“THAT NO MAN WHO HAD BEEN A NAZI CAN IN 1946 BE A FOREMAN IN A MINE WHEN IN 1945 NO MAN COULD BE A FOREMAN UNLESS HE WAS A NAZI”: CHURCHILL’S OWN SIGNED RETAINED MANIFESTO ON POSTWAR GERMAN RECONSTRUCTION
CHURCHILL, Winston. Holograph manuscript signed. [London: no publisher, July/August, 1946]. Ten pages, measuring 7-1/2 by 9-1/2 inches, stationery embossed with House of Commons stamp on upper left of each sheet. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
Churchill’s own signed retained manifesto on Postwar German reconstruction, an original manuscript draft of a Labour Party report by William Wells, who had sided with Churchill as Leader of the Opposition, which also discusses denazification and the Potsdam agreement. Undoubtedly Churchill used what Wells wrote in this ten-page, 1200-word report in formulating his own Conservative Party’s policy on raising German morale and lowering the British cost of administering their zone in postwar Germany.
This ten page manuscript is in the hand of William Wells (1908-1990) who represented Walsall (1945-1955) and Walsall North (1955-1974) as a member of the Labour Partry in the House of Commons. He was elected in the July 5, 1945 Labour landslide which resulted in Clement Attlee replacing Conservative Winston S. Churchill as Prime Minister.
There was a Sub-Committee of the Select Committee set up by the House of Commons to make a report on expenditures in the British Zone in Germany. The Committee submitted its report in July 1946, concluding that the cost of supporting the British zone of Germany in the year 1946-1947 would be over £80 million, an amount Britain could not afford. In the report here offered, there are corrections, additions, and deletions by Wells, a member of the Select Committee, who ostensibly presented his final report to the Committee. It originally began “Your Committee has already drawn….” Wells corrected it to read “The Sub-Committee have already drawn….” Wherever he had penned “Your Committee,” he replaced “Your” with “The Sub-.” Later in the report, he replaced “we” with “the Sub-committee” and changed “your Committee” with “the Sub-“Committee.” The concluding paragraph originally began “To summarize our views on this question” it was changed to “To summarize the view of the S.C. on this question….” What appears to be the final draft of Wells’ report was undoubtedly used by Churchill, Leader of the Opposition, as it more resembled his own party lines than the Labour Party’s.
In debate on the floor of the House of Commons on November 27, 1946, William Wells makes it clear he opposed his Labour Party’s views and actions in the British zone of Germany. From his House of Commons speech: “For months everybody has emphasised that there can be no recovery in Germany so long as the export of coal is permitted. Everybody has known that for months. The Select Committee, of which I had the honour to be a Member, so reported; everybody agreed it was necessary, but nothing happened at all. Nothing happened for months, until a short time ago, when we were told that the export of coal from Germany was being progressively reduced. Now that is a good thing, but it is months too late…
“I disagree with some of the statements made on this side of the House about the bad effects of unconditional surrender … Throughout this and all other Debates on this subject we have had a whole series of questions about the quality of the staff administering Germany. Nearly six months ago, the Select Committee recommended that the terms of service within the Control Commission should be assimilated to those of the Civil Service in this country … Six weeks ago, or less, I put down a Question to the Chancellor of the Duchy asking him what action was being taken to implement that recommendation of the Select Committee. The answer was that negotiations were going on between his Department and the Treasury, but that there were difficulties. There may be difficulties, but the difficulties in Whitehall and in St. James’s Square, however great they may be, are as nothing compared with the difficulties that exist in Germany…
“While I believe that in some ways a hard peace for Germany was necessary, I do wish to add my voice to the others raised on both sides of the House about the urgency of revising the Potsdam Agreement. I was in Essen some four months ago. The sullen hatred of the population of Essen, which they manifested towards us as we were passing in British Army cars, was a horrifying and an appalling thing. When you see the vast Krupps factory being wholly dismantled, taking away all the opportunities for earning an industrial livelihood from that population of 650,000 people, and when you appreciate that the whole of Europe is crying out for products such as steam engines which that factory was admirably qualified to build, you realise the full madness of the policy which we are now being forced to pursue of cutting off, on the one hand, the means of livelihood of the Germans, and, on the other, embarrassing the whole of the industrial reconstruction of Europe…”
What Wells stated on November 27, 1946 in the House of Commons, about Potsdam, the “sullen hatred” at Essen, the Krupps factory being “dismantled,” and Europe’s need of steam engines are mentioned in this draft.
Signed by Churchill at the upper right, Wells’ report is titled “Increased Costs Resulting / From Lowered Morale.” In part, “The Sub-Committee have already drawn attention to the vicious spiral caused by the shortage of coal and the shortage of food, results on production, and to the consequential increase in the costs of the occupation to the British taxpayer …. The Sub-Committee were given convincing evidence of the constantly lowering morale of the German public within the Zone, and they must attempt to analyse the causes of this tendency …. Apart from the purely physical effects of the insufficient diet of the average German in reducing his powers of work, in undermining his resistance to disease which factor alone may at any time produce a crisis from which neither our occupation forces and officials nor the British people at home are likely to remain immune, and in increasing maternal mortality, the prospect of living not much above starvation levels must affect the attitude of the German, who in the past has lived fairly well and taken his food seriously, towards the whole of his life and work and, incidentally, towards the occupying power….
“This lack of hope for the economic future of his country and himself is aggravated by the Potsdam agreement on reparations and the Level of Industry Plan. It is no part of the duty or the intention of the Sub Co to criticise the policy underlying these, but their consequences, coupled with the division of Germany into zones that are in practice separated economically as well as politically, do greatly aggravate the difficulties of administering the British Zone. The citizen of Hamburg, where employment has centered on the port, sees gantries being blown and docks dismantled; the inhabitant of Essen, where employment has centered on Krupp, witnesses rolling mills being dismantled and the manufacture of railway engines, for which the whole of Europe is crying out, prohibited ….In these circumstances it is no wonder if German workers ‘go slow,’ if there are riots at Hamburg and sullen hatred at Essen….
“This consideration brings us to another extremely difficult problem, the policy of denazification. It is not for the S.C. to criticise either the policy [or] the methods of carrying it out in so far as these are laid down by quadripartite agreement. They can only record, in passing, that it scarcely makes for an efficient mining industry that no man who had been a Nazi can in 1946 be a foreman in a mine when in1945 no man could be a foreman unless he was a Nazi. The problem bristles with difficulties, for while on the one hand the greater part of the administrative and executive talent of Germany is precluded from use in administrative pr executive capacities at a time when it is so greatly needed, on the other, any attempt to dilute this policy would arouse fierce resentment in political and trade union circles. But on one aspect of this matter the S.C. feel compelled to comment forcibly….
“There are now approximately 40,000 persons confined in interment camps, none of whom have been there for over a year, without trial; and this number is increased from time to time, equally without trial and or denunciation. If part of the object of occupation is to attract the Germans to the British way of life, this is a singular method of setting about it, for the German cannot but feel that the new British intelligence service is but old Sicherheitsdienst [the intelligence service of the SS and the Nazi Party which supported the Gestapo] writ large….
“Closely connected with the problem of denazification and, indeed, of the direct cist to the taxpayer, is a certain sense of frustration engendered by the absence of executive responsibility from such bodies as the Zonal Advisory Council. The German democrat feels that Germany should be governed by Germans and that he is the man for the job. By and large, he is not being allowed to do the job and is consequently impatient and resentful …. The Germans have, for the time being, to choose between the police state and the ineffectualness of the Weimar regime …. And elections equivalent to district and county council elections are to be held this year [elections were held in September and October 1946] …. In short, we must go as fast as we can in devolving administrative and executive responsibility on Germans, both in order to reduce the number of British staff employed and in order to train and get the best out of the Germans …. A certain amount of duplication is inevitable while Germans are being trained to take up posts now held by British staff….
“Another difficult problem is the continued absence of German prisoners of war. Here again, the Sub-Committee’s terms of reference preclude discussion of policy. They can only record, without comment, that this matter is having as bad effect on German morale and is retarding the recovery of her economy….
“To summarize the views of the S.C. on this question, there is no doubt but that German morale is being lowered by a general sense of uncertainty of what the future holds for Germany. While in the main the causes of this state of affairs lie outside purely British control, it is essential, if the taxpayers’ money is to be spent in moderation and invested well, that they should, so far as practicable, be removed.”
Light fingerprint smudge at signature. Fine condition.