Sometimes I just god-damn wonder about people.<\/p>\n
It’s been a year and a month, roughly, since the start of the war in Iraq, and approximately a year since army-to-army hostilities ended.<\/p>\n
And, overall, large groups of people – both within Iraq and the West – are declaring the occupation a failure, and the economy in Iraq collapsed and doomed. And, on a basic level, it’s our fault, because we didn’t have a Plan.<\/p>\n
Now I have a number of issues with what has been done, and I’ll set some of those out in a later post, but I want to make one point first as a way of framing the discussion around a basic set of facts.<\/p>\n
For many of us, there’s a kind of black hole between Hitler and Eva’s last stand in the bunker and the Porsche 911. Somehow, Germany – without taking a lot of room in history books – went from war, to partition, via the Airlift, to world economic leadership. That’s not quite the case. Let me offer up a few tidbits, so that you’ll understand how hard things were – and how much had to be done – between June 5, 1945 and, say 1950. <\/p>\n
Here’s what the economy looked<\/a> like in 1946 and 1947:<\/p>\n After World War II the German economy lay in shambles. The war, along with Hitler’s scorched-earth policy, had destroyed 20 percent of all housing. Food production per capita in 1947 was only 51 percent of its level in 1938, and the official food ration set by the occupying powers varied between 1,040 and 1,550 calories per day. Industrial output in 1947 was only one-third its 1938 level. Moreover, a large percentage of Germany’s working-age men were dead. At the time, observers thought that Germany would have to be the biggest client of the U.S. welfare state.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n and this<\/a>:<\/p>\n The winters of 1945\/46 and 1946\/47 were the worst Germans can remember. They were cold, and as many houses were still damaged, there was a lack of fuel (coal) and people were undernourished, many starved or froze to death. The British and the Americans, in their respective zones, did their best to alleviate the situation. The US Red Cross distributed addresses of German families to US citizens who were descendants of German emigrants and, in many cases, relatives of those in need. The American relatives than sent CARE PARCELS containing durable goods extremely scarce in war-torn Germany. The British efforts to prevent the German population from starvation stressed the country’s economy (which had not recovered from 5 years of war either) to the limit. During this process, the population of West Germany began to regard the British and Americans as liberators rather than occupants. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In large part, this was both the result of the extraordinarily destructive war, but also of deliberate policy on the part of the victorious Allies<\/a>:<\/p>\n With surrender came the time for retribution. In the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) Directive 1067 of April 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was instructed to occupy Germany “not…for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation.” Allied occupation was to bring “home to the Germans that Germany’s ruthless warfare and the fanatical Nazi resistance have destroyed the German economy and made chaos and suffering inevitable and that the Germans cannot escape responsibility for what they have brought upon themselves.” <\/p>\n …<\/b><\/p>\n Such a shift in policy from retribution to rebuilding, from collective guilt to assistance, also meant a renunciation of reparations and of the dismantling of factories: Draining financial and industrial resources from Germany was hardly beneficial to its economic recovery. In early 1946, less than a year after V-E Day, this was a hard pill to swallow for most Americans. But Truman agreed with Churchill, and on May 25, Truman halted all reparations from the U.S. Zone. The punitive Reparations and Level of Industry Plan for the four zones\u2014agreed upon only after months of haggling on March 27, 1946\u2014was quietly scuttled.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n To an extent, it was a result of inadequate planning. In his essay rebutting James Bacques’ charges that Eisenhower deliberately starved a million Nazi POW’s, Stephen Ambrose says<\/a>:<\/p>\n After the first week of May, all of Eisenhower’s calculations as to how many people he would be required to feed in occupied Germany became woefully inadequate. He had badly underestimated, for two reasons. First, the number of German soldiers surrendering to the Western Allies far exceeded what was expected (more than five million, instead of the anticipated three million) because of the onrush of German soldiers across the Elbe River to escape the Russians. So too with German civilians – there were millions fleeing from east to west, about 13 million altogether, and they became Eisenhower’s responsibility. Eisenhower faced shortages even before he learned that there were 17 million more people to feed in Germany than he had expected. <\/p>\n No food shortage? This is the report of the Military Governor for Germany in July 1945: “The food situation throughout Western Germany is perhaps the most serious problem of the occupation. The average food consumption in the Western Zones is now about one-third below the generally accepted subsistence level.” The September report declares, “Food from indigenous sources was not available to meet the present authorized ration level for the normal consumer, of 1,550 calories per day.” <\/p>\n Mr. Bacque says that the prisoners were receiving 1,550 calories a day, and he contends that such a ration means slow starvation. He apparently never looked at what civilians were getting, in Germany or in the liberated countries. In Paris in 1945, the calorie level was 1,550 for civilians. It was only slightly higher in Britain, where rationing continued. It was much lower in Russia, where rationing also continued. As noted, the official ration for German civilians was 1,550, but often not met. In Vienna in the summer of 1945 the official ration sometimes fell to 500. <\/p>\n There is such a thing as common sense. Anyone who was in Europe in the summer of 1945 would be flabbergasted to hear that there was no food shortage. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As we realized the inadequacy of the Morgenthau plan, which intended to ‘pastoralize’ Germany as a way of ending the militant nature – and capabilities – of the German people. By all accounts, the plan was a disaster in conception and execution.<\/p>\n