Road to Redemption

George C. Marshall, sitting in on his first meeting in the big time at Moscow, has a larger area of common ground between the Russian proposals and his own than any of his predecessors. And he will have a politically and morally sound basis on which to oppose the Russian demands for large reparations and a strongly centralized German government. Indeed it is only in his recent request for the withdrawal of parts of the occupation forces that Mr. Marshall's program appears at all weak.

Both the USSR and the United States are agreed that the peace must provide for a Germany with a central and democratic government. Time may eventually put quotation marks around the word "democratic" because of the varying American and Russian interpretations of the word; but at the present conference it appears that this will provide no great problem. In contrast to the harmony on these issues is the picture of strongly clashing views of the American and Soviet delegations on the matters of reparations and of the degree of centralization in the proposed government.

Russian demands for ten billion dollars in reparations are, as in usual with Russian demands, completely within the scope of existing agreements. But regardless of the legality of the Russian claims, if large reparations are to be exacted from Germany, she would probably have to be reindustrialized to the extent of her wealth just prior to the war. This indeed appears to be the Russian proposal. It is almost incredible that renovation of German heavy industry should be proposed so soon after the end of the war. Regardless of the products that such industry might turn out at first, this eventually can become nothing less than a threat of great war-making potential. The only alternative method of meeting reparations payments lies in stripping German agriculture and light industry to such a degree that they would be unable to to provide for even basic German needs.

The Russians, perhaps in a bid to enhance their popularity in Germany, have also advocated a strongly centralized German nation. A single central government has long been an American plan for Germany, but the American delegation at Moscow is rightfully dubious of the advisability of entrusting such functions as the police to one authority. Under the program of focalizing all functions in a central government the German Fuehrer complex would be too dangerously close to life.

Secretary Marshall's program has indicated thus far that Germany will be allowed to eventually redeem herself rather than be crushed under the terms of a Carthaginian peace, but that she is not to be pampered nor permitted to break loose again down the road to totalitarianism. However, it is difficult to see how this program is to be implemented if the occupying powers, as the Secretary suggests, reduce their forces below the present strength. Redemption can come only under strict supervision. Democracy is just a word to the German today, and it will never become more merely by flat. For though the statics of democracy may be learned by rote, the dynamics must be bred into a people over a period of generations--merely teaching the Germans to hold elections is not enough. The occupation will be completed successfully not when the Germans act in a democratic manner, but when they think and feel in a democratic manner as well.