countries in Europe. . . . There are two kinds of hunger in Europe today. One is physical. . . . But I sometimes think that the awful blackout over Europe is creating a great spiritual hunger. …”

He predicted that UNRRA, whose task it was to abate Europe’s hunger, would face disaster within a few weeks unless the U.S. speeded up its support of UNRRA. Britain was already pledged to pay proportionately as much as the U.S.

Price of Stupidity. Bevin for the first time openly regretted that Germany had been split into occupation zones, in effect admitted that the system was not working: “It might be said that we were wrong to develop zones. . . . Probably . . . it would have been better if we had not done it.” He reported that some 15 million German “displaced persons” were being chivied back & forth across Europe; that some ten million Frenchmen, Italians and others were also waiting to go home. Telling of how he watched the misery-laden procession of refugees in Berlin, he said: “I felt, my God, that is the price of man’s stupidity. … It was the most awful sight. . . .”

This generous outburst, a credit to British decency, swept Bevin and others of like mind into one historical error. When Bevin said of the Sudeten Germans and the Czechs that they “had lived together in perfect harmony until Hitler’s stooges and agents broke up their democratic state,” he was falling back on the old, dubious view that Hitler’s’ New Order had been the work of only a few Nazi gangsters. The 3,000,000 Sudeten Germans, now joining Europe’s miserable displaced millions, had risen in a mass to betray the Czechs.

For many reasons, economic, political and humane, Britain wanted a healthy, friendly Germany. Chief reason: the ingrained belief, shared by many other Europeans, that the continent could never be well off unless Germany was reasonably well off. Britain’s genuine decency coincided with the pattern of Britain’s interests.