Word: ruhr
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Twelve years age, Hitler grabbed the Ruhr. Without it, the German war machine would have been weak, and the incredibly successful conquests of 1939 to 1942 impossible. But with the most concentrated industrial region in the world working for him, Hitler conquered Europe. Once the Nazis were defeated, the Allied coalition determined to control the Ruhr, to make sure that Germany would never again have the productive means for war. Originally, the Allies planned to pull up the factories by the foundations and turn the Ruhr into a pasture-land. This drastic position was, however, economically dangerous, and slowly gave...
These controls seemed nearly at an end this month. The American and British military governors announced that the Ruhr will be directed by German "trustees," until a German government is set up. Then that government will have the option of nationalizing the Ruhr--or letting it remain in the hands of the trustees...
...French have protested this decision violently. Charles de Gaulle has stated clearly that he would prefer to junk the Marshall Plan entirely, rather than have the Ruhr in German hands. French Communist claims that "pro-German cartelsympathizers" have put the deal across now look all too correct to non-Communists in both France and the world outside. The Queuille government has also expressed dismay, but in a necessarily feebler tone, since it is trying to work in harmony with the other Western nations. Battered by left and right, the French government has been gravely embarrassed, and its shaky grasp...
...Believe me, I have weighed my words, and I tell you that this decision about the Ruhr is one of the gravest decisions of the 20th Century ... We lived for centuries without a Marshall Plan ... I think it can be immensely useful to Europe and France, but on one condition: that it does not lead us ... to sacrifice all the future of the country and of Europe...
...cause of the turmoil was Law 75, promulgated in Frankfurt last fortnight by the Anglo-U.S. military commanders in Bizonia, Generals Sir Brian Robertson and Lucius D. Clay. Law 75 transfers ownership of the Ruhr coal, iron and steel industries to temporary German trustees, and provides that when a freely elected democratic German government is able to do so, it shall decide the question of private or public ownership. The reason given for Law 75 was that the promise of eventual German ownership would raise morale among German workers and managers, and therefore raise production...