LONDON: The blueprint for Germany’s future traced out at Potsdam Conference will reduce the once all-conquering Reich to a mainly agricultural, but self-supporting state with a carefully balanced minimum of essential imports and exports, writes Jon Kimche, Reuter’s commentator on international affairs.

The German war potential is to be eliminated by rigid control of essential industries and destruction not only of all industrial war-making capacity, but also of organisations such as the German General Staff, the Gestapo and Nazi party institutions which might plot secretly for an ultimate resurgence of their country as a military power. Russia is to be accorded the first claim on reparations involving the removal of various industrial assets, while great German cartels which before the war tied up world manufacturers in a network of intrigues and secret understandings are to be broken up completely.

The smaller nations will be able “to work their passage” into the comity of United Nations though Spain alone among the neutrals is sternly excluded.

The Potsdam declaration goes considerably beyond what diplomatic quarters had expected, adds Kimche.

Published in Dawn, August 4th, 2020