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INTRODUCTION
At Yalta in the Crimea, Messrs. Churchill, Roosevelt, and
Stalin met to decide the fate of Europe and in their joint
statement solemnly declared:
"It is not our purpose to destroy the people of Germany."
Again at Potsdam, the representatives of the Big Three met
and in their joint Declaration, signed by Messrs. Stalin, Tru-
man, and Attlee, officially proclaimed:
"It is not the intention of the Allies to destroy or enslave the
German people."
Despite these and other assurances, the Potsdam decisions,
as we at first interpreted them, meant throwing the German
people on their own, with outside assistance prohibited, after
the necessary means for their survival had been destroyed.
This could have but one result: to blot out Germany and
the German people.
The life of every nation is supported by three main pillars:
land (all natural resources), labor (both brawn and brains),
and capital (plants and equipment). Break down any one of
these and the nation is plunged into catastrophe.
We have been guilty of pulling down all three in Germany.
The war started the process by destroying the flower of
German manpower, shattering cities, factories, railroads, and
impoverishing the soil by a five year cessation of fertilizer
production. And an equally oppressive war has been waged
against the German people since their unconditional surrender.
The supporting power of the land has been undermined by
vital territorial losses followed by overcrowding caused by the
influx of millions of Germans expelled into the shrunken Reich
from the lost areas and from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and
Poland. Industrial capital resources have been further dimin-
ished by loss of all production facilities in the territories taken
by the conquerors and by a gigantic program of sacking po-
litely known as "deindustrialization" and "reparations in
kind." The working force had been decimated by the enslave-
ment of millions, the throwing of other millions out of posts
of responsibility through "denazification," and weakened by