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From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 22, 29 May 1950, p. 6.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Last week we started, and we continue this week, a series on the truth about industrial dismantling in Germany, at its high point last year.
The amount of information published in the United States on this subject has been very small. While not officially secret, it has, apparently, been carefully filtered out of the news that’s fit to print for the American public.
The information we are making available now, relating to last year’s developments, is from a confidential or semi-confidential report made by an investigator for Congresswoman Katharine St. George of New York, made last July and August. We commented on its auspices last week: it was, as we related, mimeographed presumably for circulation mainly among Washington officials.
All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from this report. We know of no reason to doubt the authenticity of its information, gathered on the spot. Dismantling is still continuing, perhaps at an abated pace; like last year, it is difficult if not impossible to get reliable information here.
In any case, we present this story, regardless of what the status is today, as indispensable background to the present political picture in Germany. A crime was committed there by the Allied occupation (to keep it in the past tense); it is of course perfectly fresh in the minds of the German people; the American people ought to know.
The following article presents additional specific examples of how the dismantling has been carried on. Other articles will take up what dismantling meant for the workers and for the political development of Germany, and the motivations behind it, including the role of the U.S.
The Hochfrequenz-Tiegelstahl plant, at Bochum in the Ruhr, was only one of the six major steel plants of this industrial heart of Germany which was doomed by the Allied occupation.
Another is the August Thyssen Huette (Works) which in past years was the largest steel producer in Europe. This plant was considered indispensable to any recovery plans for Germany (note: not to Germany’s war potential, but to the ability to exist of German economy) by no less a personage than George Wolf, head of the U.S. Steel Investigating Committee reporting to the ECA. It was Wolf who stated in his first report on the Dismantlings of German Steel Plants that if the Thyssen plant were dismantled, it would be impossible for Germany to attain its permitted level of steel production.
Thyssen was not only the largest but also the lowest-cost producer of steel: “a fact which no doubt made it the special target of rival steel-producing countries,” says the Report. This efficiency was due to its location, directly above its own coal fields, its harbor, its positions in the heart of the integrated Ruhr economy. Rivals could not hope to duplicate it; they could only hope to erase it.
“This plant never produced direct war material,” says the Report. “Its greatest contribution was to the railroad industry, to which in the pre-war period it contributed up to 40,000 tons of rails monthly.” That fact is, to be sure, not vital to the question. Steel is as necessary to peace as to war. The Thyssen plant had a capacity to make 50,000 tons of electric sheets annually, and this product has been one of the major bottlenecks in the European recovery drive.
What happened at the Thyssen plant illustrates an outstanding feature of the dismantling program. It was not mainly dismantling at all. It was frankly turned into a scrapping program.
Writes the investigator’s Report, as of last July:
“No attempt is being made to dismantle with that care which would be necessary if it were expected that the equipment would be put to use again in some other country. A large part of the equipment is being frankly scrapped.
"In the rolling mill ... one unit has already been removed during the past months and the heating furnace has been hacked to pieces. A wire mill has been entirely scrapped, because the dismantling took too long. The material from this mill has been rendered unusable ... The spiral elevators were sliced through at their foundations. Ropes were fastened around the top, and on June 27 they were pulled down in a heap of rubble ...”
There are more detaile of the same kind.
Of the value of the capacity being dismantled at Thyssen, only one fifth will be credited to Germany’s reparation account.
“An investment of between 350 and 400 DM [Deutsche Marks] and several thousand man-years to move and re-erect equipment with a reparation value of 40 million DM, not to mention years of useful production lost in the process, is economic idiocy ... If any one example stands out above all others as a proof that competitive considerations determined the plants to be dismantled, Thyssen is that example. The eagerness with which the present dismantlings are being pressed is in eloquent contradiction to the indifference of the British to acquire the equipment so torn down.”
The Report reveals that more than one proposal was made by the Germans – industrialists, trade-unions and government as well – to satisfy the announced aims of the Allied occupation while avoiding the wrecking of the country’s economy (and the workers’ livelihood) which was proceeding. One of these was an interesting one specifically made for the Thyssen works.
This was a plan put forward to turn the Thyssen works’ management over to Allied control for the benefit of a European Youth Development project. It was proposed with the cooperation of the chief of the military government's Division of Educational and Cultural Relations, Dr. Alonzo Grace, and of Dr. Schairer of the World Education Council. It was, as the Paris Le Monde reported on July 1, “signed by 11 leading West German personalities and was transmitted to the British authorities by Mr. Arnold, minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia.”
Nothing came of it. The British simply did not want that plant operating. This in spite of the fact that no aim given for the dismantling program — not the danger of German war potential, not reparations — could conceivably speak against it.
This was not the only case in which: the Germans called the bluff of Allied hypocrisy on the dismantling program, not to be sure in order to “expose” the occupation but simply to preserve their economic life and continue to live. Another was the case of the Bochumer Verein, at Bochum.
This plant produced only open-hearth and electric steel, in particularly short supply in Germany. “Yet the dismantling order ... has been directed particularly at its most modern open-hearth steel plants and its electric steel plant—constituting a disastrous loss especially to the already badly crippled German transportation industry.”
“The pattern of dismantlement,” the Report continues, “imposed upon this plant could only be described as insane or, if rationally planned, as directed toward making the plant operate so inefficiently that it could not compete with other plants supplying similar products.”
The technical facts are given.
“One story I found almost impossible to believe,” writes the investigator. “Forty per cent of a drop forge has already been dismantled and now the British are insisting that the remainder (60 per cent) of the machinery he removed to another location – to either the Weitmar or the Hoentrop plant, they do not care which. The very thought of removing a drop forge is fantastic. [The Report then explains why.]
“I told Dr. Schilly that I could never believe this story without the proof. Are you sure that the British do not care where this drop forge is to be moved to ...
“Schilly insisted this was the case. ‘They have no interest in anything but making us go to needless labor and expense. And if you want proof that they are really pushing us on this, I will show you the letter which we received ... only a fortnight ago.’”
The verbatim copy of the letter is attached to the Report.
The Bochumer Verein management made a proposal to the British: “Before the Hoentrop tire mill was dismantled, the management offered to build a similar mill for substitute shipment. They had learned that the ... mill was to be given to the British firm of Steel, Peach and Tozer at Sheffield, who had been members of the same international trade association to which Bochumer Verein had belonged before the war, and with whom they have maintained an excellent relationship. They were told unofficially by a member of the firm that this proposal was quite agreeable to Steel, Peach and Tozer, but that orders from the British government forced them to reject Bochumer Verein’s proposal and to accept instead the dismantled equipment from the Hoentrop mill.” (The documentary letters are attached to the Report.)
Was all this to cut down Germany’s armament capacity?
During the war a part of the capacity of Bochumer Verein was used in the direct manufacture of armaments. Bochumer Verein had been the only firm in Germany permitted to make shells, under terms of the Versailles Treaty. However, all of the shell plant has long ago been dismantled. Now the British have given orders that the building is to be torn down and moved to Yugoslavia ...
A third example:
“The dismantling pattern of the Henrichshuette at Hattingen displays the same fantastic pattern as that of the Bochumer Verein. The steel-making parts, the steel foundry and the plate mill are to be cut ou£ of the integrated works, leaving the blast furnaces and processing departments floundering in a hopelessly inefficient manner at either end of the once rationalized process ...
“The senseless drain on Germany’s transportation equipment is particularly ironic, in that Henrichshuette has long been the chief source of supply for certain equipment for the Reichsbahn, already seriously crippled by inadequate over-age equipment. The situation is akin to taking away a cripple’s cane, and then cutting off a few of his toes for good measure ...
“The value to the Allies of dismantling Henrichshuette would seem to lie only in the removal of competition, for its equipment it antiquated ...”
Here too management, local municipal officials and the Ministry of Economies of North Rhine-Westphalia offered substitute equipment on a ton-for-ton basis, especially because of the serious labor situation in the area. The offer was turned down.
“Dr. Bauer, one of the directors who showed me over the entire works, told me that Henrichshuette stood ready to satisfy any demand in order to save the plant. The future is problematical. Dawson [a top British dismantlement official about whom more will appear later – Ed.] told Dr. Harten, ... that the British have no desire to have Henrichshuette equipment established elsewhere ... They simply want to destroy this capacity—that is, to scrap it.”
With the help of these three examples (more are given in the Report) we will be able to see what does make sense of the “fantastic” dismantlement drive of the Allied occupation. We will see why opposition arises in Germany both from the capitalist class and from labor, though we will also see how this opposition takes quite different channels for these two internally antagonistic classes.
(Continued next week)
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