Allies modify policy¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter’s core argument is that the post-war Allied policy toward Germany is being reshaped not by principle or humanitarian concern, but by the intensifying rivalry between Anglo-American imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy. Germany, as the heart of Europe, has become the central pawn in the struggle for continental mastery. The Allies are abandoning the earlier punitive line—Vansittartism and the ‘pastoralisation’ of Germany—not out of a change of heart, but because each bloc now seeks to use German industrial power and political allegiance as a weapon against the other.
Key evidence is drawn from a series of high-profile policy statements. Molotov’s speech in favour of a united Germany and against the separation of the Rhineland is presented as a Stalinist manoeuvre to win the German masses and dominate the country, amplified by the Socialist Unity Party’s propaganda for a centralised Reich. The American response came via Byrnes’ speech, which proposed revising the Polish-German frontier—a direct challenge to the annexation of Silesia. Bevin then followed with his own criticism of the Polish annexations, framing this as a thrust against the Kremlin. The chapter notes that while industry in the Anglo-American zones stagnated, reconstruction in the Soviet zone proceeded under Stalinist control. The Allies have used the Stalinists’ refusal to integrate their zone’s economy with the West as a pretext to renounce the Potsdam Agreement, and American imperialists are even considering a loan to Germany.
The chapter draws on the immediate post-war context of 1946–47, when the wartime alliance had fractured and the Cold War was taking shape. The Potsdam Agreement, which had set limits on German industrial capacity and established provisional eastern frontiers, is shown as being discarded by both sides as they jockey for position.
The polemic is directed against both major camps. The Stalinist bureaucracy is attacked for cynically using the rhetoric of German unity to extend its control. But the Social Democrats in the British zone come in for sharp criticism too: while denouncing the Socialist Unity Party as a Moscow front, they eagerly mirror British foreign policy, agitating against the eastern frontiers and hailing Bevin’s industrial proposals. The chapter thus exposes the hypocrisy of both German parties, each serving a different imperial master.