Crime in Liquidation

There is no sure or accurate way to figure just what the German rampage has cost Europe in money, or even what the direct German profits--so far--have been. Britain's Ministry of Economic Warfare announced last week that in occupation costs and other direct charges Germany has collected more than $12,800,000,000, and is still collecting at a yearly rate of $4,800,000,000.*

The economic pattern of German conquest has been clear and consistent. First came a vast physical looting, in which trains were requisitioned to carry to Germany movable property: machinery, raw materials, food stocks, books, scientific instruments, horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, art objects and collections, furniture, park benches, clothing, soap, hardware, garden tools, bed linen, doorknobs. The trains themselves seldom returned.

Next, after the conquered country's currency had been sufficiently inflated with printing-press money, German agents appeared to buy such nonportable assets as farms, real estate, mines, factories, corporations. Later steps involved the scientific appropriation of the best of the conquered nation's food, and the virtual enslavement of its labor.

The result is obvious: a Europe brought to ruin, in which normal concepts of money, property and ownership have been so thoroughly overthrown that they may never be restored to the prewar basis.

France, largest of the conquered nations, had to bind itself to pay tribute in francs equal to $3,000,000,000 a year. A cutting commentary on Nazi economics is the fact that currency inflation has reached a point where the actual value of the reparations payment is down from the original $8,000,000 a day to something less than $1,000,000.

Poland, perhaps the most brutally treated of the overrun countries, first suffered confiscation of all state properties, all central stocks of textiles, food and livestock. Nine thousand factories and 60,000 commercial enterprises were taken over for exploitation by Germans. In 1942, 80% of the harvest was sent to Germany.

Czecho-Slovakia has had to give up its grain, its gold reserve, mines, heavy industries and important textile industry. The British report listed Czecho-Slovakia's total tribute as $1,200,000,000.

The Netherlands. The Nazis evidently intended to assimilate the country completely, blot out Dutch nationality. Industry is almost wholly under German control. State expenditures have almost trebled--to pay Germany's occupation costs and export extortions.

Belgium, like The Netherlands, was victimized by the occupation-mark technique. By the first of this year 1,500 locomotives and the country's entire stock of 75,000 trucks had been taken. The Vichy Government complacently surrendered $260,000,000 in Belgian gold reserves to Germany.

Yugoslavia suffered the usual process of inflation and systematic looting, complicated by the partition of large parts of the country among Germany, Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. All cars were seized in 1941, all bicycles the conquerors could find were taken last year.

Norway's looting in some respects has been the most scientific and painstaking of all. In addition to ail the other standard tricks, the Germans here have gone so far as to requisition personal property of individuals right down to woolen blankets, ski trousers and windbreaker jackets.

Denmark, until recently Germany's model conquest, was looted with great finesse and tact, although the end results have been the same: all trade and industry of consequence controlled by Germans. The Danes felt a new lash of the Nazi whip last week, when troops began seizing furniture and household goods to be shipped back for the use of bombed-out German families.

High Stakes. Despite its huge loot, Germany has been unable to assemble adequate basic reserves. The nation has been like a gambler in an increasingly steep game, winning big sums yet compelled to throw it all back in, to meet the relentless doubling by the other players.

Worst recent economic news for Germany came last week from the Eastern Front as the Red Army captured Balki, only 25 miles southeast of Nikopol. For the past two years the Germans have been getting more than half of their manganese from the Nikopol mines--about 200,000 of the 375,000 tons which their war industry requires each year.

Allied blockade, air attack, further losses on the front must inevitably lower Germany's already reduced industrial production, burden and snarl its already strained transport system. In contrast to industry, Germany's food situation is better than it was last year. The 1943 grain harvest in Europe was good, and the Nazis meant every word of their boast that Germany would eat if all Europe had to starve. The German bread ration was recently increased. Yet the black market continues to flourish. One of Germany's sorest shortages is in housing. Nazi figures admit that 6,953,000 people (about 9% of the prewar population) have been bombed out or evacuated. Labor Chief Robert Ley said last week that bombs had destroyed 2,000,000 rooms in homes. The solutions so far found have been dismally inadequate. Resettled bomb victims, crowded into strangers' homes or into unsanitary new shacks, call themselves "the Fuehrer's guests."

* The U.S. board of Economic Warfare last April estimated the total German plunder at $36,000,000,000 by the end of 1941.

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