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GRUESOME HARVEsT
for which they so strongly and justly condemned Hitler. One
can readily understand why Socialistic Soviet Russia would
violate private property rights in occupied countries, but the
same cannot be said of the United States.
Russia at Yalta took the lead in demanding that German
reparations be set at 20 billion dollars, half of which was to
go to herself. President Roosevelt, engrossed as he was in his
""great design," gambling that Russian suspicions of the west-
ern capitalistic powers could be allayed by giving Stalin every-
thing he wanted, and more, agreed to support the demand.
Prime Minister Churchill, however, pointed out the obvious
fact that if Germany was to be so weakened by de-industri-
alization that she could not pay reparations from current pro-
duction and if reparation was to be limited to plant and equip-
ment discarded by de-industrialization, there could be no justi-
fication for Russia's position. The de-industrialization pro-
gram would automatically limit the amount of reparation to
the amount of plant and equipment not ruined by war, less
whatever amount would be left to the Germans. For the sake
of harmony, however, the 10 billion dollar figure was accepted
"as a basis for discussion."
At Potsdam Russia was apportioned the lion's share of the
reparation. She was to receive all from her own zone, plus 25
per cent from the other zones. Of the latter, two-fifths was to
go to Russia outright and three-fifths was to be given to her
"in exchange for an equivalent value of food, coal, potash,
zinc, timber, clay products, petroleum products, and such
other commodities as may be agreed upon," presumably to be
taken from her zone. President Truman said of the arrange-
ment: "It is a means of maintaining a balanced economy in
Germany and providing the usual exchange of goods between
the eastern part and the western." In other words, one section
of German economy must give up to Russia 15 per cent of
the flesh to be stripped from its bones in order to receive sus-
tenance from another section-a most remarkable form of
economic cannibalism.
The value of Germany's bombed and battered plant and
equipment remaining at the end of the war has been officially
estimated at between 5 and 10 billion dollars, of which 45 per-
cent was located in the Russion zone where Russia was given