Foreign News: Funk’s Finance

Most other big Nazis rant offensively, but not tiny, obese Economics Minister Dr. Walther Funk, whom Germans call the “gentlest of all the Nazis.” He returned quietly to Berlin last week from a tour of the Balkans on which he notably overbid the British and French in extending credits—i.e.,economic bribes for political favors. And the day after he got back, Poland thankfully accepted a German credit of 60,000,000 marks and, according to reports, Greece was put down by the German Economics Ministry for a credit of 100,000,000 marks.

Dr. Funk’s tour was perfectly timed to exploit German kudos won at Munich, but last week he was careful to point out how broad an economic foundation had been laid years before the Czechoslovak crisis for the present German drive of economic empire-building down the Danube.

German imports from the Balkans increased from 198,000,000 marks in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, to 574,000,000 marks in 1937. Simultaneously Britain and the U. S. began buying less & less from the Balkans, which during the past five years have reluctantly sold more & more to the Nazis—mostly on credit.

Since Munich the element of reluctance has given way to alacrity in the Balkans where Germany is concerned. Dr. Funk announced last week that the Economics Ministers of Turkey, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria have all “gladly accepted” his invitations to come to Berlin and talk further big business soon.

“Balkan Axis.” Declared the German Economics Minister: “Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey, which are political friends, form a kind of Balkan axis which reaches from the German border to the Black Sea. This fact made it possible to negotiate great economic reconstruction plans for all three countries, including extensive road construction and telephone and cable installation.

“[Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey] command rich natural resources, unexploitedso far. They will now increase production of agricultural products for which Germany has a special demand, such as cotton and oil cake, and will adapt them for German quality demands. Already about half the foreign trade of these three countries is conducted with Germany and in connection with the crisis-proof German economy this enabled them to overcome the last world economic crisis.”

Crisis-Proof? From Belgrade, Yugoslavia, the Chicago Daily News’s famed Balkan newspundit, M. W. Fodor, who operated in Vienna before the Anschluss, last week flashed: “German planned economics is in essence a form of socialist production and distribution. Up until the recent downfall of Czechoslovakia, the conventional capitalist system of production and distribution was never really seriously challenged outside of Russia. Completion of a successful tour of the Balkans by Dr. Walther Funk . . . signals not only the fact that Germany has finally won the World War, but also that she has delivered the most serious blow the capitalist economic system has received since 1918.”

Russia, too, has a “crisis-proof” economy. But Dr. Funk’s “crisis-proof” economy is neither communist nor socialist. It is merely the substitution of an economy of warfare for an economy of welfare. Best example is warring Japan, where political and not commercial interestsdominate all the forces of production. In Germany the trick is being done by conscripting Capital, Labor, squeezing the Jews and sacrificing every private interest for the Fatherland. Germany and many of her new friends are about as economically sound as an armed camp under siege and will cease to be so only when they cease splurging their resources on armaments and armies.