“DELOOTING” OF GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23965, 4 June 1943, Page 5

“DELOOTING” OF GERMANY

SUGGESTION MADE TO HOUSE OF LORDS (8.0. W.) RUGBY. June 2. The “delooting” of Germany was suggested by Lord Maugham in the House of Lords as an absolute necessity in the interests of justice. “There is no hope for these other countries in their lifetime,” he said, “unless we make up our minds that the equivalent shall be taken as our occupying troops advance through the respective zones and returned-to the countries despoiled,” Lord Maugham asked the Government to use all possible means to prevent, in co-operation with the Allies, the evident intention of the Axis Powers, in anticipation of their own defeat, to destroy the means of industrial competition in the countries they had occupied. There were two circumstances which made it absolutely necessary as a matter of elementary justice that replacement should be effected after the Allies had the Germans thoroughly beaten. The first was the scale on which plundering had proceeded in no fewer than 10 countries, and the second was that there was no other method of giving the devastated countries a reasonable hope of restoring their economic and industrial welfare for years. The most striking fact was that the loot from those countries, according to American authorities, amounted at the end of 1941 to £9,000,000,000. The German system of looting had enabled them to take practically everything they wanted. Lord Cranborne, replying, said that there were obvious limitations to any immediate action the Allies could take while they controlled Axis territory and until the Axis forces were driven out of the countries they had occupied. He agreed that the Allies should not rule out the possibility of replacing, where possible and appropriate, but to tie themselves now to a hard and fast system which might turn out to be entirely inapplicable would be a futile waste of time and labour. What they should do was to complete the necessary preparatory work so as I to ascertain as far as they could the 1 nature and scope of the problem. Th.e' House could rest assured that the problem was not being neglected. The ground was being prepared in every practicable way so that action could be 1 taken when the time came. 1